It’s been a busy week for me with the launch of a new online course, “Time Management for Technical Leaders”, a number of coaching sessions and some writing projects. I received a few questions about why I picked time management as one of the first topics. Before COVID-19 when I was running workshops to level up Tech Leads, we explore what people struggle with the most.

When you’ve got a strong leader and manager, teams don’t depend on individuals to manage their time. Team level practices like a regular iteration planning session, daily stand-up, a regular showcase and retrospective or the use of something like Kanban create a good workflow for teams.

When you step out of that environment into a leadership role, those practices no longer help with the work you need to do. It’s therefore no surprise that Individual Contributors transitioning to their first leadership role feel overwhelmed.

You know what a leader’s role is like. You get emails and slack messages coming from all sides. You have to take care of unplanned emergencies. You want to be responsive and encourage people to come to you when they need you. A natural consequence of keeping yourself available is constant interruption 😔

It’s not just new leaders that struggle though. I’ve also seen so many experienced leaders over-commit (perpetual people pleasers), are constantly late to meetings and a lack of time management fuels a constant cycle of reacting.

If you’re familiar with Project Aristotle from Google, then you’re familiar about their research what makes a team an effective and high-performing team. What they didn’t tell you though is that high-performing teams have great time management practices as well. In my experience, this applies to leaders as well! This is one of the reasons I picked this foundational leadership skill topic. Interested in taking it? Check it out here.

I hope you enjoy this week’s content. If you find it useful, please forward to someone else and send me feedback. Stay safe and healthy 🙏