Spoiler: most of you almost certainly are doing this.
A fairly short newsletter today but don’t underestimate the importance of this point. I’ve encountered this issue twice within the last few weeks and no one is really immune to it. I’ve seen it occur with:
- A brand new, entry level employee reporting into a Head of Department.
- A very experienced Head of Department reporting into a company Director.
Both of these people with wildly different levels of experience, still experienced the problem that I’m going to talk about today.
Let me explain.
Welcome to being “the boss”
When you are “the boss”, a certain dynamic exists between you and your team members. Even if you’ve recently been promoted and you’re now managing your old peers. This dynamic leads to something simple, but very impactful:
Everything that you ask your team to do is treated as urgent and should be done immediately.
Is everything that you ask your team to do urgent and should be done immediately?
No, of course not.
Why do they react like this?
Because you’re the boss.
It really is as simple as that.
No matter how nice you try to be as a manager or how much your team loves you, you’re still the boss and it’s very easy for them to fall into the trap of feeling like everything you ask for needs to be done right away.
Be even more careful if you manage juniors
This is particularly likely to happen if you manage juniors or relatively inexperienced team members who won’t have the knowledge or confidence to ask about the urgency of the task.
Instead, they will process that you need something done and probably start working on it right away – no matter what other tasks they have already on their to-do list.
One of the biggest challenges that juniors and newbies have is prioritising their to-do list and staying organised. This is because they don’t yet have the experience to ensure that they have all of the available context to allow them to do this such as deadlines or the bigger picture of projects.
You need to provide this context for them, very explicitly and with clarity. We’ll talk about this more in a second.
Experienced folks aren’t immune to this problem
As described above, I also saw this problem very recently with a super experienced (10 years+ in the industry) Head of Marketing who was reporting to the owner of the company.
They felt like every time the owner of the company asked for a task to be done, that they needed to drop everything and get it done as soon as possible.
So even those of you who have been around for a long time can still react in this way to “the boss”.
The consequences of this issue
This issue can lead to a few issues, some obvious and some not so obvious:
- A constant state of reactivity within your team because they are always reacting to what you’re saying and acting.
- Important and urgent tasks being pushed down someone’s to-do list in favour of what you’re asking them to do.
- Team members feel overwhelmed because they aren’t able to effectively plan their time and tasks.
- Over time, stress and anxiety when you ask for a task to be done because they know that when you ask for something, it affects them negatively.
These may sound extreme, but if you’re not aware of this problem, it’s very easy to get to this point without realising.
How to overcome this issue
Ironically, overcoming this issue is remarkably easy and straightforward, despite how severe the consequences of getting it wrong can be.
Every time you delegate a task – give context
Don’t just ask someone to do something and leave it at that. This is a generally good practice when it comes to delegation anyway, but it’s even more important in this context.
Instead, delegate the task and give them additional information such as:
- The deadline for the task.
- Whether they need to check in with you at any point.
- If the task is particularly urgent due to an unhappy client or stakeholder.
- If they should prioritise it urgently above any other tasks.
This can help them understand whether they really do need to drop everything for you or if they can prioritise the task accordingly.
Show awareness of this issue and communicate about it
You should also let your team know that you’re aware of this issue and that when you ask them to do something, they shouldn’t necessarily drop everything and treat it as urgent unless you say so.
It can also help to say that they can hold you accountable for giving them the kind of context that we mention above.
For example, if you send them a quick email or Slack message to ask them to do something, but don’t give them a deadline or sense of priority, then they should ask you for this information and not worry about doing so.
That’s it. A pretty simple solution to a problem that you may not even be aware of, but can do a lot of damage if you’re not careful.
