our Team Knows the Time Management Tricks. So Why Isn’t It Working?

When Martha, an Executive Director of a seniors program, called me to talk about training for her team, she wasn’t exactly sure what she was looking for. She just knew something needed to change.

Her leadership team was tired of running like chickens with their heads cut off.

• Things were falling through the cracks.
• Deadlines were getting missed.
• Everyone felt overwhelmed and exhausted.

She wasn’t looking for a wellness session or burnout prevention. She wanted to get to the core of the problem.

The workload was too much. And Martha knew the workload wasn’t going to magically change. They weren’t going to be able to clone themselves or suddenly get funding for a new admin position.

So she asked, “How can you help?”

It’s a situation so many nonprofit leadership teams are facing.

• Too much work!!
• Too little time!!
• Too few people!!

And while we won’t stop advocating for increased overhead dollars or encouraging people to take care of themselves, neither is enough when the workload itself is overwhelming. Eventually, we risk losing good people.

After acknowledging the frustrating normalcy of Martha and her team’s situation, I offered some hope.

I painted a picture of what could be different. I reminded her that each of her five leadership team members could make impactful shifts, even if the workload didn’t change. Then I walked her through what a session might look like.

She was so excited that we scheduled it that day.
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When I work with a team like this, I still start with the basics. Not because they don’t know anything about time management, but because I want to make sure we’re all working from the same foundation.

With Martha’s team, we looked at how to prioritize, both individually and collectively, using the Eisenhower Urgent/Important Matrix. We also talked about familiar strategies like time blocking and the Pomodoro technique.

Most of them had heard of these strategies. Some had tried them. And some had already decided they didn’t work. That’s where the real work started. Because if people know the techniques but aren’t using them, or they’ve tried them and they don’t stick, the question isn’t what other time-management tool they need.

The question is what’s getting in the way?
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This is where we started exploring people’s beliefs about time, responsibilities, hierarchy, people-pleasing, and perfectionism.

The problem often isn’t the technique. It’s the assumptions we make, the beliefs we hold and the values that influence our choices.

There is another layer: organizational culture. For example, if the ED asks you for something, you may automatically assume that task has become your highest priority.

But that’s not always true.

Unless we challenge that assumption, we can automatically treat every request from the ED as urgent and important. Their priority isn’t necessarily your highest priority. Their crisis isn’t always your crisis.

Having an open conversation as a leadership team helps everyone become more aware of the beliefs and assumptions shaping how they work.

Another belief that sometimes gets leaders into trouble is the idea that it’s entirely the employee’s job to manage their own workload. That’s not always the best plan of attack either.

In Character Driven Leadership for Women, I teach that part of your role as a leader is to help manage three things: Projects, priorities and pace. Let me explain.

You’ve been working on streamlining paperwork. To do that, your Coordinator needs to meet with each Manager to review the forms they use and how they use them. It’s a project she’s working on. Then suddenly, you’re opening a new program. The Coordinator gets pulled in that direction and has to put the paperwork project on the back burner. Makes sense, right?

Sure 

Until six months have passed and she still hasn’t returned to reviewing forms. Every time you ask her about it, she says she’ll get to it. But she doesn’t.

Your job isn’t to remind her, nag her or keep telling her to make it a priority.

Your job is to help her determine what needs to become less of a priority so there is actually room to do it.

• What can she delegate?
• What can she drop altogether?
• What needs to wait?

And then there is pace.

Maybe you help her schedule all the Manager meetings in one week while you cover some of her program responsibilities. There are multiple ways to do this. The point is that as her leader, you need to be her thinking partner and guide in prioritizing the work.

Left unexamined, our beliefs about workload, responsibility and priorities get in the way of whatever time management strategies your team members try to use.

A group session about time management, prioritization and organizational culture gives a team the chance to look honestly at what is really going on. Sometimes people simply need a reminder to do the common-sense things, like blocking off time to organize their to-do list for the week. Other times, the conversation surfaces something that’s been operating quietly beneath everyone’s awareness and shaping how the team works. That happened with Martha’s team.
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Their culture had been built around a “my door is always open” approach. It sounded like good leadership. In reality, it meant everyone was dealing with far too many interruptions.

When we talked about the need for blocks of uninterrupted deep work, they acknowledged that the only way they could really get into the zone was to work late or take work home.

Which, of course, meant working more hours

So we explored what was getting in the way of simply shutting the door.

• One leader admitted they thought that was the expectation of being a good leader (it’s not).
• One person had tried closing their door sometimes, but people just knocked and still interrupted.
• Another leader acknowledged that as a people pleaser, it was just too hard not to let them.

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We talked about creating a leadership team agreement on no-interruption time. They could alternate their unavailable times so someone was still accessible.

We also talked about creating a simple communication system that distinguished between “It’s not a fire, but I need some help” and “I need you now!!!”
Everyone was eager to test it out.

This is the stuff I get excited about!!

When a team pauses together and looks honestly at how they’re really working, rather than simply learning another tool they’re supposed to use or continuing to do what they think represents “good” leadership, I know they can make significant shifts.

And when they get excited about finding better ways to work within the very real constraints of the nonprofit sector, I get excited too!

Because I believe we should all be able to go home at the end of the day with energy left for the rest of our lives!

You may be reading this and thinking about your own team’s version of running on the hamster wheel. I’d love to talk with you about it.

This is exactly the kind of work I love doing with leadership teams. You don’t need to know what training your team needs before you call me. Tell me what’s going on, and we’ll figure out together what would actually help. Send me a message nd tell me a bit about what’s going on with your team. 

I’m looking forward to hearing from you!

~ Kathy 
Do the inner work! It’s worth it!

P.S. I’m going to guess that “my door is always open” hit close to home. Most teams have habits like this. It might be time to really talk about what that means and how to balance being accessible to your team with actually having time to get your own work done