CHAPTER 18
The Must-Do List
The to-do list is one of the biggest nuisances for a leader in the middle when it comes to coaching. I'm not saying to-do lists aren't important, but they are mostly populated by urgent tasks, not important ones. The longer we procrastinate the things on the list, the more urgent the tasks become. Must-do lists are different. These are lists of important tasks done on a regular basis that have no immediate consequence (so they are rarely urgent), but if not done can have huge long-term consequences. So we must make them a priority.
What goes on a must-do list? Almost all coaching activities (scrimmaging, weekly one-on-ones, setting expectations for employees, holding employees accountable), as well as your own personal and professional development tasks (telling your family you love them, reading a book, taking a class). Activities for serving across to other divisions or teams and out to customers (like those “no news” calls) should also be on this list. And what about serving up to the boss? Having the will to commit to the must-do list—demanding more of yourself and your people instead of protecting them by saying there isn't enough time to get things done—is the ultimate demonstration of serving up! Getting stuck in our to-do lists is how we get stuck in something I call the “proof factor” and trying to prove all the reasons why not.
Stop trying to prove to your boss that you and your people don't have the time to do what is important and do what you must to get it done.
Three Steps for Creating and Owning a Must-Do List
The first step for leaders in the middle in creating a must-do list is not the list itself but owning their calendars, which is a lot harder than it sounds. The process requires three things—the same three things required to bridge the knowledge gap:
- Mindset: Enhancing your mindset to accept that you own your time and commit to do the work.
- Discipline: Writing out your priorities, adding them to your calendar, demanding this from those that report to you, and sharing it with those you serve up to.
- Execution: Not accepting any excuses from yourself or your team, staying committed to your important tasks, and fighting the need to drop them to do the urgent ones.
You will find that executing your must-do list as a leader in the middle is more work at the start, but after a few months, the results far outweigh the lack of short-term benefits. You will find that you are working on daily activities that are in alignment with your long-term goals. That your time management issues are no longer an issue of time, rather an issue of priorities and discipline to keep the urgent at bay. You will also find fewer urgent problems, because coaching down leads to better anticipation and resolution of those problems to eliminate or mitigate their effects in the future.
The second step for leaders in the middle in creating must-do lists is creating the list of priorities. So take a moment right now to write down your priorities as a leader in the middle.
Here's a sample list I created based on my experience with thousands of leaders in different industries. Feel free to add in specific tasks for your industry as long as they are important. Be aware that the more you add, the more difficult focusing on and prioritizing the tasks becomes.
Coaching Down and Developing Employees
- Weekly practice meeting with the team.
- Ride days in the field three days per week.
- One-on-one development meetings with direct reports.
- Inspecting our expectations of our employees.
- Holding employees accountable.
Serving Up
- Dashboard report to boss to make sure she/he is 100 percent up to date.
- Checking in with boss for updates and progress.
- Schedule weekly one-on-ones to ensure correct alignment.
- Calling any customers with updates even if there is no news.
Building the Business, Team, and Myself
- Recognizing employees and sharing with upper management.
- Recruiting new talent (in the field two hours per week).
- Serve out to handle customer and department issues.
- Serve across and meet with other departments and teams (two hours per week).
- Personal development: read part of a book every day (or listen to a podcast, read an article, watch videos, etc.).
Once you complete your own list, you can then compare how much time you spent over the past few weeks working on the important tasks versus others and see the gaps that need to be filled. Then you can move to the third step: Don't just ink it, schedule it!
As a leader in the middle, I always found that writing something down on a piece of paper or electronically was not enough to keep me focused on what I had to do. If it was not on my schedule, it wasn't as much of a priority, if only because no one else could see it and hold me to it. If I didn't fill my schedule up with my priorities, it quickly got filled with urgent tasks and other people's priorities.
Remember: The amount of time we have is a constant. The only variable is how we choose to use it. The key to maximizing time as leaders in the middle is to break our schedules up into small blocks that allow for extreme focus on one important task at a time. This allows us not only to stick to those tasks that are important but shows the people we coach and the leaders we serve that they are important to us.
Schedule every important task and invite every participant. Set alerts to remind you. Make sure your boss and the rest of the team can see these tasks.
No one is perfect, but keep to these meetings as much as possible, and if you know you will miss one in advance, reschedule before, not after, you miss it. Move it up versus back if you can. If you have to cancel, ask yourself if there is another option first. Technology gives us a lot of options to keep our important commitments.
Okay, I get it. This sounds like another fantasy, right? Even if you wanted to do all the coaching activities and agree that if you did them every week you and your people would get better and serve your boss and organization well. But let's talk reality: Those coaching sessions can be a little boring . . . and we need to handle some real big customer issues right now . . . and by the way the month-end is coming and we have some KPIs that need to be hit (or else), and you want to talk about consequences—let's miss the KPIs!
Does some or all of that sound familiar? Chances are, as a leader in the middle, you have heard and said something similar. So what do most people do? They say forget the coaching and it's all hands on deck. We need results now! See how easy it is to get trapped in an urgent mindset and sacrifice the important tasks of making your people and our businesses better? Don't sacrifice a serve up/coach down culture by creating one that will lead to time management issues from top to bottom, as well as the development and morale of the entire team. In today's world, there are so many distractions that get in the way of giving coaching down and serving up 100 percent of our attention and focus. Trying to focus on everything at once only enhances those distractions, blurs our vision, and makes everything but the people who matter most our focus. When we learn to schedule our time for them, we not only find that time but also will find we have more of it to use.
Serve Up/Coach Down Mindset: The Must-Do List
The must-do list prioritizes what is important to serve up and coach down. It keeps urgent tasks in balance and at bay.
The wrong mindset fueled by poor coaching and an inability to serve up: Something urgent happens—not a crisis but something perceived or treated that way: Cancel everything. Cancel every important coaching activity because we need boots on the ground to focus on this. We can't worry about being better next time. We need to get the other stuff done this time!
The correct mindset fueled by great coaching and an ability to serve up: In order to get better and be better, I need to focus on what I must do and all the activities that I and my boss know are important. I want and expect to be the best I can be at my job and so does my team. I should never be too busy not to do what I must do to make those things priorities.