You probably don’t wake up in the morning thinking, “How can I make my direct reports miserable?”
But according to a survey by SHRM, 84% of workers believe poorly trained leaders create unnecessary work and stress, and one of the top three skills they could improve is “managing time and delegating.” And from what I’ve seen with my time management coaching clients, poor time management is a huge factor in bad leadership. When you’re not in control of your own time, you can end up overloading your team, creating unnecessary emergencies, and neglecting to provide essential support.
If you struggle with time management, your issues likely have a negative trickledown effect. At the mild end of the spectrum, that could be a team’s joking acceptance of the fact that you’re always 10 minutes late for meetings. At the severe end, you could be debilitating the people who work for you: I’ve had time management coaching clients who have experienced anxiety, depression, high blood pressure, TMJ, and autoimmune flare-ups caused by managers who have more acute time management challenges.
Even though you’re working hard and have good intentions, you still may be stressing out or demotivating direct reports.
Summary
Many leaders unintentionally create stress for their teams due to poor time management. Workers say poorly trained managers cause unnecessary stress and work, with time management and delegation being top areas for improvement.
Key Takeaways
- Managers who don’t manage their time well can unintentionally cause stress, burnout, and health issues among their team members.
- Assign work based on actual team capacity, not assumptions. Use shared tools to track workloads and avoid overburdening people. Plan ahead and delegate early.
- Don’t say yes to every request. Protect your team by clarifying priorities and negotiating when new work arises.
- Even well-meaning leaders can demotivate or overwhelm their team if they don’t manage time effectively. Better time management reduces team stress, increases efficiency, and improves employee satisfaction and retention.
As a manager, you owe it to yourself and your team to commit to improving your time management flaws. Not only will this reduce everyone’s stress, it may also affect turnover, given how critical having a good manager is to employee retention. I’ve identified five key areas where managers fall short in their time management — and ways to overcome them. After all, there is always opportunity for growth and change.
Flaw #1: Giving Work Without Any Concept of Your Team’s Capacity
As a manager, you should assign and delegate to your team members. But there comes a point at which the people who report to you will be at or beyond their capacity. When you don’t recognize when they’ve hit their limit, you run the risk of overloading your team, which can lead to unsustainably long hours, reduced work quality, and in some cases, paralysis because they feel set up for failure.
To avoid these issues, create a central place to capture what individuals are doing, what you’ve delegated, and how much capacity they have left. You can do this by having a shared task list for each direct report that you add to every time you assign a new task, using tools like Outlook Tasks or Todoist. Or if you’re managing more extensive projects, set them up and assign tasks through tools like Microsoft Project, Asana, and Monday.com.
Then, review these task management systems regularly with your team. You could do this during weekly staff meetings or in one-on-one meetings. And if your team members raise concerns, don’t brush them off or expect them to “just deal with it.” Help them by guiding them on how to prioritize, set boundaries, and be more efficient.
Flaw #2: Asking for Help Last-Minute on Things You Knew About in Advance
Creating unnecessary emergencies because you neglected to tell your team about a task earlier is fast-tracking them for burnout. Yes, there are times when last-minute turnarounds are unavoidable. But in all other situations, employ these strategies.
As soon as you’re aware of a new task, ask yourself, Could I delegate this? If the answer is yes, do so as quickly as possible. For example, you could immediately forward an email with a note asking your direct report to set up a time with you to discuss how to get the item done.
For larger projects, there should be some overarching roadmaps outlining key deliverables and milestones. If these don’t exist, work with your team to create them. You’ll want a clear, consolidated document of deadlines, what needs to be accomplished by those dates, who is responsible for completing the work, and who needs to sign off on it before it’s finalized. These roadmaps will then give everyone insight into where they are in the process, and what needs to be done for everything to come together on time.
Additionally, put a recurring reminder in your calendar at the end of each quarter or month to review the roadmaps and any other upcoming commitments, such as investor presentations or conferences. This helps you to delegate commitments before they become emergencies. It’s infinitely better to let people know weeks — or even months — in advance that you need something done instead of springing on them on a Friday that you have a conference next week and will need a slide deck.
Flaw #3: Not Setting Priorities or Boundaries with Upper Management
If you say yes to every request from your boss, your team will be overcommitted and crushed. One of the best ways you can serve your team is to have clarity on their highest-priority items in alignment with your area’s strategic goals. (If you use the strategies above, you’ll already have these roadmaps in place.)
Then when new potential initiatives or projects arise, instead of immediately accepting them as add-ons, have a conversation with upper management around whether or not these new items are of higher or lower priority than what your team members are already working on. This could sound like, “That sounds like a fantastic idea, but my understanding is that our strategic priorities this quarter are A, B, and C. Have our priorities shifted, or should we push this new initiative to next quarter?” Or, “My team is currently at capacity. What would you like us to deprioritize to make space for this new project?” (You can also use my free resource How to Say No Nicely)
Your managers may not always appreciate this pushback. But your team will be grateful.
Flaw #4: Never Being Available
To read Flaws #4 & #5, and how to address them, you can head over to HBR to read the rest of my article: Don’t Let Bad Time Management Undermine Your Leadership
About Real Life E
Elizabeth Grace Saunders is a time management coach and best-selling author who empowers individuals who feel guilty, overwhelmed and frustrated to feel peaceful, confident and accomplished. She helps people struggling with new levels of responsibility after receiving a promotion or becoming a parent, who aren’t meeting expectations at work, or who need better work-life balance to overcome burnout.
Elizabeth was named one of the World’s Top 30 Time Management Professionals by Global Gurus every year since 2018 and is a member of Forbes Coaches Council. McGraw Hill published her first book The 3 Secrets to Effective Time Investment: How to Achieve More Success with Less Stress. Harvard Business Review published her second book How to Invest Your Time Like Money. And FaithWords published her third book Divine Time Management. Elizabeth regularly writes time management articles for Harvard Business Review and Fast Company and has appeared on CBS, ABC, NBC, and Fox.
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