Issue 4
Even if you feel in charge of your calendar, your colleagues might not. You may be invited to meetings in which you hear complaining or boasting from people that they were in back-to-back meetings since they started their work day at 8am in the morning.
By Martin Drohmann
Published
Even if you feel in charge of your calendar, your colleagues might not.
You may be invited to meetings in which you hear complaining or boasting from people that they were in back-to-back meetings since they started their work day at 8am in the morning.
This is understandable. Since the industrial revolution, and maybe before that, employers paid for the amount of time their employees spent on a job. It is such a practical idea that moves productivity gains from machines or improved processes into the company owner’s pockets. The employees also gain a sense of security because the relationship is predictable. After all, time is something the employee is in control of. During the industrial revolution the risk of overpaying for time was rather low because most jobs were monotonous and repeatable, with repeatable and measurable outcomes, such as the operation of a loom that weaves textiles.
Meetings between product managers, engineers, and marketing officers are nothing like that. Increasing the number of meetings or the number of people in a meeting does not increase the productivity of the team.
We all know this, but it happens anyway.
You notice it when you are trying to share something that is important to you, but the group does not have the capacity to take it in. The group does not understand you, or they understand you but are too overwhelmed to process the information. Or they are incapable of turning the new information into action. Over-committed employees might feel some angst even just thinking about the effects of change, which might add more work and more meetings to their calendar.
If that is the case, the team is in a state of lack. It is the worst situation for a company, because if a team is operating from a sense of lack, it has ripple effects everywhere. It is like an octopus growing more and more tentacles that it sticks into all kinds of places. The lack gets everywhere.
But as a heart-led leader, you have ways to change it.
Heart-led leaders are aware that this situation is frustrating. Heart-led leaders welcome anything their heart tells them. So when your heart tells you, “I am frustrated,” you listen.
But how do you turn what your heart tells you into a leadership exercise?
There are several ways to react. One way is to make the situation your problem. It is the hero approach, not really recommended, but worthwhile to look at, because it happens so often.
There are at least two ways to make it your own problem: getting angry, and fixing other people’s problems, the helper syndrome.
We all get angry sometimes. And it is a good thing, because it shows that we care about something deeply. Frustration beyond our tolerance leads to anger. If that happens, we might find ourselves yelling at our team or even our boss in a meeting. Getting angry is heart-led, just like any emotion, but it is not leadership.
It just tells the group: “I am fed up with this and don’t have the capacity to deal with it. You have to figure out how to improve the situation.” So, if we get angry, we internally release ourselves from the responsibility and with that also give away our power to change the situation. This power is with the other people now, the overworked crowd.
The same happens if we avoid the conflict by fixing everyone’s problems. We see what is being missed by the under-capacitated members of the group, and we do their job: create the report for them, work over the weekend preparing our part of the solution for all possible outstanding decisions. We come up with a solution for their problems. Yes, it keeps things going, maybe shows that there is a way forward, and possibly brings some praise and recognition because things get done. But in the end it also facilitates the dysfunction. Without careful weighing of all options, we might find ourselves micromanaging our team, losing capacity for our own work, and suddenly their problem disempowers us.
So, how do we get in charge?
There are ways to avoid anger. Compassion is one of them. It increases the tolerance for one’s own frustration. If you feel in charge of your calendar, that is good, but remember your own struggles to get there. Maybe you have done the exercises from the last newsletter, and noticed a few things where you yourself had to become aware of your own powers.
You might want to remind yourself that employees are indeed paid by the amount of time they spend. Ideally, you have established some human connection with the people that you work with and know some of their struggles. We all have struggles. We have been programmed by our culture, by the education system, to believe that our worth is correlated with the amount of time we spend on a task. Students pass class through attendance. Those substitute measures are everywhere. Maybe you noticed some of those thoughts in yourself, and how they misguided you.
And then start focusing on your own power, what you can control.
Good leaders do not blame. Good leaders do not micromanage. Good leaders know what is important to them so that they can make clear requests.
If you are in a meeting and frustrated about the fact that nobody takes in what you are saying, there is a reason for this frustration. And that reason is not that everyone is unfair to you. No. Life is unfair. Period. It is a fact that is out of your control.
Likely you are frustrated because something affects you. Maybe you see your free time, or the time you want to spend with your family, dwindle because you made your projections thinking of a team that had full capacity to make decisions. Maybe you feel trust dwindling, in the coherence of the plan or your team’s ability to execute it. Or maybe you are worried that stakeholders are going to lose trust in you because you cannot hold your promises.
Once you are aware of this, you can stay in control and make requests, and set boundaries based on your own capacity.
I highly recommend the book Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life for a blueprint on how to let feelings guide you in turning observations into clear requests and boundaries. This blueprint suggests stating feelings, observations, and then ending with a request or a boundary. If you can do the latter, you have done the work.
Examples would be:
“I promised to deliver a plan by next Monday, but we are not in the situation to make a decision right now. I have heard that some people have been in meetings since 7am. I need to know when we can discuss this matter together with the capacity it requires to make a decision.”
And maybe you can add a boundary, such as: “I don’t want to postpone the plan for more than a week.”
It leaves the problem solving to the team, but with a clear direction on what is necessary to be successful. And success means solving your problem.
This is where you start cutting the octopus’s tentacles. It takes all people in a relationship to keep dysfunctional behaviors alive. It only takes one person to change them.
It is not always easy to do this perfectly. Sometimes we need to work on our compassion, sometimes on our ability to make a clear request or boundary. Calendars and recurring meetings are a good way to practice both.
And ideally, setting boundaries leads to mentoring.
If your request is received, and the group goes into problem-solving mode, they might start asking for advice. If you have done your homework and made sure that your own meetings respect your own and other people’s capacity, you can offer solutions based on your experience.
Share your own struggles and you will become relatable. It increases the chances that people will follow your lead, that they believe there is a solution.
Demonstrate how your heart led you to find solutions.
Heart-led leadership can also grow tentacles.
Of course, there is never a guarantee that it works out. It does not matter if you are the CEO of the company or the janitor: your requests might not lead to the change you requested. It also takes only one person to resist the healing of dysfunctions.
But dealing with that situation is for the next newsletter.
With care,
Martin
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