What are some additional tips for leaders that can help to reduce stress and overwhelm? So, I’ll come up with a couple, but one I already mentioned was the ‘Creating some hour meetings for yourself in your calendar’ So that you can actually tasks done, rather than having to repeat, repeat, repeat, with constant interruptions.
Tip 1 For Leaders – Your Own Meetings
So, one, being kind to yourself and making sure you’re creating some hour meetings to get things done. The second things I’ve noticed with a lot of leaders is that they don’t have all of their tasks or all of their ‘to-do’ in the one place. It might be on a written list that they’ve got down, some Post-It notes, here, there, and everywhere. A checklist, or a Slack Meeting that has some tasks there. Their email has got the same thing. And all of their tasks are everywhere. So one suggestion to take some control back would be to grab all of those things, and put them in the one place. Whether it’s an electronic diary, whether it’s a hardcopy diary, whatever, it doesn’t really matter, so long as it’s actually in the one place… and you can take it with you to where you happen to be working.
Alright, so if you’re working from home, and you’re working at the office, that you can use the same thing. Alright, so I think that would be the second tip; pulling all of your tasks into one spot, so as you’re thinking on something, or it’s there, it always ends up in the one place. So, you’re not going to miss anything.
I think part of the stress of feeling overworked, is having to be thinking of 5 different places, or worse, just having every task in your head! Alright, so that’d be second tip.
Tip 3 For The Leaders – Daily Catch Up
The third tip, would be, actually just having a daily catch up with all of your team. Whether that is really short one-on-ones, or whether it’s as a group. Having a daily catch up, no longer than 10 minutes, where people know it’s consistent, and they can bring out any of their issues or discussion points to that 10 minute discussion. The purpose of this is, when it’s consistent, and it’s regular, people just know they can have access to you, and ask for responses to questions, get signatures, answers, at a consistent time each day, rather than having to constantly interrupt and harass you throughout the day for small little things, they might just carry it over and do it in one hit. Which gives you some more clear airtime.
And the last one would probably be coming back to how you’re managing tasks again… One thing I’ve certainly noticed with, the difference between leaders that are managing things really well, and not, is how they go about managing those tasks. Whether ‘A’, They’ve got them all listed in the one spot, but 2, the really good managers at this have prioritised what they need to do, whether you think if this as Priority 1, 2, 3. Small, Medium, Large… I think of it as Rock, Pebbles, Sand.
Like a Steven Covey type of idea, but also being able to add how long you think the task is going to take. This is something I see many to do lists just missing. And leaders particularly that those that like to get lots of things done, seems to match up with being chronic under-estimators of time. So, if this is going to take 15 minutes or half an hour, just noting that against the task. So if you are short of time, you’re not taking on something that’s too big for the time that you’ve got allocated, and you’re repeating, repeating.
So they’d be my suggestions for overwork. So what was it? Setting meetings for yourself. Putting all your to-do list items in the one spot. Creating short meetings, regular meetings for your team, every day. And then, with your to-do list, making sure that you’re either allocating how much time you think it’s going to take, or prioritising it, in some way, shape or form. They’d be the quick, easy wins for destressing a leaders life.
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