Don’t get me wrong. I love what I do. At the same time, I feel that I am being stretched a bit too thin. When I try to do too many things, I feel as though I am unable to excel at just a few things. Consequently, I fear I am becoming mediocre at many things. I’m going back and forth about whether I need to have this conversation with my boss asking for more resources. What’s the best approach? How do I have this conversation without sounding like I’m whining?
-Anonymous Reader
The pressure to do more with less can be overwhelming. We all experience this dilemma if we serve in management even for a short time. It’s easy to lose our coping mechanisms over time, which causes the work to suffer along with the morale of the team.
There are no simple solutions. The stress your boss is feeling flows down to the rest of your team. So, how do we cope and excel in a world of increasing demands and not enough time?
I believe you can have an answer to this question and an effective conversation with your boss in four weeks if you follow these simple performance coaching strategies.
Examine Yourself
The first question you need to discern for yourself is, “How can I say “no” or ask for more help?” Start by examining yourself, your workflow, and your habits. Make a two-week study of the flow of work and your own use of time.
The key to powerful performance coaching is using objective data to inform a subjective experience. Be ruthless here. Don’t make excuses. Examine the facts.
Performance Coaching Exercise
Begin by keeping a log of how you spend your time. Each day record your activity in fifteen- or thirty-minute increments. At the end of the day (or early the next day), briefly reflect on your log and record your insights.
If you are a manager, I suspect you will find plenty of interruptions and emergencies. Remember these are a part of your job. Simply record and categorize the interruptions. Your categories may include the following types of activities:
- Meetings Regardless of your position, you will likely find plenty of meetings. Identify how you and your team benefitted and how you contributed in these meetings. Which meetings did not require your presence? What could be streamlined?
- Investing in Others How much time are you coaching or training your staff? How much time are you away from your desk managing by walking around and dialoguing with your team? How much time is spent delegating important tasks or following up with these delegations?
- Individual Work You are likely an individual contributor as well. What tasks are you doing? How might someone else benefit from learning these tasks?
Next, examine the data that your company uses to measure your success and the team’s success. Record where you are now to develop a baseline of objective facts.
As you reflect on the two-week experiment, what did you discover? How often were you able to invest time in the most important tasks? Define what is most important by three criteria: your role responsibilities, your values, and your boss’ priorities. You may find some time wasters to eliminate as a result.
Lastly, prepare to share your ideas with your team. Plan to be vulnerable, admit your mistakes, and the tentative solutions you have gathered.
Team-Focused Performance Coaching
In many ways, you and your team members can provide performance coaching for each other while on the job. Begin by asking your team to do the same exercise described above for one week.
Perhaps ask them to record their activities in one-hour increments and summarize their findings at the end of the week to simplify experience. Ask them to be careful to make this summary a proactive solution-based summary that avoids excuses, blaming, and complaining.
Next, meet again in the following week and collaborate. This session may take a few hours. Facilitate this meeting in a manner that leads to practical solutions. Call on each team member to share the individual findings. Where you hear complaining, ask for solutions that are within the control of you and your team. Then record the tentative solutions on a flip chart or marker board.
There will likely be duplicate solutions. Find the one (or maybe two) “low hanging fruit” solutions that you and the team can address immediately. Seek their commitment to follow through. Write this up in practical, behavior-based goals that can be reviewed at every team meeting for the next three months. Ask the team to be mutually accountable to help everyone follow through successfully.
Finally, record additional solutions that you can bring back to the group for future evaluation and development.
Now you are ready to speak to your boss.
Share Your Findings with Your Boss
You have likely uncovered issues and solutions that are beyond your control and influence. Hold these ideas for later in the discussion.
Talk to your boss about what you and your team have committed to undertake to make sure you are serving him or her and the organization more effectively. Share the specific goals that you have developed with your team and ask for concurrence. Explain how you will follow up to make sure you and the team are developing better habits and efficiency. Promise to report back in three months on your progress using the goals and your baseline data.
Then, suggest ways that your boss can help you succeed using his or her influence within the organization. This may include permission to hire a new team member, added resources, cooperation from another team or peer, or whatever your perceived need. Your boss will appreciate your preparation and proactivity.
These simple steps could be game changers for you and for your team. Turn the stress into the energy that is required to excel. I hope you will let me know what you discover and how we can support you in creating change within your organization.
