Some people think that keeping busy is a way of being effective, regardless of whether their actions are important and urgent…or not.
Have you ever caught yourself saying ‘I’m so busy’, or have you noticed that when you ask someone at work how they are, they are very likely to say ‘Busy’, and expand on how busy they are – rather than say they are well.
According to Marisa Murgatroyd’s teachings on Transforming ‘I’m too busy’ – 99% of us have, so join the club. BUT, if you are busy all the time, it can be a problem if you are in a leadership role, either as the head of a business or in management. Being too busy means that you are not finding the time to think and reflect, which is important for assessing performance and developing business strategies. Simply living like a ‘hamster on a wheel’ does not make you effective. Busy-ness is a trap that stops you from finding control, meaning and fulfilment in life and at work, when you are stuck in the quicksand of being busy.
Busy isn’t always productive – working smarter not harder is a well understood concept, and leaders must try and foster this culture.
Don’t feel stressed if you have downtime. This time can be used constructively.
Baby boomers are well known for working their fingers to the bone – with Gen Z professionals entering the workplace, this can create quite a challenge. They don’t see busyness as a badge of honour, and want careers to have meaning, value, purpose and joy. Good leaders need to find ways of motivating them and bringing the best out in them.
STOPPING TO THINK - LEADERSHIP EFFECTIVENESS
There are many examples of successful leaders who, even though they are busy, make the time to think. Bill Gates, for example, was famous for taking a week off twice a year, spent in private, just to think and reflect about Microsoft and its future. Another world renowned and respected leader Warren Buffet spent a lot of time, every day, just to sit and think.
If you can’t find the time to think, it probably means that you haven’t organised your company, or team very well and are putting out little fires all the time. It also means that you are at risk of leading your organisation astray. The only constant in our lives and in business is rapid change – and many of the components of a strategic plan are dynamic, and have to respond to emerging events, e.g. customers, markets, products and business models. Therefore, leaders must make time to reflect on these changes and systematically analyse and think of appropriate and relevant business responses. Many leaders don’t make enough time for this.
COACHING CAN HELP TO IMPROVE ‘THINKING’
Here are five questions taken from an article by Freek Vermeulen, “Leadership is about thinking: make time for it”.
What does not fit? Ask yourself if the various business activities make sense together, or does your business model need to change?
What would others do? Companies often suffer from past success – but now things have changed and continuing in the same way no longer makes sense.
Is my organisation consistent with my strategy? Is your organisation ideally positioned for your strategic aspirations? What would your organisation look like if you had to design it from scratch?
Do I understand why we do things this way? Often the answer to that question is because that’s the way ‘it’ has always been done.
What might be the long-term consequences of our key strategic actions? Coaching can be a valuable and helpful way of getting leaders to reflect and think through the dynamics impacting on their business and how to move forward successfully. This process can be enormous fun when you are able to see the potential to be better and to be working towards your best.
Coaching is not only for business leaders or executives but applies to: supervisors, managers, professionals and new graduates in business. Coaching can be used as a sounding board to be a high performance employee, lead high performance teams, be more confident and more effective and add more value to the business.
Contact Jacquie Bhana if you would like coaching to become a high performance employee and leader of a high performance team.
C: +27 83 386 8343
