Whether you’re running a small two-person nonprofit or a multi-million-dollar organization, your most precious and scarce resource is your time.
There is never enough time to meet all the demands of your job and as a women nonprofit leader, you undoubtedly have additional responsibilities in managing the schedule and needs of your family.
How you allocate your time, and your presence is crucial to your effectiveness and ultimately, the impact of your agency.
We all know that work could consume every hour of your life, you have to set limits to preserve your health and your relationships with family and friends.
The way you spend your time in leading your agency sends a powerful message to the rest of the organization
If you are unaware of how you spend your time it is impossible to become more effective in your role and practice self-care.
Today we will identify the types of tasks that can eat up your daily schedule.
It will help you become more self-aware of how you spend your time.
Once you discern the patterns, you can begin to control your time.
You can find the full transcript at https:/relishyourrole.com/27.
Have you reflected on how your time is spent as a nonprofit Executive Director?
How much time do you spend in meetings versus thinking and reflecting alone?
How much do you rely on e-mail versus face-to-face conversations?
Do you spend more time inside the agency or outside, more with internal staff or with decision-makers, donors, or constituents?
Let’s look at the types of activities that take up your time.
Face-to- Face Time
Face-to-face interaction is the best way for EDs to exercise influence, learn what’s going on, delegate tasks, and follow up on projects.
If you do not spend enough time with your staff, you risk falling out of touch. If you spend too much time with them, you may be micromanaging and eroding staff initiative.
Direct contact is the best way to support and coach staff.
How an ED spends face-to-face time is viewed as a signal of what or who is important; people watch this more carefully than most EDs recognize.
Direct interaction with staff is crucially important but it has to be balanced with other demands.
Email Time
What was invented as a time saver has become a true time sinkhole. In episode 17 of the Relish Your Role podcast I provided tips to control your time spent on email.
E-mail interrupts work, extends the workday, intrudes on time for family and thinking, and is not conducive to thoughtful discussions.
Setting proper expectations and norms for what e-mails you need to receive—and when you will respond—is essential.
Advancing Your Agenda
You oversee a large number of activities, work streams and countless types of decisions.
Keeping your time allocation aligned with your top priorities is so crucial.
A straightforward core agenda of priorities optimizes an ED’s limited time; without one, demands from the loudest constituencies will take over, and the most important work won’t get done.
A core agenda is not one-dimensional. It is a matrix including both broader areas for improvement and specific matters that need to be addressed, and it combines time-bound goals with more open-ended priorities.
An explicit agenda is one of an ED’s most important tools for making progress on multiple activities.
You need to reassess every quarter if how you spent your time the previous period adequately matched up with your agenda.
It is also important to update the agenda quarterly to reflect current circumstances.
Responding to Crises
Now and then you will have a full-blown crisis, certainly in the last few years as we navigated Covid, racial reckoning, and societal upheaval, we all have some experience in responding to high-impact, unexpected events.
Crises can create make-or-break moments in an ED’s leadership.
You need to be highly visible and personally involved; the response to such events can’t be delegated. Showing genuine concern for the people affected, avoiding defensiveness, holding everyone together, and creating confidence that the organization will not only survive but emerge stronger are some of the things an effective nonprofit ED must do during these times.
You cannot plan for them and when they occur, your schedule takes a big hit.
Routine Responsibilities
You know what these are, reviewing Board meeting notes, employee time sheets, grant reports, and so on.
There are also the ‘have-to-do’ activities, like personally welcoming new agency volunteers.
Take a hard look at every activity that falls into the routine and have-to-do categories. Ask yourself whether it serves an important purpose or is simply an agency habit, something instituted by the predecessor, or a carryover from your previous role.
Meetings
You most likely attend an endless stream of meetings, each of which can be different from the one before and the one that follows.
Regularly review which meetings are truly needed and which can be delegated.
Rethink if your presence is necessary for every meeting.
Take a look at the meeting length and see if there are ways to shorten them.
Another good way to streamline things is to reset meeting norms: Every meeting should have a clear agenda, and to minimize repetition, attendees should come prepared.
Having the right people in the room is a powerful way to build that alignment and avoid the need for repetitive, time-consuming, repetitive meetings.
Time with External Constituents
Meeting with partners, funders, etc. is a key source of independent information about the company’s progress, industry trends, and competitors.
It is important to carve out time with them, but these contacts should always support your core strategic agenda.
Board Time
Every nonprofit Ed must never forget that the board is their boss and that “managing up” is vital to success.
This involves more than board meetings, committee meetings, and board retreats; EDs must find time to build meaningful one-on-one relationships with individual directors. This is essential to take advantage of each board member’s particular expertise and perspective.
Alone-Time
It is vital to schedule adequate uninterrupted time so you can have space to reflect, prepare for meetings, and think strategically.
Cordon off meaningful amounts of alone time and avoid diluting it by dealing with immediate matters, especially responding to emails.
Work/Life Balance
Activities that preserve elements of normal life keep you grounded and better able to engage with colleagues and workers—as opposed to being distant, detached, and disconnected.
Successful EDs also have to make time for their professional renewal and development.
Self-awareness leads to Self-Improvement
These are the ten priority areas where an ED spends their time. Conduct an audit to become aware of how your time is spent.
Make adjustments to achieve the right balance between short and long-term issues and preserve the time to take care of yourself and think and reflect to move your agency forward.
Self-awareness is the first step to self-improvement.
You can do it and I am here to help.