Ben Franklin understood the importance of time management. In Poor Richard’s Almanac, he writes, “Lost time is never found again; and what we call time enough, always proves little enough.”
We generally think of time management as a day-to-day concern, a way to stay focused so we can cram more to-do items in between meetings. It’s well worth paying attention to, but it’s limited in scope.
If you’re like most of us, there’s someone in our workplace who—let’s face it—gets on your nerves and drives you crazy. Whether it’s an employee who knows it all, a client whose poor planning skills make everything a crisis, a senior executive with a huge ego, or a board member who can’t stay on track, the end result is the same: Stress. You worry about what disruptive thing they’ll do or say next, and about your ability to control your own responses—not to mention what others might do. It’s almost like middle school for adults.
It’s difficult to know how to handle these people/situations. You may find yourself reduced to dealing with their behavior one crisis at a time, walking on eggshells in between. It’s exhausting and it detracts from your performance—and your team’s.
Even though the “usual” order of things is supposed to involve parents teaching their children, I’m surprised at how often the reverse is true.
When my 14-year-old son, Jaden, decided that he wanted to compete in the Junior Olympic Track and Field Championships (3000M) and be the #1 runner on the high school cross country team as a freshman, they didn’t feel like entirely impossible goals—he’s a talented runner who made the varsity track team as a seventh grader—but even for such a gifted athlete it was certainly ambitious.
If you’re like most good leaders, you work hard to put together the best possible team. Finding not just the right skills but the right person—someone who’s productive, knowledgeable, and a good fit with your other team members and organizational culture—is a gratifying experience.
But whether your dream team is fully in place or still a work in progress, it’s important to remember that retaining great staffers is at least as important as recruiting them. Not only is turnover hard on employee morale and short-term capacity, but searches, hires, and onboarding are time-consuming and expensive processes. And there’s always an element of risk when you bring in someone new.
We’re constantly surrounded by reminders to look and plan ahead, to play the long game, to think strategically about where we want to be in five years while also preparing for retirement. That kind of planning is important to building a successful career, without question. But there’s also something to be said for focusing on the here and now.
The concept of mindfulness, focusing and conscious awareness of the present moment is very important. It’s been found to not only make you more productive but also have health benefits ranging from reduced stress to lower blood pressure.
When most of us think about leadership, we see ourselves empowering people, bringing them together, inspiring your team to do great work. And certainly those high points make the calling to leadership feel fulfilling.
But, as with any field, there are elements that are more challenging to get through.
If you break it down to its prehistoric DNA, the plot of “Jurassic World” and its predecessors resembles anybody’s bad day at the office: You set out to do something with good intentions and high hopes. Something goes wrong, but no big deal—there are systems to deal with it. Systems fail. Plan B is launched. Unintended consequences ensue. Repeat with Plans C, D, and E until you conclude that maybe the entire concept is flawed.
Even when no dinosaurs are involved, it’s a frustrating spiral. But short of casting an action figure to come in and save the day, what can you do when a plan you’ve worked to bring to reality goes horribly wrong?
In our interconnected era, it happens all the time. A snarky comment appended to an email from the boss, accidentally sent using “reply to all” instead of “forward.” A flirty text directed to the wrong person. Or, in the recent case of a BBC journalist, making headlines after an accidental tweet announcing the death of (still very much alive) Queen Elizabeth. Talk about a bad day!
Such mishaps make for funny stories—as long as they don’t happen to you. But even a minor incident can undermine how those around you perceive you and how much they trust your judgment. And especially in a professional setting, those perceptions and that trust are assets that are well worth protecting.
The U.S. Army Ranger School has been in the news after enrolling its first-ever group of women. The trial enrollment has drawn sharp opinions on both sides, but it’s also highlighted the rigors of what’s been called one of the world’s toughest and best leadership programs.
If you think your MBA school or corporate training was hard, imagine a program where only about half of those who enroll go on to graduate, and a third of those do so only after repeating all or part of the course.
Even though it’s been around as a concept for nearly 50 years—and in reality much longer, depending on how you define it—servant leadership has been growing in prominence. Maybe it’s a reaction to the excesses of ego and power in some sectors of business, or an acknowledgement of interdependence.
I suspect that the biggest factor, however, is a growing awareness that it works—and that it leaves everyone involved better off than zero-sum business philosophies where the winners end up on top and the losers don’t matter.