The Secret to Having Time to Task as a Manager
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Introduction
As a manager, you always wish there were more hours in the workday to complete tasks. You may be feeling overwhelmed by all your duties and responsibilities, wondering where to turn to make changes that will truly work to your benefit and make sure all your tasks are completed. Here are some key methods to consider to maximize your working hours and address your work:
Understand the Balance Between Working and Managing
Managers are expected to juggle helping out the team and completing their work tasks. This can become too much at moments when your workload piles up or if an employee constantly is asking for your help. Creating a balance can be difficult, but it demonstrates your strong leadership abilities. Consider the following to help balance your two roles:
Have office hours where employees can come ask you questions at a designated time
Encourage your team to ask each other questions before turning to ask you
Have designated time where you focus on your tasks and limit interruptions from your team
Make information available to avoid unnecessary questions
Poor quality work
How Do I Help My Employees And Complete My Work?
Your employees will need guidance throughout the work day, and they cannot be expected to always work independently and avoid asking questions. As a manager, part of your role is guiding employees through their tasks and trying to find solutions to their problems, when they are unable to do so on their own. However, allowing an employee to continuously ask for help and never try to problem solve on their own, is not acceptable, as it deters your productivity and effectiveness.
How To Guide The Employees With Their Tasks:
To lead your employees in the workplace through their tasks, the emphasis of your role as manager is to guide the employees, but not do the work for them. Here are examples of what guiding means:
Answering questions, but not an exhaustive list of questions, unless the employee is truly struggling with a task.
Present clear guidelines for any tasks you assign an employee so that they can feel comfortable with the expected work.
If an employee expresses to you that they don’t have a specific skill to complete a task, take time to teach the employee the skill, or if there is no time to do so, find another employee who has the skill to teach the other employee how to do something.
The Importance of Delegating Work and Questions
Although you are the leader within the workplace, don’t feel as if you cannot ask your team for help, especially when it comes to answering someone’s questions. An employee may have a lighter load of work to complete, and that employee can take time to help out another coworker, so you don’t have to. This removes some of the stress on you to help out all your employees and creates a collaborative environment where coworkers feel comfortable asking each other questions. In essence, don’t feel expected to always answer every question, when you know another employee could be helpful in aiding the coworker.
I Can’t Meet a Deadline Because I Was Helping An Employee, What Do I Do?
When aiding an employee affects your own productivity, it is important to clearly understand the priority of each task you have to complete. This is where the importance of having two schedules, a best case scenario and a worst case scenario, can come into play. Always preparing for the worst demonstrates your leadership skills and also will ultimately keep you ready in any situation. However, when worst comes to worst and you realize you cannot complete a task, here are some suggestions of what to do:
Delegate the task to an employee if possible
If you realize this during a conversation with an employee who is asking for help, push back their deadline and ask them to come in at a different time or day for help
If it is a smaller task, move it to a different day when you have more time
If it is a large, very important task, extra hours may have to be put in to finish it
Conclusion
As a manager, it can be stressful to juggle all your responsibilities and guide your employees. Take time to acknowledge the priority of your tasks and know when to delegate work or questions to others on your team. Making sure your employees are supported is crucial to the success of the team’s endeavors.
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