Live Chat with Jen Weaver
Customer Support QA and Training: I deliver bite-sized episodes every two weeks that each dive into a single solution, showcasing the tech stacks and workflows top support pros use to tackle challenges and optimize their customer and team experience.
Live Chat with Jen Weaver
Let Go of the Legos: Why Delegation Makes You a Better Leader | Episode 16
Ever feel like your to-do list is calling the shots? Elyse Mankin has been there, and she figured out how to take back control.
As Head of Support at Attio, Elyse knows firsthand how hard it is to shift from individual contributor to team lead without drowning in tasks. In this episode, she gets real about the habits that don’t scale, the ones that do, and what it takes to rebuild your time management from the ground up.
We get into the messy (but rewarding) process of spotting your own pitfalls, building a planning rhythm that sticks, and coaching your team to find their own flow, instead of just copying yours.
Here’s what we dig into:
- Why the move from IC to manager breaks your old time habits
- How Elyse sets a yearly-to-daily cadence to stay focused
- Her go-to frameworks for prioritizing (Rule of 3 + Eisenhower Matrix)
- How to coach time management without micromanaging
Whether you're scaling a team or just trying to tame your own calendar, this episode gives you a toolkit (and mindset) for leading with clarity and care.
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🔍 More of Elyse’s insights → Elyse Mankin on LinkedIn
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So let me ask you this Is there a story for how you first got interested in time management or kind of the problem that you were trying to solve?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know it was really the shift from IC work to leadership work that highlighted some of my tendencies that were not working so well for me in terms of time management right, and especially that shift from IC to leader and in the support context you know, the IC role is like so focused on at least in my case it was so focused on the front line that it's kind of naturally managing your time right.
Speaker 2:There is a level of you need to know when to rabbit hole, when to, not when to cut it off right, of you need to know when to rabbit hole, when to, not when to cut it off right. But the balancing of tasks, of priorities, of oftentimes competing priorities, of requests coming through the reactivity nature of, you know, support and support leadership all of that was new and I found myself like really overwhelmed out of the gate and so leveling up my time management and kind of really figuring out what worked for me and what continues to work for me is it was really important. It was one of the ways as like a brand new support leader, that I was able to up level. You know just the way that I show up and approach work.
Speaker 1:You mentioned your tendencies that you were trying to get away from. Can you name those? Do you have particular insight now, looking back?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So certainly when I moved into management, it was really hard for me to give away my Legos. Delegating was like extremely difficult Because I didn't and I think this is probably natural, just being a support person, I don't want to bother anyone Like I didn't want to, like you know, impose my you know new tasks or, you know, responsibilities or projects or things like that on my team, you know. So I ended up keeping a lot of the things that I didn't need to own and that were, more importantly, opportunities where my teammates could really like stretch their wings and succeed, right, you know, maybe dipping their toes into an area where they've wanted more practice or, you know, just kind of giving them more responsibility and more ownership of their work.
Speaker 2:So delegation was extremely hard for me and, you know, if I'm keeping all of those Legos, then like I don't have time for a lot of things. I was constantly finding myself in this you know, hamster wheel, of feeling like I'm never able to catch up on the to do list, and that's, you know, the to do list will always be there. That's kind of just a general principle of time, but it was. I was focusing on the wrong things through all of that and keeping the wrong things to focus on. So it was just, you know, throwing my, my balance off.
Speaker 1:And I think later on you're going to walk us through how to figure out what those right things are to focus on, but it sounds like the consequence at this point was you were just overloaded and doing too much work.
Speaker 2:Too much? Yeah, and I wasn't, you know, I was still also. I think a natural move from IC to leader, in the support context too, is you need to zoom out right and you have to be able to, like, think that bigger picture. But it's so different than working in the queue. You see the nitty gritty and it's one problem after the other, after the other right, and you're so close to it that that was another shift that just generally was difficult for me to make it at first right, Like you really have to be able to, to operate at the big picture but be able to dip into the very tactical, the very nitty gritty when you need to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I know you've given us this amazing structure for what we're going to talk about. That breaks down basically into three subjects we're going to touch on today how to manage your time personally as a leader, and really digging into where to focus your time tactically. And then working with your team. So it's a lot, so I want to just zoom right through, because it all seems super valuable.
Speaker 1:So managing your, your time as a leader personally, do you quick question do you mix your work and personal tasks and planning kind of all into the same process or do you separate those?
Speaker 2:personal tasks and planning kind of all into the same process or do you separate those? I personally don't, and we'll talk about this in detail. But I think a level of time management too is really understanding, like your own yourself, right, and having that level of awareness For me between work and personal. It's helpful for me to keep a bit more of a stronger boundary between the two, so I have like separate processes that I go through for work and personal. It's helpful for me to keep a bit more of a stronger boundary between the two, so I have like separate processes that I go through for work and for personal. They're constantly all evolving and happening at the same time, but I think about my work planning separately than I do, you know, my personal planning.
Speaker 1:And that really segues greatly into, I think, your first topic, which is yearly, quarterly, monthly, weekly planning. Breaking it down, that's something I do myself and I find really useful, Can you like? How does that work for you? What system have you designed for yourself?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's. You know it's hard to manage your time if you don't know where you're going, right? So really being very clear of what that vision looks like for the long term is step one. So, yearly is important, but I also like to think you know three to five years out to really understand, like, what is the overall vision of this support org that I am leading and that I am building? Where do we ultimately want to go, even if it's far out, right, like, because there are things that we could potentially be doing today, um, that set us up for success, even on the three to five year plane, right? So, um, really really understanding that vision, making sure that it's aligned with leadership, uh, that you've had those conversations with stakeholders, right, that is is step one, for for me, I find that incredibly valuable to make sure that, okay, that everything else that we are doing is rolling up to that long term plan, because if it doesn't, then why are we doing it? There's no point in taking on that work if it doesn't align with that longer term vision. So the long term is really, really important and then you can kind of you know, break it down into easier to bite off chunks, the quarterly basis.
Speaker 2:I'm a big fan of doing retros, so with the team, every quarter we go through and we talk about what went really well, the moments of celebration that we have, we talk about what could be improved. So I really like to follow the start, stop, continue method. I think it really kind of highlights, again like those areas of celebration, what we need to like consider pausing, and then gives the team the opportunity to like you know, what should we like start doing? Uh, what are some ideas that could be interesting? Uh, for the customer experience, for the team? Again, like it should be framed within your yearly vision, within your org vision, so that it's all rolling up to those pieces. But it's a really helpful exercise to hear from the team, give them a space to talk about it and you kind of have them participate and be owners of their own destiny to a degree.
Speaker 1:That's beautiful. It sounds like that yearly and like three to five year planning you're doing with executives and with other stakeholders. The quarterly you're doing with your team bringing in that yearly information.
Speaker 2:How does the monthly yeah, and then the monthly is a double check on the quarterly right. So it's we've said we're going to do these things. How are they going? What are our blockers right? Where are areas of opportunity? What have we accomplished that we can celebrate, right? It's just, it's the double check to see if we need to adjust anything, if we need to pivot, if any new business information has come in right that we need to be taking into consideration. Like, those monthly checks are a really nice way that we can make sure we are staying not only attentive to our goals but we're also staying flexible enough to change them if we need to.
Speaker 1:So are those meetings and who are those with?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I like to do them within the support sync. So I think it's a couple of checks. Actually, one is like with with leadership. So I check in with my my boss regularly on the goals, on you know how we're progressing against them. I talked to her about what's going on a leadership right. So if there's anything that is starting to like brew there or being talked about there, I can be aware of it and then we can pivot if we need to. And then, with the team directly, I always bring it up in one-on-ones on a regular basis just to make sure that you know if there's anything more sensitive that folks want to talk about. Or just if they're shy, right, give them a different mode.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, I just want to expand that a little bit, that's yeah. So you kind of before or alongside the team meetings you're talking about these things one on one, and that's really supportive of people who just have a different, maybe more introverted, personality type.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's just like learning right Different modalities for different people. I want to make sure that there is space for everyone to engage in the way that they want to and can engage, so not only having the team discussion it's I find that very helpful but also saving space individually to just to see if there's anything else that we can talk through together.
Speaker 1:So then you've also got those weekly component. That's where the one-on-ones come in, right, Yep exactly Weekly one-on-ones.
Speaker 2:I think it's also important to like bring in I mean you look at your metrics across all of these but looking at metrics on a weekly basis too, just to kind of see on the micro level, like, what are the trends happening? Is there anything popping up that we might need to talk about, or blockers that are popping up that we might need to talk about, or blockers that are popping up that we can react to quickly. I think kind of having that, that more consistent cadence, not necessarily a deep dive on it right, it might be a little too much on the weekly basis, but at least keeping a check on how things are progressing is helpful at that level.
Speaker 1:So with this whole yearly quarterly, monthly waterfall, I've often found it difficult to take a quarterly goal and and really think what can I do on this this week? Right yeah, how do I go from big chunk to to little weekly goal? Do you have tips on that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I, you know. I think that it is really helpful when you are looking at the mountain of work, especially at the beginning of the quarter. The way that I like to approach it are like what are the quick wins that have big impact and just knock those off the list right, because once you get that momentum going, it's easier to keep going, and so if you can kind of get those quick wins as fast as possible, I find that gets the quarter rolling in a really positive way.
Speaker 2:for the bigger things, I think it really, you know, requires a level of understanding, like where the business is at, what the most important goals are.
Speaker 2:Right, all of these should roll up to the most important goals.
Speaker 2:But if there are areas that are causing, you know, particular impact for the business, for customers or for the team, or maybe a combination of all three, kind of going through a prioritization exercise of what feels most severe, I think also having a level of understanding of like what's the biggest thing, that like it's just going to take the whole quarter.
Speaker 2:So we need to start chunking it out now, so we're not waiting until it's just feeling too overwhelming and crunchy that's always very helpful so that you kind of have a almost a stack rank of like what is ahead of you, who might be able to work on. It is another piece of it too, right, who on the team has the space, or if they don't have the space, when will they? So we can start to kind of prioritize from there. There's a lot of different layers and factors there. But but prioritization and that kind of trade off game is really kind of the next step Once you have the plan. It's prioritizing the plan and figuring out what is the the easiest way to chunk it up and break it out.
Speaker 1:So now, you mentioned to me earlier the rule of three. Can you walk me through that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah so.
Speaker 1:I've been reading this book by Oliver Berkman.
Speaker 2:I really loved it. It's called 4,000 Weeks.
Speaker 1:I have heard of it Time Management for Mortals. Yeah, 4,000 Weeks is like the number of weeks in your life. Is that In your life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's not a lot of time, not a lot of time at all, and so this isn't necessarily a business and work productivity book. It is really holistic of your entire life. But a lot of the concepts in there are really interesting, and one that he talks about is this rule of three that you can only focus on three things at a time, or you should only focus on three things at a time, because if you're trying to do anything more than it's just kind of busy work and you're not really succeeding across all of those three right Like your attention can't necessarily be divided across more than you know. A certain a certain maximum, certain ceiling, um, and the rule of three is is where he landed, and I believe this is like rooted in some uh uh productivity, um uh science neuroscience for sure, yeah, it's.
Speaker 1:Your working memory can only hold that many things right, so much right, only so much, and it makes so much sense.
Speaker 2:And so, for monthly planning, what I like to do is so I have my quarterly plan, these are all of the things we want to do, what feels most important in month one, what are all of the things?
Speaker 2:Right, like, just get them all out on paper that feel most important to tackle first, then within that, what are the first three, and only important to to tackle first, then within that what are the first three, and only focus on those three until one is done, and then you can elevate something else. Um, it just kind of it's something that I've been playing around with, uh, this year, uh, most intensely, and I've really enjoyed it. It gives me the freedom to say, okay, I know, these are still on my on my radar and on my to-do list, but I'm also saying that they're not the most important things to be uh, focusing on right now. Right, these other three that I have outlined are the most important, and so it gives me an easy out when something comes up saying, um, that that's not, you know, towards those three, or at least like an easy evaluation, right, it's, it's an easy criteria to say, okay, does this new project or new request. Help me achieve these three things that I've said are important, yes or no? Do those three things need to change?
Speaker 1:Yes, or no.
Speaker 2:Because sometimes they do Sometimes you need to be flexible and shift things around, but if they're both no, then like okay, that goes either to delegation or to the backlog right, that'll be something that we tackle later, or we just say no to right now. The backlog right, that'll be something that we tackle later, or we just say no to right now. So that's been a really very helpful framework for staying focused on the things that I've already determined are like the highest priority for again, like the crosshatch of those three for the business, for the team and for customers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so if you have somebody you mentioned flexibility if you have somebody who comes to you and says I have this emergency project that I just thought of or just came up, how do you communicate with them about whether or not you're going to prioritize that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think being open and honest and asking good questions is really how to approach that conversation. So, is really an emergency right, and if so, why? Really understanding, okay, where is the urgency coming from so you can make a better informed decision? Sometimes it is right, and so that's helpful information to bring into your decision-making framework. I think, asking to you know what the goals are, what the needs are, you know what the overall scope of the project is.
Speaker 2:Is this something that is, you know, really critical to help us meet a business goal? Right, like, that's probably important to make some some space for. Or is it something that you know feels important for maybe an inflated reason? Right, like it's I don't know something popping up in the queue that like we've seen a couple of reports on it frequently over the last like week, right, but like is this really a trend? Or is this something that is just like a bump popping up right and like, and what is really the severity behind it? So you know, really understanding is step one and then, if it is something that you know you do need to pivot for, then go ahead and do that and then you can set expectations from there.
Speaker 2:But if not, um, you know, I think, just a clear no. And explaining why it's a clear no is is the conversation. You know, I understand that this is important, right, um, I, I get what we're trying to do here, but when I compare it to you know, these other three things that I'm working on right now, I just don't see or understand, like, where, um, where, how I can bump these other three right, like these really do feel more important for whatever reasons that they do, and just clearly communicating that, and sometimes that opens a dialogue where you can still, you know, talk about it and make a trade-off decision, but at the end of the day, it's, it's all trade-off calls, uh, and so really understanding, um, and then just having that conversation with whomever is bringing the project or the situation to you, to make sure all the cards are on the table and that we all understand what we're trading off and why is how I would approach that.
Speaker 1:And I think in your role you end up being kind of the gatekeeper in that way, because you do have the business interests in mind and see the bigger picture.
Speaker 2:Yep exactly.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and the more you can empower your team around. That, too, right, which is why I think that all of these cadences of planning and talking about things are really important. So it's you know, we all know where we're going and why, and then we all have that in our in our brains as we are coming up against, you know, challenges or finding opportunities. Right, it's a good reminder for the team and for yourself to say, like, okay, is this the most important thing that we could be working on, or an important thing that we could be working on that helps, you know, us achieve those, those pieces.
Speaker 1:So you're presenting the goals for for your whole team and letting them break it down in the way that makes sense for them in their weekly and daily planning. Yeah, exactly what's your daily planning like for you?
Speaker 2:Yes, For me personally, I go back to my rule of three hey, what are the things that I need to get done for today? These three buckets for today, right? Like I look at my meetings, what are the things I need to do to prep for meetings? And then I always save space for reactivity. Nature of support is that there's just no way around it, right? Whether it's an outage that pops up that we need to deal with, or you know people, leadership just in general is more of a reactive thing, right. You don't necessarily know or can plan on other things that your team might need from you in any given day.
Speaker 2:So saving some space for that in the course of my day has also been really helpful. So I don't, you know, bump into something and then think, oh no, how am I going to fit this into you know the course of my workday and feel stressed about it. There's always just like a little bit of buffer where I can have the space to pivot.
Speaker 1:It's more of a natural limitation. Instead of trying to fill up all the hours of your day, you leave some buffer between things. Exactly that makes total sense. You shared with me these three words and I'm super curious productivity, attention, distraction. What does that mean for this process?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that was again like in the context of that 4,000 weeks book there's only so much that our attention can take and there are unlimited distractions, right, and the whole concept of this book is because life is is there's a finite amount of time, right, you know, we have this like false sense of productivity when we just fill it with busy work and we fill it with distractions and we fill it with, you know, the ooh, something shiny moments that we think are important, but they're not necessarily.
Speaker 2:They're ultimately just a distraction. And so, you know, kind of getting really bullish on what the important things are on your on your plate or within your vision, or where you're headed, is kind of critical for that, you know, there's also a concept here that, like you know, tomorrow is not guaranteed. So you know, really like banking yourself in the future is actually where we as humans really get into trouble, and so it takes us away from the present, right, so we can set ourselves up for success in the future. But you know, using today as like a means to an ends for tomorrow is, uh, just like a challenging human nature thing. So, um, I found that to be like a very interesting concept in that book and the way that it applies to work, is doing your best in the present moment to set the team and yourself up for success in the future.
Speaker 1:That kind of segues us into how you decide where to focus your time. So I know you have a lot to say about this. Do you want to just kind of introduce this idea? I struggle with this myself. Yeah, making, making, very making informed decisions about priorities.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, I do think that it is done. Their data is foundational to this. There's also a level of the qualitative piece of it, though, too, and it doesn't have to be a situation where, if you don't have the perfect data model or framework, I think that we can sometimes lose the forest through the trees and in feeling like, well, I don't have the perfect model or framework or anything set up. Right, we're a small team, maybe, or we're going through this like rapid growth phase, and it's just kind of like all hands on deck. You know, you don't we're not aiming for perfection with this, and the team can be an extremely helpful data point for you. They're the ones having these conversations day in and day out. They're the ones feeling the friction, they're the ones you know really deeply involved with customers, and they know where the opportunities are.
Speaker 2:Have a conversation with the team, right. You can do a quick gut check or a quick temperature read of what's feeling good, what's not feeling good. Those are kind of the two basic questions that I like to ask and see where the conversation goes from there, right. A lot of the times, I find that it's mirrored in what I'm seeing in the data, and that's a great point of validation, too, of OK, cool, I did see like our, our conversation volume in this area of the product spike, and that makes sense because you all are having these like very long, involved conversations.
Speaker 2:You're feeling they're very hard and challenging to get through, so that's an area of opportunity for us, right, and the way that you decided, the way that I think about deciding you know what to focus on is again like rolling it up to those top level goals. So you know, for our team right now, one of the big things that we are working on is efficiency, and so you know really what does that mean for us to be working together as smooth and effectively as possible. We just went through a large growth on our team, which is very exciting. Congratulations.
Speaker 1:So with new folks comes.
Speaker 2:Thank you, thank you. Yeah, so with new growth, right comes a level of is what we were doing before still working for us, right? Or is there a level that or areas of opportunity where we can really evolve that um for the, the new team that we have? Basically, um, so you know, really aligning it back up to what you are trying to accomplish is, I think, the the best way to decide what is important and how to use your time. Um, again, because then it gives you the question of, okay, if I'm doing. Again, because then it gives you the question of, okay, if I'm doing, if my goal is efficiency, right, and I have project A and project B. Project A is, you know, working on our automations, right, so that we can, you know, automate a lot of the repetitive tasks. Maybe project B is something completely unrelated, right? That's an easy one of saying, okay, well, project B probably doesn't roll up into efficiency, right, so not necessarily the thing to prioritize at this point.
Speaker 1:So, when you're using data for these, do you feel like there's a danger of setting a marker, setting a milestone with a specific number 98%, CSAT or whatever that then maybe it's hard to move the needle there and that's that could be discouraging.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean. I think that numbers should all be looked at as a rich tapestry. Pulling the lever on one will have an impact on others, right, and so if you're not looking at the holistic scope of your metrics, you could inadvertently be changing things in a way that you don't intend, and so, while you should have clear, concise goals, the way that you measure them I'm not necessarily a believer in like one metric fits all, because they all are intertwined with each other. You really need to understand how they work together so that, when you are pulling these levers, you understand what the domino effect is In a support cue in particular, like they're just so tightly intertwined.
Speaker 1:For me, I immediately go to if we're going to increase our speed, we may sacrifice some CSAT. And how do we want to? What's our sweet spot? For that? You know, you can just look at the one.
Speaker 2:Exactly. And what's the what's the tolerance, right? So, and that's that's where, you know, conversations with leadership come into play, right, like it's, it's more of a it gets into a philosophical conversation too of you know the speed versus quality one. You know I'm a big believer that you can have both, but if you do go too far in one direction or the other, the opposite is going to suffer, right? So if you prioritize speed over nothing else and that is the only message your team is going to hear then, yeah, the quality will suffer a little bit.
Speaker 1:It sounds like probably knowledge base and training have a lot to do with that.
Speaker 2:All of it. Yeah, knowledge-based training. You know, I think, especially as AI develops, right Like the internal co-pilots, how do you tie all of your different knowledge sources in together? You know, historically, like you've got your help center, you've got your internal knowledge, you've got previous conversations, there's just so many places Slack, right Like there's so many places that support team can go for knowledge. If we're talking efficiency, right like really kind of bringing those all together in a way that makes sense and is actually helpful is is a really big area of opportunity and one that AI could be helpful with.
Speaker 1:You mentioned. We were talking about the knowledge base and it feels a little bit connected to what you were saying earlier about delegating. Knowledge base work is something that I had trouble delegating as a new support manager, but can you speak more about delegating? I know you mentioned the Eisenhower matrix, which I'm sure everyone is familiar with, about its importance versus urgency. Right Got it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's, exactly.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yes, yep, um, yeah. So you know, this was one that I leaned on quite a bit, um, as a new manager who struggled with delegation, um, the framework was very helpful for my brain to understand and to like really matrix out the things that were coming across my plate, as I like learned this skill right and really kind of up-leveled. So, um, the concept is, you know, if it is urgent and important, then you take it on, right. Um, if it's urgent or, excuse me, if it's important but not urgent, that's, that's an opportunity for delegation, right?
Speaker 2:Um, if it is, uh, let's see, uh, important but not urgent, uh, also an opportunity for delegation, uh, the matrix is interesting right, but it breaks down into these four quadrants that make it very simple to say, okay, is this urgent, is this important, and then you can act on it accordingly and if it's not urgent and not important, then maybe just don't do it yeah, exactly, exactly, and that comes down to saying no.
Speaker 1:So we talked a little bit about that earlier. Yeah, how, how do you say no gracefully?
Speaker 2:right. Yeah, I like to lead with curiosity in this. So if someone comes with an idea, especially if it's in the like we're going to say no to this right, or even if I'm just unclear on it, I think leading with curiosity is a great way to get the clarity that you need and just engage in a bit more of the conversation. I think it also helps folks think through what they're proposing a little bit more, especially if you can be like a little bit more of a sounding board, right, so asking kind of pointed questions around you know, how does this, how do you envision this matching up with, like, our support goals, right, or our business goals, or help me understand the urgency, help me understand the importance, right, and have them kind of walk through it from their perspective. I find really interesting and a great way to engage whomever is bringing this opportunity to you.
Speaker 1:What it makes me think about is relationships. So if I have a foundation of a really great relationship with someone, a direct report or a peer who comes to me and says, hey, we should do this project and I need to I love leading with curiosity, like you said, but if I need to say no to them, it feels like it would land so much better. If I have been giving them positive feedback, if I've really been seeing them and seeing their work and valuing them, then they know that I'm not just saying no cause I don't like them or you know, but that, um, do you have, do you have tips for us or guidance on how to build those relationships. So when you do say no, it smoothly preserves the relationship.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's such an important principle in any communication. The foundation is relationships, right, you know. Whether it is directly with your direct reports, right, your team, whether it is managing up, whether it is cross functionally. Getting to know the humans that you interact with and that you work with is absolutely critical. There's just no way around it, right? So in the cases where you interact with and that you work with is absolutely critical, there's just no way around it. So in the cases where you have a really great relationship, it makes those conversations a lot easier. You don't maybe not necessarily have to go as far in depth or always give the clear and correct and complete answer, but framing is more important. In those cases where maybe you have a new relationship, right, or maybe there is a relationship that's a little strained or tenuous, taking a little bit more care in how you are framing and communicating something is well worth the time and effort in those either like new or strained relationships.
Speaker 2:So, taking into consideration whether the relationship is really on solid foundation or whether it's a little strained, as you're saying, no, yeah, I think it's important, especially, you know, to your point right, like if someone has a feeling that like maybe I just don't like them, right, or maybe they've proposed some opportunities that you know just we didn't get to action on right and they're feeling like they want to have impact but we just haven't. You know, their feedback hasn't been action on right and they're feeling like they wanna have impact but we just haven't. You know, their feedback hasn't been actioned on right. Really, kind of understanding where that person is coming from is really a cornerstone for having really any conversation, but particularly a no conversation Cause then it gives you also avenues to think about how else you might approach the situation or other opportunities for this person to get involved. So if it's like a no for whatever they're proposing, right, and maybe it's within the product realm.
Speaker 2:But I have this other product thing that I'm thinking about and I know that, like they're interested in product, it could be a segue conversation instead of just a no conversation, right, we're not gonna prioritize this thing right now for X, y and Z reasons. Great idea, let's put it in the backlog or whatever the case may be right. But I do have this other thing that I've been thinking about that's. You know we're talking about it with our product cross-functional partners. It's kind of come up in some spaces Is this something you'd maybe wanna be involved with?
Speaker 1:That sounds like it's really targeted for a particular personality type that I think we've all seen, who are really high achievers, who just really want to. They're motivated by being able to create things and come up with ideas and be of impact, and that's I just think that's brilliant to shift over to. Well. You can have an impact in this way, and it goes back to what you said about tendencies, and so I'm curious about how you, what you've learned about your personal tendencies at work and your teams, and how to work with that in terms of time management.
Speaker 2:Yeah, again, I think just awareness of yourself and how you show up as a human is particularly important as a leader.
Speaker 2:You know it's important for anyone, but I would argue, especially important for leaders, because you know you are, at the end of the day, responsible for the people on your team.
Speaker 2:There are other humans that their livelihood is attached to your work and you're accountable for that, and it's something that I don't take lightly. And so really understanding how you show up in those spaces, how it impacts you, how it impacts your team is is really really important. And so for time management, you know it, for me it's it's understanding like where are, where are my areas where like I might you know naturally, like want to put some distance right, or like procrastination opportunities right, like just kind of the where are the hiccups in, like how I approach work right, and you know we are human, there will always be room for improvement, right, and areas of opportunity that we come across. But I think just being aware of our natural tendencies and how they show up so that we can watch for them, number one. But then like really work with them or around them, number two, is really really important and that's, you know, really dependent on the individual.
Speaker 1:Do you have any examples, kind of at the ready, on what that looks like, what particular tendencies we might notice? In ourselves might be.
Speaker 2:One for me is and we talked about this a little bit earlier but like staring at the mountain of work, so like a brand new project, right, especially a really, really large one. It can be daunting and like my natural inclination is to just like, oh, tomorrow is a day for that, tomorrow is a day for that, but you do that too often, right, and then this project never gets done. So what I have found for me is to just start moving it like rock by rock, if I can again identify like the quickest, lowest barrier wins, right, like just get some momentum going and that helps me understand. Okay, this is actually isn't quite as daunting, or like I've got some momentum at least to kind of carry me through it. That's one that you know, I I look out for personally.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you've broken down a project, a mountain, into smaller chunks, maybe even daily, to do's, for example, how, what's your method for tracking to do's.
Speaker 2:Yeah, um, it fluctuates Me too. Yeah, yeah I, if it's a project, I really tend to just lean on the project documentation that I write Um. That way it's really nice and visible for any stakeholders. If I have, like you know, domino tasks that kind of come from it that's not really related to the project, I will usually just do like a written to do list that you know I can kind of check off. It also feels nice to check things off in pen in my brain. So you know, I kind of vacillate between the two. But for projects, especially ones that I'm working on for the team or cross functionally, I really like to just lean on the project documentation.
Speaker 2:So it's nice and visible. Anyone can go in and see exactly. You know what the progress is, what's still outstanding, if there are any blockers, right, I know we're coming up to the end of our time.
Speaker 1:I really wanted to hear what you had to say about keeping your team on track. You know you have quite a bit there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so you know, we we did talk about a bit of it here, right, and it follows that same like yearly, quarterly, monthly planning cadence.
Speaker 2:You know, the team as the whole, making sure that they are aware of where you're headed and where they're, like areas of participation lie, are really important, you know, I think, not only from a buy-in standpoint, but also from like making the work satisfying and like giving them ownership in what they're doing and, you know, helping them be creators of their own destiny within like a structured way.
Speaker 2:The way that I always like to think about it and frame it, especially if, like you have a top-down decision or something that you know you need to work on together is like this is the house that we live in, but how we arrange the furniture is completely up to us, and I need help with that and I would love your opinion on this. Right, and I don't need to be the interior designer by any means. I would love for this to be a team project and a team perspective, so really kind of giving them clarity of where they can participate and how they can participate, I think is really important for, you know, just kind of keeping projects and visions and strategies on task and then really you know again, just making sure that they know where they're headed. Those are like the two big ones for me, and then you can talk about it weekly, you can talk about it, you know, monthly. I think all of those touch points between your support, syncs, between one on ones, are always really helpful and critical for keeping things on task.
Speaker 1:Has there ever been a time that you've coached a direct report or someone on your team about time management like someone who was struggling and really moved through that?
Speaker 2:struggling and really moved through that? Yeah, yeah, absolutely, and I think of it in phases. I think first phase is identifying the problem, right, and here's the impact of the problem. So we've talked about it. For example, maybe too much rabbit holing, right, it's just taking a little bit too much time to go through conversations and we need to speed that up a little bit in a way that makes sense, right? So what does that look like? Do you have a sense of what you might want to do to help yourself here? Right, because time management is a personal thing and what works for me might not work for someone else, so I really don't like to step in with you know directives right out of the gate there in with you know directives right out of the gate.
Speaker 2:There it's, it's I approach it for more of a conversation so we can talk about. You know, if you have a sense of how you might want to approach this, great. If not, I've got ideas happy to share. You know suggestions, we can try some things out, right, and I find that that is really helpful for for helping someone move through. Right, it could be. Maybe they just need calendar, need calendar blocks, right? I'm a big believer in calendar blocks. I, my calendar, is always usually blocked out every single day with what I need to do. But maybe it's something totally different, right. Maybe it's just setting a timer. Maybe it's actually moving into a to-do list, right, where they have everything marked out. They're just kind of getting lost in in whatever it is that is on their their plate, right? I'd like to just start with that conversation, putting as little or as much structure around it as they want, letting the employee kind of guide that, and then we can course correct from there.
Speaker 1:Leading with curiosity, like you said.
Speaker 2:I hear, you saying that over and over again.
Speaker 1:I'm really curious about what you said about time blocking in your own calendar. Do you do that sort of like the day before or a week at a time?
Speaker 2:A little own calendar. Do you do that sort of like? The day before or a week at a time. I a little bit of both, if there you know, if there is a specific project or like projects that I'm working on, that at the end of the week. At the end of the week I do a weekly review and I look at the week ahead. I look at my meetings. I see like what is going on and I think of what are the things that are on my to?
Speaker 1:do list.
Speaker 2:If I have areas in my calendar where I can pre block things, I will. I try to keep some days relatively meeting free so that it's more like deep work and I'm less context switching, and so I will do that, you know, kind of preemptively. I don't try to do it for my entire week, because then everyone looks at my calendar like, well, where can a meeting go? Right, like you need to stay flexible for any meetings that pop up. But setting some time aside on a weekly basis I find helpful. And then, yeah, on a daily basis I do it more for a how did I spend my time, like reporting standpoint, so I can go back through and say, okay, I've spent, you know, eight hours on this project collectively this week, or whatever the case may be.
Speaker 1:Do you do that by titling the calendar event and then searching for that title, like, like, yeah.
Speaker 2:I use colors for like different, different types of work. So all of my like people management and one on ones or one color. All of you know like if I'm in the queue, still my queue work is another color. Project work is a different color. Um, project work is a is a different color.
Speaker 1:Oh I just this makes me so happy, I love it. So do you look at this sort of at the end of the week and review and kind of write down this is how much time I spent on things. Do you have a weekly review process?
Speaker 2:I guess is what I'm kind of thinking about I yes and no, this is one that's a little bit fluid. Um, I I do go through and think about okay, what were the things that were on my list this week? How did I progress against them? What feels most important at this point for next week? Do I need to do any prepping or planning so that I can kind of like leave for the weekend feeling more or less like I can check out and get a break right? That brain break is really important to come back Monday ready and ready to go. But yeah, it's more of a light process right now. I kind of just go through and think you know, do I have blockers that I need to work on unblocking? Is there anything that I'm anticipating coming up in the next week that could be a blocker? And then, how am I progressing towards the things that I'm working on? Or is there any opportunity for me to get more efficient? Or do I need to change anything around in my approach?
Speaker 1:And for your weekly review, for any cadence, for you or for your team. How do you celebrate wins?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you know, for the team just celebrating it in our support sink, right, celebrating the support sink, we have an internal Slack channel. We celebrate there. We also have an org wide kudos channel, so it's those are all really good spaces to celebrate the wins. I also do a monthly support report, so anything that we've accomplished at the monthly basis goes in there for the whole org to see and celebrate with us. On an individual level, I think it just depends on the person. One of my first questions I ask in our first one-on-one is how do you like to receive recognition? Is it public or private? Because some people are on one end of the spectrum or the other, right, and so the last thing I want to do is have someone who's a private person like really like, shout their name from the mountaintops, because it doesn't feel so good and it kind of takes away from that celebration. So any individual praise is done with the individual's preference.
Speaker 1:How do you keep track of people's preferences? Do you have like a doc for each person, kind of like Harriet the spy?
Speaker 2:I do. Yeah, my notes are in depth for each of my teammates. And, yeah, the people that I work with too, so anyone who I interact with on a regular basis I just keep notes on. And for my employees in particular, yeah, like I have a little matrix that I set up so I know and keep that just nice and visible for myself as a reminder of how everyone prefers to work, so that I can, you know, really kind of tailor my, my approach to that specific individual.
Speaker 1:If you had to boil all of this down to one mantra for support leaders about time management, working with your team, what would that be?
Speaker 2:I think it would be it's twofold, but it is that leading with curiosity lens right. It is getting curious about yourself and it is getting curious about everyone else around you Because, again, like the whole, the most important piece of time management right is that we are working effectively on the things that matter, and so to do that, you need to understand yourself and you need to understand the people around you and the things around you in a business context. So just getting really curious, I think, is the big thing I'd leave folks with.
Speaker 1:I love that and I've seen that over and over again in your answers. It's clear and it's very human approach. You know it's sort of a way to really care about the people that you work with and yourself. Yeah, I think, yeah, I love that. Thank you so much for being here. I just this has been an absolute delight, gosh, just thank you so much for sharing your wisdom.
Speaker 2:Of course, of course. Thank you so much for having me, Jen. This was lovely. I had a really good time.
Speaker 1:Thanks.
