Balancing Managerial Duties with Personal Workloads

One of the hard things about being a new manager is figuring out how to balance your personal workload while managing your team. You didn’t learn it as an Individual contributor. You just put your head down and got the work done.  Now that you’re responsible for getting work done through others, it becomes a juggling act.  It’s not easy but you can do it. You’re not born knowing how to do it, you learn the skill with time and practice.

Striking the right balance is essential not only for your personal productivity but also for team success. It isn’t always easy but it is essential for your success. Here are some tips that can help.

Balancing Management 

Understanding and Setting Priorities

One of the first steps to help you balance your work is understanding what hat you’re wearing. Are you the individual contributor or are you the team leader? It depends on what you’re working on. One way to figure it out is by using the Eisenhower Matrix. This simple tool helps you understand what needs to be done, who will do it, when to do it, how to do it, and even why to do it.

The Eisenhower Matrix

• Urgent and important: Do the work
• Important but not urgent: Plan the work
• Urgent but not important: Delegate the work
• Neither urgent nor important: Eliminate or postpone the work

Assigning priorities tasks is the cornerstone of providing team leadership while completing your deliverables for your boss.

Learning to Delegate

Delegation becomes difficult for many managers. Even more so for new managers. You want to show that you deserve the job so when things don’t go as planned, you think it’s better to do it yourself.  Congratulations. You just flunked management 101.  You are their leader but you are also a mentor. As such, your job is to develop your people for growth. That means letting them learn by doing. It is also about creating trust and strengthening relationships. Delegation not only helps you balance your workload and management duties, but it also allows your team to improve their skill sets. Some things to consider when delegating tasks.

Keys to Effective Delegation

• Assign tasks that align with team members’ skills and development goals.
• Provide clear instructions and expectations.
• Trust your team to deliver and resist the urge to micromanage.

Delegating the right tasks to the right people will give you more time and help your people build their confidence and capabilities.

Balancing Personal Workload

Setting Boundaries and Managing Interruptions

As a leader, you get frequent interruptions.  It’s part of the job but it doesn’t mean that you don’t need (and deserve) time to work uninterrupted. Letting others know when and how you structure your workload allows you personal time while still being approachable. it also helps your team develop critical thinking skills to manage issues they should be able to handle without you.

How to Establish Boundaries

Setting specific boundaries ensures you have uninterrupted time for strategic work while staying accessible to your team. Some things you can do:

• Establish specific times for open-door availability.
• Use tools like shared calendars to communicate your schedule.
• Encourage team members to solve problems independently when appropriate, reserving your input for more complex challenges.

Managing Interruptions

I created a simple communication tool for a client who felt she was constantly interrupted by things her team could (and should) be able to do for themselves. We assigned a numeric level to common reasons for interruptions. These are the levels we created. I encourage you to create your own based on your situation.

1. Emergency: Immediate attention is needed.
2. Permission, Help, Resources: Input needed to move a project forward.
3. Strategy, Planning, Discussion: Help is needed with the actual task.
4. Venting: Allowing staff to decompress without making formal complaints.

Team members identified the level they needed and she prepared to respond accordingly. This allowed the employee to identify what support they needed and it helped her realize that she didn’t need to “fix” everything. As everyone’s communication skills increased, the Interruptions decreased. It was a win for the entire team

Prioritize, Schedule, Accomplish

Your calendar is your best friend when it comes to balancing your workload and your managerial duties. Take the time to plan your week and work your plan. Use your calendar to keep track

• Start with a list of everything coming up for the week.
• Transfer the list to the Eisenhower Matrix.
• Eliminate or delay tasks in Quadrant 4.
• Delegate tasks in Quadrant 3.
• Schedule time for Quadrant 2 tasks.
• Work on Quadrant 1 tasks first.

Take Care of Yourself

Lastly, don’t forget to manage your well-being. Burnout is a real risk for managers who try to do it all. Prioritize self-care by:

• Taking regular breaks.
• Maintaining a healthy work-life balance.
• Seeking support when needed, whether from mentors, peers, or professional resources.

Conclusion

Balancing leadership duties with hands-on work is a skill that takes time and practice. By prioritizing strategically, delegating effectively, setting boundaries, and regularly reviewing your approach, you can manage your time in a way that helps both you and your team. Remember, your role as a manager is not just to complete tasks but to guide your team toward collective success.

Active listening requires a skill that separates managing people from processes and products. You know that, but do you know why? When we’re promoted for the first time, we tend to think about the end result as if we were still an individual contributor. But here’s the thing. The feedback you get from processes and products is devoid of the one thing that real, live people possess – emotions.

Back in the day, we use to discount employee’s emotions, referring to them as “touchy-feely” stuff and making the argument that there was no room for it in the workplace. Yeah, right. Somewhere down the line, we started to address the entire employee. Why is Robert no longer the stellar performer he was last month? Nothing has changed in the workplace but he’s falling behind. You decide it’s time to find out what’s going on. And this is where many managers fail. They talk but they don’t listen. Let’s fix that right from the start.

What is Active Listening?

I call it “listening between the lines.” I hear the words but what are you telling me? Active listening means understanding not only the speaker’s words but also their emotions and the overall message they’re sending. It means asking questions that get to the heart of the matter. It’s not called the heart of the matter for nothing – this is your opportunity to see what’s causing the situation good or bad. Active listening is work, you can’t be a passive  listener and it’s a skill you can learn and practice

Active listening improves your overall skillsets by:

• Building trust – when people feel seen and heard, they feel valued
• Improves critical thinking skills – getting to the heart of the matter allows you to see the big picture and how to carve out sustainable solutions instead of slapping a band-aid on the problem
• Reduces Miscommunication – minimized errors and confusion

How to do it

So, what are some steps you can take to make sure you hear what’s being said?

• Turn off the noise inside your head. You have to be 100% present in the conversation. You can’t be thinking about your next meeting, what you’re going to have for lunch, what you’re going to say in response to what you’re hearing. Focus completely on what you’re being told.
• Practice being emotionally intelligent. Regardless of whether you love or don’t like what you’re hearing, understand your emotional reaction and keep it in check. Why? Because part of active listening is managing the relationship between you and the speaker. Body language matters
• Acknowledging the speaker. This is the “active part.” Let the speaker know that you are engaged in what they’re saying. You can do this physically (nodding your head, making eye contact, etc.) and verbally (checking for understanding, asking open-ended questions to get more information, paraphrasing what you hear, etc.)

When to do it

I’m going to tell you to do it in every conversation. Why? The more you practice, the better you’ll get. But there are situations where it is especially important to make sure you hear what people say.

• One-on-one meetings. It is important that you meet with your people regularly. These meetings provide opportunities to get to know your employee, create and monitor career development plans, address performance issues, and understand the person behind the worker. Listening to what’s important to your people makes it easier to improve your performance as well as theirs.
• Team discussions. Using active listening skills in team meetings models the process for others. The end result is a team where everyone can contribute in a meaningful way.

The Bottom Line

Active listening is a soft skill with a powerful impact. By making a conscious effort to hear and understand your team, you’ll foster trust, collaboration, and a positive work environment. Like any skill, it takes practice, but the payoff in employee satisfaction and team success is well worth the effort.

As a new manager, remember listening is not a passive act; it’s an active investment in your team’s potential.

Your Professional Legacy

Legacy: something transmitted by or received from an ancestor or predecessor or from the past

“Legacy.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/legacy. Accessed 13 Oct. 2024.

Legacy usually means the things we leave to others when we die. What’s in the will? Who gets the car?  I believe that it’s much more and plays a part in how we approach our work. Our legacy doesn’t have to be about things. It can also be about impact. Have you ever wondered what your workplace legacy will be like once you’ve left? We often think of what we’ll leave family and friends but rarely think about what we’ll leave the people at work. Start thinking about it today, especially if you’re a new manager. Why? Because everything you do and say impacts someone in some way and often in ways that aren’t obvious to you. You build your reputation daily with your team, organization, or industry, but when you leave, you leave your legacy. How do you want to be remembered?

Types of Legacies

Think back to your favorite boss. What did they do or say that you still carry with you in your current workplace? Now think back to the last person who cut you off in traffic. Can you still feel the anger or fear that they might have caused an accident? Did it change the way you drive when you approach that spot in the road? Both of these memories, feelings, and actions represent legacies left to you by those who came before you. They are not material but they do or did impact you. The thing is, they can be direct (your boss) or indirect (the bad driver). They can also be long-lasting or instantaneous. As managers and leaders, we must keep this in mind. What we do, what we say, and how we act impact others whether we interact with them for years or seconds.

Direct Legacy

Unless we live alone in a cave, we interact with other people. Either by choice or by necessity. Regardless of how they come into our lives, how we treat them leaves them with some sense of who we are and how it affects them. Think about it. How you show up affects the actions and attitudes of your team. Are you the type of manager that encourages them to be creative or do you micromanage the hell out of them because you don’t trust them to be able to do the job better than you?

How does working with you day in and day out impact their job performance? Does it affect how they react to situations outside of the workplace? It does. I once had a boss who negatively impacted the team to the point that they had filed more than thirty grievances against her. One of the complaints? She never said, “Good morning.” While that may seem like a trivial complaint, it not only affected her relationship with the team, it affected their attitudes and dealings with customers and the overall reputation of the team suffered.

Indirect Legacy

These are the people who exist on the fringes of our world. We often forget about them because they are the ancillary people who keep the wheels turning in the background. It is important to remember that we impact them too. When was the last time you said “thank you” to the person who cleans your building or delivers your packages? What about the customer service person you called to repair something? Your interactions with these people leave an impact. If you come in and are in a foul mood, do you ignore them and act like they don’t exist? Are they just “the help” and not part of the team? Take a moment and think about how their job affects your job. What is the legacy they leave to you?

Why it Matters

“When people show you who they are, believe them,” said the great poet and author Maya Angelou. The advice can help us plan the legacy we want to leave. We create wills to leave our material possessions, so why not develop a plan for impacting others before we leave? What do we want them to remember? Our emotional intelligence?  Our ability to think calmly and lead with confidence? What about the managerial courage to do the right thing for our people? If not, our legacy might be one of laziness, cowardice, and incompetence. But If we take the time to increase our self-awareness, use the tools, and apply the skills we’ve not only learned but taught,  we will leave a legacy of that person who encouraged others to be the best at what they do. This is the art and skill of management and leadership.