A 15-minute a day habit that your teams will thank you for!

I get it - you're busy!  It's the end of the year.  Performance reviews are due (or late!)  Holidays are coming up.  Projects are in critical phases.  End of year "spend it or lose it" time with budgets.  Probably some annual planning work in there somewhere too!  Busy, busy, busy!

I can't think of a better time to pause, take a moment and reflect... "Am I being an empowering, transformation manager/leader, or am I being a command and control manager?"  

I can tell what you're thinking already!  "Ugh Coach Dan!  Are you serious???  Time to reflect, NOW?  It's one of the busiest times of the year."  

Yup!  This is the perfect time to pause and reflect... because if you're as busy as I think you probably are right now - you've probably been operating on "manager / leader auto-pilot," and you've been showing your true management colors!  What better time to take a critical look at how you've been acting, asking yourself if that's the kind of manager/leader you want to be, and challenging yourself to be better?

For those of you who haven't clicked "close" yet, let me suggest a simple framework and exercise for you to assess how you've been (management wise) and set yourself some goals that will help you get to how you want to be.

How managers split their time.

There are countless models and theories about how managers manage.  I prefer to keep it simple, so I'm going to share with you a 4 quadrant framework to help you assess how you're spending your "manager" time.  

First let's look at the quadrants in the framework.  (Spoiler alert, I describe each quadrant in true "Coach Dan" style, with a touch of whimsy and a dash of drama, so keep that in mind!)

The Subject Matter Expert

As a manager, you're often called upon to be the "answer person".  The human who has all the answers, knows how it works, understands the in's and out's and can tell people how to solve their problems or do what they need to do.  You're regularly the smartest person in the room.  I mean, it stands to reason, you're the manager!  You got to where you are because you're better at it than anyone else!

The Fire Fighter / Work Assigner

These tasks aren't going to assign themselves!  Someone has to dole out the work, right?  As a Fire Fighter / Work Assigner, you are the reason that work flows through your team so smoothly and effectively.  You are both gatekeeper and key master for the capacity that you manage.  You know what the real priorities are and you make sure those real priorities are attended to.  No one on your team makes a move without your approval.

People Developer

Helping people grow and become the best they can be by coaching, mentoring, teaching and experimenting.  Aligning experience and passion with real customer and business problems is how you help the company get the most out of its investments.  A good development plan and regular touch bases help to keep your finger on the pulse of the team members entrusted to your care.  

Process Improver

There is nothing more rewarding than removing impediments and dependencies so teams can deliver value!  It doesn't matter if you're helping to streamline communication amongst or between teams, eliminating non-value-adding steps in an enterprise process, or removing obstacles so a team can achieve their objectives more efficiently; improving processes unlock the amazing potential of your people!

Fitting it all together

Now in all fairness, most people spend time doing all four of the quadrants described above.  The trick is, turning the quadrants into something you can use to improve!  If you put the four quadrants together, you get a grid that looks like this...

As you're looking at these quadrants, think about your last week.  In which quadrant did you spend the majority of your time.  Don't confuse yourself with where you planned to spend your time, or how you wanted to spend your time.  Go back and look at your calendar.  Think about your last week critically.  In which quadrant did you spend the most of your time?  

Unless it's "performance review week" I would venture a guess that most of managers reading this spent the bulk of their time on the right side of the grid above.  If you want to do it mathematically, go ahead and assume a 50 hour week.  How many hours of that week did you spend solving technical or business problems? SME Quadrant!  How many hours did you spend prioritizing or assigning work (or understanding what the ask was so you could direct the person to the right people to do their work?)  Fire Fighter / Work Assigner Quadrant.  You get the picture.  

(By the way, if you're counting Team Member 1-1 or staff meetings as "People Developer" time - hold up there a second.  What were you actually doing in those 1-1 sessions?  Assigning Work?  Getting status updates?  It's easy to count those 1-1 as People Development time, but this exercise only works if you're being honest with yourself...  You get what I mean.)

As "agile minded managers and leaders," we know that the biggest contribution we make to the company is not being the smartest person in the room... but building a whole team of smart, capable, passionate, empowered people who can do it just as well, if not better than we ever could.  That is how managers and leaders multiply their impact.  That is a true manager or leader's legacy.  

So take a look at your grid again.  Did you spend your time being the smartest person in the room, or building the smartest people in the room?

Coach Challenge - Turning data into improvement

So there is knowing how you spend your time, and then there is doing something about it.   If you're serious about being an agile minded manager or leader, you've gotta challenge yourself to shift to the left side of the grid.  One way to do this is to start and end your day by looking at the grid!
…at the start of each day		Start each day off by spending 5 minutes looking at your calendar, and then looking at the grid.  Where do you have opportunities in your calendar to shift yourself away from the right, and into the left?  Look at the possibilities your calendar offers, and set yourself a goal of where you'd like to end your day, percentage wise - left side vs. right side of the grid. Do you have a series of 1-1 meetings today?  Instead of asking for status, look for opportunities to coach.  Instead of telling them how to solve a problem, challenge them to imagine how you would solve it, and  encourage them to try that solution themselves (with you being a safety net, of course!)  Then count that half hour toward "People Developer" Do you have a project kickoff meeting today?  Instead of giving the team a RACI chart, present the team with the objectives and outcomes the project is intended to achieve, and ask them how they might best organize to solve the problem (you can always use the RACI as some guardrails, or a place to start...)  Another two hours in the "People Developer" or (depending on how they organize themselves) even "Process Improver" quadrant! Look for opportunities to challenge people throughout the day to solve, prioritize, organize themselves.  Help them to think about all of the different inputs or obstacles they may encounter.  Not only will you be building better team members, but you may be surprised and delighted by an idea you hadn't thought of before!
…at the end of each day		End each day with some math and reflection.  Take acritical look at your calendar and reflect on your interactions for the day.   How much time did you actually spend on the left side vs. right side?  Did you meet (or even exceed) your goals?   Where are the opportunities to "shift left" that you may have missed?  How could you have spent more time on the left vs. right?   Celebrate the fact that you're even looking at your day through this lens!  With everyone's calendars and their daily pressures, giving yourself the space to reflect can sometimes be a huge win. Give yourself some grace.  The most agile-minded, people focus leaders and managers have days where they wish they never got out of bed in the morning.  Remember, there are always opportunities to improve, it's one of our shared values.  You can celebrate a lesson learned just as much as you can
Wash, rinse, repeat.  By making this simple routine a part of your day to day, you're setting yourself up to continually improve the way you're managing your team, which by extension, improves your team's ability to deliver value.  And that's what this is all about. What stopping you from investing 15 minutes a day (5 at the beginning, 10 at the end) and using this grid to set goals, prepare and reflect on how you're showing up as a manager.  One small step can lead to a universe of improvement for you and your team!  You're all worth it! We all win together