After months of covering for multiple senior positions and participating in an extensive interviewing process, all open spots have finally been filled. At long last, you can go back to normal—to your actual job. This could mean that you suddenly have a large chunk of time back in your schedule, giving you the opportunity to focus on your priorities, hand off work, and strive for better work-life balance. But without very intentionally reevaluating your situation, it’s easy to allow the momentum of your current calendar and the way you’ve been operating to rob you of the flexibility available to you. You could still find yourself sitting in back-to-back meetings, getting too involved in the details of individual projects, and answering emails about questions that other people should now answer. You might find yourself with more hands on deck but still trying to do all the work. As a time management coach, I’ve seen senior leaders struggle to let go of control when someone new is on board. It feels easier in the short-term to let inertia carry them in the way they’ve been operating, but in the long-term, they’re hurting themselves—and their team. If you’re not focusing on your own role and priorities, you’re failing to demonstrate your full leadership potential. This could limit your team’s results (and frustrate your new hires), hinder your upward momentum and growth, and keep you from investing in essential self-care. To fully receive the time benefits of a new hire, you need to question everything that you’ve been doing. And once you’ve identified what’s no longer yours, release it. If you find yourself feeling like you finally have the people and resources you desperately needed, without more room in your schedule, here are steps you can take to reclaim your time. Uninvite Yourself to Meetings ASAP Jill’s VP of sales submitted his resignation just when they needed him the most: Her group had been tasked to deliver aggressive month-over-month growth to fuel the revenue goals of the entire company. During this vacancy, she essentially took on the additional senior role until it could be filled, sacrificing her workout every morning to squeeze in extra work hours. Jill knew after she had gotten used to direct involvement in sales that it would be tempting to stay hands-on even once a VP was hired. She had been making decisions, built rapport with the team, and most of all was producing results. But she also knew that if she didn’t let go, she would have the VP of sales position filled in name, but not in practice. And she really, really wanted to open up some time in her schedule to breathe. I encouraged her to reevaluate every meeting on her calendar, including team meetings, standups, project meetings, and one-on-ones through the lens of whether she absolutely needed to attend now that the new employee was starting. She decided after the initial transition of introducing the new leader and getting him up-to-speed that she would let go of almost all of the sales-related meetings except for the weekly team meeting on Monday mornings. She needed to trust the VP to do his job and to report back to her on critical updates and decisions. This opened up hours of time in her calendar and established the new hire as the go-to person for the area. Delegate What Is No Longer Yours Similar to Jill, Jim had an extremely difficult period where he was juggling strategic updates all the way up to the CEO of his publicly traded organization, while at the same time having to do project management on some key initiatives because of open project manager (PM) positions. The volume of tasks was crushing. Once Jim secured the new PMs, he knew that he had to delegate as quickly as possible to deliver on a more strategic level for his team and regain control of his time, so he could spend his time at home doing what he wanted: exercising in the morning and spending time with his kids in the evening. In addition to combing through his meeting schedule for opportunities to uninvite himself, Jim also reviewed his entire project and to-do list for items to hand off. This included ongoing tasks, following up with the team, and special projects such as preparing presentations for upper management. He made a list of which tasks he would no longer do and which projects he wouldn’t start. Then he began to transition them over to the new hires. During this process, Jim experienced some disappointments and discomfort when his team didn’t deliver up to his standards. But instead of seizing back control, Jim paused and used this as an opportunity to put better systems in place, including establishing earlier deadlines so he had time to review work and send it back for changes before it was shared more broadly. He also standardized internal review meetings with the team before external presentations. These processes ensured the work was done well without Jim having to do it. Be Strategic As a highly visible leader in a Fortune 100 company, Gary intellectually knew that the right use of his time once he had delegated to new hires was to focus on strategic work that would drive the efforts of his division. But during our time management coaching, he realized that he had some emotional resistance to using his time in this way. Gary had internalized a subconscious message that attending more meetings made you more important. And as he created more time in his schedule, insecurity crept in—he worried that he was missing out or may be considered less significant if his presence wasn’t there. Without an intentional plan of how to use his newly available time, he naturally gravitated toward water cooler talk and email to make himself feel busy and engaged. Through the time management coaching process, we worked through those fears and discussed how to commit to the most strategic work. The process included Gary reviewing his division’s key performance indicators and thinking through which actions he could take to help accomplish them as effectively as possible. He found his opportunities for impact primarily fell within two areas: individual work to set clear direction for the team on what was most important and stakeholder management to get buy-in. Once Gary knew exactly what he should be accomplishing, he then practiced the discipline of blocking those activities onto his calendar on a weekly basis. If he had only small bits of time between meetings, it was OK to spend it on lower-level tasks or catching up with colleagues. But any time he had an hour or more available, he chose to focus on activities that would move the needle on his division’s goals. Give Yourself a Break Sandy no longer knew how to relax. She had developed the habit of working from the moment she woke up by checking her email in bed to the moment she drifted off to sleep still thinking about messy personnel issues. After almost a year of covering for multiple senior positions, the roles were finally filled. But the idea of completely disconnecting from work made Sandy physically uncomfortable. One night when Sandy’s husband was out with his buddies and she had nothing that she absolutely had to do, her first instinct was to check email to “get ahead.” No one was expecting her to send a reply after hours; Sandy had just developed the default pattern of taking every opportunity that she could to work. But because of our time management coaching work, she stopped herself. She had accepted that there will always be more work to do, and if she didn’t consciously take a break from it, she never would relax. Sandy also knew that if she didn’t slow down now that she had the opportunity to do so, she was setting herself up for burnout. Sandy turned to the list we had made of simple joys, including going on a walk and calling her best friend, watching TV, and taking a bath. Since she had actually gotten home before dark (something that was uncommon while she was covering empty positions), she decided to go on a walk around the neighborhood. Every fiber of her being wanted to bring her work phone with her—just in case. But she exercised restraint and got herself out the door. On that walk, she noticed the blue of the sky, the new flowers in her neighbor’s garden, and the sound of the cicadas—all things she had been missing tethered to her computer at the office. Her shoulders dropped, releasing the tension, and her heart felt at peace for the first time in a long, long time. It took conscious effort to break her work-all-the-time habit, but it felt amazing to really let go. . . . Covering empty positions can be a headache, especially when your leadership role already feels heavier than the average full-time job. And once you’re fully staffed, you’ll still have a significant amount of work to do. But by letting go of control and intentionally taking back your time, you can focus on what really matters in your own work.
