Professional Detachment

Actions to take: Recognize when you are overinvested in the outcomes of work issues or decisions. Stop yourself from rash actions or rash communications on the matter. Take big-picture preventative measures such as having other passions, as well as more immediate measures such as consulting colleagues on the specific issue.

Have you ever been so sure you are right about something that you would move mountains to convince everyone?

One time, I was in a branch manager's meeting for a large library system when the chain of command announced a major change to our organizational structure. They were adding additional management positions to the branches. Great news, as I was directly supervising 25 people at the time. However, we weren't taking a traditional approach, like adding an assistant manager or department managers. Rather, the positions under the branch manager would supervise a cross section of the library—some shelvers, some desk workers, and some professional librarians each. As they explained, "It will be as though each supervisor has their own mini-library." 

I spent the remainder of the meeting in something akin to an adrenaline panic. I needed to change their minds about this plan. If I could come up with the right explanation, then surely they would see the problems that this kind of structure will cause. As soon as the meeting ended, I rushed to my boss to try to express my concerns. (I had not yet learned that there's no point in questioning decisions that are finalized.) Naturally, she brushed me off. Lots to do after any manager's meeting but especially one with an announcement this big. 

After work, I called some friends to vent and game plan my next steps. I couldn't sleep that night. At the next one-on-one with my boss, I laid out a comprehensive explanation of the problems with this kind of structure. I talked about how it would cause mass confusion about who was responsible for what, decision-making be knee-capped, etc. etc. etc. She listened patiently and delicately brushed me off once again. Later, I did the same thing with her boss. Eventually, I had a sit-down meeting with the executive director of the entire library system. Each person kindly and patiently brushed off my concerns. 

That week, the problem consumed me. I was up late every night unable to sleep. It was all I thought about. It was all I talked about with my spouse. I needed to help my organization avoid the crisis that I had decided would inevitably occur if we went through with the decision.

The organization went through with the decision. Of course we did. We already had gone through with the decision by the time I first heard about it. My worry, my mental energy, my passion about this issue only caused problems. It was a huge distraction from my day-to-day work, and it was time I could have been using to figure out how to implement the change as effectively as possible. It was a huge distraction and time-sink for the chain of command above me. 

There is such a thing as too much passion for your job. There are times when your level of emotional investment is a problem, not an asset. Here is what to do instead:

1. Accept the limitations of your role: This suggestion alone deserves its own blog entry. It is not your job to fix certain problems. It is not your job to make certain decisions. When you try to fight battles that don't take place on your turf, so to speak, you will only end up resentful at your lack of effectiveness. Further, those problems and decisions belong to someone. When you step in to "fix" them, you are showing a lack of respect and trust for those people (who are usually your superiors).
   
   
2. Take the long view: Think about five years ago. Do you remember the big issue like this one from five years ago? If no, that should tell you something about how important this one is in the grand scheme of things. If yes, did all of your flailing and warning amount to anything? Even if you were ultimately proven to be right, I bet all your work and worry didn't change the outcome. Channel the patience of President Lincoln and remind yourself, "This, too, shall pass."
   
   
3. Consult with more experienced colleagues: An obvious one, but sometimes we need reminders to do the obvious things. It is calming simply to hear another person say that they've been though similar circumstances and made it out alive. I guarantee that your more experienced colleagues know what you are feeling. They can talk you through it and help you see your way to the other side. 
   
   
4. Have other passions: Much of the problem with too much passion for the job comes from the fact that we can't think about anything else. If there is nothing for you to do about it, ruminating about a work issue is self-undermining. When you have other things to focus on, concerns about work recede into the background. Friends, family, video games, exercise, hobbies. Find anything that is engaging enough for you to commit your full mental energy to. 

The dose makes the poison. Anything is toxic when you get too much of it. Passion for your work is no exception. When you find yourself too emotionally involved in a decision at work, step back and breathe. Give yourself several days before deciding to voice your opinion. Don't just think about the outcome you want to see. Rather, think about the outcome you are likely to see. Accept that acceptance may be the only realistic path forward.

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New Manager: No Immediate Changes

Actions to take: Make no immediate changes as a new manager. Wait to implement changes until you have established a rich understanding of each of your employees, and they understand who you are as a manager. A rough rule of thumb is three months. During that time, spend your energy on developing those understandings. Write down any change ideas you have for later review. 

Its your second day as manager, and you can already tell some things need to change. Maybe you were promoted internally. You've been around for years and seen the cracks developing thanks to a series of weak bosses. Maybe you were specifically brought in to "clean up the mess" in this department. They warned you during the interview process that this team needed to be whipped into shape. 

Or maybe it's more mundane than that. You just see a few fixes that will make everyone's work easier.

Whatever the situation, you need to wait. Do not make any immediate changes as a new manager. After referencing this advice in the Transition Costs article, I realized that we hadn't covered this important topic. If you are an ambitious type who wants your team to succeed, you're probably internally shouting at your screen. Wait? This will improve things! We'll work better with this change! Why should I wait!?

When you make changes as a brand new manager, you won't know what you are doing. You will think you know what you are doing. No one will tell you otherwise (part of the problem). But from both a personnel perspective and from a process perspective, you won't know what you're doing.

On the people side, you won't know who is for this change and who is against it. You will have no idea how to effectively manage your team's commitment to the change. Everyone will have reactions. If they are smart, they won't share their honest opinions with a new manager. Think about it. They've had bosses who punish them for being candid, who did not reward them for having opinions that differ from the boss's opinions. We've all had bosses like that. Until you've spent time proving that you can respect diverse opinions and reward candor, they will be smart to treat you like you don't. 

On the process side, you do not know the details of your change.  No matter how much you've thought about it, no matter how well this worked in other environments. You have the broad idea, but you don't have the fine-grained understanding of this environment that is necessary to effectively implement this change. Every workplace is an integrated system. Move one part, and every other part compensates in some way. 

In truth, the manager never understands the whole environment well enough to anticipate exactly how a change will go. Our workplaces are too complex for that these days. It isn't your job to perfect understand every detail of the work you team does. Rather, it is your job to communicate and work with your team. It is your job to ensure that they will help you implement change by understanding the change and communicating how it will impact their work. Even the "process side" of change is really a people issue. As a team, you can effectively implement changes.

Implementing changes early on is like going into a dark cave without a light. You have no idea which step will be the one with the hole that breaks your leg. You won't even be able to predict if that leg-breaking step will come in the form of a process issue or a resistant staff member.

There is no hard line for "too soon" to make changes, but a rough rule of thumb is three months. The less defined but more accurate answer is that you can begin making changes after you know your team and they know you. That doesn't happen with one or two chats. It doesn't happen by asking how their day is going once in a while. It requires intentional effort and significant time. During that first three months, spend your energy on learning about your team and their work. (The internally promoted folks may be saying "We already know each other." Nope. They know you as a coworker, but they do not know who you are as a manager.) 

The only exception to the "no immediate changes" rule is routine one-on-one meetings.  If the previous manager never did one-on-one meetings, you do not need to wait to implement them. One-on-ones are the primary way that you'll establish the understanding we are talking about here.

Think of it this way. Imagine you were hired to paint a house. First day on the job, you show up with your brushes and rollers, and the home owner says, "Oh, the last painter just used their hands. They didn't need brushes." Painting a house means applying a thin, even layer of paint to a surface. Brushes and rollers are the easiest, most efficient way to do that job. Managing people means frequent, detailed communication on a thousand different subjects. One-on-ones are the easiest, most efficient way to do that job.

Rather than making changes right out of the gate, write down your ideas for change as they come to you. After a few months, return to that document armed the knowledge you've gained about your team. You'll have a good laugh about what a disaster it would have been to make those changes in early days.

Removing Distractions Series: Email Twice a Day

Actions to take: Only spend time on email at the beginning and end of each day. With practice, you can get your email inbox to zero in 30 minutes or less. Turn off all email notifications. Close the app when not in use. Get more efficient at both reading and responding to email.

This is one entry in a short series about removing distractions from your work, inspired by the Cost of Distractions post from early September. There are both productivity and mental health benefits to removing distractions while working on anything that requires focus.

I have a colleague whose email signature includes the line "Please note: My working hours may not be your working hours. Please do not feel obligated to reply outside of your normal work schedule." As I understand it, her entire workplace uses this line. I wish every organization encouraged its employees to have a similar message.

The best thing about this signature isn't what it says to the recipient. It is what it says about the sender. It says, "Don't expect me to respond immediately either."  It says, "We don't use email for urgent business." It says, "My workplace values thought and focus, not round-the-clock availability." 

It shouldn't be necessary to make these statements, but it is. Most organizations won't come right out and say that you need to check your email constantly. The assumption is there, however. And it is a massive productivity killer. Every time you are notified of a new email coming in, your attention gets pulled from whatever you were doing. It is worse than that. Even if no new emails pop up while you are working on something, you won't be able to focus completely. Because we are so primed to expect email, we have trained ourselves to never get immersed in a task. 

You can work better than this.

When you get into work in the morning, spend enough time to clear your email down to zero. Before you leave for the day, clear your email down to zero. If you are waiting for something important from your boss, take a minute to check it once before or after lunch. Other than that, stay out of email entirely. In the vast majority of workplaces, you can get your email down to zero in 30 minutes. I'm saying, at a maximum, you should spend 61 minutes in your email app per day.

That figure sounds laughable to some of you. In many organizations, there is so much email that you wouldn't even dream of getting through it in an hour a day. You can. You have to work a lot smarter, and you have to ween yourself off the false premise that you need to be available at all times. Here's how to do it.

How to work smarter: 

1. Set up sorting rules. Outlook (and any email app like it) has a robust set of tools for automatically slotting emails into folders. Set up a folder for email that comes from directly up the chain—that's the important one to check every time you open your app. Set up another for emails that come from your staff—also make sure to check that daily. The rest of the rules are up to you. Virtually everything else is okay to wait a day or two if you run out of time in your 30 minutes. Half or more can likely be funneled into folders you never have to check (e.g. automatically generated emails from the timeclock software).
2. Scan for the bottom line. Most people are terrible at writing emails. The most important point will be buried in the 3rd sentence of the 5th paragraph. Don't read emails top to bottom. Instead, scan for "the ask" that the sender is making (What type of response do they need, if any? Are they notifying you of a deadline? Are they briefing you on new information?). After you find the ask, go back to the top of the email. You'll be able to read and absorb much more quickly knowing the point of it all.
3. Respond briefly. You are spending too much time composing your emails. You don't need to do all that explaining. You don't need to re-read it for the third time to make sure your wording is perfect. People probably aren't reading it. Those who do read it are probably getting lost in the message you intend to convey. Just write less.
• Yes, some emails need a great deal of care. Maybe you are reporting to your boss on a highly sensitive matter. Compose that correspondence outside the email app and outside the 30-minute windows we're talking about here. 
4. Or don't respond at all. Very little of our email expects to get a response. For the 5 percent or so of emails that do pose some kind of question, ask yourself how likely it is that another person on the team has the same thoughts you do. If there are good odds you'd just be saying the same thing as everyone else, then don't spend the time.
• If you are only checking your email at the beginning and end of the day, a colleague will probably respond before you. Likely, they'll cover most of the ground you would have. Then you can spend your time effectively by bringing up points that are unique to your perspective.

How to commit to this new method:

1. Turn off all email notification: The default notification settings for Outlook are wild. You get a little colored envelope on the Outlook icon in your taskbar, a pleasant-but-fairly-long chime sound, and a popup preview of the email that hangs out for 5 seconds or so. Based on how thoroughly you are alerted, you can be forgiven for thinking that email is the most important thing in the world. It is not. If you take no other advice from this post, at least turn off these notifications. Even if you can't help checking email every 15 minutes, at least you won't be getting pinged every 3.
2. Close the app entirely. This has the same effect as step one, just better. Most of you won't be able to bring yourself to do it though. You will be surprised at the fear of missing out that this act creates. To fight the FOMO, track how often you give in and open the app outside of your morning and end-of-work times. Whenever you give in, mark how often you found something that couldn't wait until your usual email review (prediction: it will be 0% of the time).
3. Realize most people won't notice. According to a MarketWatch study, senders typically expect a response within 24 hours, but recipients often reply within 15 minutes. Nobody wants you to be that on-the-ball! I mentioned the twice-a-day email method to one of my bosses after almost 2 years working together. Until that moment, she had no idea that was how I operated.
4. Accept that you'll occasionally falter. It is very difficult to switch to this method after spending years with "always on" email. Even after you see how well it works, you'll find yourself peeking into your email app every hour "just in case." It's okay not to be perfect. (Though I really do encourage you to track how often these cheat-checks end up being anything other than wasted time)

The advice here extends beyond email. Give this treatment to any communication app that has the ability to distract you mid-thought (I'm looking at you, Slack). Schedule when you are going to use it and for how long. Stick to that plan. You'll find that you are much more able to immerse yourself in tasks. When you can focus completely, it virtually guarantees better, more efficient work. 

Manage Your Stress by Managing Your Workload

Actions to take: Think of your stress like any other workflow issue, not as a personal problem. If you are at or near your stress limit: 1) Don't take on new work without reducing time spent on other tasks. 2) Begin reducing your workload. 3) Temporarily ignore other stress-inducing activities. 4) Take a full week vacation as soon as is feasible.

 

We live in an extremely stressful time. There are a lot of great resources for coping with stress. I encourage you to seek them out. This post is about reducing your stress through workload management. The following tips, while difficult to achieve in some work environments, apply to virtually any workplace at virtually any level in the organization. 

Discuss new work with the assumption that you already have a full workload

Every time you are assigned new work, have a conversation with your boss about priorities. Ask them what work should be deferred/stopped in order to accommodate the new task. Approach this discussion as if it is understood that you already have a full workload. 

The default assumption in a work environment is that people can take on extra work while maintaining all of the duties they currently have. This is largely true. We get better at tasks as time goes on. You might be able to do twice as much in your 3rd or 4th year as you were able to accomplish in your 1st.

You need to make it clear that this is not case for you right now. Have estimates of how much time various projects and tasks are taking. Be confident and relaxed, but firm in your explanation that you cannot add new work until you make room by removing something else. Don't approach this as a "you" issue. Approach it the same way you would for, say, production capacity on an assembly line. You could overclock the machinery and destroy it, or you can keep production within normal parameters. It is the same thing with you: "Here is my available output. What should we apply it to?"

Confidently begin to reduce your workload

We just said you would approach conversations about new work as if you are at full capacity. If this post is speaking to you, you are probably beyond full capacity. We can get tricked into believing that 10 hour workdays are fine and typical. 

When projects wrap, don't take on new ones. When you figure out how to shave an hour from the time spent creating that monthly report, don't fill it with something else. Have you been the chair of some committee for the past 2 years? Maybe it's time to let someone else get experience with it. Start reducing your workload as directly or as subtly as you think appropriate for your work situation. 

Regardless of how you do it, actively assert the idea that you are indeed overworked, even if only to yourself. In the absence of information, bosses assume that your status is "fine." When we are stressed, we don't have the free mental energy to engage in self-analysis. Without that mental energy, we rely on others' cues about the world to guide us—we just don't have the capacity to guide ourselves. Our stress causes us to take cues from the boss ("If the boss thinks this is fine, it must be fine"), which means more work, which means more stress, which means even less ability to speak up about the fact that we are overworked.

You have to break the cycle. Be positive, practical, and matter-of-fact about it. Again, this is not a "you" problem. It is just a capacity issue that needs correcting.

Take a break from as many energy-draining activities as possible, even if it means letting things go for a while.

Time is finite resource. Start thinking of mental energy as a finite resources too.

Our tank of mental energy gets drained from many places. Under normal circumstances, we barely notice most of them. We have perhaps two or three main sources of stress. We recognize those as the things that eat up our mental energy and monitor them accordingly.

When you are at your stress limit, all of the tiny sources of stress become important. Anything that uses our energy can become the thing that puts us over the edge. Take a break from small stressors. That might mean letting the house go uncleaned for a while, skipping your weekly phone call with your well-meaning-but-judgmental relative, and uninstalling your social media apps.

Taking a break is the easy part. The hard part is using that break effectively. You'll only feel worse about yourself if you pause a diet only to spend more energy reading about world issues. We are temporarily cutting out little sources of stress to gain the energy to do the things described elsewhere in this post. Don't squander it. 

As soon as you can manage, take a full week vacation, Monday through Friday

A full week vacation does much more to reset your stress than anything shorter. It is also significantly better than taking mid-week-to-mid-week vacations. Part of this is getting more days in a row with weekends on each end. 

A subtle but bigger part is that you are fully pulled out of the weekly workflow. When you take vacations, say, starting and ending on Wednesday, you still have to be engaged in both weeks' work. You essentially do a full week's work on Monday and Tuesday before leaving the office, then a full week's work on Thursday and Friday after returning. Even though that would be 6 days of vacation time, it does less to recharge you than a full Monday-Friday vacation. 

Your return is an excellent time to start deferring work. For the first two days you are back, it is easy to take on absolutely no new work: "I'm still catching up from time off. Can we touch base about that in a week or two?" If it was important, it will get shunted to someone else. If it was not, odds are 50/50 that it will be forgotten about for the time being. 

Conclusion: Do fewer things better

Somewhat paradoxically, the more you place your own wellbeing ahead of you work, the better your work will be. It can be easy to believe that you need to take on as much work as you possibly can in order to succeed. The work needs to get done after all, right? 

No. It doesn't. There will always be more things worth doing than time (or energy) to do them. Chose what is most important, and ensure that you have the capacity necessary to do it well.

The Cost of Distractions

Actions to take: Cut out distractions and interruptions from your work, even ones that come from other parts of the job (e.g. email interruptions). Focus entirely on the task at hand. Use the time you save to rest your brain.

Tell me if you can relate to the following. There have been times in my life where I get home every day completely exhausted. My brain is so tired that I can't even carry on a conversation with my family. I started examining those days where I went home so drained. I eventually realized that my exhaustion wasn't tied to how much work I had done. It was tied to how busy I felt throughout the day.

Invariably, they were days where I never had the chance to focus. One thing and another kept coming up. Through the course of the day, I might end up attending to over 100 pieces of information (emails, tasks, questions from employees, etc.). Sometimes I would have to be actively thinking about 4 or 5 separate things at once because I got interrupted from my interruption. 

The last thing I noticed: The days I felt most exhausted were never the days where I got a lot of work done.

Let's talk about the cost of task switching. Assume it takes about one minute to mentally switch between tasks. Yes, you can be deeply involved in something, get asked a yes-no question, answer, and go back to what you were doing. That may take less than a minute. However, you will lose something in the exchange. When you return to your task, you won't be totally absorbed in the task the way you were before. Thoughts will come just a touch slower. It takes time to get back in the flow of what you were doing.

Call that loss of efficiency a one-minute cost. It is probably much more than that. We'll keep our estimate simple though. If you have two tasks that normally take 30 minutes, doing one completely then the other completely will take 61 minutes (one switch). Now imagine that you switch between the tasks every 5 minutes. With just one minute of productivity loss due to switching, that 60 minutes of work becomes 71 minutes of work (11 switches).

Obviously, no one would intentionally work like that. But almost all of us do something far worse. We leave email on, phone ring volumes up, a bunch of Slack chats and social media notifications and whatever else ready to interrupt us. I took an informal poll of colleagues about their distractions. The average of that small poll was 15 distractions every hour. 25% of our time is used just on the mental energy cost of switching tasks.

Fix it. You'll be happier and better at your job. Here are a few suggestions:

1. Turn off all email notifications. Close the email app entirely. Check it only 3 times per day if your office culture makes this even remotely possible. Your workplace can survive without you constantly checking email much more easily than you think. Do a similar thing with Slack chats and other "always up" communication methods.
2. Turn down distractions from others. If someone stops by to engage in conversation or ask a question, it is okay to say, "I'm really involved in something at the moment. Can you stop by later?" 
3. Quit setting yourself up for failure. I bet you are creating at least half of these distractions. Close the social media windows on your computer. Turn off the notifications on your phone. Turn off your phone entirely.
4. Set your intention when you start a task. Tell yourself that you will work without interruption for however long, then follow through.

Each of these actions could be fleshed out into an entire post on its own. Take a moment to think through how exactly you would do each and how you would benefit from them.

This isn't about making you a more productive cog to improve whatever machine you work for. That is going to happen anyway. The work you produce will be significantly higher quality when you start focusing deeply on one task at a time. You will likely find that "30 minute" tasks are in fact 20 minute tasks when you don't have distractions. It is, however, a side benefit. 

The main benefit is to you personally. I encourage you to claim the saved time for yourself. Work without distraction for 50 minutes. Then take a full, relaxing, totally-for-you break for 10 minutes. Take a walk. Close your eyes and recline in your chair. Let your brain rest for those 10 minutes. I am certain you will be more productive and get more done than back when you were "always" working. Test it out for a week and see if I'm wrong.

So far, we've talked about task-switching as a time cost. It is a mental cost too. When you cut down on task-switching, you use less mental energy throughout the day. You feel better. You feel happier. You are more pleasant to be around. You feel more satisfied with the work you've done. 

When you're in a better mood with more mental energy and greater satisfaction about your work, it comes through in your social interactions. You'll be a better boss.

Don't Alter Your Management for Poor Employees

Actions to take: Do not take on extra work (or make others take on extra work) to make up for poor performance. Talk with the problem employee using the usual means that this blog recommends (one-on-ones and routine feedback). Leave it in their court to do the fixing. Accept that things may get worse before they get better.

Way back in the day, libraries used card catalogs to keep track of where they kept the books. It was essentially like a giant recipe box with index cards. Each card had information about each book: title, author, Dewey Decimal number, etc. A cataloger might create thousands of these cards each year. I knew of one cataloger who got a chewing out because, one time, a day's batch of cards went missing in transit from their desk to its final destination. From then on, the cataloger made a duplicate card for every single book they cataloged, doubling their workload. The issue never came up again.

The moral to this story: "Don't create a new procedure based on a single, isolated event."

In the post about what counts as "not public" for feedback, we imagined an employee who was willing to eavesdrop on conversation clearly not meant for them. Let's work through a solution to that problem. The only way to be absolutely sure they are are not overhearing comments meant for others (for instance, feedback to their coworkers) is to stop giving feedback anywhere except your office with the door closed. We need to do everything we can to make feedback feel safe, after all. 

This is the easy answer. We control our actions. We know for sure this will solve the issue. It is also the wrong answer. It completely ignores the moral we just learned. 

When you change your managerial behaviors for one poor performer, you set a bad precedent. It is tantamount to saying, "You, employee, have the power in this relationship. You can force me to be less effective that I could otherwise be, do things I would rather not do." In the scenario we just described, we are making more work for ourselves and making it harder to give feedback, all because some employee is doing an inappropriate and uncourteous thing. 

We accommodate problematic behaviors in countless ways. You are undoubtedly doing at least a few things to work around problems with your employees. Do you have an employee who is a little bit of a bully with their opinions during meetings, and you side-step it rather than coaching them on it? Do you have an employee who always has excuses for missing deadlines, making others rush through other parts of the process? Do you have an employee who claims to be perfectly fine with every plan but quietly harbors resentment when things are done differently from how they would have? We have to get things done, so we do whatever is necessary to work around these little problems in the moment. The thing is, we are always busy. There is never a convenient time to address the root issue. 

We've got a spiral of cause and effect here. We do a little more work to get around these little problems, making us a little busier, making it a little harder to find time to fix the underlying problem. There seems to be no escape. This is the ultimate result of altering your managerial behaviors when you encounter poor performance from your employees. 

So what is the answer? Frankly, you are going to have to let things get a little worse before they get better. You need to stop fixing the problem for the employee. Only then will they feel real pressure to fix the problem themselves. Your job is to provide coaching and feedback and explicitly state expectations of the job. Their job is to do the work within the parameters of that guidance. When you find workarounds for problems, you are both failing to do your job properly. 

You've got an employee who is chronically late on deadlines? Stop rushing other parts of the work to make sure the whole thing gets in on time. Start letting the whole thing be a little late. When your boss asks, be honest about where the issue is (or preempt this by giving your boss the heads up before things start coming in late). You've got an employee who eavesdrops on private conversations? Have a very serious feedback conversation where you explain that it cannot happen again and change nothing about your own behavior. You must allow for the possibility that it might happen again in order for the employee to prove that they will not do it again.

Bonus piece of advice: if you have been accommodating poor performance, it may be wise to fess up to your part in all this. Consider telling the employee that you have realized you are enabling issues to continue and that you will not in the future. 

There is one more major downside that comes from accommodating problematic behaviors: you hide the extent of the problem from other parts of the organization, specifically HR and the management chain above you. They might blithely listen to you complain about a problem employee, but everything is going okay as far as they are concerned. From their perspective, you've got it under control. It must not be that big a deal. Congratulations, through your hard work, you have saddled yourself with poor performers that you will never be able to let go of.

Average bosses find themselves bending over backwards to fix dozens of little problems for their employees. They don't know how to properly help employees improve, so their only recourse is to change their own behavior. "Employee A can't [Blank], so I'll [Blank] instead. Employee B refuses to [Blank], so I have to do [Blank] workaround." So on and so forth. They end up becoming fantastically overworked micromanagers. Better bosses live up to the adage that two wrongs don't make a right. They understand that it is their job to help employees do well through coaching, feedback, and other communication, but it is emphatically not their job to cover for poor performance.

Note from the author: if you enjoy this blog, please consider sharing your favorite posts with others.

How to Make Conversation

Actions to take: Put work into paying attention to others' interest level during a conversation. If they are more interested than you, stay on the topic longer than you normally would. If less, try to cut off your thoughts a little early. Make conversation flow easily using the following structure for your comments: 1) acknowledge what the other person said, 2) say whatever is on your mind, 3) ask them a question.

Note: this advice pertains to everyday conversations, spontaneous work conversations, one-on-one meetings with your direct reports, and similar situations. Be selective about applying this advice to meetings that you are running. Meetings with agendas, structure, and specific desired outcomes have a different set of social norms, and you may need to be a bit more abrupt in your communication at times.

Are you an expert conversationalist? Can you deftly engage virtually anyone in conversation, enter and exit discussions smoothly when you want, and get your points across while making the other person feel heard no matter the circumstance? If your answer is, "yes," you can safely skip this blog entry. For the rest of us, here is a very simple strategy for improving your conversational skill.

In a workplace, we have a lot of topics to cover in a relatively short period of time. This leads a lot of managers to rationalize the negative consequences of abruptly cutting from one topic to the next or ending a conversation. In almost all live communication, and in one-on-ones especially, bosses can be so caught up in "getting the conversation done" that they destroy the value of having a conversation. 

Remember, the point of having a conversation is rarely just an information dump. We might wish that communication were that simple. It is not. The world is not that simple. Humans are not that simple. We have conversation to help understand one another. That takes time and a little bit of finesse. 

When a boss, or anyone for that matter, abruptly changes topic in a conversation, it makes the other person doubt. The other person doubts that the boss cared about the last topic. Doubt that the boss heard their thoughts on that topic. Doubt that the boss cares about their thoughts on the last topic. This is a little bit melodramatic, I admit. If you are generally a thoughtful, caring person, then the other party won't think this completely. But you are still undermining yourself when you fail to engage in the finer details of making conversation. 

We've mentioned finesse, and we've mentioned the finer details, but what, exactly, are we supposed to do differently? There are two very easy strategies that will make people think of you as an excellent conversationalist. 

First and foremost, start paying attention to the other person's interest in the topic. If they are more excited about it than you are, stay on that topic longer than you want to. On the other hand, you may be the type to talk at length about things. Train yourself to watch for when others' attention fades (are they giving one word answers? Looking away a lot? Not making an effort to contribute their own thoughts?). Make it part of your job to match the other person a little bit more closely.

Second, you can make a conversation flow naturally and easily for as long as you want (2 minutes, 20 minutes, 2 hours) with the following strategy. Any time it is your "conversational turn," structure your thoughts like this:

1. Acknowledge what the other person just said,
2. Say whatever you have on your mind, and
3. Ask an open-ended question. 

If you want to continue that same topic, it might look like this: "I know what you mean about the new layout of our software. [Thoughts about how it is worse in some ways, better in others, and how to get over the problems with it]. How well do you think those things would work?" 

If you need to move on to the next topic, here's how it might go: "The new layout has some problems for sure. Let's talk a little bit about the office space discussion you brought up in our last one-on-one. [Continue with your latest thoughts on subject]. What thoughts have you had about it since last week?"

This works due to a concept I mentioned earlier, the conversational turn. Conversations become stilted or awkward when it is not totally clear who should be talking, or when they are done. Have you ever witnessed someone continue add every thought as it occurs to them, seemingly without any plan to stop talking? It happens in interviews fairly often. It is because the person doesn't know how "pass the conversational turn" back to the other party (or are so nervous they forgot). Asking a question is the most common, easiest way to pass the conversational turn. 

That explains the last step. The middle step is obvious—you're saying whatever it is that you wanted to say. 

Regarding the first step, we could say "this is just good manners," and leave it at that. But let's take a moment. Etiquette has a purpose. It fulfills some necessary or useful function when dealing with others. In this case, the good etiquette accomplishes two things. First, it makes the other person feel heard. We can't very well acknowledge what the other person said without listening to it. Second, it forces us to actually listen. If you know that you'll be acknowledging their comment in some way, it pushes you to pay attention to what they are saying, rather than just waiting for your turn to speak. 

Knowing how to make conversation is a skill that is helpful to everyone everywhere. To be an effective boss, you have to develop relationships with your employees. Jolting, awkward conversation is high on the list of things that signal, "we barely understand one another." Use the tips we just discussed to make a better impression, have better conversation, and develop work relationships more easily. 

Schedule Tasks, Not Just Meetings

Actions to take: Put important tasks on your work calendar, just like a meeting. Stick to the time you've allotted to complete the task, even if it means the work will be a little less refined. When others request your time during that block, tell them you have something scheduled. 

   

Tell me if you can relate to the following anecdote. It's Monday morning. You made your to-do list for the day, not too ambitious but certainly enough to keep you busy. Then the interruptions start rolling in. An employee wants to ask which week would be best for vacation; a coworker from another department calls to chat about the meeting last week; three of your eight bosses stop by to ask why you misfiled your TPS reports; and so on...You look up, the clock says 4:30, and you haven't even touched your to-do list. 

Managers are pulled in a hundred directions. When we allow it to happen, there is no way to focus long enough to do anything well. Sometimes it is impossible to get anything done at all. This post walks through a simple behavior that surprisingly few people engage in, yet it solves the problem entirely. 

Schedule time to do your work. Don't just make a to-do list—put time on your calendar as a scheduled event to do the work. I use the acronym WBO (work blocked out) as the "meeting" title. 

Scheduled things get done. There is a funny psychological element at play here, and it has to do with our capacity to make decisions. Throughout the day, those hundred distractions each ask you to make a tiny decision: "Do I continue doing what I was doing, or do I focus on what this person wants?" Our brains tend to go with the option that requires the least mental energy in the moment. When someone asks you a question, the default path, the path of least resistance at that point in time, is to engage. Each interruption requires you to decide that you will continue working on your task at hand instead of getting distracted by their request for your attention.

When you have scheduled something, the psychological script is flipped. Now the default is, "I should do what I have planned to do." When someone or something interrupts, the mental path of least resistance is to continue working on what you are "supposed" to be working on (i.e. the task you scheduled for yourself).

We're entirely capable of procrastinating and getting distracted without help from anyone else, of course. Scheduling the task helps with this problem too. When you just have a list of things to do with no times attached, you can get around to them whenever and however you want. There is no psychological pull to do anything at any particular time or in any particular order. So, when something new comes up (a gif from a friend or an email about a new task or anything in between), we naturally turn our attention to it—it is new, and new things are more attractive to our brains. 

However, if a specific task is scheduled for a specific time, there is more of an imperative to get it done. This little bit of guilt-tripping ourselves is usually enough to keep us on task. It doesn't matter that the plan is self-imposed. It still works.

Tips for scheduling tasks effectively:

• Put it on your work calendar: For this advice to have any meaning, you must put your tasks on the same work calendar as your meetings, the one others can see and use when planning meetings with you. You will not get the same benefits if you just mentally schedule yourself to do it or put it on a private calendar. There are two groups of people who need to see it on your calendar:
• You: Once something is on your calendar, it is part of the plan for the day. Sure, the plan can change. Meetings sometimes get cancelled. But not often. When you put a task on your calendar, you will treat it the same way you treat a meeting. It becomes work to change the plan, so you will be naturally inclined to do the task.
• Everyone else: People from all over the organization make claims on our time. Our employees need to pop in with quick questions; our manager calls us up to review this or that; the business office and HR need to check in on budgets and timecards and all sorts of minutiae. When a portion of your calendar is blocked out, it eliminates a big chunk of those claims. Most (though not all) people tend to respect your time. They prefer to catch you when you are not busy. They will gladly pick a different time to talk with you or schedule that meeting if they know you are busy. (Even if you haven't shared your calendar, people will respect your reply that you've already scheduled something during that time. You do not need to mention what that something is.)
• Estimate time and stick to it: There is an adage, "Work expands to fill the time given." How many times have you written an email to your boss, then re-worked it two or three more times to get it just right? We double or triple the time we take on a task for very little improvement. Assert to yourself that you will finish the task in the time you have given it and follow through on that assertion.
• If you find yourself at the end of your time with the task incomplete, pause to review why it happened. Did you productively work on it the entire time, or were there interruptions and procrastinations? Make a note of which problem it is, and set out to do better next time.
• Say no to interruptions: You are letting people make demands on your time. You do not need to do that. If you were running a meeting in your conference room, you would not answer your office phone. You would not let an employee pop in to ask a quick question. Treat your scheduled tasks the same way. It's simple: 
• When your employee pops in, say, "I'm in the groove on something and would like to finish it up. Would it be alright if you came back in an hour?" Virtually everyone will be totally fine with that.
• The phone is even easier. Just don't answer. Most phones have a button that silences the ringer or pushes to voicemail. Use it. When you call back later, you can give a quick apology that you were busy. Or don't apologize, frankly.

There are exceptions to all of this. Use your judgment for what should and what should not displace your plan. The crux is, treat your important tasks like meetings. You would cancel meetings, interrupt meetings, push meetings around for something more important. But you wouldn't pause or cancel a meeting at every minor request for your attention. Use the same criteria for your solo work.

How to Apologize

Actions to take: When you need to apologize for something you regret having done, ensure that your apology has these three elements: 1) acknowledgement of your error, 2) expression of regret, 3) a plan or commitment to avoid the error in the future. Take time to reflect on how you would have handled the situation differently, and don't include extraneous information in your apology.

Some errors require more than a simple "I'm sorry." Saying "I'm sorry" is good for when you accidently drop something or bump into another person. When you have done something that you genuinely regret, a more robust apology is appropriate.

A proper apology has three parts: 

1. Acknowledgement of your error
2. An expression of regret
3. A plan or commitment to avoid the error in the future

If, for instance, I lost my temper and raised my voice with an employee, the apology might look something like this: "When we spoke yesterday, I let my emotions get the best of me. I raised my voice and phrased things more sharply than the situation warranted. I am embarrassed that I let it happen. I am very sorry about the way I acted. If I ever sense myself getting close to that point again in a conversation, I'll make sure we take a break so that cooler heads prevail."  

There are major benefits to using this complete apology rather than a simple "I'm sorry." First, it encourages you to reflect on your own behavior. When conflicts arise, it is easy to see how the other party has offended you. It takes real effort to see how you are contributing to the problem. When forming your apology, first ask yourself, "In what ways could I have handled this better?" If you have answers to that question, then you have something worthy of apologizing for.

Second, it removes some of the defensiveness from the situation. Any time you follow up on a conflict, the other party is going to assume you want to talk about their actions. Even the most emotionally stable among us can't help but feel ready for a fight. The conversation will go far better by discussing your own actions, not theirs. It is an olive branch.

Beyond the three-part structure mentioned above, there are a few more tips to make your apology go well: 

• No insincere apologies: Don't say anything you don't believe fully and completely. If you are unable to genuinely take part of the responsibility for whatever conflict occurred, then you are unable to give a proper apology.
• In person if possible: All communication is more meaningful in person. An apology is one of the most emotionally difficult conversations you can have. That makes it something we want to do through an easier communication channel but something we need to do in the most robust communication channel possible. At a minimum, do not apologize through a less robust channel than the one in which the conflict occurred (e.g. If you had an argument in a Slack chat, do not send an email apology). 
• Prepared in advance: Some may think this makes an apology less genuine because it is not "straight from the heart." Entirely untrue. Preparing an apology in advance means you took the necessary time to reflect on your actions. It means you thought about the other person's point of view. It means you actually have a plan for avoiding your error in the future. 
• No extraneous details: We always want to explain why we did what we did. A good apology says, "I understand you and your point of view." When you try to explain yourself, that says, "I am asking you to understand me and my point of view." It is a different conversation. It is not part of an apology. 

People think that conflict damages relationships. The opposite is true if you successfully get to the other side of that conflict. When you apologize in this way, the other party sees that you have thought through your actions. They see that you have thought through their response to your actions. Most importantly, they will see that you are putting effort into the future of the relationship, and they will almost certainly do the same.

When to Apologize

Actions to take: Give meaningful apologies any time you have done something you regret that negatively impacted another person. Do not base your decision on anything else. Do not base your decision to apologize on your feeling that the other party should apologize.

When should you apologize to someone at work? The answer: far more often than we do. 

You are bound to run into emotions, tempers, and hurt feelings at least occasionally at work, unless your relationships with your coworkers are completely superficial (and if that's the case, you're not following the advice from this blog). It is especially easy to hit raw nerves when you are a manager, since part of your job is to resolve issues and provide feedback about shortcomings.

I once had an employee come to my office completely livid about a decision I made. Our team had been doing something locally that was really the responsibility of a central department, and I put a stop to it. This employee felt that my decision was incorrect. For about fifteen minutes, they berated me at various volumes and various tones of voice. For most of that time, I attempted to address their concerns and explain my decision. At some point, I lost my cool. I was about five sentences into explaining that they didn't have a damn clue what they were talking about before I caught myself. I finished my thought and sent them out of my office before any more damage could be done. 

When something like this happens, you need to know how to get past it and maintain your relationship with that person. A smart first step is an apology. The criteria for deciding if you should apologize is simple:

1. You have done something you regret
2. That thing negatively impacted another person

Any time both criteria are true, apologize. Your decision to apologize is completely independent of the other person's decision. "Who should apologize" is the wrong thinking. It is not a contest.

The fact that the other person has done more wrong (in your opinion) is irrelevant. Apologies are not team decisions. The feeling of regret is personal and internal. Therefore, you don't get to decide when the other person should apologize, and they don't get to decide when you should apologize. To get out of the wrong mindset, I tell myself, "If you are even 5% at fault for what happened, you owe someone an apology." In the anecdote above, the employee quite literally did 95% of the shouting. It doesn't matter. I still failed to handle it as well as I should have.

Many people see an apology as giving in. They think that admitting your mistakes during the conflict means that you've accepted blame for the entire conflict. That is incorrect. It is the same wrong thinking as the "who should apologize" mentality. 

In fact, an apology is a powerful thing, in two senses. First, it is difficult to apologize. It requires strength of character to give a genuine apology for the things you regret. People who are confident and certain of themselves have an easier time apologizing, largely because they are not caught up in thinking about how others will interpret it.

Second, an apology is powerful because it puts you more in control of the situation. After conflict, both of you are burdened with many frustrations. Your regrets about how you acted are one of those burdens, whether you admit it or not. A genuine, meaningful apology will free you of that burden.

Average managers hide after conflict, metaphorically and, on occasion, literally. Some will cold-shoulder the issue until enough time has passed that they can pretend it didn't happen. Others use their authority to force the other party into accepting blame for the incident. Better bosses know that those strategies are both immature and ineffective. They address the issue head-on, and they start by admitting their faults with meaningful apologies.

New Manager First Day

 Actions to take: Avoid computer time on your first day. Spend the whole day getting to know your team instead. Take a few notes here and there to remind yourself of what you learned.

My first major managerial position was head of a branch library for a multibranch system. I had held a sort of shift supervisor position before that, but this was the first time I was clearly "part of management." On my first day, my supervisor spent three hours in my office with me explaining various systems and software, checking things off the list that HR had provided her. Then she left. I distinctly remember the feeling of near-paralysis that came next. What now? Eventually, I had to go out and speak with my new employees because my computer had locked itself and no one had told me the phone number for IT. My state of mind during my first interactions with my new team was embarrassment at not knowing what to do and fear of looking like a fool. 

That pain and awkwardness could have been avoided with just a few minutes of coaching. It is no challenge to impress everyone on your first day as a new manager once you know what to do. Follow these three simple pieces of advice: 1) stay off of your computer, 2) talk to your staff, 3) take breaks to take notes.

1. Stay off your computer: Do not be the boss who shows up on the job, has a conversation with their supervisor, then disappears into their office for the rest of the day after a brief round of introductions. What impression does that make to your new team? At best, no impression at all. More likely, they will conclude that you are just like most other bosses, that you will only interact with them if there is some kind of fire to put out. You will spend 6 to 10 hours on that computer every day for the rest of your time in that position. Take your first day off while you have the chance. This advice stands even if you've got some HR forms or training that you were told to complete.  As a manager, you get to pick what trouble you are in. I'd rather get in trouble for missing some run of the mill safety training than miss out on setting a good impression with my new team. The paperwork will wait.
2. Talk to your team: Instead of spending time on your computer, spend the whole day getting to know your new employees. Your supervisor or their proxy will probably walk you around for 5 minute introductions. During that time, ask each person if you can come back around later and learn more about them and their jobs. Then, do it. Their first impression will be, "the boss said they were going to do something, then made good on it." Fill your day with it. If you've got 10 employees, plan to spend about 35 minutes; if you've got 20 employees, spend a little less than 20 minutes (roughly 6 hours total in each case). Have a series of questions ready, both basic personal information and questions about their work. Have information about yourself ready. Make it a conversation by encouraging a lot of back-and-forth and asking follow-up questions on their answers. Avoid making it feel like an interrogation. Do everything you can to be casual. Feel free to be totally transparent about what you're doing. You can say, "I know that I'll be stuck in my office most of the time most days. The first day is like a hall pass. I intend to use it to get to know you guys a little bit before the routine sets in." 
3. Take breaks to take notes: Periodically return to your office to jot down a few notes on each person. Don't worry about getting all the details right now. You can ask again in the future. No one expects you to remember the stuff you've learned. That said, they will be impressed with the details you do remember. Do not do this note-taking in front of everyone while you talk. That would come off as bizarrely formal. Take notes on paper rather than you computer. It will help you avoid the temptation of doing other things that first day. Once you have the computer running, you'll feel compelled to check your email "just in case something important came through." In the last hour of the day, you can go back to your computer and transcribe your notes if you like.

Your employees will be seriously impressed if you do this. Their thoughts about you will filter up to your boss, who will hear that you "seem really engaged" and "are one of the most approachable bosses they've ever had." It speaks volumes about the lack of managerial training in the world that this is all you have to do to stand out. But it's true. Average bosses assume that they need to learn systems and get training knocked out right away, because that's the first thing that comes up in the HR orientation. Better bosses know that they will be set up for success by spending that first day talking to the team.

Management is a New Career

Actions to take: Take your managerial development into your own hands. Your industry likely fails to genuinely acknowledge that a separate set of skills is required for management. Spend time every single week intentionally seeking out and reviewing developmental materials. 

Generally in a career, you build skills from one job to the next. The skills from your previous job provide a foundation to help you succeed as you promote. Using an example from my field, picture the bottom rung of the library profession, the shelver. They learn the rules for organizing books and learn parts of the software for checking in, placing items on reserve, sending books to other locations for pickup. Over time, those processes become like second nature. They promote to desk clerk. Here, they get to see the organization process from the customer perspective a little bit. They add to their understanding of the library system software. The get a more complete understanding of the collections, what gets purchased and what doesn't. Finally, they promote to professional cataloger. The cataloger has to understand the system at a much deeper level than either of the previous positions. But it is easy to see how the previous jobs help prepare the employee for cataloger work. There is a direct line from the shelver’s tasks to the desk clerk’s tasks to the cataloger’s tasks. 

Management is not like that. The work you do as a manager does not really use the skills you learned in previous jobs. People get tricked into thinking it does. You're still talking about the same work, so you can get by for a while. You know the details of the work your employees are doing because you did the work yourself. You probably know their work very well--there is a reason you were promoted to management, after all. 

You can get by on that expertise for a while. People are happy to follow you "because you know best" for a while. But it won't work like that for everything. It won't work at all the moment you transfer locations. Those new employees don't know you. They won't automatically trust that you are an expert worth listening to. 

You need other tools in your toolbox. You need to develop your relationship power toolbox. That is what you did not learn in your previous roles. This idea that management is a totally different career, we don’t really acknowledge that. When I say we, I mean practically all of humanity. Yes, people might pay the idea lip service. They might say stupid platitudes about getting thrown into the deep end. But we don’t do anything structurally about this fact. We promote people to management, watch them splash around and almost drown, and say “that’s just how it works” because we had to do the same thing ourselves. 

That is stupid. It is maddeningly stupid. A big part of my motivation to write this blog comes from my frustration that the world works this way. It’s a painful, cruel process that isn’t even particularly effective.

That isn't how it has to happen. What is the typical scenario when we change careers? Maybe you're a teacher that decides to become an electrical engineer or vice versa. The answer: we train, often for years, before taking on that new role. We learn what skills are necessary for the job. We practice those skills before it matters so that we can do the job adequately when it does.

Management is something else, but your career is not set up to acknowledge that. When you get your first management job, you’ll be thrown into that deep end, and there won't be a lot of people coaching you on how to swim. You need to prepare for it yourself. Set aside time every single week for professional development. Find managerial resources: books, blogs, online courses, seminars, everything. Critically assess the advice you hear. And, most importantly, apply it. If you fail to change anything about your work, then the learning is pointless. 

Your organization is not going to do this for you. Better bosses will do it for themselves. 

Keep a Work Journal

Actions to take: Keep a daily work journal. In it, note any conversations of significance you had during the day and any particularly valuable actions you took. 

My Human Resource Management professor once said "If you take nothing else from this course, remember this: keep a daily work journal where you track every important thing you do and every important conversation you have." He was adamant about it. When I started my next job, I kept a daily journal. For several months, I did not really see why I was doing it. Then, about 4 months into my position, my boss rolled out a new assignment. I needed to provide a monthly report on my activities: successes, failures, challenges, plans, etc. The work journal immediately began paying off. I could tell that my coworkers were stressed about this assignment at the end of each month and took hours trying to come up with things to say. Meanwhile, I was able to produce my report in about 45 minutes. I got feedback that mine were the most robust and informative that she received each month.

That experience, however, is just a side benefit to the real value of keeping a work journal. At some point in your managerial career, you will be subtly but persistently interrogated about some aspect of your job. This will probably be in regards to a poor performer. HR will want to know every detail of your work with that employee. They will be looking for gaps, for shortcomings in your management. In this situation, or situations like it, effective documentation practices will save you. 

Each time this has happened to me, I was able to give specific dates for each and every conversation related to the issue--not just when I spoke with the employee, but dates when other employees complained about them, dates when specific incidents occurred, dates when I spoke with my boss or others in the chain of command about it. Along with those dates, I was able to supply details about the interaction at hand. Perhaps most importantly, I was able to say to HR, "This is not just me trying to remember six months later. Here is what I wrote down about the conversation that day, so I am very confident that this is what happened." There is no describing the satisfaction you feel when HR is struck nearly speechless by the comprehensiveness of your notes.

This is not hard to do, and it doesn't require anything fancy. Just keep a work journal. Mine is a word document with the date, then a bulleted list, then the next date, its bulleted list, and so on. In it, make a short note of every important conversation and any particularly valuable actions you took that day. Some days will have just a few bullets, some will have ten. Many bullets will just be a single line of text, 5 to 10 words. Occasionally, you'll want to write a few sentences. For very important staff performance issues, I recommend documenting those conversations separately in greater detail, though you'll want to note that the conversation happened in your journal. For all of your entries involving other people, Write the person's name, perhaps their title, and anything else that might be useful for finding it with Ctrl+F several months later. Here is an example journal entry:

2/1/21

• Usual morning duties. Greeted staff. Updated schedule due to call-in. Did daily pre-opening meeting.
• [Peer, Head of X] emailed to ask for advice about staff goals. Emailed back some thoughts.
• Weekly 1-1 with Alexis
• Weekly 1-1 with Elena
• Received positive feedback email from [Superior, Director of Y] following report submission: I “did a lot of good groundwork to get everyone clear on the issue” plus a few other positive remarks
• Discussion with [employee] who was frustrated. Having trouble dealing with “entitled customers who need everything done for them.” Discussed strategies. Made note to follow up 1-1 next week & 4 weeks. Possibly assign training.
• Updated supplies budget spreadsheet. On track to hit target within 1%.

The usefulness of your work journal will crop up in little ways elsewhere in your work. You'll need to remember the name of this or that external partner you talked to back in March, or the context for some project an employee proposed 8 months ago. Your journal will be a great resource in jogging your memory. Peers, employees, and the chain of command above you will be impressed with your uncanny ability to recall details. They will think you have some kind of super power, when in fact you are just doing a very simple thing that takes no more than 15 minutes a day.