How do you spend your time?

One of the complaints I hear from many managers, is that they understand the need to lead and coach to develop and inspire, however, they also realise that they do not have the time.  

Often, it's easier and more efficient, in the short-term, to make the decisions and to tell people what they need to do.  

Yet they also understand that in the long term, this is ineffective.  

They are caught between being busy today and being proactive for the future. However, when a leader looks at how they are actually spending their time, they will realise that they are getting involved in things and activities that cause more problems.  

If you look at your given week, even just a day, and plot all your activities to keep a record of what you spend your time on, you can determine whether you should be doing that as part of your job.  This self analysis is critical for leaders to understand whether they are focusing on vital tasks or functional activities. Vital tasks add value, functional can be automated, repeated and delegated.

Often, Managers get stuck in managing and can't make the break into leadership because of the activities they choose to spend their time on. In this analysis, the common activities that keep people stuck are solving urgent problems, creating reports and monitoring performance, getting information for others, finding solutions for team members, sorting out disputes/conflict and firefighting.  They are managing, but they want to lead more. They are stuck in directing rather than empowering leadership styles. 

The analysis helps you to understand where you are taking responsibility from others, disempowering your people. You will see where your time stealers are and what you can do to change them. You might see you are spending a lot of time leading meetings, yet make all the decisions rather than facilitating talent. Perhaps you rush in to firefighting too soon and create even more fires.to be doing is coaching people to find solutions for themselves, so that in the future they don't need to ask, they just feel empowered to solve their own problems.

Many leaders also find that they are involved in conflict between individual members teams or functions. 

If one team member has an issue, they report it to their manager who then has to resolve and feedback. It is inefficient and yet they continue to do it. Rather than holding others accountable for resolving conflict, role modelling healthy conflict and seeking to understand why people are in conflict, they try to solve it so everyone moves on. The manage rather than lead. The reality is, unless the conflict is really resolved, grudges form and then it becomes toxic later.

When leaders can see how much time is being wasted on fixing problems, attending meetings, and doing admin, they realise they are stuck in management behaviours, rather than leadership behaviours.  

They need to take responsibility for their own actions. Develop and empower their team members to be more effective.