Daily Habits for Managing Well
When I returned to managing a team several years ago, I had to do a lot of adjusting. Working a more standard schedule as opposed to the more flexible faculty life was a big adjustment, of course. Managing people and their work was a thing I had to sort out. As my roster of direct reports grew, I had to experiment with the best strategies for their growth and care, but I also had to continue to find a path towards finishing my own work. In some contexts, managers focus on managing people and do not carry many of their own tasks and projects. In my context, I was also project managing, writing and revising policy, and being asked to work at a focused strategic level.
Here are some ideas and technologies that worked well for me in developing habits for managing a team well.
Ideas
Address distractions. There is simply no way to focus on the kinds of work I had on my own plate if constantly distracted by pings, alerts, etc. Maybe some people like a Teams pop up, but for the number of times I was being pinged a day that level of tech interruption was not sustainable. I’ll say more below about response times and expectations for my team, but very early on I silenced Teams alerts. I do the same with Outlook and most alerts on my phone. Less noise leads to more focus for me.
(Also I used to be young and vibrant and capable of listening to any kind of music whilst working…now it’s classical or nothing.)
Build in triage. One of the best things my boss and I do is regular, focused triage. Triage for me means: (1) email review and quick replies, (2) task manager review, (3) quick review of team tasks.
For email review, I generally leave things that need more response/attention until later, giving myself time to think on it before replying too quickly. For quick things that I can answer in the moment, I go ahead. Remember with email triage to start at the most recent emails before responding – otherwise you risk responding without being on track with the most relevant part of the thread.
For task review I focus on a few things:
Where am I at on projects/quick tasks and what can reasonbly be given focus today
Where is my team at/what’s overdue (and what matters if it’s overdue)
Who on my team might need extra time with me today
Where might I need time with my boss before I can move forward?
What’s urgent and what can wait? (I like the Eisenhower Matrix at least as a thought process if not literally mapping it out.)
Using a technology for task management and/or project management has allowed me to build quick views of my work and my team’s work so I can see where we’re at on a given day.
The other part of building in triage is focusing on synchronous triage meetings with my boss and my team. For example, my boss and I meet for about 30 minutes on Monday mornings and 15-30 minutes on Wednesday mornings. This way I know I have his attention during that time, can avoid pinging him for anything non-urgent, and we have dedicated time to chat through complicated stuff before taking our individual next steps on a project.
I set up similar strategies for my direct reports, meeting with most 1:1 once/week. If something will take more time than our 1:1 allows, we set up additional time to meet later. I use a 1:1 Trello board and ask each employee to add anything we need to chat through that is not urgent to that board as a running agenda. I do the same. By doing that we have a plan, we are less likely to forget stuff, and we all get interrupted less with chat notifications.
My team knows I will sometimes redirect them to the board and I am comfortable saying “let’s chat about that in our 1:1” when I think something can wait/needs more than a quick Teams chat.
Here’s a good 1:1 board example from a Trello template.
Finally, I build triage in – and require my team to do the same – throughout the day. For me it looks like first thing, before lunch, after lunch, and as part of my last 30 minute block I call “daily wrap up.” In my current role, we’re also managing multiple customer-service ticket queues, so those are part of our triage efforts, ensuring prompt acknowledgment of customer needs.
Remain flexible. All the stuff I wrote above works most days. Other days start with shifting priorities, a presidential request for urgent data, someone staying home sick, etc. So we do our best to make the routine work most of the time, remaining flexible as needed. This needs to work both ways – some days I have to move a regular triage for a direct report. And they know they can request to move our meeting when they need to as well. Routine is healthy and useful, rigidity is not much of a retention tool or way to live!
Schedules don’t have to match. While my mom was ill, I asked my boss if we could shift my schedule from 8-5 to 7-4. This created space to be with my mom later in the day which is what I needed during that time. It changed everything for me and was a relatively simple shift that didn’t negatively impact my team. In fact, working an hour earlier than most on my team gave me more space for quiet triage and planning before others needed me. It’s rare anyone needs me after 4 and if a day calls for a later meeting, we make it work. Since this worked so well for me, we’ve allowed most people on our team the option to work a shifted schedule of 7-4 or 9-6, asking all staff to be available for the core hours of 9-3 (we also do our best to avoid meetings before 9 and after 3). For student-facing service positions we do require an 8-5 schedule so students are best served, but where we can be flexible we try to do so!
Document and track. As noted above, I’m not as youthful as I once was. I used to not “get it” when my parents could not remember every detail of their childhood and tell us stories on command…um, I get it now! Our work team has been scattered with hybrid positions, on-site positions, one position at a satellite location, and two fully remote positions (including mine – yes, I have managed people despite rarely being on campus…).
Managing a graphically scattered team works because we document and track, work from live files, and use technology to our advantage.
Whether on Todoist or Trello, we require that employees track task updates, ask questions, and leave comments on the task itself so everyone can see what needs to be done next/where we’re at and we can find it easily later!
My boss and I do the same on our shared tasks. This strategy allows you to view updates all at once when triaging (instead of having some in email, some in Teams, etc.).
It also cuts down on team-wide distractions as each teammate is expected to triage multiple times per day.
And, very importantly, it frees up your brain to focus on your work in the moment – you don’t have to retain it all, it’s there when you need it!
Of course, some quick questions might be answered via chat or email, but the priority is to house it with the task unless confidential. Even when I answer something outside the system I might say, “please be sure to revise the instructions in Trello” so we have the relevant info logged for the future.
Leave bookmarks for yourself. Related to documenting and tracking, I also have a habit of leaving “bookmarks” for myself in my work. If I’m working on a policy manual, for example, I add a comment in Word to note where I left off, what my mind was processing when I stopped, etc. so I can avoid losing key details. If I think of something important when not actively working on that document, I might pop in to add a comment, create a Trello note, etc. I leave physical bookmarks on notes on my desk, making sure to digitize to my online task list as part of my final triage/daily wrap up each day. And, of course, I save links to relevant websites via my browser’s bookmark tool. This might look like a daily folder of bookmarks for sites/links I know I need to access first thing each day, categorical bookmarks for relevant projects of technologies, or bookmarks to websites with ideas for the future.
Build boundaries and set expectations – and meet them! Some of what I wrote above boils down to setting and honoring your boundaries. The other piece of that equation is being available when you say. I frequently shut down Teams to laser focus on something, leaving a status update like “Laser focusing, will check in at 11.” The key is that I do check in at 11. My team knows that I will reply to them, that I will honor our 1:1 time and focus on their list, and that any time they need me urgently they can call/text me, including after hours. They rarely take advantage of that, but on the odd occasion they do, I’m responsive! They respect my boundary – as does my boss – and I am a person who does what she says. (And I do not contact my team outside of hours with incredibly rare exception. I can think of maybe three times I have in four years…and our work is still done with excellence!)
Follow good advice. I have lost track of how many years I’ve been following Alison Green at Ask a Manager. Her advice is well-written and thoughtful and her site makes you feel less alone in management challenges. It also will make you feel like “at least that’s not my life” and laugh heartily on a regular basis. I am a bit of an advice column junkie enjoying many other life advice columns, but Alison is my recommended go to and has been part of my morning triage for four years. Coffee + Ask a Manager is the right way to start the morning and ease into your work day! I read her advice and use it, I send relevant links to my direct reports, and strongly advise them to become regular readers as they start to manage their own direct reports.
Technologies for Organizing all the Things
Surely this could be its own post, but here’s a quick list of technology tools I use to function well as a manager :
Do not disturb settings on my phone and computer.
Coding handwritten notes with cues to transfer any paper trail stuff to digital records later.
Todoist – this app runs my life and has for nearly a decade. It hit some snags with managing shared projects for our team which I think they’ve sorted in a major update. I prefer it for tracking work for myself, but had to make a change when they couldn’t support our team needs.
Trello – when Todoist broke down for our team, I moved our workflows to Trello. There are pros/cons to both and team workflows but I do like the ease of onboarding for Trello, visualization, and custom options available.
I’m currently using OneNote and adjusting to it as a note taking source since it’s already available through Microsoft 365. I was using Notion for a while and before that Evernote. All have their pros/cons depending on what you need – you can find endless advice on the internet about all of them!
The key to using productivity apps in my experience is fairly app agnostic. They all do some things better than others and worse than others. The important piece is knowing the work you’re mapping out well enough to create processes that you and your team can stick to- and then sticking to it! (By the way, I help individuals and organizations think through those steps via my consulting work…I’m what you might just call a process nerd.)
What about you? What has worked well in your daily habits to help manage your time and people who report to you in the workplace? How do you stay focused without losing details?