CEOs are responsible for the performance (and, one would hope they recognise) and the wellbeing of all the people in their team. Often, though, they do a poor job of supporting one key member of that team. Themselves.
So, as you are the CEO of your own time and energy, how often do you consider how well you support yourself and your own performance?
Today let me share with you some ideas and a story about the power of managing time and energy. I hope it has value for you for your own performance and personal happiness and fulfilment, it certainly did for the client in the story.
Recently a past client shared a Havard Business Review article “How CEOs Manage Time” and in sharing it, said:
“The way a leader allocates her time and presence – where she chooses to personally participate, is crucial. Not only to her own effectiveness but to the performance of the company.”
This took me back a number of years, to when she decided to hire me as her coach. She was working incredibly hard, and, as I always look to establish with a new client, she landed on a one-word context, FUN.
She loved her work (still does) but it was no longer FUN. She wanted to bring the fun back. Though we worked together for a few years, the FUN came back within a reasonably short timeframe, and one of the greatest rewards I’ve ever experienced as a coach was bumping into her and her two kids and seeing how relaxed she was. How much she smiled, how much FUN life had once again become for her.
This client was physically fit and aware, as well as open to change, all of which gave a great starting point. In addition, she also had a secret weapon who we brought into this, her amazing assistant. More than she will ever know, her assistant and I collaborated often in support and care of this amazing leader and human being.
As you can imagine, there were many elements to bringing the FUN back, but today I will focus on time management and allocation.
In performance coaching, there are many lessons to be taken from fields outside business, notably athletic performance. As an ex-athlete and a super curious student of this field, I worked for a number of years with and as a practitioner of a performance coaching business that has evolved into a Sydney based global business called Next Evolution Performance, led by a mentee who always inspires and energises me, Vanessa Bennett. I work with individuals in this space, if you want to work across your organisation, I urge you to talk to Vanessa and her team.
One lesson from athletes is rigorous management of time. My two oldest sons were elite swimmers, who managed business degrees at university with upwards of twenty hours of training in around ten sessions per week. On top of that, rest and nutrition are not something such athletes do outside their work and training, they are also part of their meticulous planning. Athletes are rigorous with their time. As a sidebar, when my oldest son started with a “Big 4” firm after University, he was told how hard it would be to cope with the often 50-60+ hour weeks in “busy season”. Quite honestly, he coped with no stress at all. For someone who did a double major degree while training for major international swim meets (and also planning out rest and nutrition), managing his time for one area (he had retired from swimming by then) was simple.
So, back to my client and her time management and using this for simple tips for CEO performance. My dear friend and mentor Suki Laniado Smith signs off every email with “Awareness is the greatest agent for change“, so starting by knowing where you spend your time is key. For this client then, when we did this it first brought awareness, then a sense of choice as to where she would spend her time and energy.
I smiled when I read the HBR article she shared, reading this extract:
“In the study each CEO’s executive assistant (EA) was trained to code the CEO’s time in 15-minute increments, 24 hours a day and seven days a week, and to regularly verify that coding with the CEO. The resulting data set reveals where, how, and with whom the CEO spent his or her time and on what activities, topics, and tasks. Because it also covers what CEOs do outside of work, we have visibility into how CEOs balance work and personal life.”
For this client, her amazing assistant was key to this. Today I’ll highlight that we tracked this focussing on both time and energy
TIME
We chose a few (no more than four) categories of where she spent her time at work and at home.
As examples, you could choose, as a CEO, work categories such as Leadership/Engagement, Key Clients/Revenue, Strategy/Vision, Management/Business Support. Personally, you could choose areas like Personal Time, Exercise, Family, and also perhaps “Business of Family” (finance. admin, school run, cooking etc).
For simplicity, let’s say you simply chose: Leadership, Revenue, Business Support, Personal.
ENERGY
The HBR article is a little “high think” for me, as I always look with clients to balance thinking (rationality, data, numbers, logic) with feeling (energy, emotion). Oh, and if we look at the word emotion, try looking at it as e-motion, or energy in motion. As CEO of yourself, where do you choose to be put yourself in motion, where do you spend your time, your energy?
For me, then, it is insufficient to record the time, it is also key to be clear on the energetic impact of your time. For example, are you a morning person or an afternoon person? What type of work do you prefer to do on Monday mornings? Friday afternoons? Which types of work and personal life do you find bring you energy and which take it away?
All of these the three of us (coach, client, assistant) collaborated on, building a deep understanding of what worked uniquely for this leader, their business, their personal life.
Lots to consider here, but to begin with, the client simply had her assistant record her time, allocate to one of the four categories above, and colour code in four common colours of BLUE, RED, BLACK, GREEN
I note that it is key to focus on energy as well as time, and viewing a diary that is colour coded connects us neurologically to what we feel about our time allocation. Let’s say we find “RED” time energetically challenging, then imagine the impact on our energy if we walk into the office on Monday morning, check our diary page, then see it is a) totally full, b) more than 50% RED, and c) lots of RED in the afternoons (when we know for ourselves that we have less energy in the afternoons). A major “energy down”.
The full story involved building layer upon layer over time to this, and also naturally involved elements of coaching around beliefs, as well as business coaching for frameworks and tools for both management and leadership. However, this one client experience, thanks to the collaboration between coach, client AND assistant, was uniquely powerful and started with something as simple as colour coding her diary.
You are the CEO of your own time and energy. Please consider how aware you are of this and what you could do to improve your own performance. I remind you of my clients words:
“The way a leader allocates her time and presence – where she chooses to personally participate, is crucial. Not only to her own effectiveness but to the performance of the company.”