What is a boss supposed to do?
Have you ever wondered what your boss really does? Or started a new leadership position and asked yourself What should I do? 🧐
Unfortunately, most leaders (basically all) have come to the wrong conclusion. They do something, often lots of things, but it's not the right stuff. Busy and stressed without being productive.
Why are managers stressed out?
The simple and cynical answer is that they created this lack of time themselves. Many managers trade in their workdays for a series of work moments. Workdays are shredded to bits, you have 30 minutes here, 15 minutes there, and so on. Managers do so many things at once that they have to cut corners. They can't do great meaningful work.
Poorly done things lead to a lower effect, which managers try to compensate by launching more initiatives, which in turn requires more time. You work all day, but you don't get anything done. It probably happened to you yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that.
⬆ We overestimate how good we are at multi-tasking. The majority believes that they can juggle several tasks at the same time even if everyone else is lacking that ability. In reality, quality quickly suffers for everyone.
Instead of doing many things at the same time, we should think about the results we actually produce.
What are leaders doing with their time?
If leaders are so busy, what are they doing with their time? Simon Elvnäs, a Swedish researcher, is studying precisely that. He has recorded leaders over 5000 times and clocked them in time studies.
Every behavior they do has been measured and categorized. It turns out that leaders are practicing leadership about 14 hours a week (first-line leaders), but during 26 hours they are doing something else. On average they are performing 10 behaviors per minute. That means about 300 behaviors per half hour or 25 000 per week.
Inform
60 - 80 % of a leaders time goes to informing. That means talking about how things have been, how they are, or how they will be. No one is responsible for the things the leader is talking about and the listeners stay passive. Besides it doesn't develop the business, it’s simply reporting about a situation.
This is called relationship-building behavior. Informing doesn't come with a demand that the listeners should have done something, or should do something. We're talking in a way that makes us feel good. No one feels threatened, questioned and there are no demands.
Instruct
The next category is called instruction. Activities to make it clear what employees should do and what the purpose is with different tasks. That is something leaders do between 10 and 20 % of their time. Unfortunately, 4/5 of all instructions that leaders create are unclear. That leads to frustration, misunderstandings, and that work needs to be redone.
Leaders spend up to 50 % of their time redoing work they didn't handle well enough the first time. They need to inform and instruct again and again. They think they have been clear enough, but it was only straightforward to them. The message didn't make it all the way.
What should a leader do?
Nearly all time is spent either instructing or informing, but what should a leader do if we ask science?
The three most important behaviors are:
Follow up
Give feedback and confirm
Clarify
Follow up: The most important behavior is to give employees attention and follow up on what they have done. People feel good when someone cares about what they do at work. Ask them how things went with that sales presentation they were about to give or how that project is coming along.
Give feedback and confirm: The first step is to show that you care about what employees do. When that is fulfilled people want to know whether what they did was satisfying or inferior, and to understand why it was good or bad. That is called feedback.
A lot of leaders have a hard time spotting the difference between follow-up and feedback. They think follow-up is sufficient feedback. They wrongly believe it's enough to show they care.
But that someone cares about what you do doesn't make you understand if you did well or not and why. Feedback is needed.
Clarify: When leaders both care about what the employees do and give them feedback about it, the last piece of the puzzle is to clarify. That's what we call instructions above.
How much are leaders doing of this?
Follow-up takes up about 0 - 2 % of a leader's time.
Feedback and confirmation, about 0 - 2 % of leader's time.
Clarification of tasks. Between 10 and 20 % of the time. But 4/5 of the time the instructions that are created are unclear.
The majority of leaders do close to nothing of the things science points out as the most important for leaders.
Why did we come to this?
We are emotionally driven by nature and crave much autonomy. Preparation, agendas, and structure are against most people's nature. Some professionals like engineers, accountants, and lawyers (among others) tend to appreciate a clear structure, but for most of us, it feels arduous and restricting.
The individuals we have selected as leaders generally like people. They want to improvise and use feelings as a tool for how to do their job. But if we mostly steer by gut feeling the results will be sketchy. It can quite hard for a lot of people to come to the realization and accept that they would be better leaders if they structured their leadership.
The most skilled leaders set aside time to structure and prepare their work. Planning, creating agendas, checklists, communication platforms, leadership models, and so on. Unfortunately, nothing of this is visible to others. It may look like the best leaders improvise most of the time. In reality, they have a solid structure to stand on and improves from.
How should leaders plan their time?
The ones that only run on feeling and spontaneity can expect that 50 % of their workdays will be spent redoing work since it didn't turn out that good the first time. It's a sound investment to work in a more structured and prepared way with one’s leadership.
How much should you schedule?
Simon Elvnäs personal record when he has been helping leaders plan their time is to free up a half time. About half of your workdays could be given back to you if you worked in another way.
Start out by listing the activities you do in a week. Most of us can't do it straight away, you might have to work on that task during a week to get a somewhat correct answer. If follow-up, feedback and clarification is missing from your list, add it.
Prioritize the activities according to how important they are. It's usually apparent for everyone that does this exercise that they spend too much time on less important tasks and too little on the important ones.
The next step is to schedule the most important ones and make a deal with yourself that you can't spend less time than this on these activities. You get a higher effect if you do the most important things on given days and given times. Less time spent and larger impact.
Schedule your 6-8 most important activities with the correct amount of time set aside and execute each task on determined days and times and you'll have to prepare yourself for the shock of how effective your time and leadership will be. When that happens, leaders end up having a crisis wondering what they should do with their time. And the answer to that isn't to run around improvising but to spend even more time on the most important things.
Some of the things leaders say they don't have time for is being where it happens, give attention and follow up, clarify and create instructions.
Try it out by changing your leadership during a month and see what happens.
Currics skills development
Our skills development is based on insights from research. Since a manager that approves an employee needs to tag along into reality, coach, and discuss all the important things comes naturally. A lot of leaders feel hesitant before they have tried that they won't have time and aren't experts enough to approve others.
But all these fears fade away when things are set in motion. Instead, it's apparent that leaders do more of the important stuff, and that brings results.