CHAPTER 19
A Tale of Two Leaders
Let's end this journey through time management with a story of two leaders in the middle: Mark and Brandon. Mark and Brandon work for the same manufacturing company servicing different products. Both are good guys, manage the same number of people, have tenure at the company, and know the business. Mark's team is in charge of the newer division selling and servicing plastic blocks. He and his team are successful, but he will tell you they need to do more and take on new adventures to be as big as Brandon's division. Brandon's division is in charge of selling and servicing metal blocks, which is more established and has more customers and a stronger financial foundation to manage.
On the surface, it sounds like Brandon has it a lot easier than Mark, right? Not if you ask Brandon, which I did when I started working with them on coaching their teams. Because Brandon has a time management problem and Mark does not.
Brandon's work life is a constant stream of urgent customer and team issues, like the fact that two of his people just quit and his customers' orders are incorrect or delayed. But why coach? Brandon believes if you want a job done right, you have to do it yourself. That's why he is usually the first one in the office, the last one to leave, and comes to work most Saturdays. When he found out one of his team members never returned phone calls, he took the phone and did it himself. As a result, Brandon works very hard and long hours but has no control over his day. Everything is in a state of emergency and crisis. Brandon realizes he has a time management issue. The problem is, he is looking for a time management tool to solve it. He makes no commitment to any of the important tasks of coaching. In fact, he managed to schedule and hold only four practice meetings with his team in the first six months I worked with him and none in the last two. He says he does not have time to schedule one-on-one sessions because he is too busy.
Mark is busy too, but he is a big believer in coaching his employees and being coached. He has a family, and he makes sure each hour in his day is used effectively so he can leave on time to spend time with his wife and two boys. That does not mean Mark works forty hours a week. At his management and compensation level, his job requires sixty to sixty-five hours per week most weeks, yet he still attends most of his kids' events. Because Mark is busy but never too busy, because he prioritizes his time and schedules every hour starting at 6:45 a.m. with daily prayer. His calendar is packed with practice meetings with his employees, one-on-one development sessions, quarterly planning sessions, recruiting talent time, and client visits. Mark also makes time to email his boss daily updates and a weekly dashboard report, because he knows his boss wants to know that the business is moving in the right direction. He has chosen to prioritize the important things professionally and personally, made his must-do list, and taken control of his calendar to manage it, avoiding many of the customer and team problems that Brandon constantly deals with.
So which leader in the middle would you want to hire, work for, or be?
Of course, the answer is Mark in most circumstances. If it were my company and I needed to take leave from my company for a month, I'd be comfortable with either of them, maybe even most comfortable with Brandon. He'd make sure that every little unimportant detail was covered. But if I need to grow my business, I'm not asking Brandon. I'm asking Mark. Because that's what Mark was focused on: development and growth.
When I started working with them, Mark seized the nature of important tasks to serve his and Brandon's boss better. Their boss was the owner of the company (one of the best in the business), but he was very difficult to work with and a micromanager. Mark took that as a cue to communicate better and make sure he took the time to tell his boss what was going on by providing those daily and weekly reports the way he wanted them. When their boss asked them to come in to the corporate office for an important meeting, Brandon's first response was: “Why are we having a meeting? Can we do it over the phone? I have too many urgent things to attend to.” Mark, however, despite having travel plans to meet with his team, accepted the meeting request with the mindset that if the boss needs to meet then it must be important. He adjusted his schedule, informed his team of the change, and then contacted his boss to see if he needed anything prepared for the meeting.
In the end, Mark and Brandon both showed up, but the difference was their mindset. Brandon resented the meeting while Mark embraced it, just like he embraced the choice to make time for coaching. Brandon said he was open to the same coaching as Mark, but he was too busy to get on top of things by prioritizing what was important. If he had, he easily could have avoided many of the fires he was putting out. For example, Brandon's team missed three deliveries in a week for a product that takes almost a year to deliver. That's right: twelve months from the time the customer orders the blocks to the time that customer receives metal blocks. And yet Brandon's team missed those three deliveries. Of course, that week was chaos for Brandon as he made call after call to the customer, the manufacturer, the shipping team, and the warehouse. He blamed everyone but himself for not being on top of the important tasks and scheduling meetings and coaching activities that might have uncovered issues and breakdowns before they became urgent problems. Tasks Brandon is too busy to start doing now.
Choose Your Mindset
Some of you may be thinking Brandon needed those problems to feel important. Perhaps. But the truth is most successful leaders in the middle are never too busy to take on more and those who struggle are always too busy to do what they are already supposed to do, much less take on more responsibility. The difference is in their choices. The work needs to get done. Leaders in the middle who serve up know they need to choose to find the time by demanding they and the people on their teams maximize their time by focusing on the important tasks and not accepting time management excuses. And here's the thing: After dealing with hundreds of companies over the past fifteen years, I realized that those leaders who prioritized the important tasks always handled the urgent stuff too.
It's not like Mark's team never had any urgent issues. The team just handled them and the important ones too. By taking the time to coach down, Mark empowered his team to be better and more equipped to manage their time to serve him as the leader. Mark's team knew Mark never made excuses, so they knew they could not make them either. This allowed the team to focus on how to complete the important and urgent tasks rather than blame others for why they happened. In fact, by focusing on the important tasks (making the calls they needed to make, going on client visits, staying on top of the entire supply chain) they put out fires like those delivery problems Brandon's team had before they even started.
Your people will always have problems if you accept them. Brandon did; Mark didn't. That meant more time for Mark's team to grow and develop, and when he wasn't traveling, Mark still managed to tuck his kids in at night with a clear conscience while Brandon was still at work.
Simply put, Mark's team reflected his mindset and Brandon's reflected his. The leaders in the middle set the example. Mark's team always found time because Mark did, whereas Brandon's team struggled because Brandon felt he was too busy to do anything but handle those urgent tasks. So he accepted when his people gave the same excuses for being too busy or having problems, and those problems will not just continue, they will multiply along with excuses for why it happened and blame for whose fault it is. And no one will manage to have the time to fix it.
Final Considerations: Time Management
When it comes to time management, the wrong mindset is an unwillingness to change your priorities and stop making excuses. The right mindset is that you can always be better and focus on the things you know are important. You never let the urgent get in the way. This is why time management is a “will” issue. Time management is not a system. Time management is a result of your priorities and your choices and judgment.
Remember: Every coaching activity is about doing things to make your people better. Urgent tasks and checking boxes give you immediate gratification and get things done, but they are an unproductive mindset of busy-ness. All that work comes at the expense of important tasks that lead to better time management that serves your boss and organization, because your team is never too busy to take on more responsibility.
And what happens if a boss gives you contradictory priorities on what is important? The wrong mindset is to attack. The wrong mindset is also to let it go. It's okay to struggle with direction; it's just not okay to keep struggling with it. Take the time to make time by asking your boss to coach you on the priorities and sort them out so the work you are doing is in alignment with the long-term goals. But never say what your boss is asking for is unrealistic. If your boss is asking you to do it, you have to choose to make time to do it. If you still think you don't have time, the problem is you.