Why You Aren’t Managing Your Time Effectively and Three Time Management Tips that will Lead to a Bigger Impact for Humanitarian and Development Leaders
Do you feel stretched thin by work demands, struggling to carve out time for impactful projects?
In this episode, we uncover three often-overlooked strategies for time management specifically tailored for humanitarian and development supervisors.
Here's what you'll learn:
- Gain insight into setting effective boundaries on your time and your team's time, empowering you to prioritize tasks strategically.
- Understand the importance of respecting scheduled work time, avoiding the trap of overcommitment and burnout.
- Identify and overcome "High Performance Syndrome" thoughts that may be sabotaging your productivity and learn how to coach yourself towards greater effectiveness.
Listen now to unlock the secrets of effective time management and maximize your impact in your leadership role!
FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
Why You Aren’t Managing Your Time Effectively and Three Time Management Tips that will Lead to a Bigger Impact for Humanitarian and Development Leaders
Welcome to the Aid for Aid Workers Leadership Podcast. I'm Torrey Peace, a former aid worker, now leadership coach, whose mission is to help you achieve the impact you're seeking while empowering your team and stepping away from the hustle so you can focus on the things you love the most. Sound good?
Let's get started.
Hello, my aid worker friend. I hope you're having a wonderful week. I was thinking about last week's episode and talking about how to make a greater impact. And one of the things that I mentioned was once you have an idea of the impact that you want to create, then how do you manage your time effectively so you can do that? And I see certain things that Humanitarian and Development supervisors do, which actually prevents you from being as effective with managing your time as you could be. And I'm pretty sure you probably have not heard of the three things I'm going to be talking about today. I remember when I was in Timor and there was a proposal opportunity that came up and I already had a lot going on at the time I was the Country Manager
and so I was kind of like a Head of Programs and a Country Representative all in one, a shout out to those of you doing that role, it's not easy. I remember. reviewing the proposal and there was some pressure to apply for this particular proposal mainly [00:02:00] because it would bring in funding but also because of the visibility and so on.
But I realized upon reviewing it that it just wasn't a good fit for us. Like strategically, it didn't quite align with our plan and it was going to require a lot of work and diverted resources. And I wasn't quite sure either the probability that we had being very high to, to win it. So I pushed back and I remember having a conversation in which I was very nervous, but I recommended to my supervisor to not apply for the proposal and I gave him some of the reasons that I just stated.
And I said the things that I felt I needed to say and I did so not only to protect my own [00:03:00] time and to make sure that we were on track and we were following our strategic plan, but also to protect the time of my team. And surprisingly, he came back to me and he said, you know what, you're right, let's not go for it.
And imagine if I had not pushed back at that opportunity, I think they probably would have expected us to go forward and put a lot of time and resources into applying for this proposal that it was very likely that we weren't, going to win. And would have diverted a lot of attention to the things that we were already implementing and the impact that we were already making.
And I bring up this example because I think that sometimes we forget that we, as leaders or supervisors, we are the gateway. Part of our role is [00:04:00] to set these types of boundaries, as I would call them, and really protect not only our own time, but our team's time too. And that actually leads me to one of the first ways that you can manage your time more effectively and something that I think many leaders
forget or don't think about, and that is setting boundaries on your time and on your team's time by saying no. What happens when we are not more strategic about what we say yes to, and we're not aware of our already existing workload and whether we can or cannot take on more, what happens is we eliminate or dissolve our [00:05:00] boundary.
So if we talk about boundaries, what does that mean? Well, the idea behind a boundary is that it's kind of like a fence, right? It's a protection allowing you to control what comes near you and your space or your workload in this case versus what you say no to, what you turn away. And some of you are just so liberal with your boundaries that they don't even really exist.
They're almost invisible. And so guess what happens? When we don't have that fence and we're not reinforcing that fence, then others will take advantage of that. And they will see that we don't have a fence and so, "Hey, I can just stop by whenever I want." And as nice as that sounds, [00:06:00] it's actually not being genuine to them or to you because you're essentially allowing someone to take advantage of you.
And you are also giving them the impression that you are okay with them doing that and and so we need to teach others how to treat us. And we start by the way we treat ourselves. And this is kind of an underlying theme for today's episode because what happens is when we don't have that boundary, when we allow people to give us more work and we don't say "no" or we don't say we can't take on more work, we eliminate that boundary. We feel disempowered. We feel like we have no control. We feel [00:07:00] demotivated and frustrated, but we're doing it to ourselves. It's not our organization doing it to us. It's not our team or our supervisor doing it to us. It's because we are doing it to ourselves.
We are allowing it to happen. And so I want you to see this because you have the ability to set that boundary. It's up to you whether you do work or not. And I know there's a lot more sometimes to this and the reasons why we say yes and no, and I'll get to that in a minute as well. But I think it's important to first point out that,
if we set a boundary around ourselves and if we don't respect that, we're not, allowing others to respect us either. And sometimes we can forget that and we [00:08:00] blame others.
But this is also part of what I call "taking responsibility" the more we have responsibility over our own time and what we say yes and no to, the more that we realize that by saying no, by setting this boundary, we are teaching others how to respect us.
You have to teach others how you want to be treated and we have to realize that it comes down to first, how we want to treat ourselves.
If you want to treat yourself as someone who is able to take on tons of work then guess what's going to happen? You will be overloaded and overworked. So I want you to think about and be more strategic around saying yes to work that would not normally fall on your plate, [00:09:00] or even if it would normally fall on your plate or be given to you and to really communicate when you feel like it's too much.
We need more leaders doing this. When you do that you also are setting an example. for your team. You're also allowing your team to do the same- to say they need help, to say that "this is too much. I can't take on this extra work. We need to look for an alternative or we need to reprioritize things."
So that is the first thing is being able to set a boundary and respecting our own boundaries. by saying no. And the word no, I think some people are afraid of, but you don't have to say the word no. You can say not right now, or I need to get back to you or [00:10:00] let me think about it and come back to them.
There are many ways of saying this besides just "no", but think about in advance how you want to say it, and then maybe even practice. But there's nothing wrong with saying no. And if anything, you're teaching your team or your others to respect you more. And there's also nothing wrong, of course, withasking for help if that's what you need as well.
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[00:11:00] aidforaidworkers. com. That's www. aidforaidworkers. com and click on the sign up for weekly emails in the navigation bar at the top of the page. Now back to today's episode.
We talked about not respecting your boundaries or your ability to say no to others. But this also goes into not respecting your own time. I'll give you an example. When I first started, doing consultancies, I was asked to help a new organization to look at their workload and why everyone was overwhelmed and overworked. And it was a humanitarian organization.
They were doing great work. There were several reasons why [00:12:00] everyone was overworked and overwhelmed, but this was one of the biggest ones. And that was when people would schedule time in their calendar to work on something, for example, they had to work on research and Development or a report they had for a client, when someone else asked them if they were busy during that time,
they would say no. Even if they had scheduled time to work on something, as long as that thing they were working on, it was just time they were working by themselves, in other words, they weren't working with anyone else, it was just by themselves. They would say they were not busy. I find this so interesting.
Why we think that when we schedule a meeting with ourselves. [00:13:00] That if someone comes along and asks us if we're busy during that time, we say we are not. When we are, we have something on our calendar. And what happened in this case, they would say, "Oh no, I'm not busy."
And so they would schedule over the time that they had set aside to work on this report or this research. And then guess what? They would have to work on those things after hours, or they'd have to work on them on the weekend or they would have to work on them and squeeze them into various hours.
And then that led to being overworked and overwhelmed. Why? Because they weren't respecting their own scheduled time with themselves. Now, I know sometimes you might have an emergency meeting that's really important with the government or whoever, and you do need to schedule over time [00:14:00] that maybe you've scheduled for focused work.
However, I think that should be not the normal, but the exception. We should, whenever we have a meeting or I hope that you put this time in your calendar to work on things that require focused concentration, I hope that you have that in your calendar during work hours. And then you need to treat that time as if you are meeting with the CEO of your organization.
So if someone comes along and they ask you if you're busy, you say, "yes, I am busy." Because you are, you're busy with yourself. You have a meeting with yourself to do this really important work. And guess what? They will be fine with that. Because once again, if, if you say, "Oh [00:15:00] no, I'm not busy" then you're only disrespecting yourself.
They're not disrespecting you, but we get really frustrated and overwhelmed because then we feel like, Oh, I have no time to do this all during the day. Now I have to do it at night or whatever, but that's our own fault. So also taking responsibility when it comes to meetings with ourselves and respecting our own time.
And guess what? Also, If we do not respect ourselves and our time, then we also know it. We know it, and we begin to not trust ourselves. And so when we schedule our time on our calendar, we schedule it out, but we have this feeling of anxiety or mistrust that we're not going to follow through with the things we say because we haven't. Because in the past we scheduled over this time, we've, [00:16:00] we've not followed through for ourselves,
and so we don't trust ourselves. We are disrespecting ourselves. And it all begins with how you treat yourself, right? So first thing, setting boundaries and being able to set that fence around you to what work you are willing and able to take in and what you're not.
And also setting boundaries in terms of your own time and respecting your time that you've scheduled when you have focused work with yourself. All right. The third thing to manage your time more effectively that many leaders do not do has to do with the way we're looking at our time. And there are many layers to this, but in the interest of time, I'm going to just go through a few.
The things that I've talked about so far, setting [00:17:00] boundaries with your time, and then also respecting your meetings with yourself. If you feel uncomfortable and find yourself resisting these kinds of suggestions that I'm making, it's because you probably have this third challenge, which is your thinking or your mindset.
So, in other words, you have a belief or a way of thinking about your time that is preventing you from taking these actions. I'll give you an example. If you feel that you cannot say no to others because you don't want to disappoint them or you think you won't be seen as a team player, sometimes we see this as this is how it's going to be.
If somebody asked me to do more work and I say no, they're going to think I'm not a team player. but that is not a fact. That is a thought. That is [00:18:00] a belief. If you believe that you won't be seen as a team player if you say no, the crazy thing is that this can be so powerful that it will prevent you from saying no or setting boundaries.
And we think by doing this, that we're actually being good team players. When oftentimes when we don't set boundaries and we say yes to too much work, we're actually being the opposite. We're not being a team player at all because we are lying. We are lying and saying that we can handle it, when we really cannot.
And that does not serve us and it does not serve our team. So this is one of the examples of the type of thinking that I'm talking about, which I label under the umbrella of High Performance Syndrome thoughts. [00:19:00] Now, I think I talked about High Performance Syndrome before, but once again, it's basically a well intentioned way of thinking and leading, which we think will lead us to impact, but actually does the opposite.
And I see it all the time. We think, " I'm a high performer if I'm a team player", but the way we're trying to be a team player is actually creating the opposite result. We're burning out and getting overwhelmed. So these thoughts, they come from a good place, but they actually create the opposite of what we want.
So there are several High Performance Syndrome thoughts that humanitarian and Development workers have, which keep us overworked and overwhelmed. One of them, of course, is the one that I just covered, "I need to be a team player". Another one is "I have to always be available", which I've talked about in the previous episode on open door policy.., "This needs to be perfect." [00:20:00] Another one. And there are others as well. We think we're high performers and we're doing better, but it's actually preventing us from being higher performers.
And the more we are aware of these things, and we identify these thoughts and we are able to coach ourselves or others to overcome them, we can be more productive and create true impact. And this is exactly what we cover in "The Coach Approach Leadership Style" course. We start with how do we identify the high performance syndrome thoughts that we have that are preventing us from
making the impact that we really want from focusing our time on the things that will be most productive for us? What are the things that we [00:21:00] believe, for example, "I have to be a team player" or, " I don't have control over my time" is another one. What are these things that are keeping us from really
being as productive as we can with our teams and ourselves so that we can truly create an impact.
So I really encourage you to reflect on this and practice setting boundaries if that's what you need to do or practice respecting your time and really becoming more aware of how the way you're thinking about your time and your interactions and your work with others might be preventing you from being as productive as you could be.
All right, that's it for now. Until next week, [00:22:00] keep broadening your impact. Bye for now. Hey, if you are ready to step up your leadership game, I want to invite you to join my coaching course for aid worker leaders, where you're going to learn how to master coaching skills in order to empower your team to become more proactive, confident, and motivated at what they do, which of course will help you achieve more impact for them and for you.
Just head over to www.aidforaidworkers.com and click on the coaching course waiting list. So you'll be the first to know when doors open for the next enrollment. Can't wait to see you there.