Busy Manager or a Good Leader?

Several years back I was attending a training on Organization Strategy and Processes when the old trainer defined the term Management - "Managing Men Efficiently". "To the T", he went on to add. This is the real goal of any manager. When Managers fail to manage people efficiently, they end up being busy managing people inefficiently. This means that when people reach out to them for some help, they will end up saying "I am busy".

When I was not a manager and I heard this sentence from one of my managers, I used to wonder - "What on earth does the Manager do all day?" Most of the great managers (also Great Leaders) that I have worked with had plenty of time for the employees to connect. Almost all of them followed an open-door policy and appeared relaxed. They had time to acknowledge and appreciate in person and provide the right advice needed for the moment. This not only results in solving the problem at hand, but also improving the employee morale and creating life-long relationships. Leaders who face high workloads (i.e., high amounts of work and time pressures) tend to prioritize technical responsibilities at the expense of treating employees fairly — that becomes their second priority (source: journals.aom.org). And we know that most people don’t leave companies but rather leave managers.

Busy Managers lack time for reflection. They are always anxious running from one meeting to another, making phone calls, dousing one fire after another. No doubt, there are delivery pressures and the work is ever increasing. The fact is however that only a few managers manage themselves as well as they could. They think that they are attending to pressing matters but essentially they are just spinning their wheels. How would we know whether we are effective as a manager? At the end of the day, there are only 3 questions to be asked - How productive was my day? What action did I take today to achieve long-term business goals or what strategy did I devise to increase efficiency? What I am learning in the process? An answer for each of the above questions is a sufficient metric.

There are some things that are in control of a manager but what to do about the unnecessary "Have-to-attend" meetings. While some of these meetings cannot be avoided because of hierarchical protocols, there are some meetings that can clearly be delegated to other people in the team. Some managers feel that no one can do this work better than them and so they hesitate or have the fear of losing power. A lot of managers just love to speak and show who is in control. A delegation on the other hand empowers people and helps them develop skills that are otherwise difficult to attain. Sometimes the presence of a manager in such meetings provides a cushion to the team but it is manager's responsibility to get the team out of the comfort zone. They should be enabled to handle small fires and prevent them from growing big. A manager should ideally watch from a distance and intervene when he sees a risk of those fires getting wild.

A Project Manager recently reached out to me asking for help in managing her time going into meetings where she cannot contribute meaningfully but the team wants her to be in those meetings. My question to her was - "Are they managing you or you managing them?"

Either manage, or get managed! Who are you managing? Do manage yourself first.

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