Dear Madeleine,

I work on a team that has had a lot of turnover in the last couple of years. Although our company is very big, over time I have learned who to call to get things done. I am now considered our team’s “answer lady.”

The situation has slowly morphed into people asking me to forward their email instead of taking the next step themselves. I now spend time taking care of a lot of tasks that aren’t mine. In addition, my boss has had a lot going on in her personal life, so I frequently fill in for her.

I recently realized a lot of small things have added up to me doing so much more than I think is fair, and I am starting to get annoyed. How do I push back when my co-workers try to fob their work off on me? And how do I tell my boss I can’t fill in as much as she’d like? I have my own personal life to attend to, after all.

Answer Lady 

________________________________________________________________________________

Dear Answer Lady,

How do you push back? How do you tell your boss enough is enough?

Directly, clearly, and kindly, but firmly. That’s how.

You are training your co-workers to believe you will take care of things they don’t know how (or want) to do. You are training your boss to believe you can do your job and hers, too. So cut it out.

I don’t want to sound like I’m blaming you—I’m not. This happens to most people whose first impulse is to be helpful until they realize they have created a problem for themselves. The problem is if you send the message that it is okay for someone to do something, they will keep doing it for as long as you allow it. So you must stop allowing it.

This might be uncomfortable and challenging at first because you have to set new expectations and retrain people, which will be inconvenient for them. You may even find that some folks get upset—but remember, the only people who get upset with you for setting boundaries are the people who benefit from your not having them. If you shy away from conflict, which I suspect is the case, this will certainly be unpleasant. But a moment of unpleasantness in exchange for not being annoyed all the time is worth it.

Next time a co-worker assumes you will take the next steps, clearly state who they should speak with and ask them to let you know how things work out. Do not volunteer to take over, forward an email, or get involved. Just stop taking on other people’s work.

As for your boss, I think it is fair for you to have a conversation with her. You can share that you wanted to help out because you know she has been having a rough time, but your workload is becoming unmanageable. Be prepared with a list of what you think makes sense for you to continue to do on her behalf until things settle down for her, and a list of activities you feel are way beyond your job scope.

This is, of course, unless you want to ask for a promotion and a raise. If you think it makes sense, you can certainly prepare to do that. You might want to rehearse with a friend how to frame your request so that you have a clean, concise approach. Something along the lines of “I understand you need coverage, and I wonder if it would make sense for you to deputize me for the duration? It might mean changing my title and possibly a bump in pay.” Avoid complaining. Instead, point out the reality and share some proposed solutions. Be kind but clear. The more you can keep feelings and emotions out of it, the easier the conversation will be for both of you.

The beauty of putting some time into practicing setting boundaries is that people often will sense the shift in you and stop asking you to do things they shouldn’t ask you to do. I am not quite sure how this happens, but I have experienced it myself and seen it happen for countless clients. But it doesn’t always. You still need to be ready to draw a line in the sand.

Start today. Stand up for yourself before you get so annoyed you say something you regret. It’s much better to strike while the iron is cold and say what needs to be said before you get heated up.

There is helping out in a pinch, and then there is letting people take advantage of you—which will continue to happen until you put up the hand.

Good luck!

Love, Madeleine

About Madeleine

Madeleine Homan Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response soon. Please be advised that although she will do her best, Madeleine cannot respond to each letter personally. Letters will be edited for clarity and length.

Dear Madeleine,

I am a mid-level manager in a global software company. I have been working here for about ten years and I lead three teams. Right now I am working with my manager on our goals for 2024 and I can already tell that there is no way my teams are going to be able to deliver on all of them.

We have been pushing like crazy all this year with a promise that the pressure would let up at the end of the year. As it is, I have to talk someone off the ledge daily. Now I am looking down the barrel of another year of nonstop work. I feel terrible about this—like I am breaking a promise to my people.

My boss isn’t a jerk. I know she is being pressured from above. She would never say it, but I can sense the unspoken “if you can’t get this done, I will find someone who can.” There has to be some way to manage my people’s and my boss’s expectations more effectively, but I don’t know what it is.

What do you think? I am beginning to think that I can’t live with the kind of anxiety that is building up with no relief in sight. How do I manage this relentless tension?

Pressure Cooker

_____________________________________________________________________

Dear Pressure Cooker,

Well, this sounds like situation normal. Almost everyone I speak to is feeling this way. Here are the choices you have to consider:

• Negotiate for more (or more skilled) resources.

Carefully break down each goal into discreet tasks and estimate the time required to complete it. If you can show the math of what it will take to complete all of the required work, and how it will be physically impossible for your existing people to do it, you may be able to get more help. It is hard to argue with math.

You may get countered with “work smarter, not harder.” If you think that might be the case, be prepared to request the kind of training that would help your people to do that. (There might not be any.) With your experience, you probably know how long it should take people to do certain things—and some things just take the time they take. Doing this will also help you pinpoint if you have any team members who cannot get the work done in a reasonable timeframe. You may need to upskill or replace some folks. This can be hard, but honestly, sometimes people are in the wrong job and it isn’t doing them any favors to not address that. You can take a stand as long as you can show that you have really thought it through.

• Negotiate a reduction in distractions.

Of course I don’t know how much of an issue this is, but if your company is like anyone else’s, you and your people are probably asked to join any number of meetings that don’t contribute directly to getting the job done. Look at what those are, and do everything you can to get a few of those items off of the required list.

• Negotiate to reduce the deliverables.

This is the most obvious, and the one your boss is expecting from you. This is probably the least effective option for you at this time. However, I do urge you to check out the boss’s unspoken threat—you might be making it up. This is a classic way for people to needlessly ratchet up their stress levels. You can literally ask your boss what the consequence would be of not being able to deliver on everything.

You absolutely can and should:

• Work with your boss to prioritize.

In the spirit of wanting to under-promise and over-deliver, you can ask your boss to put each required outcome in order of priority. The hard truth is that if everything is a priority, that means nothing is a priority. I suspect your boss knows this as well as you do. So as long as you know your people are focused on the must-haves and will get to the nice-to-haves, that should help you manage your stress level.

• Work with your team to design sprints.

Since no one can go full-out all the time, work with your team leads to design one week of go-hard sprints and then one week of regular work. It isn’t a new idea, but I have seen it work well. You can read more about that here.

In the meantime, I hate to say it, but the intensity in most workplaces seems to be here to stay. You must decide whether you are going to live with it or try to find a more forgiving environment. If you choose to live with it, you have to find ways to take care of yourself and encourage the same for your people. Find one thing you can do to help you manage your stress and commit to it. Meditation, exercise, yoga—whatever has worked for you in the past. You also need to get some perspective. Breathe, do your best, remember that nobody dies in software development and that what gets done is what gets done, and be okay with that. A little perspective can go a long way.

I know it feels like you are breaking a promise, but the fact is that you have limited control over your environment. You can explain that to your people and share what you are doing to advocate for sanity. And at least now you know to be a little more cautious with your promises in the future.

Part of being a leader is choosing one’s attitude and what to focus on. This is your opportunity to do that. Your people will follow your lead.

Love, Madeleine

About Madeleine

Madeleine Homan Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response soon. Please be advised that although she will do her best, Madeleine cannot respond to each letter personally. Letters will be edited for clarity and length.

Dear Madeleine,

I have been a manager for a couple of years. My company provided zero training. I kind of figured things out as I went along, and took a lot of online courses. I’m doing okay.

My issue is that there is just too much work. I’ve tried putting in ten-hour days, being super organized, using time management systems—you name it. But even when I work 55 to 60 hours a week I still can’t get it all done. My partner keeps telling me I’m going to burn out, but I don’t really feel that way. I love my job and am convinced there is a better way to get things done. I keep hearing that I need to work smarter, not harder, but I don’t really know what that means.

I am beginning to think there’s something wrong with me. Maybe I’m just not smart enough.

Any suggestions you have would be welcome.

Up Against the Clock

___________________________________________________________________________

Dear Up Against the Clock,

There is nothing wrong with you.

You are smart enough.

There is just too much work.

And your partner is right. You are in danger of burning out.  In fact, I might suggest that your recent attack of self-doubt is an indication that burnout is already happening.

Humans are simply not built to sustain that much intensity 24/7/365. If you were saving orphans in a war zone, it might make sense, but even that would come to an end at some point. High intensity can work well for special projects—situations that have a beginning, middle, and end. But even CEOs and business owners have to find ways to take vacation and modulate intensity, and they are generally well compensated for their commitment. The situation you are describing sounds like a long, dark tunnel with no hope of light at the end of it.

You must take action. Now.

You have a few options.

1. Get help. I am not sure where your manager is in all of this, but if you have not escalated this situation to them already, now is the time. You can’t expect your manager to know you are overburdened unless you tell them. If they are available to you at all, ask for a 1:1 to go over everything on your plate and brainstorm how to get some of it off your plate. If they are not available to you, make a spreadsheet. List everything required of you, the time each thing takes, what you need to hand off to someone else, what you are going to do in 45 to 50 hours a week, and what you are not going to do. Then email it to your manager. If you can’t get support from your manager, you might think about escalating the situation to your manager’s boss or even HR.
2. Prioritize. Choose the deliverables that are going to make the least impact on your team and others and find a way to delegate them or just don’t do them. A client who had just completed an MBA from Harvard Business School once told me that one thing Harvard teaches in MBA programs is how to prioritize. The way they do it is by assigning so much work that it is almost impossible to do it all. The students who succeed figure out which assignments to invest their time in and which to coast on. This story may not be true, but it makes sense to me because no one can do everything that could be done, or even should be done. The dirty little secret of working smarter is that you decide what you’re not going to do or what you are going to do less well. You must choose what you will focus on and what you will not focus on.
3. Schedule and take a vacation. It sounds like you have climbed on a hamster wheel and you can’t get off. Impossible as it may seem, you must step away and get some perspective. And I don’t mean a long weekend. I mean at least one entire work week during which you totally unplug. If you can’t do it, that is an HR matter. Seriously. It means that the staffing and resourcing for your team is wrong.

You will notice I am not suggesting you delegate more, because every situation like yours I have ever seen suggests that you are either already doing that or you don’t have anyone to delegate to. If that is the case, you need more people. Fight for it.

This is a crossroads moment for you. And I know you know that, or you wouldn’t have written this letter. The only person who can put up the hand, stop the train, call a time out, and rebuild your work life so it makes sense is you. Your number one priority is personal sustainability so that you can continue to contribute to your organization, grow your career, and enjoy your life.

The moment is now.

Love, Madeleine

About Madeleine

Madeleine Homan Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response soon. Please be advised that although she will do her best, Madeleine cannot respond to each letter personally. Letters will be edited for clarity and length.

Dear Madeleine,

I have been working for a company for a few years now. They moved to an Unlimited PTO policy just as I joined. It was heavily promoted in the recruiting stage.

Things went fine the first couple of years. I took the typical PTO breaks—December holiday time, a couple of days in the spring when my kids had a break, around 10 to 14 days in the summer—nothing that exceeded the number of vacation days I would have taken in the old model.

I work on a great team. We have always talked about time off and who would cover for the person who was out. We also have generally checked in and made ourselves available when we’ve been on PTO if there is potential for a problem. There has never been an issue.

 We got a new boss about a year ago. He is a stickler for clearing PTO, which is fine—except that whenever I put in for time off, he denies my request. This has happened a couple of times now.

He always has a different reason—the launch of a new project, heavy workloads, someone else had already requested that time (even though no one said they had). Everyone on our team has experienced this. It’s getting to the point that instead of asking, some colleagues are simply calling in sick when they need to be out.

This is stressing me out. My mother-in-law is planning a big family reunion late this summer, and my wife has made it clear that attending is not optional. But now I am afraid to even ask. Help!

Denied PTO

__________________________________________________________________

Dear Denied,

This sounds frustrating indeed. Some managers get very anxious at the prospect of a team member being out. If I have this right, it sounds like you would be asking for this time about two and a half months beforehand. It would be absurd for your boss to deny you.

So, I say, ask now. The longer you wait, the greater the risk of being denied. Make it clear that you need the time for a family event and that it will create a real problem if you don’t attend. Explain that the team has always been super cooperative when it comes to covering for each other when they take PTO, and that you will make sure to cover all contingencies before you go.

If that fails, the next step would be to have a conversation with your manager to understand the reasoning behind the denial. If he claims that somebody has already asked (unlikely), ask who it is, and maybe you can negotiate the dates with that person, if their plans aren’t set in stone.

If that gets you nowhere, it will be time to go to HR. The statistics show that employees tend to take less time under the new Unlimited PTO policies than they did under the old model that set the number of days off. The fact is that people need to take vacation. Not just taking time away from work but still checking in; I mean a real don’t-even-think-about-work vacation. Any decent HR group will know this and should offer proper guidance and support to your manager.

It is possible that your manager doesn’t understand the PTO policy or he worries that if his team appears to take too much time it will reflect badly on him. We can speculate all day long, but it would be up to the HR business partner to get to the root of your manager’s reluctance to let anyone take time off.

Based on what I have read, asking for time off with plenty of notice should work to get you the time you need. You can read here about your rights, but remember that every state and country has different laws.

Don’t let your previous experience delay your making the request. Ask now and get HR involved quickly if you are denied. Lean on the recruiting promises if you need to. If you get no joy, you might consider working for a company that sees their employees as human beings, not machines.

There are already enough reasons to get stressed out these days. Adding the potential wrath of your spouse and her family to it just makes no sense at all. If your company will not support your need to take care of yourself, find one that will.

Love, Madeleine

About Madeleine

Madeleine Homan Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response soon. Please be advised that although she will do her best, Madeleine cannot respond to each letter personally. Letters will be edited for clarity and length.

Dear Madeleine,

I am the executive director of a well established not-for-profit organization. I am passionate about our mission, and I know we do great things for our community.

My problem is that I am exhausted—physically, mentally, and psychologically. We have recently been through a couple of big hiccups with one bad hire, one very reliable director who has had to go out on medical leave, and some intractable logistical issues.

It just never seems to end. Problems come at me all day and it would take 12- to 14-hour days to get it all done. That would probably be okay, but I have kids at home and a partner who is getting fed up with my mono-focus on the job.

I know I need to bring in more of the right kind of help, but hiring takes a lot of time—and I am gun-shy from the last hire that turned out to be nightmare. I never have time to think anything through. I am in constant reaction mode.

I have always been driven and I just don’t seem to be able to turn it off—especially when there are so many critical things that need my attention. I envy people who don’t have to work, because they can go to yoga and take walks—things I have always done to stay centered. I can’t remember the last time I did either.

There has to be a better way but I just don’t know what it might be. Would appreciate your thoughts.

Feeling so Done

_____________________________________________________________________________

Dear Feeling so Done,

Boy, do I understand your situation. It sounds very familiar, and very difficult. I would say almost every client I work with—every one of them as driven as you—is up against similar circumstances. The rapid change everyone is dealing with, the challenge of finding the right people to fill important roles, and the constant press of needing to do more with fewer resources are all conspiring to push many folks to the brink.

Here is the thing, FsD. Your nature—to set big audacious goals and then drive toward them with unwavering commitment—is part of the problem. It can be easy, when you have experienced real success because of your drive, to let your drive take over your life. But now it is impacting your mental health and your family life. Drive is like any kind of useful energy—let’s say fire. A well controlled fire is a miracle, and useful in innumerable ways. But an uncontrolled fire is a disaster. It is up to you to use this uncomfortable moment to make a permanent change—from letting your drive have power over you to leveraging your drive to power you. Drive is a wonderful gift. But like all great gifts, it has a dark side.

At the risk of offending you, I might submit that your boss is a relentless task master who needs to cease and desist. Of course, your boss is you. If you go down, which you will if you keep this up, the whole house of cards will go down. It is up to you to stop the madness. Have a chat with your boss (take a walk and have a long chat with yourself) and negotiate for a saner way through this difficult time. You are down two important people, so you simply aren’t going to be able to accomplish everything you had planned. Look at your calendar and cancel stuff.

“I can’t!” you are silently screaming. To which I reply, “Yes you can, and you must!” But how?

• Call people you have made commitments to and negotiate a change in deadline and/or deliverables.
• Block off your calendar for a walk or a yoga class every day. I promise you that you will be much better equipped to deal with all of the problems that need solutions. You will think more clearly, be better at creative problem solving, and be much more optimistic. All of the research shows that this is true—and you know it is true from your own experience.
• Choose a couple of things that you will put off until you are properly staffed.
• Work with your partner to understand what their complaints are and what they think would be satisfactory from you in terms of after-work time. Negotiate an approach you believe you can commit to, and then follow through. If you decide to be home to be with family at 6:00, don’t schedule any meetings after 5:00 so you have time to review the day, look at the next day, carry over tasks, and breathe. That way, when you walk through the door you can be fully present with the people you love the most in the world. People like you really need the full support of their family. And your family can tell you how much they really need you at home: what is “nice to have” and what is “have to have” for them.

I think of these techniques as personal sustainability: these are the things you need to do to go the distance. If you keep going the way you are currently going, you will just burn yourself to the ground.

A word about envy: I learned this from my dear friend and colleague Laura Berman Fortgang, and I have never heard anyone else say it. But I think it is so true. Envy is simply data. It is information about your deepest desires, your wildest dreams. So when you notice that you get a stab of envy when you see others going to yoga, or taking their walks, that is an indication of exactly how critical it is to you. Let your envy inform your priorities.

There is no shame in stepping back and reshuffling priorities in the face of changed circumstances. The problems coming at you will still be there tomorrow. Your to-do list will be there tomorrow. Remind yourself that nobody will actually die if you do what you need to do to take care of yourself.

No one else can do it for you, FsD. Only you can reclaim your sanity. You have everything you need to do it—you just have to decide that you are going to.

Love, Madeleine

About Madeleine

Madeleine Homan Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response soon. Please be advised that although she will do her best, Madeleine cannot respond to each letter personally. Letters will be edited for clarity and length.

Dear Madeleine,

I am an EVP of sales in an organization that is growing insanely fast. I have a brand new Chief Sales Officer and my regional counterpart just quit—so I have gone from four direct reports leading 300 people to seven direct reports leading 700 people.

I would have thought my number one job would be to make sure everyone is on track with their quotas—but, as it turns out, no. I mean yes, but in addition to my new boss being hell-bent on my getting everyone to quota, I have to complete 27 projects. I am not kidding. I sat down over the weekend to create thumbnail project plans for each project and there are literally 27.

I tried to talk her out of my needing to complete all 27, and to get her to prioritize them—you know, the 80/20 rule—but she just waved her hand and said: “You are such a rock star; I know you will figure this out.”

I am so overwhelmed, I don’t even know where to start. Everyone is barely keeping up as it is because there has been so much change in the organization. I can’t even begin to imagine how we are going to get everything done.

Any thoughts will be appreciated. I think …

My Boss is Nuts

____________________________________________________________________

Dear My Boss is Nuts,

Well, she might be. Or, more likely, she is just very green. She is making the classic rookie error of so many who want to make a splash when they hit the C-Suite: too much, too soon, too fast.

If your new CSO is like any other in a fast-growing organization, she is probably being driven by a relentless CEO who is being driven by an uncompromising board and very vocal investors or shareholders. She hasn’t figured out how to discern between what really matters to her CEO and Board and what is just an idea—so she is just going to pile it on you. It is the senior leader equivalent of throwing spaghetti at a wall to see what sticks. It is a terrible strategy, but a lot more common than you’d think.

So it is up to you to figure out what matters most and what is actually doable. The first thing to do is create a matrix of all the projects and organize them by:

1. the ones that will make the biggest impact on revenue generation; and
2. the level of difficulty.

Since hitting or exceeding quota is job number one, prioritize everything that will help everyone to do that. Start with the least complicated and get a toehold on the more complex, longer term ones.

Everything else can get slotted into the calendar after these get going. You may or may not ever get to them—but if you are crushing the numbers and most important projects, it won’t matter that much. Then the projects that are still important will bubble to the top and the rest will just fade away.

Don’t forget that you have seven VPs, they all presumably have multiple directors, and you actually have 700 human beings to deploy to make this all happen. That is a lot of manpower available to you. Last time I checked, sales people tend to be very motivated by bonuses.

So sit down with your seven VPs and think this through. Spread the work. Be creative. Be clear about outcomes. Create timelines. Share them with your boss and invite feedback. You probably won’t get much—she obviously trusts your judgement.

You probably can’t get everything done, but you can absolutely get the most important things done.

Trust that your boss trusts you and that you will absolutely figure it out. Breathe, keep your wits about you, and rock on.

Love, Madeleine

About Madeleine

Madeleine Homan Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response soon. Please be advised that although she will do her best, Madeleine cannot respond to each letter personally. Letters will be edited for clarity and length.

“So many of us are dealing with changes to our work routines. It’s generating a mountain of new requests and tasks that require us to get things done using new guidelines, practices, and procedures,” says bestselling business author Dr. Vicki Halsey, VP of Applied Learning at The Ken Blanchard Companies.

“Leaders need to: (1) be sure direct reports are clear on what they have to do; (2) work with each of them to diagnose where they are on each task; and (3) get them the resources they need to succeed,” explains Halsey. “Managers need to be as clear as possible about what a good job looks like.

This can be more difficult than it seems on the surface—for example, when there are conflicting priorities. Managers are often asked to hit output quotas at a high level of quality but under a certain budget. In a call center, this might translate to workers being urged to solve every customer’s problem the first time they call while also maintaining a call volume of more than 20 calls answered per hour. That’s a huge challenge. The best organizations get clear on what is most important and set specific, trackable, and attainable goals while striving to maintain motivation and avoid burnout.”

Once goals are set, leaders need to be attentive to each individual’s level of competence and commitment for the new task or new way of doing things. Diagnosing development level is key, says Halsey.

“Help people see where they are on a specific task in terms of ability and motivation, which we describe as competence and commitment. A person can be high or low on either scale. When these measurements are combined, the person will end up at one of four development levels such as Disillusioned Learner (low on commitment, low on competence) and Self-Reliant Achiever (high on commitment, high on competence).

“As a leader, you need to listen and observe very carefully. If the person is a learner, you help solve the problem for them. If they’ve had some demonstrable success but they’re a little hesitant, you flip the conversation and ask them how they think they should solve the problem.”

Halsey says in all cases, the leader must stay involved.

“If you leave people alone, that’s when they will move the task to the next day’s to-do list. If you want to keep accelerating their performance, you have to stay with them. Are they letting you know their status on a task, or have they gone silent? Go and check with them. If you notice you’re not seeing the person as much as you used to, you need to connect with them, figure out where they’re stuck, and get them back on track.

“Your goal as a leader is to keep the conversations flowing. That’s the secret to productivity—clear goals, people aligned on performance, and being able to diagnose and then give what is needed to ensure they get the job done. When you accomplish that, you are working in a highly productive, aligned manner,” says Halsey. “That’s good for you, your people, and your organization!”

Would you like to learn more about helping the leaders in your organization have effective conversations in a changing work environment? Join us for a free webinar!

3 Performance Conversation Skills All Leaders Need to Master
Wednesday, June 10, 2020, 7:00 a.m. Pacific Time

Join Dr. Vicki Halsey for an in-depth look at the three skills today’s leaders need to master in our changing world—goal setting, diagnosing, and matching. Halsey will show you how to help your leaders diagnose people’s development levels on new tasks and goals and how to provide the proper amounts of direction and support to get people up to speed quickly. You’ll explore how leaders can:

• Structure new goals, tasks, and processes for team members
• Diagnose a direct report’s current development level for mastering a new skill
• Provide a matching leadership style with the right amount of direction and support

Don’t miss this opportunity to get people performing at a high level quickly in a changing world.

Register today!

Dear Madeleine,

I know I should be grateful to have a job, and I love the company I work for. BUT. My whole company is madly trying to stay afloat and reinvent itself and I have more work coming at me than I can possibly do. I am working 16-hour days. I have my laptop in bed with me until midnight and get going again at 6:00 a.m.

My husband is retired and is good natured about it. He says I need to set some boundaries—but everyone is working as hard as I am. We are all doing what we need to do to survive the changes in our business and the resulting economic disaster.

I had all kinds of dreams about this last chapter of my career and they did not include feeling like I am part of a startup. Been there, done that, hated it then. I am angry, overwhelmed, and exhausted—but more than anything, I feel so disappointed. And then I judge myself, knowing that so many people are so much worse off than me: sick, losing loved ones, out of a job, homeschooling children while working full time, not to mention all the kids with canceled proms and graduations. What do I have to complain about?
And yet, here I am feeling out of sorts and not able to pull out of it.

Thoughts?

So Disappointed

Dear So Disappointed,

You bet I have thoughts. And a lot of similar feelings. I spent a couple of days feeling sorry myself because I wasn’t going to get to see my daughter pick up her Master’s diploma in her fancy cap and gown and yuk it up with all of our pals in New York City. And don’t get me started on how hard it has been to let go of our collective dreams for her gorgeous wedding in July. I mean, we argued over whether we should have broccoli salad (my vote: gross) and about 127 other details. And OMG, the band was going to be the best! And now—nothing. “Come on,” I tell myself. “People are dying. Get over it.” So I let myself have my sad little pity party for a weekend, and then I did get over it.

You must allow yourself to have your feelings. Just because someone else is suffering more than you are doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to acknowledge what a big fat bummer your own reality is. In fact, if you suppress your feelings, you will just end up feeling numb—or worse, you could start acting out: smoking, drinking too much, drugs, overeating—we are apparently having an epidemic of this kind of thing right now. So don’t do that. But you also don’t want to ruminate on your feelings by going over and over the same sad story in your head. That won’t help you; you’ll just get stuck in a nasty rut.

What will help is to break all of this down. Part of what is going on here is a mashup of all the facts, thoughts, and feelings until it feels like a car alarm is going off in your head. Let’s tease everything out so you can deal with each thing, one at a time.

The absurd workload: Your husband is right. You need to set some boundaries. Laptops do not belong in bed. Yes, I know millions of people watch TV on their laptops in bed, or goof around on YouTube and social media. So let me rephrase: work does not belong in bed. Yes, that’s better. New rule for you: NO WORK IN BED. You need your rest time and your sleep, and you will not be able to keep up this pace without health consequences.

I don’t care if everyone else is working as hard as you are. You are the one who is in pain. Put up the hand and say no. You know perfectly well what you can do in a reasonable workday—maybe that is 10 hours or even 12, but 16 is just sick and wrong. You are not saving babies from Ebola here, but somehow you have gotten yourself into life-or-death mode. The adrenaline and cortisol being released in your system will hurt you if you don’t cut it out.

Break down your work requirements and tell your boss and your team what you can do and what you can’t do. My experience is that the reward for good work is more work, not a break. Your boss is depending on you to cry uncle and tell him when you can’t do another thing. If you suffer in silence, the work will just pile on. You had gotten into a nice work rhythm before the Covid Fun House Crazy, so you got out of the habit of having to say no when enough is enough. Flex that muscle and use it now. I promise the entire organization isn’t going to go down the tubes because of you. If the company isn’t going to make it, the extra four hours you take to exercise, meditate, and sleep is not going to make the difference.

Suddenly trapped in a startup: Well. Yes. I can relate. I have been part of three startups—and the last time I said “never again.” Startups are a young person’s game, honestly, because they do take just about every drop of blood and sweat from each overtaxed employee.

The problem is this: every business is kind of a startup right now. Everybody is scrambling to figure out how to win or even operate with the new business landscape and restrictions. My own company is in the same boat. I keep hearing things like pivot, iterate, and fail fast, experiment! It is exhausting. All I can say is, this isn’t going to last forever. Your company will figure it out and things will settle down. This doesn’t change anything I said in the last section. It is reality and all you can do is adapt. Get some boundaries, take care of yourself, and do your best. This too shall pass.

The dashing of your dreams: This is a big deal. Bet you didn’t think I was going to say that. And I wouldn’t have, if I hadn’t studied neuroscience. I’m fascinated by one little neuroscience tidbit about the chemical reaction that occurs in our brains have when explicit expectations are disappointed. Research shows that when we have an expectation of something good and it is not met, our brains actually stop producing dopamine for a time.

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that is generally thought of as a feel-good chemical. It is released when we experience pleasure or anticipate a reward—cupcakes, wine, the perfect find on sale, juicy gossip. When we anticipate something good, our dopamine receptors are primed for the rush, and when it doesn’t come, the entire dopamine delivery system grinds to a halt. It feels terrible. In fact, it sets up such a negative downward spiral that it can affect our mood, and then our performance.

We intuitively know this. Think about the times you have strived for an outcome but tried really hard to manage your own expectations. We know disappointed hopes feel lousy, but unmet expectations feel even worse. So you, my friend, are the victim of perfectly reasonable expectations that are not being met. Your dream has turned into a nightmare. This is increasing your stress levels, decreasing your creativity and problem-solving ability, and probably affecting your confidence, too. The fact that you are not alone is no consolation.

What can you do about it? Reframe. Rewrite the story about how this part of your life was supposed to go. Define the narrative you had, and then redefine it. It might sound something like this: “Well, I thought this part of my career was going to be four-day work weeks, during which I could focus on my cherry-picked projects. I was going to do yoga every day and cook gourmet meals every night. But all that has changed now. My considerable wisdom and experience is now needed to creatively respond to this new challenge and rise to occasion by working at an accelerated pace again.” And so on. Focus on the strengths you can bring to this challenge, and what exactly will make you feel proudest when it is all over. Reset the expectations you had for this chapter of your life and keep them centered, as much as possible, on what you can control. You will find yourself in an upward spiral very quickly and start feeling a lot better.

If you need to wallow a little, go ahead. No one will blame you. But then do your work, untangle the yucky mess, deal with each thing one by one, and get that spiral going up.

Your husband will thank you, and your colleagues will too.

Love, Madeleine

About the Author

Madeleine Homan Blanchard is the co-founder of The Ken Blanchard Companies’ Coaching Services team.  Since 2000, Blanchard’s 150 coaches have worked with over 16,000 individuals in more than 250 companies throughout the world. Learn more at Blanchard Coaching Services.

Marcus Buckingham believes some basic assumptions about work are simply no longer true in today’s business environment. He shares his insights in his latest book, Nine Lies About Work: A Freethinking Leader’s Guide to the Real World, coauthored with Ashley Goodall.

Lie #1: People care which company they work for.

Many companies use their corporate culture as a recruitment tool. Although it is true that people will join a company for their projected culture, people will stay—or leave—because of the team they work with every day. Team members who truly care about one another and have each other’s backs create their own culture. Leaders who observe and understand what makes teams perform well, and then encourage that behavior in other teams, will create a stronger organization.

Lie #2: The best plan wins.

Executives spend months developing a strategic plan, getting it approved by the board, and then disseminating it through the entire organization. The more rigorous and detailed the plan, the longer it takes to develop—and during that extended amount of time, reality probably changes. Planning is a good way to scope a problem, but what leaders really need is intelligence. Smart leaders empower their frontline people to deal with situations immediately and then check in regularly to see how they can help. Buckingham’s research indicates that this method lowers turnover and improves productivity while it builds an intelligence system that outperforms a complicated planning system.

Lie #3: The best companies cascade goals.

It has been common practice for a CEO to have annual goals that are cascaded first to the executive team, then through each department structure, to the individual level. The problem? Things can change over a year—but fewer than 5 percent of people go back to look at the goals or recalibrate their need. Truth be told, goals work only if you set them yourself. Freethinking leaders know what they need to accomplish, take the responsibility to explain it to team members, and then set goals they can achieve. The best practice is to cascade meaning—not goals.

Lie #4: The best people are well rounded.

Companies spend time defining competencies they want employees to develop—and then spend more time trying to improve people’s weakest competencies. This practice creates employees with just-average performance. Freethinking leaders look for the skills that people do well and leverage those skills. High performers usually do something a little differently than others—and that difference, when used intelligently, can be a competitive advantage.

Lie #5: People need feedback.

Feedback is a tricky subject. On one hand, if you don’t give any feedback and ignore someone, it destroys them. On the other hand, if you approach someone saying you want to give them feedback, their brain pattern looks almost exactly like fight-or-flight brain waves. The person feels like they are being attacked. Many times, feedback isn’t helpful because it isn’t delivered in a way that helps the person learn how to change a behavior. When freethinking leaders see someone doing something that works, they ask the person what they think worked well and why. This line of questioning as a method of feedback serves as the learning moment. The interrogation of the action—good or bad—is the most important conversation.

Lie #6: People can reliably rate other people.

Forty years of research shows that ratings of the performance of others is more a reflection of the person doing the rating than the person being rated. We simply can’t rate other humans on things like strategic thinking, creativity, business knowledge, or overall performance. Accurate rating of other people’s performance takes a much deeper conversation based on observations—it’s not about selecting a number on a scale.

Lie #7: People have potential.

Of course people have potential. The danger comes in identifying certain people as high potential, because doing it presupposes that others are low potential. By creating these designations, we are deliberately not seeing 85 percent of our people. The truth is that everyone has potential—but we have never found a way to measure just how much potential they have.

Lie #8: Work-life balance matters most.

Work-life balance is a great aspiration, but it is important to remember that balance is stationary. So, if you feel like you are totally in balance, you are probably stagnant. The trick is to find activities that give you strength in work and in life, and then spend as much time as possible on those things. Of course, none of us can spend 100 percent of our time being happy. But if we are deliberate about spending time doing things that invigorate us, it lessens the chance of us burning out and increases the chance of us being happier and more productive.

Lie #9: Leadership is a thing.

The main thing Buckingham wants leaders to know about the power of human nature is that each human’s nature is unique. If we see this as a problem that needs to be fixed, that’s a shame. But if we make a home for the unique individuals, we can build work environments where people are seen and challenged to become a better version of themselves.

You may completely agree with what Buckingham has to say in this book, or you may question some of it. Either way, once again, he’ll give you something to think deeply about.

To hear host Chad Gordon interview Marcus Buckingham, listen to the LeaderChat Podcast, and subscribe today. Order Nine Lies About Work on Amazon.com.

For more information on Marcus Buckingham, go to www.freethinkingleader.org

Many leaders I work with know they would benefit from developing new skills but aren’t sure how to fit learning into their already packed schedule. I encourage them to think of their workplace as an on-the-job learning lab or playground where they can experiment with a new skill or behavior. I use this language because I think it’s best not to think of skill development as a big, serious task. Learners can relax into the learning by playing with it from different angles.

How about you? Are you putting off learning new things until the time feels right? Here are five strategies to help you get started.

• Choose one skill or behavior you want to acquire or improve. Get clear on one tool you want to add to your repertoire. Developing a new skill or behavior takes your best effort, so focusing on just one development area at a time prevents you from getting overwhelmed or diluting your efforts.

• Check your motivation. Do you truly want to develop this skill, or is it something you’ve selected because you think it might look good on your resume? Skill development requires that you be intentional and roll up your sleeves to hone what you want to learn. Internal motivation makes it much easier to put in the time and do the work.

• Create an image of what good looks like. Let’s say you want to become a more effective presenter. Once you determine you want to add that skill, create an image for yourself of what being a more effective presenter would look like. You can start by noticing good and not-so-good presentation skills of others around you—including people you work with, friends, family, or even the person giving away samples at a grocery store. After observing for a while, you will have created your vision of an effective presenter.

• Put your development plan together. Once you have your image defined, what you will you actually do to gain this new skill? If you aren’t sure, watch other presenters in person or online to see what they do that feels authentic to you. Seek advice and support from people who have presentation experience. Read books or articles on the topic. Look for tips, tricks, and suggestions that motivate you and resonate with who you are as a person.

• Ready, set, go. On the job is the best place to practice a new behavior—but use care. If you want to add presentation skills to your tool kit, it’s probably not best to start by volunteering to present to your executive leadership team. Start small, then build up your opportunities for practice as your skill level increases.

You don’t have to wait until your calendar opens up to work on skill development. You can practice on the job in the learning lab that is your workplace. Put these five strategies to work and take the first step today!

About the Author

Joanne Maynard is a senior coach with The Ken Blanchard Companies’ Coaching Services team.  Since 2000, Blanchard’s 130 coaches have worked with over 14,500 individuals in more than 250 companies throughout the world. Learn more at Blanchard Coaching Services.

During my time as a coach, I have often utilized SWOT analyses to help teams analyze their organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. This is a simple, user-friendly method to help a team or a board focus on key issues affecting their business. This type of analysis often can be used as a precursor to a more comprehensive strategic planning session.

One benefit of the SWOT process is that it encourages teams to not only brainstorm ideas but also face untapped opportunities and potential threats. Consistent use of this framework can give an organization a competitive advantage through dialogue regarding brand, culture, new products or services, and capabilities.

What some people don’t realize, though, is that SWOT analysis can also be an effective personal strategic planning tool. Crafting your personal SWOT matrix is a powerful technique that can be used, for example, when you are seeking a career change or facing a major shift in your life.

Here are three steps to get started:

Step 1 – Identify what exists now. List all strengths that exist now. List all weaknesses that exist now. Be honest.

Step 2 – Look to the future. List all opportunities (potential strengths) that may exist in the future. List all threats (potential weaknesses) that may occur in the future.

Step 3 – Create a matrix/get a plan. Enter your ideas in the appropriate quadrant (see figure). Notice that strengths and weaknesses are internal forces; opportunities and threats are external. See how each quadrant has a relationship with another? What strengths exist that could overcome weaknesses? What weaknesses need to be overcome in order to embrace a new opportunity? Review your matrix and think about a plan.

Here are a few helpful questions to increase your awareness around internal and external factors:

• What skills and capabilities do you have?
• What qualities, values, or beliefs make you stand out from others?
• What are the skills you need to develop?
• What personal difficulties do you need to overcome to reach your goal?
• What external influences or opportunities can help you achieve success?
• Who could support you to help you achieve your objectives?
• What external influences may hinder your success?

A SWOT matrix can provide a foundation to help you create goals and action steps. You may consider addressing your weaknesses by building skills or self-leadership capabilities. Carefully review your opportunities, as they may be used to your advantage. And consider how threats could be minimized or eliminated by shifting personal priorities or gaining new knowledge.

It’s common for people to experience blind spots around their own strengths and weaknesses, so don’t hesitate to seek out opinions from friends, family members, and colleagues. Also, be willing to share your SWOT matrix with a partner who will hold you accountable for action steps and celebrate your progress.

Best of luck—and happy personal planning!

About the Author

Patricia Sauer is a coaching solutions partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies Coaching Services team. Since 2000, Blanchard’s 150 coaches have worked with over 14,500 individuals in more than 250 companies throughout the world.

Learn more at Blanchard Coaching Services.

A common topic in my coaching sessions is work/life balance. Heavy workloads, daily abundance of emails, competing deadlines, required meetings, and other concerns can be so overwhelming that work can become the focal point and main priority in life. As a result, we can feel obligated to dedicate long hours to our work. We struggle with setting and honoring boundaries that could give us a more balanced life. Many of us know the benefits of a work/life balance, but fall short in achieving it.

The definition of work/life balance is different for each individual. For one person, it’s working a set number of hours in a day or week. For another person, it’s scheduling some longer days for more intense work and some shorter days that are easier. And some people prefer a compressed work schedule—such as four ten-hour days—so that they have an extra day off every week.

So how can you achieve much-needed balance between your work and home life? It’s usually a combination of priorities, boundaries, and structure.

Identify your priorities. Depending on where you are in life, your priorities may be different than they used to be. What is most important in your life right now? Think of what work/life balance means to you, based on those priorities. It could be something as simple as not taking work home or checking email on the weekends so that you can be fully present with your family. Or dedicating Wednesday nights to bowling with friends to keep your relationships close.

Set your boundaries. What boundaries might help you achieve work/life balance? It may be getting to work no earlier than 9:00 a.m. on Mondays and going home no later than 3:00 p.m. on Fridays.

Create some structure. What kind of structure needs to be in place for work/life balance? It could be having weekly one-on-one meetings with each staff member to ensure that you delegate more effectively.

Think before you commit. Do you sometimes say yes because you want to be seen as a team player—and instantly regret it? I’ll never forget a thought-provoking edict from my coach training: “Whenever you say yes to something, you are saying no to something else.” Pause to think about the potential impact of your answer before you respond to a request.

Honor yourself by applying any or all of these steps. You will instantly feel more in control of your daily life as you move toward the balance you need to succeed—both at home and at work.

Most people will tell you they are working as hard as they can, says bestselling business author Vicki Halsey. “The problem is, they still aren’t able to keep up with the workload. Today, people need to work smarter, not harder,” says Halsey.

“That means leaders need to (1) be sure direct reports are clear on what they have to do; (2) diagnose where they are on each task; and (3) get them the resources they need to succeed. People are doing activities—and lots of them. But the activity may not be targeted toward the critical goal, task, skill, or strategy that is actually needed for the organization to hit the target.”

According to Halsey, productivity improvement begins with observation. She likes to compare behaviors of the most productive people in organizations and the ones who struggle to keep up. One difference is that the former group has a laser focus on the work that needs to be done to achieve strategic goals.

“As Ken Blanchard says, all good performance begins with clear goals. So begin with clear expectations such as what someone needs to achieve, and by when. This is the essence of smart goal setting. Your goal is to create a crystal clear picture of what a good job looks like.”

It’s also important to check for understanding, says Halsey.

“As we think about setting clear expectations with people, it’s important to remember our differences in communication and learning styles. I teach a graduate class at the University of San Diego and also gave the same learning preference survey to my MBA students that measures if they are visual, auditory, kinesthetic, tactile kinesthetic, or auditory verbal. Results from students representing 35 different cohorts showed only 5.4 percent in the category of strong auditory learners. Consider going beyond telling—to showing. For example, in addition to explaining what a good job looks like, provide a video so that learners can actually see the behavior in action.”

Once goals are set, next comes diagnosing competence and commitment, says Halsey.

“Help people see where they are on a specific task in terms of ability and motivation, which we at The Ken Blanchard Companies® describe as competence and commitment. A person can be high or low on either scale. When these measurements are combined, the person will end up in one of four different development levels including Disillusioned Learner (low on commitment, low on competence) and Self-Reliant Achiever (high on commitment, high on competence.)

With an accurate diagnosis, a leader can put together a clear plan to accelerate the person’s productivity, says Halsey. But it requires a rethinking of the SMART goal setting model.

“I love the SMART acronym—Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Trackable. But for it to be most effective, change the “M” in the model to motivating instead of measurable.

“People want to see the impact of their work and they want to know they are making a difference. The original version of SMART begins with Specific and Measurable, which works well for identifying what needs to occur by when. But it doesn’t take into account the very human need of doing work aligned with our purpose, values, and who we want to be in the world.

“Sometimes leaders wonder why they should care how committed a direct report is to a task. When I am training a group of leaders and I hear that, I ask, ‘How many of you have something on your to-do list that you’re not motivated to do?’ Everyone raises their hand! And what happens to those things on our to-do lists? They go to tomorrow’s to-do list. And the next day’s. And what does that do to productivity? It impacts the quality and quantity of work done. So it’s critical that a leader has a very finely tuned sense of observation. They are observing their direct reports either moving toward what needs to happen, or moving away from it.”

That’s the commitment part of the equation, says Halsey—but remember it is critical to also diagnose competence.

“In its simplest definition, competence answers the question Has a person done this before successfully? If a direct report is new to a task with very little experience, the leader will need to provide a lot of direction and access to resources. If the person has accomplished the task successfully with high levels of reliability, the leader can delegate the task to them confidently. If the person is somewhere in between, the leader needs to adjust the mix of direction and support to match the person’s development level.

“So as a leader, you listen and observe very carefully. If the person is a learner, you help solve the problem for them. If they’ve had some demonstrable success but they’re a little hesitant, you flip the conversation and ask them how they think they should solve the problem.”

Halsey says in all cases, the leader needs to stay involved.

“If you leave people alone, that’s when they will move the task to the next day’s to-do list. If you want to keep accelerating their performance, you have to stay with it. Are they letting you know their status on a task, or have they gone dark? Go and check with them. If you notice you’re not seeing the person as much as you used to, you need to connect with them, figure out where they’re stuck, and get them back on track.

“Your goal as a leader is to keep the conversations flowing. That’s the secret to productivity—clear goals, people aligned on performance, and being able to diagnose then give what is needed to ensure they get the job done. When you accomplish that, you begin to work in a highly productive, aligned manner,” says Halsey. “That’s good for you, your people, and your organization!”

Would you like to learn more about creating a culture of high productivity in your organization? Join us for a free webinar!

3 Keys to Creating a High Productivity Work Culture
Tuesday, April 30, 2019, 9:00 – 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time

Research shows that most organizations operate at only 65 percent of their potential productivity. In this webinar, bestselling business author Vicki Halsey shows leadership, learning, and talent development professionals how to reduce the productivity gap in their organizations by improving the performance management skills of their leaders. Halsey will share how to improve leadership skills in three key areas:

• Collaborative goal setting—how leaders create a partnership approach that improves accountability and gets results
• Diagnosing development level—how leaders identify the skills and motivation level of a person being asked to take on a new task
• Providing a matching leadership style—how leaders flex the amount of direction and support they provide to create the perfect environment for goal achievement

Don’t miss this opportunity to learn how to equip leaders with the skills they need to align and coach people to higher levels of performance and productivity. The event is free, courtesy of The Ken Blanchard Companies.

Register today!

Dear Madeleine,

I am an entrepreneur trying to grow my business while trying to also have a life. I know I have some bad habits that I should probably correct and I want to develop good habits moving forward. What are your thoughts on this?

Want to Get it Right

_____________________________________________________________________________

Dear Want to Get it Right,

You are smart to be thinking about this. And you are right that habits can really make the difference between success and anything less than success.

First, the basics: A lot of research has been done on habits. There is strong support for establishing regular routines that add up to small wins over the day. Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit, calls these keystone habits. They help us to exert more self control over our emotional states, act less impulsively, and stay focused on what we think is most important.

Getting up at the same time, eating a healthy breakfast, and making the bed are examples. Habits like these tend to build on themselves and create a virtuous circle. You can start by looking back at times that you have been at your best and see if you had any habits then that seemed to keep you in the zone. If that doesn’t yield anything worthwhile, experiment with small things you think would make you feel great—then slowly keep what works and weed out what doesn’t. If, as you mention, you have habits you know for sure are not serving you, Duhigg has some very good ideas on how to stop them.

Some tips:

• Don’t try to do everything at once—tackle one bad habit at a time.
• Get support—a buddy, a group, a way to track success. Any and all positive reinforcement is good.
• Substitute a bad habit with something good. For example, instead of going outside for a smoke, go outside for a walk around the block.

Research also shows that people who exercise are more likely to follow through with other habits that contribute to success. Exercise is one of the hardest things to fit in to a 24/7 work scenario, but cracking that code will absolutely serve your highest and best good.

My regular readers will roll their eyes at me, because I am a broken record on this: developing a habit of counting your blessings contributes to better brain chemistry as well as more creativity, resilience, and happiness. All it means is for you to regularly list the things you are grateful for. The great thing is that you can do it while you are walking around the block, waiting at a stop light, or standing in line at the market.

Now the work stuff.

When I was starting out as an entrepreneur, the book that rocked my world was The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber. Clearly, I am not alone because Gerber has made himself the guru for small business and has a ton of wisdom to offer. I have used these concepts from Gerber again and again for myself and with clients:

• Anything that gets done regularly needs a clearly articulated and written process. Regular processes help a business run smoothly. This sounds obvious—but I’ll bet if you look around, there are some areas where you don’t have one.
• Don’t spend time on anything that someone else could be doing. As the head of your business, you are a finite resource. You have to drive down tasks and problems that some one else can take care of. By doing this, you free yourself and empower others.
• Many entrepreneurs move fast and find explaining things over and over again to be boring.  So, be clear about the vision for the business, and the values you use to make decisions and then repeat.  Repeat long after you are bored silly, and then keep repeating.

As a lifelong student of success, I have experimented with lots of other ideas from Hyrum Smith, Steven Covey, David Allen, and others. Some habits that have made a difference for me are these:

• Put yourself first—because if you go down, the whole house of cards goes down. To go the distance you will need to practice radical self-care: sleep, good food, lots of water, exercise, some fun, and rest. (Rest does not mean watching TV, although that can count as fun. Rest means prayer, meditation, staring at the horizon, reading for fun, cooking for fun.)
• Decide what, after your own health, is most important to you and say no to everything else. Just say no. If you can’t, start with maybe and then say no. Be brutal. Get used to disappointing people. It is hard at first, but it gets easier.
• Do the hard stuff first: visioning, strategy, emotional conversations, creative problem solving, etc. I tend to not be great at that kind of stuff at the end of the day. Neuroscience research supports this as well.
• Look at the calendar every day for the crazy makers—in-person meetings that have no transportation time between them. Phone or web meetings with no call-in numbers or link. Meetings you need to prepare for that have no prep time already carved out. No breaks for food. Hour-long meetings that should be 15 minutes. Meetings that you shouldn’t be in at all. Eliminate time wasters, surprises, and stuff that will make you late. I guarantee this: the minute you take your eye off of it, your calendar will be the bane of your existence. (Of course, if you don’t keep a calendar, this would be a good time to start.)
• Write everything down, even if you think you will remember it. Maybe you will, at this point in your journey. You probably have a great memory now, but as life gets more complicated (hyper growth! Lawsuits! Kids! Dogs! Aging parents!) you just won’t be able to keep track of it all. And your memory will decline inevitably as you age, much as I hate to say it, so having good systems to keep track of all the stuff you need to do and think about will be a habit you are grateful for.
• Automate and/or delegate anything you can. With the online services available today, it is amazing what errands you can eliminate.
• Keep your eye on your social media habits – anything that isn’t helping you be successful is quite literally a waste of your most valuable resource.  Don’t forget the job of the news people is to keep you paying attention to the news, don’t let yourself get sucked in.  Stay off of social media-  unless you are looking at puppies on Instagram, that is actually good for your brain.

Good luck to you.

Love, Madeleine

About the author

Madeleine Homan Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response here next week!

Dear Madeleine,

I always get a little overwhelmed during the holiday season, but this year I am at the brink. I have a big team at work and I usually try to create some kind of fun event for us—but this year it just isn’t happening. There is a massive problem with our technology and my team and I are having a hard time doing our jobs. My printer stopped working and so did the key card I use to go from building to building. Two of my people are out sick and another needs to be talked off the ledge every hour on the hour. 

In my personal life, my car’s check engine light is on and my mechanic won’t return my calls. My dryer at home is broken, and I have two kids coming home from college with suitcases full of laundry. Our Christmas tree is up, but it isn’t decorated, and I usually have the house all ready for the kids. I haven’t even ordered Christmas cards, let alone sent any! The dog is limping for some unknown reason and the cat keeps throwing up on my bed.

I just got off the phone with a colleague who told me that one of my direct reports dropped a big ball and really screwed up. I am this close to picking up the phone and letting my direct report have it, but I know it wasn’t really his fault. So I am writing you instead.

I feel like everyone and everything is letting me down and I am pushing a huge rock uphill by myself. I can’t even think anymore. Help?

Melting Down

______________________________________________________________

Dear Melting Down,

Oh my dear, this sounds hard. And so familiar. When you start feeling sorry for yourself, it is time to stop. Just stop. Take a deep breath. Say out loud: “This is not neurosurgery, no one is dying.” Repeat three times.

Then, take action.

Make a list of everything you are tolerating. You can read about tolerations in one of my old posts here. Essentially, a toleration* is every little thing you are putting up with. When the list gets too long, one tiny straw can break the camel’s back. This is where you are right now.

Once you have your lists—one for work and one for home—look at each item one by one. Decide whether you are going to deal with it, dump (ignore) it, or delegate it. Some things are simply outside of your control and you will just have to suck them up. Others you can either do something about yourself or get others to handle.

Before you get to it, though, you need to consider your standards—your expectations of yourself and others based on both what you think is important and marks you have hit in the past. Remember: standards are not laws. Gravity is a law. I must have the tree decorated by the time the kids come home is not. Do you see the difference? You have made up that some of the standards you hold yourself to are a priority—when, in fact, your reality is making them impossible. For right now, as you go over your list of tolerations, ask yourself where can I lower my standards, just for this year? I remember one year when I was similarly overextended, I just didn’t do Christmas cards. My sister-in-law was horrified—but you know what? Nobody died.

So lower your standards and your expectations of how things should be. Deal with the real problems—like your car—the ones that won’t resolve themselves and will probably turn into bigger, more expensive problems. Find a new mechanic. If the dog is still limping, make a vet appointment. Assuming the cat is feeling better, close the door to your bedroom just in case.

Let the kids decorate the tree when they get home and take their clothes to the laundromat. Send them a warm text to explain your situation and to warn them so they aren’t surprised. They may moan, but they will also probably rise to the occasion—especially if you manage their expectations. Send a nice email to your work team thanking them for their hard work and promising a fun event in February—which, honestly, is when people really need one. The technology problems will resolve themselves eventually, and you aren’t going to get fired.

Tom Magliozzi, one of the co-hosts of NPR’s Car Talk show, says: “Happiness equals reality minus expectations.” Deal with the incontrovertible reality, and remember the rest is all made up. Be the model of grace, humor, generosity, and patience you know yourself to be, especially with your team. Keep breathing. Your kids and you will be fine.

I wish you great peace, healthy pets, a functioning car, and upgraded technology in the New Year.

Love, Madeleine

* Thomas Leonard, a pioneer of the coaching profession and the founder of Coach University, the ICF, and Coachville, coined the term tolerations in the late 1980s.

About the author

Madeleine Homan Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response here next week!

Dear Madeleine,

I lead a team in a large organization. I stepped in as an interim leader when my boss went out on leave—but he never came back.

At this point, my challenge is that I need to delegate more and make people on my team do the stuff they should be doing. I have managed to get by for the last eighteen months by doing much of the work myself—but I can’t keep this up. How do I change the dynamic that I have inadvertently set up here? My people are happy and comfortable with the way things are.

Where do I begin? I’ve never had any training but have been reading a lot and watching videos on leadership. I need more. Help!

Victim of My Own Ignorance

Dear Victim,

I love that you are taking responsibility for your circumstances, but this isn’t all your fault. Your organization has also helped create the situation by offering you zero guidance and support. You are not alone. Most people who find themselves managing others are in a sink-or-swim scenario and learn by trial and error. You, for now at least, seem to be swimming—so you have that going for you. You also are clear about the error you have made in taking over tasks you should have delegated to others.

I think the only way to go at this is by coming clean with your whole team. Pull everyone together and explain what you have told me here: the situation, as it currently stands, is unsustainable for you and you all need to work together to change it. Tell them you need to do a job review with each team member and hand back all tasks that don’t belong to you. Don’t call anyone out in front of the group or place blame. You need to be as clear with the group as you have been with me about how you helped create the situation; just keep it general. Then have a one-on-one meeting with each individual to go over their tasks and goals, with a specific focus on anything you are currently doing that they need to take back. You can offer clear direction and lots of support as needed to help the person work the task back onto their own to-do list. You can also share what your tasks will continue to be, so there is crystal clarity all round.

Some people aren’t going to be very happy. That’s okay. No one likes to venture out of their comfort zone. Doing this will actually take more of your time at first, and it will be frustrating. You will have to talk some folks off the ledge and put up with a little whining and attitude at first, but stay with it. For more detail on giving people what they need based on their competence and commitment on the task, check out this paper.

Be clear that your job is to be available to help, not to actually do the job yourself. This approach will help you build a much more well-rounded team and offer everyone else development opportunities—not to mention that it will keep you from becoming resentful and potentially burning out.

You can do this!

Love, Madeleine

About the author

Madeleine Homan Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response here next week!

Dear Madeleine,

I recently took a director level job with a huge Fortune 50 organization. I have been thrown into the deep end and I am worried about completely bombing out. I have had zero onboarding, so I am constantly making errors and spending tons of time backtracking and clearing things up.

I am really trying to do all of the things that Michael Watkins says to do in The First 90 Days, but his methods pre-suppose a sane organization. I am in back-to-back meetings all day, taking work home at night, and I have a list of deliverables as long as my arm.

When I ask my boss about how to prioritize my work, she just looks at me blankly. She clearly expects it to all get done at the same time. I have two direct reports who are already swamped and I am working on hiring a third one. 

I am used to getting things done and making an impact, but I can’t do that here. I am literally in despair that I left a great job to jump into this hell. Should I just jump ship before I get fired?

Want to Jump Ship

Dear Want to Jump Ship,

This sounds hard—regret about leaving a comfortable situation for a hellish one can really take the wind out of your sails. But take heart—you are suffering from the classic, predictable stage of disillusioned learner! In our SLII® training, we teach that we all start on a goal or a task as an “enthusiastic beginner,” and then hit the wall and become a “disillusioned learner.” This development level is marked by all the things you are thinking: “What was I thinking, leaving my old job?” “I am never going to make it here.” “Should I jump ship?”

The thing I can say to you is: this stage won’t last. You are going to figure this out and get yourself on an even keel from which you can make a rational decision. Big corporations can feel like lunatic asylums—I know, I have worked in some.

You will find your groove and fit right in. Or you may not. Either way, you will make the choice to stay or go based on the criteria you decide.

So what are your criteria for an organization you want to work for? Examples might be: amazing leadership, the company is making the world a better place, you are making more money and amazing benefits which will allow you to do something you always wanted to do. Make your list. When you feel as if you can breathe again, consult it and see if you are in the right place.

In the meantime, since your boss has no interest in helping you prioritize, you will have to prioritize for yourself. Since you are at director level, your boss probably assumes you know how to do this and expects you to do it. Decide what tasks you think are most important, find something that can get you a win, and focus on that. You might choose wrong—but honestly, what do you have to lose? Do a couple of things well and get your feet under you.

Take a few minutes a day to meditate, calm your brain down, and breathe. Take a deep breath in and exhale. Take care of yourself, eat lunch, and go home at a reasonable hour. You will wake up one day soon and realize you are fine.

Breathe.

Love, Madeleine

About the author

Madeleine Homan Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response here next week!

Dear Madeleine,

Our company went to “unlimited PTO” about 16 months ago.  The idea was to try it out for a year and re-evaluate.  The re-evaluation period was moved to the 18-month mark, so it hasn’t happened yet.   

You would think the problem would be people abusing the policy but I have the opposite one: my people are not taking any vacation.  Back in the day when we had a “use or lose it” policy, I had to stay on people’s cases to take their PTO and they would, but now that time off is at the employee’s discretion, I can’t get people to take their vacation. 

I have a team of nine folks and every single one of them seems to feel worried about taking reasonable time off. I am worried that people are going to burn out.  Can I make my people take time off?  What to do? I feel like I need to call a…

Time Out

Dear Time Out,

This is certainly an interesting and trending topic, and you are not alone trying to navigate the dynamics that come with such a big change.  I found an interesting post on this that may help you.

Based on my experience with clients and my own team, I would have anticipated that people not taking time off would be the problem with unlimited PTO.  In fact, the first time I heard of it a couple of years back, I thought, “Oh God, people are never going to stop working! They’re just going to work themselves into an early grave.” In some cultures this is literally true, but that is because of a cultural expectation that people work massive amounts of overtime.  

In Western cultures at least, it would seem that giving people the option to manage their own workload, get their jobs done in the agreed upon timeframe, and take care of their personal lives with flexibility could only be a good thing.  Such an approach treats people like responsible, sensible adults.  But in some organizations many people are burdened with unreasonable workloads.  Some employees are poor judges of how long certain tasks will take, so they take on too much.  Other employees burden themselves by taking on more than they should.  The very ambitious sometimes seek to assure their promotability by simply outworking their peers.  It is up to the manager to figure this out and gauge the proper workload for each person.

In certain sectors people are going to be more affected by high performance pressure than others, making it feel unsafe for people to take time off.

People avoid taking time off for many reasons: For example, they:

• Feel they are indispensable and believe nobody else can do the job they do.
• Worry their customers will be upset by their absence.
• Succumb to FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out)—they don’t want to miss getting in on an exciting project.
• Fear being judged—they don’t want to be seen as a slacker.
• Bank their hours for a “rainy day”—rather than taking a big vacation, they save their hours in case an unexpected illness or emergency requires them to be out of the office

You, as the manager, need to discuss PTO with every person you lead.  Each individual is going to have a different concern and you can work with them to alleviate those concerns.  You can also work as a team to assure that plans are made in advance and people are properly covered during their time off.

The benefit of the unlimited PTO policy is that it provides people with flexibility in their work day to attend to family or other personal matters without having to submit paperwork.  The danger is that people won’t take the time they need to rest, play, and get a change of scenery—activities that research shows are critical to mental and physical health.

You are the leader of your group.  Make it clear to your people that you expect them to take vacation time, rest time, time to go to doctors’ appointments, and other kinds of self-care. Show them you mean it by doing these things yourself. Have you planned your own vacation?

Love,

Madeleine

About the author

Madeleine Homan Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response here next week!

Dear Madeleine,

I am an experienced manager but I am in a situation that is stumping me. I have a large team, and we have a reputation for getting a lot done, very efficiently. One team member—L— has been with the team since before I took it over. She is in her early 40s, a single mom, and very good at her job.

The problem is that she is too nice. People on the team who are behind on their tasks always go to her for help. She is a wiz at certain obscure programs that we must use from time to time, and people get her to help them instead of learning the programs themselves.

L is very active with our company foundation and is often involved in big events that take up her time. She participates in several other committees for the company as well. I can’t keep track of them all. She is always the one to show up with a home-baked cake when there is something to celebrate. She even made gluten-free cupcakes recently for my birthday! She has to leave at a set time to pick up her kids from daycare and I know she goes home and does volunteer work.

This would be all fine and well if L didn’t miss her deadlines on a regular basis. We recently met for her performance review and I was chagrined to see that she hadn’t hit any of her goals at 100%. I was forced to give her a lower rating than I would have liked. I feel like a jerk because she is such a strong addition to the team. I don’t want to demotivate her. How can I fix this?

Feel Like a Jerk

Dear Feel Like a Jerk,

You clearly value your “giving” employee, as well you should. Adam Grant, a highly regarded organizational psychologist, has researched the phenomena he calls givers, takers and matchers, and has established that givers make organizations better. According to Grant, it is not unusual for givers to do less well on their performance metrics than takers or matchers. The key here is to find a way for L to win at work doing what she does naturally and well.

What if you were to shape into goals the things L does naturally, so that she is measured on things she will definitely excel at? Make her Team Den Mother (or come up with a name that suits) so remembering and honoring notable events among the team is a task she is measured on and acknowledged for. Make being a high contributing organizational citizen a goal and map out a limited number of committees she will be on and what her goals will be. Again, she will no doubt knock that out of the park.

Finally, you can designate one of her key responsibility areas as being an expert on certain processes or programs that the team uses. This way, when she spends time helping others, it is actually part of her job. This means some of her other tasks or goals will have to shift to others on the team.

Discuss this idea with L. She will probably help you think it through so that you can arrive at a fair way to recognize her contribution.

Love, Madeleine

About the author

Madeleine Homan Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response here next week!

The challenge is knowing when each conversation is most appropriate. Without clear distinctions it is easy for these conversations to blend together and overlap. And once that happens, managers may find themselves attempting to play all three roles—manager, coach, and mentor— simultaneously, and that rarely (if ever) turns out well.

Here are the distinctions that can help leaders and managers identify the best conversation to use based on the questions people ask.

The Management Conversation—for questions about what the job is, how to do it, and how to produce the best results. The management conversation is most appropriate when the goal or task is clear and when manager and direct report have shared responsibility for results. Management conversations solve problems and produce results, with and through others, that benefit the organization.

The Coaching Conversation—for questions about things that are affecting a direct report but aren’t necessarily related to their job or their performance. The coaching conversation works best for creating clarity when goals are not crystal clear. It is also used when the direct report has higher interest than the manager in the outcome or when the manager does not have enough expertise to provide optimal benefit to the employee. Coaching conversations promote discovery, generate insights, and clarify purposeful action for the employee in ways that may or may not benefit the organization.

The Mentoring Conversation—for questions about professional development and career support. The mentoring conversation is used when a mentee—whether or not they are a direct report—is seeking advice and willing to assume responsibility for a mentor/mentee relationship. The mentor must have suitable experience and useful advice to provide about the company or industry.  The mentor also must be willing to invest time and energy in ways that go above and beyond the requirements of their regular job. Mentoring conversations enable the sharing of expertise based on personal experience, which may or may not benefit the organization.

Being all things to all people is impossible. The manager who knows exactly where they are and what role they are playing at any given moment will be able to serve their people best.

In upcoming posts, I’ll share ways to be more effective with each of these conversations. For now, consider these three distinctions. What types of conversations are you and your leaders most often engaging in?  Are you identifying different outcomes—or are you trying to be everything to everyone?

About the Author

Madeleine Homan Blanchard is the co-founder of The Ken Blanchard Companies’ Coaching Services team.  Since 2000, Blanchard’s 150 coaches have worked with over 14,500 individuals in more than 250 companies throughout the world. Learn more at Blanchard Coaching Services. And check out Coaching Tuesday every week at Blanchard LeaderChat for ideas, research, and inspirations from the world of executive coaching.

The leader does the heavy lifting.  To be effective, a coaching conversation must be a two-way discussion.  Both the leader and the person being coached (i.e., the direct report) need to be engaged.  However, if the coachee doesn’t fully participate, it’s easy for the leader to do more of the heavy lifting.  This is like the leader driving a car with the direct report in the back seat, enjoying the ride.  It’s the opposite of what is meant to happen. Both parties must be active participants in the discussion.  When using a coach-like style, the leader’s job is to draw out the brilliance of the person being coached.

The leader creates dependency.  When a leader does all the work, it can create a dependency on the part of the direct report.  For instance, the direct report asks the leader to help with issues they can easily handle themselves—or they delay action or avoid a decision on a task.  In extreme cases, the direct report starts abdicating all decision making to the leader.  When this happens, a leader’s own work time gets eaten up, which can result in their needing to bring home work that could have been completed at the office.

The leader talks when they shouldn’t.  When leaders facilitate a coaching session, some find it hard not to offer up good ideas—especially if the coachee is quietly contemplating what to say. This scenario is fairly common since most people need time to think about a topic before they chime in.  A leader who wants to be more coach-like needs to give people the gift of silence—which is easier said than done.  One tactic I’ve suggested to clients is to envision themselves sitting on their hands versus jumping in to help.  If the coach can stay silent, they are less likely to impart their own knowledge and more apt to draw out brilliance from their direct report.

When appropriate, using a coaching style can be instrumental to the development of others.  When leaders encourage their people to do the work and to come up with their own ideas and solutions, direct reports become engaged and step into their growth, which is a beautiful thing!

Are there any other traps you’ve seen leaders fall into when trying to be more coach-like? Please share in the comments section below!

About the Author

Joanne Maynard is a senior coach with The Ken Blanchard Companies’ Coaching Services team.  Since 2000, Blanchard’s 130 coaches have worked with over 14,500 individuals in more than 250 companies throughout the world. Learn more at Blanchard Coaching Services. And check out Coaching Tuesday every week at Blanchard LeaderChat for ideas, research, and inspirations from the world of executive coaching.

I am a senior leader in a large commercial services organization. I spent many years learning how to make good use of an assistant and I’ve always made sure I had a great one. Over the last few years, the company has been reducing the size of the administration group and I have had to share an assistant with other executives. That was okay because I was self-sufficient, had my act together, and would set things up so my stuff always got done.

Until now. Two other executives and I were recently given a new assistant and he is a walking disaster.

He doesn’t write things down, he doesn’t remember anything, and he doesn’t seem to understand the most basic office software—for example, I had to teach him some basic calendaring skills and then he didn’t remember. Some days I think he is on some kind of drug because he is so laid back and spaced out.

My problem is I have started to take back all the tasks I would usually delegate, which is adding an extra 90 minutes to my already packed days. Why not just go to HR and replace him, you ask? He is the nephew of the CEO and sucks up shamelessly to the other two executives, who don’t really know how to use an assistant so they don’t really care that he is incompetent.

I need help! What do you think?

My Assistant is Terrible

Dear My Assistant is Terrible,

Wow—I am so sorry. I tell my clients all the time that they are only as good as their assistant, so I can certainly understand your predicament. It sounds like you are dealing with a bunch of different issues here—and one of them is political.

Your first line of defense is to sit down with your new assistant, explain what a good job looks like, and create a step-by-step plan for him to get up to speed. Be kind and patient—we can’t have nephew Fred reporting negative things about you. Document each and every interaction, task, and goal, every dropped ball, every instance of incompetence. You might be surprised that he is not the numb nut you think he is when he has proper direction. On the other hand, if he IS what you think he is, you will have flawless documentation to support your case. The most entrenched nepotism can’t ignore terrible performance, but you must have your documentation.

In the meantime, do meet with HR to lodge your initial complaint and let them know what you are doing. You can ask nicely to be reassigned to a real assistant as well. Are there any terrific assistants working for others? Maybe get yourself moved to one of them. You might also make the case for needing your own full-time assistant if you can show how much more you produce when you have the right kind of help. That 90 minutes a day adds up to more than a week’s work each month—and goodness knows what else you could be doing with that 45 hours. One more option, and I know this sounds nuts but I have seen it done: consider hiring a virtual assistant outside of the organization and paying for that person yourself. It may be impossible because it would require access to calendars and email, so the organization would have to approve, but there may be a variation on the idea that could work.

Don’t despair. If the nepotism situation is as out of control as you think, your guy will be promoted soon. If it isn’t, he will be gone, and you will still have your reputation.

Love, Madeleine

About the author

Madeleine Homan Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response here next week!

Sincero shares how to stop limiting yourself and start focusing on your strengths.

Drawing on her own experience of personally trying and evaluating almost every self-help resource out there, Sincero recommends finding the approaches that work best for you and then taking action.  Don’t over-control the situation.  Have faith and trust that the “how” will take care of itself—even if it scares you.

As Sincero explains, “It’s never really the right time—but you have to decide and put yourself into motion.  Inside all of us is incredible potential.  Open yourself up to a new reality. It’s about rediscovering your true nature and tapping into the mother lode of potential available to you. That’s when you can start to make big, fat changes in your life.”

Be sure to listen to the very end of the interview, where Ken Blanchard shares his thoughts and takeaways.

Since I almost always ponder life through the filter of coaching, this brings to mind three of my recent clients:

–A leader who could feel herself heading toward overwhelm—not sleeping well, having to work hard in order to stay focused, feeling off her normal game and generally unbalanced.

–A client who felt stuck and frustrated—spinning his wheels on a project and going nowhere fast.

–A colleague who referred to her days as inefficient—bouncing from one thing to another and not getting anything fully completed.

As I thought about how to help these people, I was reminded again of something we as professional coaches often experience.  When common themes start showing up in our clients, it’s a signal to investigate the same theme in our own lives. “Know thyself” is a great piece of advice. Where was I feeling stuck? Where was I working hard but not getting results? How balanced did I feel?

This is something you may have experienced as well.  What trends have you been noticing in others that may be an internal signal for yourself?

Here are three ways to know when to grab for the mask:

1. You find yourself coaching everyone on the same focus topic
2. You feel off—not at your best—over time
3. You aren’t sleeping well

And here are three ways to begin a course correction:

1. Be aware—notice it. Claim it.
2. Breathe deeply—it is one of the best ways to reconnect brain and body, and can be done anywhere and anytime.
3. Practice the three Ps: Pause, Pray, and Ponder (or meditate)

Know when to reach for the oxygen mask. Take care of yourself so that you can continue to serve others. And don’t forget to breathe!

About the Author

Patricia Overland is a Coaching Solutions Partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies’ Coaching Services team.  Since 2000, Blanchard’s 150 coaches have worked with over 14,500 individuals in more than 250 companies throughout the world. Learn more at Blanchard Coaching Services. And check out Coaching Tuesday every week at Blanchard LeaderChat for ideas, research, and inspirations from the world of executive coaching.

Dear Madeleine,

I am a manager of a large team. I like my work, the mission of the company is meaningful, and we make a difference in the world. I have a reputation for being a good manager and getting things done on time and under budget. My boss, who is fairly new—and, frankly, in over his head—is constantly coming to me with new projects and never seems interested in the projects we are already working on. He says he trusts me to get it all done.

My problem is that the strategic direction and priorities are constantly shifting and I can’t keep up. I can’t possibly get it all done, and my team is maxed out. I am becoming demoralized by not really understanding the point of what we are being asked to do. I know I need to talk to my manager, but I don’t want to come off as a whiner. How to proceed?

Shifting Winds

Dear Shifting Winds,

This must be so frustrating. It sounds like you do need to talk to your manager and get some clarity on what to focus on and the timelines for each item. You appear to have a low opinion of your new manager’s capabilities—and you may be right about him—but you also don’t know what he is up against. Until you actually know what is going on, I’d suggest to start off by assuming the best of intentions.

In any case, definitely get a meeting on the calendar and set the context carefully. Make it clear to your manager that you appreciate his trust; however, there is more work here than can be done and you need direction in prioritizing the projects. Tell him that to set priorities you normally use your knowledge of the strategic focus for the company—but lately you have been confused about what that is and you need his help.

To communicate with your boss as effectively as possible, first you need to assess his style. Which do you think would work best: Charts outlining all of the different projects on a big whiteboard? An excel spreadsheet with all of the project plans? A presentation with a little bit of story? Your manager needs a quick and easy way to grasp all of the assignments you are working on and how many hours are needed to complete each project. That will help him see how overworked your team is and will help you make the case for getting another person on board to ensure you can complete everything.

Having each project visually represented might also make it easier for you to see the point of each one—but even if it doesn’t, it will make it easier to talk to your boss. You can explain that your people get inspired when they understand the reason they are working away at something. Most people—especially millennials, research is showing—want to know the context and meaning for their tasks.

Next, rehearse, prepare, and be succinct. You won’t be perceived as a whiner unless you actually whine.

You are going to have to stand up for yourself and your people at some point. Many managers are so overwhelmed themselves that they will just keep throwing work at their people until someone cries uncle. He may be waiting for you to do just that.

Good luck.

Love, Madeleine

About the author

Madeleine Homan Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response here next week!

Dear Madeleine,

I report to the general counsel of a large global organization and I have a team of seven attorneys. I routinely work at all hours of the night finishing projects my people committed to completing and then didn’t—and the deadline, of course, can’t slip.

My husband says I let my people walk all over me. I think we all have too much work so I try to protect them from burning out.

I’m not sure what to do. I don’t want to wear my people out, but I also don’t want to be a doormat.

Am I a Wuss?

Dear Am I a Wuss,

You might be, but we don’t need to call anyone names, do we? It sounds like it all comes from the best of intentions. One of the hardest things about being a manager is keeping everyone’s energy and engagement high when the workload is crushing. Internal law groups are notorious for working their people to the bone, so if you don’t want to burn your people out—or worse, burn out yourself—you are going to have to be super strategic.

Here’s the thing. You have trained your people to think they can get away with making a commitment and not following through. The result is, when you give out work assignments, your team members know there isn’t much of a consequence for shoddy planning, so they plan shoddily. This needs to be corrected or you will just keep repeating the same pattern.

You need to start with naming and claiming the reality of the situation. Do your people have any idea how put upon you feel? You probably want to say “I am sick and tired of you leaving me holding the bag,” which is why you haven’t said anything – you know that isn’t going to be effective. So how might you express it? You want to craft a neutral statement with no blame or judgment. Practice with a friend to get the wording right—something like, “Lately, in order to meet deadlines, I find myself finishing work that you had committed to completing. This isn’t sustainable and it needs to change. Let’s talk about what we can do to prevent this situation in the future.”

Here are a couple of ideas to get you started:

• Be clear that deadlines are non-negotiable. Perhaps your team members think the deadlines you give them are soft ones. If this is not the case, you need to tell them.
• When you give out work assignments, spend a moment with each person to talk through the steps involved. Scope out the time requirement for each step so that the work can be broken down into manageable pieces. You probably don’t think you should have to do this, but sometimes you need to go back to basics.
• Rotate the crazy deadlines so that you take some, but not all—and so does everyone else. Make sure your team knows that everyone is expected to step up and go the extra mile when things get tight.

If it is really true that there is too much work, it is up to you to make the case for a new hire. This means that everyone, including you, needs to track their time on work projects in fifteen-minute increments. You will need this data to be convincing when justifying another body.

Your team members are going to have some good ideas, too. Put the reality of the situation on the table, listen carefully, and engage them in crafting a solution for moving forward. You clearly have empathy for them, which is great. Now you have to advocate for yourself—and from that position you’ll be able to craft something that will work. And you won’t have to put up with your husband’s criticism on top of everything else.

Love, Madeleine

About the author

Madeleine Homan-Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response here next week!

How about you? Is there anything about yourself that you want to change for the better in 2017?

If so, here are some suggestions I picked up from Ken Blanchard about keeping my commitment to my good intentions. I know they will help me.  See if they might help you also.

1. Write your goals down. Research shows that people who write down their goals accomplish significantly more than people who do not write their goals. As Ken shares, “In the working environment, writing goal statements is a common practice. However, many times when people are setting personal goals, they think about what they want to do but they don’t write anything down.”
2. Review your goals on a regular basis. Ken suggests reviewing goals each morning and reflecting on how you did each evening. “Give yourself the gift of thinking about your day for a few minutes. What did you do during the day that was consistent with your resolutions, and what got in the way?”
3. Ask others to help you stay on track. We all need help accomplishing our goals. Find an accountability partner—someone you can check in with on a regular basis. “Accomplishing the goal is usually more difficult than we think it will be, yet we rarely ask for help from others who can support us. Be systematic about checking in with your helpers. Set up a specific time each week to talk about how you are progressing. This can be as simple as a ten-minute phone call or even a quick text.”

In 2017, I will be more patient and loving, and will embrace the curve balls life throws my way. I won’t sweat the small things in life and I’ll trust that the big things will work themselves out. I plan to be more centered on who I am, not on what others think of me. I’m not interested in being someone else’s perception of what they want me to be. I want to be a better version of myself.

Okay, step 1 accomplished—writing goals down—now on to steps 2 and 3!

Why don’t you take a minute to reflect over the year and ask yourself who you will be in 2017.

Now take your first step!

IMPROVING LEADERSHIP ONE CONVERSATION AT A TIME

Executive coach Madeleine Blanchard held the phone to her ear, listening attentively as her newest client explained the problem she was having communicating with her direct reports. “They say that I’m not a good listener. I’m trying to connect, but it just doesn’t seem to be working. Any suggestions?”

Blanchard thought for a moment and replied, “Well, I can hear you typing right now, so I suspect you are actually answering emails while we talk. Do you do that when you are with your people? What would it be like if you actually gave each person your undivided attention?” READ MORE 

MANAGING IN A BUSY WORLD

Managers are struggling to find the time to have needed conversations with colleagues and direct reports. Ann Phillips, a senior consulting partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies, knows this firsthand.   “I always ask leaders ‘How many of you have enough of your own work to do each day?’

The leaders in class typically tell me that every day they have 8 to 12 hours of their own work that doesn’t include addressing the needs of their direct reports.  Lack of time kills many good intentions.” People want to be better leaders, says Phillips, but they don’t have the open space in their schedules. READ MORE 

CREATING A DEEPER CONNECTION AT WORK

You have to put yourself out there if you want to create an authentic connection with people. Sharing your Leadership Point of View is one of the most powerful ways to accomplish that, according to coaching expert Joni Wickline.

“Your Leadership Point of View is about the people and events that have shaped who you are. It also speaks to your values, your beliefs, and what drives you as a leader.” Wickline says creating a Leadership Point of View is an emotional journey and a lot of leaders play it safe when first given the chance to share. READ MORE

MID-LEVEL MANAGERS: TAKING CARE OF THE HEART OF THE HOUSE

Scott Blanchard, principal and EVP at The Ken Blanchard Companies, likes to use the phrase heart of the house to describe the important role middle managers play in an organization. In Blanchard’s experience, if mid-level management is neglected, the result is a slow-moving organization that doesn’t respond well to feedback.

Blanchard says that to be successful, middle managers must be skilled in communicating what is expected and how it is to be achieved.  That means connecting the dots from the boardroom to the frontlines. If middle management is ineffective, the staff both above and below this level suffers. READ MORE

ALL GOOD PERFORMANCE STARTS WITH CLEAR GOALS

The ability to set goals effectively is a key managerial skill. It’s also the key to being a successful individual contributor, according to leadership expert and best-selling author Ken Blanchard.

“All good performance starts with clear goals. If people don’t know what you want them to accomplish, what are the chances they will be successful? Not very good. “Peter Drucker used to say, ‘If you can’t measure something, you can’t manage it.’ Measurements are important to give both managers and direct reports more clarity when assessing performance.” READ MORE

Dear Madeleine,

I am the new CEO of an asset management firm. I am concerned that my executive team is not up to speed and I am nervous about delegating to them.

They are all super talented, bright and experienced. The problem is the former CEO was a micromanager who was punitive when people asked for help. Now I need to change the culture in the group to make sure people ask me for help before they dig themselves in too deep.

I have told them to feel free to come to me if they have doubts, but they don’t—and then there is a mess to clean up.

This is a critical juncture. The eyes of every board member are on us. But I am traveling too much and doing work my team should be doing because I don’t trust them not to screw things up.

I know I have to stop this, but I don’t know how. Ideas?

Can’t Delegate

Dear Can’t Delegate,

It is true that most new leaders would prefer to shoot off like a rocket to where they are going and send a postcard from the destination. Welcome to the brave new world of getting things done through others. This is the transformational journey that you unwittingly signed up for, and it will be fraught, difficult, and intensely rewarding. It will require patience and generosity and—probably most challenging for you—slowing down right now so you can go faster later. Here are a few ideas:

• Shift your mindset. It’s hard being a genius (I use Immanuel Kant’s definition of genius as someone who creates new things with existing materials or ideas.) I know this because for 25 years I have specialized in coaching them—and I have been married to two. I’m guessing you have an exceptional ability to make connections between big abstract ideas that are obvious to you. Because they are obvious to you, you assume they are obvious to everyone else—but this is where you are wrong. You have to slow yourself down enough to articulate the steps and connections between your big ideas. You have to draw pictures, show the progression of logic, and connect the dots between your big cognitive leaps. Tedious? Yes. But a critical part of your job right now.
• Address the problem head on. Pull your team together and articulate the problem as you see it. Talk about the former CEO and his method of operating, making clear that your approach is not the same as his. Be explicit about how you will reward people when they ask for help. Scott Blanchard, who works on many complex deals, has a mantra he repeats: “Don’t lose a million dollar deal by yourself.”
• Remember that you are suggesting a big change. Asking for help makes some people feel vulnerable and can require fairly intense personal development. Challenge each of your people first to figure out what gets in the way of their asking for help—and then to push themselves past it. Introduce them to Brene Brown, who is at the forefront of the research showing that learning to be vulnerable makes better leaders.
• Apply a method to assess competence and confidence. In our flagship model, Situational Leadership® II, we teach leaders how to work with people to zero in on exactly where they need help to become the wiz they are. Remember that the tasks you are delegating are highly complex. How come you don’t screw up? Are you that much smarter? No, but you learned a lesson along the way—figure out how to help people identify their development level on a task.
• Allow the team to reason through complex situations even if you already have the answer. Let them work it out together, learn from each other, and grow as a team. If you absolutely must, you can throw in your wisdom at the end.
• Share your thinking. Anytime you learn something new, send the learning to everyone on your team. A short email is all it takes. When you travel, take someone with you and share your every thought on what you are learning and experiencing along the way. You think they can read your mind,—or you wish they could—but they can’t and they won’t. So tell them everything you think they need to know.

You were made CEO because it was assumed that you will be able to do what you do and empower your executive team to be brilliant. If you apply only two of these ideas, you will be well underway.

Love, Madeleine

About the author

Madeleine Homan-Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response here next week!

Traditionally, this term refers to those who choose to work while sick or unwell. But this definition has now widened to encompass a generation of young people who feel they are forced to fake the extent of their workloads in order to win favor with their superiors, according to research conducted by Ricoh with office workers in the UK.

A new report entitled Overhauling a Culture of ‘Presenteeism’ at Work points to the belief among many employees that working long hours at their desk is the best way to secure career progression and positive endorsements from senior stakeholders at work.

Additionally, the report reveals that 39 percent of currently employed 18- to 26-year-olds believe working away from the office could damage their career progression, while nearly half (41 percent) feel their bosses favor staff that work in the office longer than their contracted hours. Perhaps as a result of these perceptions, more than two-thirds (67 percent) of the 18- to 26-year-olds admitted to faking the extent of their workload by staying late at the office.

The study recommends that employers consider different attendance standards based on changing work styles.  I agree.  We are experiencing a changing of the guard when it comes to the work style of a group I call the inbetweeners (millennials).

As the report concludes, “By embracing a culture in which the onus is placed on outputs and delivery of work, rather than being present in the office, young professionals would be happier, more motivated and would benefit from an improved work / life balance.”

If you are skeptical about the less-is-more work style theory, here’s a story from my home town of San Diego that may convince to at least take a second look.

One good way to measure productivity is revenue per FTE (Full Time Employee). This year, Tower Paddle Boards in San Diego will generate $9 million in revenue with just ten employees—a small sample, but still very impressive at $900K per FTE! Did I mention that Tower employees work only five hours a day? This is a staggering metric when you put it into perspective.

If some employers are able do more with less time, what can the rest of us do to move in that direction? Remember, the goal always must be efficiency and output. Neither of these should be sacrificed in exchange for a person simply being present.

A new working generation of Americans is seeking a new level of flexibility. If you are a manager, which do you think is more important: quantity of hours put in or quality of work?  Both have impact. Only you can decide which one has a more positive and productive outcome for your organization.

But does this leadership style help them gain confidence and grow into a high performer?  Or have you become an enabler of dependent behavior?

We’ve all heard the famous saying about how if you give someone a fish you feed them for a day, but if you teach them to fish you feed them for a lifetime. If one of your direct reports doesn’t know how to do a task you have given them, instead of doing it for them, set them up for success. Give them the proper amount of direction and support until they are both competent at the task and committed to doing it themselves. This way, they will grow and eventually become self reliant.

So how do you lead someone in a way that will meet them where they are and help them move from low to high competence and commitment? To start, have a conversation with them about their level of development on the task or goal at hand. Then give them the proper amount of direction and support as they learn and grow. For example:

• When a person doesn’t know how to do a task or reach a goal, begin with specific direction on how to do it and frequent feedback on their performance.
• If the person becomes discouraged, continue to give direction and add praise to build their confidence. Include them in decision making to build their commitment to the task.
• When they can accomplish the task but are still unsure about their ability, they no longer need direction but you should keep up the support in terms of praising, listening, and addressing any concerns they have.
• After you agree with the person that they no longer need support and that they are both competent and committed to doing the task, delegate responsibility to them for day-to-day decision making on this task. Let them know if they need you, you are still there for them.

Once you start giving this kind of personalized leadership—targeted to the individual development level of each direct report on each of their tasks and goals—you’ll notice an improvement not only in your team’s motivation but also in their personal performance. What’s more, as a manager you will have more time for your own work because your people will see you as a partner in their success rather than as someone who sees them as incompetent or comes around only when things go wrong.

As a leader, you want your team to know you are always there for them. Giving them the right amounts of direction and support to match their development level on each of their tasks and goals will result in improved relationships, confident and empowered people, and a high performing workplace.

Often, 20 to 35 percent of value-added collaborations come from only 3 to 5 percent of employees, according to a recent study shared in a Harvard Business Review podcast with Rob Cross, University of Virginia professor and coauthor of the article Collaborative Overload.

“As people become known for being both capable and willing to help, they are drawn into projects and roles of growing importance,” says Cross.

The downside? This kind of collaboration usually comes at a cost—not only to the person who is shouldering the load but also to the organization. Here’s why.

When someone is called on to be involved in everybody’s projects, sooner or later an organizational bottleneck is created when numerous groups are waiting for the person to work on their job. This is not healthy for the organization or for the overworked individual, says Cross. When one person is in extreme demand from several sources, that person will eventually suffer from burnout.

Wondering if you may be an excessive collaborator? Your calendar can offer some hints. Over the past four months, how many times have you:

• been involved in projects outside your core responsibilities?
• received routine informational requests about projects that you don’t need to be part of anymore?
• been asked to make routine decisions when you are not adding value?

All three of these questions point to signs of either a poorly designed role or one that has experienced scope creep. For example, you are unable to let go of old projects that could now be handled by others or you are still part of an archaic approval process put in place years ago that doesn’t really serve the organization any longer.

Cross explains that bottlenecks, burnout, and turnover can affect the performance of an entire organization. Don’t let yourself become a pinch point. Begin in small ways to remove yourself as an assumed collaborator by saying no, shifting priorities, and placing buffers in your work life.

Finally, if you are a manager, make sure you are not inadvertently asking people to become overloaded bottlenecks themselves. For example:

• Do you ask people to be always on?
• Who do you pick for assignments—is it typically the most connected, overworked people?
• Do you ever choose people for tasks who are less busy and could quickly learn the job?

Take a look at your culture and what kind of work ethic it encourages. Don’t put yourself, your people, or your organization at risk of burnout.

To learn more about the risks of collaborative overload, check out the complete article at Harvard Business Review. Are you a podcast listener? You can hear Rob Cross discuss these concepts on the HBR Ideacast.

I grew up with a cat, and she was quite the opposite. She roamed the house when she wanted to and would occasionally come to me if I had something of interest (i.e., food), but otherwise would generally leave me alone.

Leaders’ behaviors can be very similar to the behaviors of cats and dogs. Some constantly hover around and pull you out of your work for status updates, meetings, and side projects, while others leave you completely to your own devices and are nowhere to be found when you need them. And it can be quite frustrating to deal with either.

Do you work with someone like this? Here are ways to cope:

Dog Leaders: These leaders don’t necessarily understand how disruptive their behaviors can be. They simply want to ensure that progress is being made and work is getting done, but they also want to make sure they’re giving you what you need. Perhaps they are new to their role or are unsure of their own leadership capabilities. Be sure to provide plenty of positive feedback for the good that they do while also letting them know a few things that could be done even better. To keep them informed, use a simple virtual communication/collaboration/project management tool where you can post updates on your work. You can direct them to this tool for any updates, leaving yourself to work distraction-free.

Cat Leaders: These leaders require much more work on your part. When they give you your task, you must think several steps ahead, anticipate any questions you may have later on, and then ask the questions while they are with you. Be sure to ask the best way to contact them if you do have any urgent questions since they may have a preferred method of communication. Also, take the initiative and schedule regular meetings with them that last 15-30 minutes for the purpose of providing quick status updates. If any questions come up, you can ask them during these meetings.

By understanding these two types of leaders, you can work with them more effectively and get more done with less fur-ustration.

Cat Owner Life VS Dog Owner Life

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaU4a86aYb4

Dear Madeleine,

I am a leader who is conscientious, caring, and committed. Now, at the middle of my career, I find myself becoming a bit resentful of working long hours. I am constantly in danger of losing my PTO and yet the stress of preparing to be off work, along with the avalanche of work when I return, makes it very hard to disconnect completely. 

I’ve read the research and I know I’m not being a good role model for my people when I take vacation time and then end up working through it—which just breeds more resentment. I have a great team and I delegate a LOT to them, but the amount of work we are all expected to do is intense. 

My boss says I need to take vacation and just not worry about it. Any ideas on how I can do that and not kill myself with work when I return? 

—Just Can’t Take a Vacation

Dear Just Can’t Take a Vacation,

Being at the middle of your career, in middle management, and feeling like the proverbial hamster on a wheel is notoriously common and really, really hard. In, fact, I wrote an article about it recently. I hope it will help a little.

The short story here is that you absolutely must must must must take care of yourself for the long haul or you will be a miserable human being. Before you know it, you will not be the wonderful conscientious, caring, and committed person you are now. You will die inside because resentment is like taking rat poison and waiting for the rat to die.

So.

I am going to challenge you to go to your calendar app right now and schedule two weeks off. When you book your vacation, leave on a Tuesday and spend that Monday tying up loose ends, preparing everyone for you to be away. Then come home on the following Wednesday, and spend Thursday and Friday catching up. But DON’T TELL ANYONE YOU ARE DOING THIS. Leave all your emails in your outbox and let them go the night before you are supposed to be back.

That gives you a good week away and some nice padding on both ends to keep you sane.

You can decide you are going to work while on vacation—there’s no shame in that—but set some boundaries. For example, designate just one hour a day to check in and do not attend a single meeting. Keep in mind that when you do this, though, you train people to not let you take a vacation. If you decide not to work, I hate to tell you this—but you are going to have to turn your phone off. It can be done—I know because I have done it. And I have made my husband do it. You have kind of a little mini nervous breakdown on Day 2, and then you get over yourself and relax in way you haven’t experienced since before the internet. (You may still vaguely remember that.) I highly recommend it. And honestly, unless you are the only person on the planet who is curing cancer or engineering world peace, nobody will actually die if you take some time off. Including you.

You are a leader. And I really don’t want to be mean to you, but you are acting a little bit like a victim. It is time for you to make a choice to take care of yourself, defend your choice and stick to your choice. You will be smarter, more creative, and more interesting. You may feel a little buried when you get back, but you’ll have two full days to dig out. If you plan your vacation properly—meaning, it is something you really want to do with someone you really want to do it with—you won’t regret it.

Love, Madeleine

About the author

Madeleine Homan-Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response here next week!

Dear Madeleine,

I run a department in a fast growing biotech company. Things are moving so fast that they keep promoting me and I have to say I am pretty sure I have no idea what I am doing at this point.

I have excellent people reporting to me—they are all super smart, insanely dedicated, and well intentioned. When I was first promoted, I really enjoyed managing professionals who were like me. But with the latest change I now supervise managers of other managers who are quite a bit older than me and more experienced, and I also still have my own deliverables.

I am behind on paperwork required by HR, performance reviews, and my goals for next quarter. I am so overwhelmed I don’t even know where to begin. I am tempted to go to my boss, tell him I can’t hack it, and ask to be demoted again.

Want to Downgrade

Dear Want to Downgrade,

Whoa there, let’s just take a deep breath and think this one through, okay? You, like so many, have been thrust into management, and now senior management, apparently with zero direction or support. It sounds as if you feel like your hair is on fire—and why wouldn’t you? Let’s try to put that fire out first so you can think straight and make yourself a plan. The good news about being clueless is that you aren’t doing a lot of stupid stuff you shouldn’t be doing.

You definitely need to go to your boss—but to get some help, not to throw in the towel. I suspect your boss is underwater as much as you are, but you can ask him for some direction and prioritization. You will figure out how to do everything you need to do, just not all at the same time. Find out what is most important to your boss and, in the process, notice what matters to him least—for example, he may not care about the HR stuff. This will help you to decide what to tackle first, and what you can let slide for a minute or two. Choose which areas will help you get your feet back under you, and then figure out the rest. Block out some time each day to plan and prioritize. New research shows that people who spend their commute time clarifying goals and planning their workday have much lower levels of stress than those who don’t.

Next, get one-on-one meetings with each of your new direct reports on the calendar. The agenda? Simply ask them what they think you should know. You will be surprised at what you can learn.

Finally, cut yourself some slack. Someone obviously thought that in a sink-or-swim situation you were going to swim. So take a moment to float while you get you get your bearings, and then pick a direction and start swimming. Worst case would be that you fail and get demoted—but that probably won’t happen. Or you might actually figure out the job, decide you don’t want it, and move on to something else. At least that way you would be rising to the challenge and not throwing your hands up and quitting. I suspect you would regret that most of all.

Oh, and the next time you think you are going to run screaming from the building, take a short walk and take three deep breaths. When we are super stressed out, we tend to hold our breath—but the answer to the question always comes with the intake of breath.

Good luck!

Love Madeleine

About the author

Madeleine Homan-Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response here next week!

I’ll take that last part first. For the record, I prefer to pretend that the concept of luck doesn’t really exist—because if it didn’t, any magical thing that happened to help us along the way would just be a bonus.

Now for the main question. In my experience, there is no one thing that makes someone successful. I believe real success involves a combination of eight critical components—and that a person needs all eight of these qualities to truly succeed. I’ve found that someone who has most but not all of them will almost always fall short of achieving what they think they are truly capable of. The good news is the majority of these things can be acquired or learned—and a coach can help a client uncover which elements are missing and which to focus on first.

To start, a client must have three prerequisite qualities:

1. Reasonable Intelligence. You don’t have to be that smart, just smart enough.
2. Talent. No matter your desired area for success, you do need to have some natural ability in that area.
3. Passion. You really have to want it.

Then here are the five elements where a coach can step in and help:

4. Goal Orientation. “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.” This quote is attributed to both George Harrison and Mark Twain, but it is essentially a paraphrase of what Cheshire Cat said to Alice in Wonderland, who did not know where to go. To be goal oriented, you need to have a sense of where you want to go. A coach can help with designing and articulating the vision and can teach fundamental goal setting skills. Excellent models are out there, and a little practice and attention go a long way.
5. Discipline. An unwavering work ethic may come naturally or it may be achieved with a great deal of accountability. Either way, it is non-negotiable.
6. Patience. Nothing moves as quickly as we want it to. Staying the course through elongated timelines can be easier with support.
7. Persistence. Disappointment is extraordinarily difficult and requires resilience. A coach can offer a variety of mental tools to help get you back on your feet after you fall down.
8. The ability to build and nurture a network of relationships. This is natural for some, but can be slap dash and a learned behavior for others. A little analysis, focus, and planning can really make the difference.

How are you doing in each of these areas? Which are your strengths? Which are your personal weak spots? With focus, assistance from others, and a disciplined, patient, persistent approach, a coach can help a client attack each component and stay with the job as long as it takes.

And a little pinch of luck never hurts!

About the Author

Madeleine Blanchard is the co-founder of The Ken Blanchard Companies’ Coaching Services team.  Since 2000, Blanchard’s 130 coaches have worked with over 14,500 individuals in more than 250 companies throughout the world. Learn more at Blanchard Coaching Services. And check out Coaching Tuesday every week at Blanchard LeaderChat for ideas, research, and inspirations from the world of executive coaching.

In conducting classes with organizations eager to develop their own one minute managers (and, more recently, situational leaders), Blanchard and his work colleagues have often used an exercise that brings the distressing state of goal setting into sharp focus.

In this exercise, class instructors work separately with groups of managers and their direct reports. First they ask the direct reports to identify and rank order their top ten priorities at work. Separately, they ask managers of those individuals to identify their direct reports’ top ten priorities. The instructors then compare the priorities identified by team members with those identified by their leaders. As Ken Blanchard tells it, “Any similarity between the lists is purely coincidental.” In most cases, priorities are rank ordered quite differently by manager and direct report, with some important goals missing.

Digging into causes, Ken and his colleagues have found that day-to-day emphasis by managers on tasks that are urgent, but not necessarily important, are often to blame. Managers tend to focus on short term issues when delivering feedback, which causes important long term goals to fade into the background. Only when performance review comes around are the long term goals re-identified. Of course, by then it’s often too late to make any real progress. This results in missed targets and, often, hard feelings.

Don’t let this happen with your team. Take some time between now and the end of the month to make sure you and your team members are focused on the same priorities. Using the same exercise Blanchard instructors employ, ask your people each to identify their top five priorities for the coming year. At the same time team members are working on their lists, take a minute to identify what you believe their top five priorities are, given department and organizational goals.

Then, in your next one-on-one conversation with each team member, compare your list with that individual’s list. Identify and discuss differences. Gain agreement on the team member’s top five priorities and set goals around each priority that are SMART: specific, motivational, attainable, relevant, and trackable. Getting clear now will set up follow-up conversations during the first quarter where you can work together to review progress and make adjustments as necessary. The goal is to partner with your people to keep priorities top of mind so that important goals are achieved.

Don’t let the urgent crowd out the important in your organization. Re-examine priorities today—it will make all the difference down the road!

PS: Interested in a deeper dive on goal setting? Join Ken Blanchard for a free goal setting session on January 27. Ken will be helping hundreds of managers and individual contributors from around the world effectively set work and personal goals for the coming year. The event is free, courtesy of Cisco WebEx and The Ken Blanchard Companies.

“As an individual contributor, your focus is on doing the work, getting projects done, and meeting deadlines. But when you switch into a manager role, it means that you have to help others get the work done and ensure that they have the support, resources, and encouragement they need to be successful, both as individuals and as a group.”

When it comes to relationships, Miller uses the simple example of lunch behaviors to make her point.

“When we are peers, I get to go to lunch and we talk about personal things and sometimes we talk about our manager. But when I become the manager, I’m not always invited to those lunches. A new manager can sometimes feel lonely because they’re not included in the conversation.”

Jay Campbell, vice president of product development for The Ken Blanchard Companies—who will also be speaking as a part of the Livecast event—explains that first-time managers often find themselves with too much or too little help when they step into their first role. On the too-little side, many new managers  receive only a few hours of initial training in their first week, focused primarily on how to fill out timesheets, manage PTO, or maybe some compliance training—but not a lot that helps them master the skills of new management. On the too-much side, some training programs can consist of 10 to 15 modules, which can leave first-time managers completely overwhelmed before they get a chance to apply any of their new learnings.

Ken Blanchard believes the secret is to apply the 80/20 rule when developing training curriculum for new managers: 80 percent of the performance and results you want will come from 20 percent of what you focus on. Blanchard recommends first-time managers begin with a focus on goal setting, praising, and redirection.

“You want to make sure all of your people are clear on what you are asking them to do, and that they know what good behavior looks like.”

Becoming skilled at three types of conversations helps to set that up:  a Goal Setting Conversation, a Praising Conversation, and a Redirect Conversation.

“All good performance starts with clear goals,” explains Blanchard. “Once people are clear on goals, you need to get out of your office, wander around and see if you can catch them doing something right.”

For performance that isn’t going in the right direction, Blanchard recommends that first-time managers master the One Minute Re-direct.

“Go to the person and tell them the behavior you are observing. Talk to them about it and see how you can get their performance back on track. You don’t want to wait for a long time if performance isn’t going well. You want to catch it early.  It’s not about punishment; it’s just getting people going in the direction they need to go.”

To find out more about the First-Time Manager Livecast and how a minute can make all the difference, be sure to check out the registration page at www.kenblanchard.com/livecast.  (Over 3,000 people are already registered for this free event.) Blanchard, Miller, and Campbell will be joined by other consultants as well as both new and experienced managers. They will all share tips and strategies to help new leaders succeed in their first leadership assignment.

Dear Madeleine,

I am an office manager for a mid-sized business. I really like my job and am well treated and decently paid. I am also a single mom of a son who is in eleventh grade. He and I are spending a lot of time planning for his college applications and I have been researching scholarships.

My problem is that I find myself envying my kid. I never finished college for all kinds of reasons—the biggest one being the birth of my son. The professionals in my office all have master’s degrees. I know I am at least as smart as any of them, but without a degree I will never be considered for those types of positions. Daily, I fight the urge to quit my job and go back to school. I am worried that one of these days I’ll just up and quit. —Champing at the Bit

Whoa there, Champing.

Envy doesn’t make you a bad person. Actually, it can be a gift—it gives us insight into what we truly desire. So use it as a critical data point about how you plan to spend your time and your resources. In the future.

I sympathize with your impatience. You seem to have really behaved like a responsible grown up, which I can tell you from personal experience can be exhausting. I can certainly understand that you are feeling done. But let’s not get crazy and do anything rash. It sounds like your job situation is decent and I believe you’d regret losing that security without a plan in place. The key word there is plan—and that is what I recommend you make for yourself. Take a look at adult education options where you can start earning college credits while you are working. You could get a few credits under your belt and then continue more intensely once your son goes away to school. Many companies will reimburse their employees who take courses toward a degree. Have you ever discussed this with your boss? Even if your company won’t pay, you can certainly pursue a degree while you are working. I earned my master’s that way. Okay, it took me a long time, but I finally finished and I cannot tell you how satisfying it feels.

So. Don’t quit a good job. Do your research, make a plan, start small and take steps. Soon you will be so busy achieving your goal that you won’t have time to feel impatient.

Love Madeleine

About the author

Madeleine Homan-Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response here next week!

Dear Madeleine,

I am a creative director at an advertising agency, and I have been managing teams of people forever. I was the darling of the advertising world when I started, and developed a reputation for hatching brilliant ideas—in fact, you would recognize some of my work. It is a fast paced business with crazy hours. I just barely manage to juggle a household, two elementary school-aged kids, and a husband who works equally nutty hours. This job, which always has been kind of nuts, is now just a 24/7 slog.

I am a good manager. My people love working for me and I attract the best talent to my projects. My problem isn’t with managing people. My problem is that I feel as if I have lost my creativity. Kids in this business are innovative and quirky and fun, and I just don’t have any good ideas any more. I am worried that I am going to be found out, and that stress is really taking a toll. —Am I washed up?

Dear Washed Up,

No. But where you are right now sure is unpleasant, and for that I am truly sorry. To get to be a creative director at an agency you must have started out with amazing ideas and kept it going for a long time. So, fundamentally, you are a clever and imaginative person. But here is the thing. Creativity is a little like a water well, and it isn’t so much that yours has run dry; it is more that you need to prime the pump. Your life sounds exhausting and I am pretty sure what you are experiencing are classic symptoms of burnout. This is tough but reversible.

I have a few ideas. Some may make you roll your eyes because they are obvious, but others might be new to you.

1. Remember. Look to your past life and former self for clues. What did you used to do regularly when you were at your most creative? I guarantee you will think of some activities you did on a regular basis that you no longer do, whether it’s because you simply don’t have time or because something has changed. For example, when asked this question one client realized that she did her best thinking in the bathtub and had recently moved into a new home with a cruddy tub. She re-prioritized the planned renovations and got to work on the bathroom first!
2. Put yourself first. Howard Gardner, one of the foremost researchers on creativity, examined creativity through the lives of some of the great creative geniuses like Stravinsky, Einstein, and Picasso. He found one of the hallmarks of these people to be that they were very good at taking care of themselves so they could do their work. Not only that, they were particularly good at getting other people to take care of them so that they were freed up to think and create. What this would mean for someone like you would be so radical that you might use the label Extreme Self Care. What would this actually look like? Delegating mundane tasks someone else can do, for starters. If you can’t afford help at home, make your kids empty the dishwasher while you meditate for six minutes. Instead of doing laundry, drop it at the Fluff and Fold. Ask yourself, of all the things that suck the life out you at work, what might some of your direct reports be able to do? Your problem may very well be with managing in that you are not giving away enough tedious stuff and keeping some fun work for yourself. I have found that many people will put up with all kinds of overwhelm until they realize that the cost is too high. Sometimes it is a big health scare. Sometimes it is the death of their creativity.
3. Walk. Most people go to the gym so that they can stay in their skinny jeans. But a pile of evidence now shows that the part of you that really needs exercise is your brain. A study from Stanford shows that walking, even for short periods, increases idea generation and problem solving capability. So get up out of your chair and walk. Have walking meetings. Walk around the block for 15 minutes. Just walk.
4. Write morning pages. These next two ideas come directly from Julia Cameron, who wrote a book called The Artist’s Way that swept New York City, and the world, by storm in the early 1990s. “Morning pages” is a practice that involves grabbing a notebook upon first waking and writing 3 full pages of stream of consciousness. That’s it. No censoring, just free flow writing, for 3 pages. It doesn’t have to take more than 15 minutes. I can’t tell how or why it works, but I have used it myself in times of crisis and many clients have used this practice to get through rough spots in their lives, and magical things happen.
5. The Artist’s Date: Also from Julia Cameron, is the concept of the Artist’s Date. She recommends that you take two hours every week to do an activity that involves experiencing, sensing, and observing, with no real agenda other than to simply be in the moment. This can mean a walk in the park, a visit to a museum, listening to music. (I just heard you laugh out loud at the idea of taking two hours a week. To be fair, as a working Mom I feel pretty pleased if I do this two or three times a year, but even that makes a difference.) For more detail on Cameron’s work: http://juliacameronlive.com/basic-tools/

Finally, Breathe. Is that annoying? It probably is, but too bad. I’ll bet on a regular basis your shoulders are up around your ears and your abdomen is tight—and not in a good way—with anxiety. Take a deep breath in, and release your shoulders on the exhale. Take another breath in and think about what you are trying accomplish, and with the release let go of the judgment you have about your own creativity. The third breath will bring the idea, the word, or the solution. The spirit comes in on the breath. Always. You haven’t lost your creativity forever, I promise. But you will have to fight hard to get it back.

Love Madeleine

About the author

Madeleine Homan-Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response here next week!

Dear Madeleine,

I am a relatively new manager at a not-for-profit organization. During my first two years working here, my boss told me exactly what to do all the time. A classic micromanager, he constantly breathed down my neck.

He left the organization and I now I report to the woman who was his boss. She is the polar opposite of my old boss and gives me zero direction.

This, it turns out, is even worse.

All she does is pile on more work, saying things like, “Oh, could you just take care of this? You are so smart and you always get things done.” Nice to hear, but how can I do it all?

To make matters worse, because of her constant piling on of work, I have no real idea what I am supposed to be focused on at any given time. She keeps claiming an open door policy, but in real life her door is never open—and I can’t get on her calendar to get the clarification I need. I feel lost. This situation is affecting both my own work and my ability to set goals for my new hire. Help! —Overburdened and Feeling Lost

Dear Lost,

Don’t you just hate that—one manager drives you crazy breathing down your neck and the next one drives you crazier by paying no attention to you at all. If nothing else, you have two excellent models for how not to manage your own direct report.

I am thrilled to hear that you are working on goals with your new hire—this is an excellent first step. Ken Blanchard, in his book The New One Minute Manager, says the first step to success is to write down crystal clear goals and post them someplace extremely visible. Ask your new person to double check all of their activities against those goals on a regular basis to make sure everything they are doing is moving them toward accomplishing the right things. If you are familiar with Situational Leadership® II, be very clear about what leadership style your employee needs for each task and goal. This is so that you can provide extra direction when needed, but you also can leave them alone when appropriate. When used correctly, extra direction when your employee is new to a task won’t be perceived as micromanagement—and extra autonomy when they are competent at a task won’t be perceived as abandonment, which is how it probably felt when each of your bosses used only one style with you in all instances.

Now this is specifically for you: Anyone who has a clueless boss must take the reins and bring the boss up to speed by any means possible. This will mean you, alone, need to clarify the goals and tasks you are currently working on. Take your best guess to start. Write them in the briefest, simplest way possible and put them in front of your boss. Get creative and use several types of communication to find one that gets her attention—a hard copy left on her desk, an email, or even a text if that makes sense. If she listens to voice mail, leave your goals and tasks in a message. Then write them big and bold and put them over your desk so your boss sees them when she passes by. If you are on the wrong track, she will notice and tell you.

Once you’ve clarified your goals, communicate with your boss often and without fail. I recommend weekly, but bi-weekly will do—or, worst case, monthly. This communication should list your goals and all actions taken in relation to those goals. As a side note, list in a Miscellaneous bucket any tasks you are working on at your boss’s request that aren’t connected to your goals. That should be instructive.

If your boss won’t provide clear goals, direction, and support in the proper amounts, you’ll have to take the bull by the horns and provide them for yourself. Hopefully, your boss will get the message—and in the meantime, this exercise will remind you of how important it is to provide the same for your direct report. Let me know how it goes.

Love, Madeleine

About the author

Madeleine Homan-Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response here next week!

For example, one client I was working with wanted to say “no” to committing to weekly one-on-one meetings with a new direct report. My client did not feel she had the time to commit to another meeting due to competing priorities.  Plus, she wanted to accept a complex project that would increase her professional development.

During our coaching sessions we discussed the impact of her committing to weekly one-on-ones and how it might serve her, the direct report, and the overall department. My client soon realized it was her responsibility to provide support and direction to her direct report to help her be successful. She understood that saying “no” would negatively impact her as well as her direct report. My client also recognized that saying “yes” to meeting more often might eliminate some of the frustration she was feeling as her direct report was challenging her on requests while missing deadlines.

As a result of our discussion, my client committed to weekly one-on-ones with her new direct report to increase her competency in specific tasks. The “yes” response supported the direct report’s growth and development that led to the accomplishment of departmental goals. Over a period of time, the direct report needed less and less support and direction from her manager. This allowed my client more time to take on a complex project to increase her own growth and development.

How about you? Are you thinking through the implications before you say yes or no? Below are a few questions to ask yourself prior to making a knee-jerk decision.

• Who will benefit from this decision?
• What am I not going to be able to do if I say yes or no?
• Will this decision help me accomplish my goals or will it take time away from my efforts in reaching my goals?
• How much time will I need to invest?

What situations have you said yes or no to recently? Are the decisions you make increasing your leadership effectiveness? YOU have the power of choice to make conscious, informed decisions.

About the Author

Terry Watkins is a coaching solutions partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies Coaching Services team. Since 2000, Blanchard’s 130 coaches have worked with over 14,500 individuals in more than 250 companies throughout the world. Learn more at Blanchard Coaching Services. And check out Coaching Tuesday every week at Blanchard LeaderChat for ideas, research, and inspirations from the world of executive coaching.

I recently coached an ambitious sales person with ten direct reports after he attended a three-day Managing People workshop customized for his employer by The Ken Blanchard Companies.

This leader was very busy, working an average of twelve hours a day. Due to scheduling conflicts, we set his first coaching session three weeks after the workshop took place. Research indicates that you lose 70 percent of what you learn within one week if you don’t use it, so we started the session by clarifying his top two challenges.

The first challenge was that he wanted to contribute more to his company and achieve a higher leadership position. The second was his desire to have his direct reports take over more of the routine problem solving so he could better balance both his managing up and managing down duties.

I asked him, “From what you learned in the workshop, what do you think would help you with your priorities?”

After a little time with him not really answering the question, I gently asked again, “So in your opinion, which of the workshop concepts would help most with your priorities?”

It took a few more seconds of thought, but then the answer came to him: “I feel that I need to strengthen my relationships with both my boss and my direct reports.”

“How do you see this happening?” I asked.

“I think I can achieve it through the one-on-one meetings they talked about in the workshop,” he replied.

From there, he swiftly identified how implementing one-on-one meetings could help him both upstream and downstream:

1. Strengthening relationships through more communication: One-on-ones would allow him to spend more time with his boss learning about corporate projects and identifying opportunities where he could contribute more to the organization. The one-on-ones with his direct reports would help strengthen relationships by allowing a time to discuss their needs in a more scheduled way than through quick hallway consultations.

2. Improving competence all around: He could learn from his boss how to manage big picture items and projects, and his direct reports could gain competence through his increased direction, coaching and support to help them solve problems that arise from day-to-day operations.

3. Increasing delegation: As his direct reports’ competence improved, he could delegate more to them—and thereby open up time for him to be involved in big picture projects. Also, with the one-on-one meetings’ recommended best practice of the manager setting the time and the direct report setting the agenda, direct reports would become more empowered and would take more charge of the items under their responsibility.

4. Clarifying expectations: One-on-one meetings would also provide the occasion for him to clarify his direct reports’ goals as well as to provide feedback on desirable behaviors within the organization. Additionally, these meetings would present a great opportunity for him to catch his people doing things right!

One-on-meetings become time savers with the mentioned relevant benefits for all parties involved when used on a recurring basis. Follow these five tips for getting started:

1. Make one-on-one meetings short: 15 to 30 minutes in length.
2. The leader sets the meeting date and time and the direct report provides the agenda.
3. Meet at least once every two weeks.
4. Focus on what the direct report wants to talk about; i.e., progress reports, obstacles, concerns.
5. Show direct reports that meetings are valued and important by treating them as a priority. If a meeting has to be postponed, reschedule promptly.

It was fascinating how this leader—by identifying the need for one-on-one meetings with his supervisor—also recognized how this could help his direct reports. Need more time in your work life? Make sure one-on-one meetings are a managerial resource in your toolkit.

About the Author

Antonio Estrada, MBA, Certified Professional Coach is a member of Blanchard Coaching Services network of executive and leadership coaches.  Since 2000, Blanchard’s 130 coaches have worked with over 14,500 individuals in more than 250 companies throughout the world. Learn more at Blanchard Coaching Services. And check out Coaching Tuesday every week at Blanchard LeaderChat for ideas, research, and inspirations from the world of executive coaching.

Yes, you already knew all of this. But I learned something new last week and I want to pass along the knowledge in the hope it will benefit you, too.

Everyone has little tricks they use to finish a project. My kids will tell you I like to make a list when I have many steps to complete, and I place a check next to each task when it’s accomplished. I’ve endeavored to get them to consider this process (especially when completing homework). Our phrase for it is “get a satisfying check.”

When reviewing my work list last week, I saw I had a deadline today. I had already completed tasks that had deadlines last week, so I had discretion in where to apply my time and effort. I thought of the “satisfying check” and decided it would be especially satisfying to get this particular project done sooner rather than later. It required having multiple programs open as well as logging into a secure site. I opened all the spreadsheets and programs and was about to begin when, as sometimes happens, I was called to join other meetings. Since I have a home office, I decided to leave all the resources open overnight and start my project first thing the next morning.

You can guess the rest. The spreadsheets were tabbed and ready. My check list was ready. Even my coffee cup was filled! The secure site took my credentials, but wouldn’t open the resource I needed. I tried, and tried, and tried again. I called a colleague to see if he was having troubles with the site. He said he had had a problem but eventually was able to get on.

He then suggested, “Why not reboot your computer?”

WOW! So obvious, yet not on my radar. And that’s my point: sometimes the desire to beat a deadline can beat out common sense.

I knew enough not to work all night on the project, but my tools—in this case, the laptop—needed to be refreshed, too. Turning things off allows for a fresh start. It’s wry to note that I even was ahead of schedule, yet still overlooked the obvious solution. I had to close the spreadsheets and other documents only to open them again—big deal! The computer needed a fresh start to be of service to me in completing my task. And yes, after I rebooted, I got right into the resource and finished the task five days ahead of schedule.

You need to keep yourself in good order to produce good results. Assessing whether you need a break for a fresh start is part of planning for good results. But remember to assess the functionality of your professional work tools as well. Don’t sacrifice common sense in pursuit of a satisfying check!

About the Author

Mary Ellen Sailer, Ed.D., is a Coaching Solutions Partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies’ Coaching Services team. Since 2000, Blanchard’s 130 coaches have worked with over 14,500 individuals in more than 250 companies throughout the world. Learn more at Blanchard Coaching Services. And check out Coaching Tuesday every week at Blanchard LeaderChat for ideas, research, and inspirations from the world of executive coaching.

(Spoiler alert: the answer is always take it!)

According to Time magazine, in 2013 employed Americans took an average of 16 days of vacation—5 fewer days than in the 1980s. This happened in spite of reams of research supporting the notion that taking vacation is good for your body, your mind, and your soul. Here is more evidence that good things happen when you use those PTO days.

1. You are more likely to be promoted. New research actually shows that, counter-intuitively, people who take their vacation time are the ones who get promoted.
2. Your brain will thank you. When we take vacation, the brain creates new neural pathways and is far more active than during normal routine life. Even if you stay home and do unusual activities, your brain will be refreshed and more alert.
3. Your heart will last longer. The famous Framingham Heart Study, a long-term study that began in 1948 to analyze adult subjects who were at risk of heart disease, revealed that men who didn’t take a vacation for several years were 30 percent more likely to have heart attacks compared with men who did take time off. What’s more, women who took a vacation only once every six years or fewer were almost eight times more likely to develop coronary heart disease or have a heart attack compared with women who vacationed at least twice a year.
4. You will be happier. An interesting study published in Applied Research in Quality of Life shows that the happiness that comes from a vacation is derived primarily from the anticipation and planning of it—as much as six weeks of increased happiness.
5. You will be more fun and more interesting. Okay, I can’t actually find any research to support this claim, but seriously, you know it’s true.

So take some time to plan your getaway, even if it is months out. Start packing a week in advance to relish a new task that involves visualizing yourself at play (in the waves with the kids, dancing on a cruise ship, hiking up a goat trail). Plan your time away, keeping your calendar clear one day before (to tie up loose ends and resolve last minute emergencies) and one day after (to manage the avalanche of email) your time away. Arrange for dependable backup and a good dog sitter, and put an out-of-office message on your email and voicemail. And go. Go do something different from what you do almost every day of your life.

Love,

Madeleine

About the author

Madeleine Homan-Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response here next week!

It brings me back to the day I learned about the original The One Minute Manager. Like so many people, I was introduced to the book by someone who loved it—a client who had stumbled upon it and found that its lessons really helped her to manage her three assistants, something she had been struggling with. I immediately got the book and was stunned at the simplicity of the ideas and how actionable the steps were. The new book is so exciting because the basics have been updated for a new generation of leaders. It feels current and just as relevant now as it has ever been.

For example, I recently worked with a client who was complaining about a new employee—she called him “the kid,” and, in fact, he was just nineteen years old. “I tell him the stuff I want him to do and he forgets,” she told me.

It reminded me, once again, that most managers just don’t start with the basics.

One Minute Goals

In The New One Minute Manager the first secret is to set One Minute Goals. The critical step here is to have your employees write goals down and put them where they can refer to them every day. Nobody ever thinks they are going to forget their goals and tasks, but the fact is that our days get away from us, the unexpected crops up out of nowhere, and life is filled with distractions. Everybody, from an entry level kid to a CEO, has to stop, take a moment, refer to their big goals, and make a to-do list for the day. It is the only way to make sure the right things—not simply the distractions—get done.

One Minute Praisings

The second secret is One Minute Praisings. This is particularly pertinent for managers who want to be more like a coach. Taking a minute to praise a person for something well done is simple and easy to do, but for some reason most people just don’t do it. Certainly, as an executive coach working in organizations, I was considered a freak because I gave so much positive feedback. I couldn’t help it—it was simply part of my training. But the crazy thing is that praising works. It helps make employees more confident, more creative, and more willing to take risks. One of the phrases that struck me when I first came to The Ken Blanchard Companies was that a manager should “catch people doing things right.” I thought, “Okay, I’m going to get along just fine here.”

One Minute Reprimands Re-Directs

The third secret is the biggest change from the earlier book. Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson have changed the One Minute Reprimand to a more time-appropriate One Minute Re-Direct. Back in 1982 when the original book was published, when a direct report made a mistake, the in-command manager told them what they did wrong and took steps to see that it didn’t happen again. The tone of a reprimand was well meaning but parental. Today, people at all levels are in a constant learning mode. A reprimand isn’t appropriate for someone who is continually learning new skills. Personally, I have never been comfortable reprimanding anyone, so the Re-Direct works better in today’s world—it re-clarifies goals and gets people back on track faster.

Better than Ever

I generally don’t recommend books to clients, especially to those who don’t have the time or inclination to read—but Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson’s ability to boil down the complexities of management and leadership to simple, doable steps has been a gift to all of us for over 33 years. If you never experienced the original book, The New One Minute Manager is a great place to get started. It just doesn’t get old!

About the Author

Madeleine Blanchard is the co-founder of The Ken Blanchard Companies’ Coaching Services team.  Since 2000, Blanchard’s 130 coaches have worked with over 14,500 individuals in more than 250 companies throughout the world. Learn more at Blanchard Coaching Services. And check out Coaching Tuesday every week at Blanchard LeaderChat for ideas, research, and inspirations from the world of executive coaching.

In short order, the client mentioned five large development goals—and my sense was that he could have easily doubled that list if I had given him an extra minute or two.

This didn’t surprise me—my experience has been that if asked, most leaders can identify a laundry list of development goals for themselves.

What I’ve learned, though, is that for leadership development to be most effective it’s better to focus on only one or two objectives at a time—to gather, versus scatter, our forces when establishing a learning focus.

Biting Off the Right Amount

Developing a new behavior takes time, energy, and practice—and it’s often a trial and error process. If your scope is too big and you try to tackle too many changes at once, it can become overwhelming. When this happens, frustration can set in—which can lead to throwing up your hands in defeat.

Setting a reasonable goal is more likely to lead to success. But reasonable doesn’t mean something already in your comfort zone. The change you seek should stretch and challenge you—maybe even scare you a little.

3 Questions That Can Help

When defining the right level of challenge, ask yourself:

1. With my limited time and energy, what are the one or two most impactful areas I should focus on?
2. What would achieving this goal look like? What would be different? What is the target I’m striving to hit?
3. Who can I enlist (a coach, friend or mentor) to help me along the way?

Focus Leads to Mastery

Gather your forces by picking one or two behaviors you want to acquire or change—and then practice, practice, practice. Try to think of the time you spend in development as a learning lab as you test and refine the new behaviors you want to add to your tool kit. Take time periodically to evaluate what is working and what isn’t. Give yourself permission to fumble along the way.

Keep in mind that learning happens over time, with practice. If you stay focused, before you know it you will master and own that new attitude, habit, or skill.

And after you celebrate, you can pick a new area to focus on!

About the Author

Joanne Maynard is a senior coach with The Ken Blanchard Companies’ Coaching Services team.  Since 2000, Blanchard’s 130 coaches have worked with over 14,500 individuals in more than 250 companies throughout the world. Learn more at Blanchard Coaching Services. And check out Coaching Tuesday every week at Blanchard LeaderChat for ideas, research, and inspirations from the world of executive coaching.

Is collaboration always positive?

I think we need to take stock of our actions and ask ourselves:

Are we always the most effective leaders if we default to a collaboration mentality?

What happens when we need to make quick decisions for the good of the team and are paralyzed by our fear of not including others?

The Collaboration Pitfall
I first questioned this seemingly ‘best practice’ mentality when I read Jake Breeden’s book ‘Tipping Sacred Cows: Kick the Bad Work Habits That Masquerade as Virtues’.
Jake states that ‘working with others is sometimes a blast, sometimes a must and sometimes a waste’. We can ‘auto-collaborate’; gaining comfort from working in a team and avoiding conflict by reverting to consensus.
If you need to make a quick decision in a manager’s meeting, would you reconvene in order to discuss the matter with the team first? You potentially risk losing your credibility and a decision being made on your behalf in order to move the agenda along.
Being a representative is all about understanding the vision of your team and being able to speak on behalf of the individuals within it – not being able to do so can stifle progress and does not reflect well on your leadership.
I believe this links to time management and could potentially be a cause of overwork and increased stress. I would love to know your thoughts on the matter – so please do share your comments at the bottom of this post.
Get Smarter About Your Time

We are over-committing to the team, always looking to gain consensus and as a result having longer meetings when we could have made an informed decision ourselves.
Using this example of meeting length, ask yourself the following questions before your next team huddle:

• Why are we holding a meeting? Will actions be noted and decisions made.
• Who will be held accountable for the actions? There needs to be follow-up; will individuals be held accountable and how will you do this.
• Is this the most effective use of everyone’s time? Is everyone going to be actively participating in the meeting; it’s good practice to consider if everyone needs to be there. Does the meeting need to be as long – could all agenda points be covered in 10 minutes (I have never had anyone book a 10 minute meeting, but there have been meetings where I am sure all agenda points could have been covered in that time)?

If you can’t think of adequate answers to these questions you should cancel the meeting. Collaboration has potentially driven you into ineffectiveness.
Changing Our Collaboration Mindset
 This does not mean that collaboration isn’t crucial for the success of individuals, teams and the organisation. It does mean we need to think smarter about when to collaborate.
We need to strike a better balance.  Let’s collaborate smarter to gain back our time, make meetings more productive and refocus on getting results.
 
About the author: Lisa Ellis is the EMEA Client Services Manager at the Ken Blanchard Companies, she manages a team of Project Managers, Learning Services (online learning) and Staffing (resource scheduling).
 

That was the response John, a VP in the high tech industry, gave us when we asked him this question. And from what we could see, he was right. He was overworked and exhausted—because he was doing all the work for his employees! Given the constant deadlines he faced, he still believed this approach was easier than taking the time to coach his direct reports toward better performance.

This is a common problem we coaches face when working with well-meaning managers. They know they can’t keep operating this way, but they can never seem to find the right moment to slow down and put a new plan in place.

For John, it wasn’t until we had him track how much time out of one week he spent either doing the work himself or telling his people what to do and how to do it that he finally decided it was worth it to make time for day-to-day coaching.

That breakthrough led to these three questions John now uses as the basis for his new approach to coaching others to higher levels of performance.

1. What is getting in your way?
2. What do you need from me?
3. What will you do next?

Turns out, asking those three questions and listening to the answers netted John an increase in saved time of more than eighty percent! Now instead of doing the work himself, John is able to quickly identify—in partnership with the direct report—what the challenge is, where the direct report is in terms of competence and commitment to meet that challenge, and what leadership style is required to keep the project moving forward.

Eighty percent time saved. John says it’s the best experiment he’s ever conducted. Now he’s a believer.

How about you? Examine the possibilities. Try something new. Get new results. How much time could you save? This is just one example of the power of coaching—it benefits you as well as the people you lead.

About the Author

Patricia Overland is a senior coach with The Ken Blanchard Companies’ Coaching Services team.  Since 2000, our 130 coaches have coached over 14,500 individuals in more than 250 companies throughout the world. Learn more at Blanchard Coaching Services. And check out Coaching Tuesday every week at Blanchard LeaderChat for ideas, research, and inspirations from the world of executive coaching.