I was recently working with a corporate executive . The brief for the coaching assignment was to help him manage his work more efficiently. I started by shadowing the individual in his work day. The one thing I noticed about him from day one was that he was a go-getter, was always looking to do more, achieve more and push himself more…all positive traits for someone who wants to grow their career or business. The feedback from peers, subordinates and supervisors reconfirmed this. As I continued to shadow him I realized that his strength was also his problem…he was taking on too much. If there was a project available he wanted either to own it or be a part of it. If there was a new initiative he wanted to lead it. This wasn’t about bad time management. He was working 12-14 hours sometimes 7 days a week to make things happen and delivering brilliant results. It was just the sheer amount of work that he was handling that made me apprehensive.
Think of a rubberband.
When you stretch a rubberband it can expand and hold the tension. When this same rubberband is stretched beyond capacity for a long time it snaps.
The way human beings work is not much different. We can only tax ourselves so much. When you function at maximum capacity for a long stretch you will invariably damage something…either performance,productivity, growth or all of it!
At this point you may be thinking that this post is about a good work life balance. But it is really not. There is no such thing as work life balance. Your priorities are decided by what is important to you and not by some formula of a perfect life. Besides lets face it – life wasnt meant to be perfect.
Our careers are meant to be like marathons….where you pace and manage your energy and resources to get the best outcomes.
Sometimes we get mislead into sprinting instead. Sprinting is an athletic form to run short distant at very high-speed giving it you all. In a sprint since the goal is short-term it is easily manageable. When it comes to your career, the ones who sustain the longest tend to have the biggest wins.
Like a marathon focus all your energies on things that are important to you in your career. Only then will you be able to work at optimal performance and get the outcomes that matter.
The 3 things you need to know before taking on an assignment:
- How clear you are on what you want: When I spoke to the client he told me that he wanted to be seen as someone who is the best at his job and capable of handling the most difficult projects. I then asked him why he wanted that and he said it was because he wanted to grow in his career, with a short-term goal of heading a business vertical and eventually the country operations. We then spent sometime understanding what that was like and what resources and skills he would need to get there.
- How many of the things you spend time on align to your priorities: We then looked at all the assignments he was handling and realised that many of the tasks on his list did not fit in the “most difficult projects” In fact they were those that a new inexperienced manager could handle. These tasks did nothing to prove that my client was ” better than others” either. So relook at the work you are handling and how it adds value to who you are before taking it on. This is also something one should look at before every career move.
- How much work do you take on because you think you should.We often spend time developing skills and doing tasks and acting a certain way because they are supposed to be the right things to do. For example my client also had a load of things on his schedule which were things handed down from his boss which probably his boss did not want to do. In our conversation my client realised that he had a problem saying no to people especially people who he reported into. At the same time he realised that the skill to say no gracefully was something he needed to acquire if he wanted to get to the level he wanted in his career.
By the end of the engagement my client came up with a checklist that he now runs through before taking on any new work or assignment. It went something like this:
- Not the quantity you handle but the quality of work that you do makes you a leader. Does the work you are looking at add value to you? Can you add value to it at a level that really matters to the organisation?
- Leaders are not jacks of all trades but masters of some. Is this something that will help you master something or be useful in the long run? Will it make you stand out as a leader?
- Are you doing this because you want to do this or because you are too uncomfortable to say no. If the answer is the latter don’t do it.
Wao what an example, it’s very true. I can co-relate with me.
glad you liked it