Still drowning in meetings? How to reclaim 5 or more hours every week as a manager

You wake up in the morning and you realize, I don’t think I can get through everything I need to do today. You look at your to-do list and the meetings and the one-on-ones you have to have and the clients asking you for stuff, and it’s like this building, building sense of dread of like, how am I going to finish everything? If this is familiar, you are every single one of us right now, I think all of us are spread completely thin, we’re at our max, and as leaders, we’re carrying the pressure of helping kind of shield our teams from this while also knowing we have to take on more work.

We have pressure from clients, from our own stakeholders, executives in our company, boards, whatever it is. And right now is a moment where none of us have any freaking time. So you’re not alone in feeling that. But the problem is when we get so, so inundated and stressed and spread too thin, what I see every day, and frankly, what I noticed the trap I fall into too, is we start prioritizing the kind of little busy work stuff that actually doesn’t solve the problem.

And so that’s what I want to talk about today, actually how to get more time in your life and how to really shield your team from taking some of that burden on. All right, I’m Leah Garvin, and this is the New Manager Playbook, where I share tools, tips, and strategies to make managing your team the easiest part of your job, because dealing with people is hard enough, and it sure as hell is time consuming, right? So how do we get back more time?

Well, I want to share an example. A client came to me recently, and they’re from a big tech company, and they were saying they really want to kick off the work that we were doing with their managers, but folks are feeling like, I don’t even have time to step away for like a two-hour workshop, let alone kind of getting a series of trainings going that are going to really help them. And this is something I’m hearing a lot, is this struggle between we want to invest time and energy, but folks can’t even come up for air.

So the first challenge, I think what happens is we say, well, let’s just wait, let’s put this off further. And I already talked about the cost of inaction, right, on a recent episode. And the problem is, just like with money, when we don’t address something right away with time, we end up, well, we only have so many hours in the day, so as leaders, we end up prioritizing things that maybe aren’t the most as important, or we kind of let this hit and translate to our teams.

And as I asked this client, well, how is this showing up? You know, I get it, we don’t want to add more to folks’ plates, but what’s the sentiment on the team from the individual contributors on the team? What are they saying? And they said, well, gosh, it’s really coming through that the managers are not managing their stress as best they can. Individual contributors are feeling really stressed. They’re feeling like they don’t want to go to their managers with questions because it’s obvious like, hey, they’re at their max.

And it was creating this tension where everyone’s just feeling like overburdened and we can’t do anything about it. And that is why we actually have to do something way before that ideally, but when we realize that this stress is translating to our teams and folks aren’t flagging risks or coming to us because they don’t want to bother us or overload us, that’s when we realize it’s actually gone too far. And if you’re at that point, no judgment, this is your wake up call like, hey, let’s do something, let’s implement some of the tools I’m going to talk about in a minute.

And it doesn’t mean to feel embarrassed or you screwed up or you did something wrong. It means we’ve got to act and we’ve got to resolve it. Now, if you’re listening to this and you’re managing managers, or you’re an HR leader and you’re thinking, yeah, like when’s the right time to do this? Or hey, I don’t want to add a training because my managers are already saying they’re spread too thin. We still have to act now because I already said, when we’re feeling like I can’t get my head above water, we start to act out of our own best interest.

Let me give you an example. When we are managing a project with a lot of tactical work, a lot of times as leaders, we can find ourselves saying like, oh, let me just jump in and cross stuff off the list. The tactical stuff is often what we gravitate towards because it gives us a sense of completion. We can move the ball forward down the field. Now, the problem as a leader is that’s actually typically not where we’re really needing to be best situated.

We end up getting in the weeds, we’re duplicating efforts with our team members, we’re jumping in in places that they already had covered. We are spending more time in meetings than we have to be really in the weeds. And we not only take up more of our time, but we disempower our teams and they stop stepping up. And then we find we have to be in that meeting again because nobody took responsibility for anything. Everyone’s like, okay, well, if my manager is going to be here, I’ll just kind of like sit in the background and be on my laptop.

So when we start to hold on tighter because of this time stress, we’re actually pushing our team members away from being able to help us. It’s so counterintuitive, but that’s what happens. So when you’re feeling stressed for time and that you wake up middle of the night like, oh my God, what am I going to do? Or you wake up in the morning, you’re like, I can’t get through this. Or you’re looking at your calendar Sunday night.

I know I always go through my calendar Sunday night and I kind of plan out the week. I start shifting stuff around if I have to, or adding things, work blocks, whatever. When we get to this point and we start thinking, okay, how am I going to approach this week? Or you’re realizing it really in the middle of the day, like, oh, shoot, I don’t have a plan. That’s when we want to get really, really clear on actually engaging our team instead of pushing them away.

Okay. First thing, devil’s advocate, I know I heard you before, well, I don’t want to overload my team. They’re already stressed. How could I possibly delegate something? How could I possibly step out of that meeting when they need me? What if someone throws more work at the team? I need to be there. This is our first strategy we have to be implementing. The reason we have a team is to scale ourselves. The reason we have people that are working for us is so more work can get done.

So if you’re creating a bottleneck, limiting the amount of work folks can get done because you are making all the decisions or you have to be in every meeting, you’re defeating the whole purpose of it. And so this first thing is thinking, okay, what meetings in every week, meeting series ideally so you don’t have to do this every week. What can I step out of and get my team members plugged into? That’s first and foremost. When we feel like we’re out of time, we have to start creating more time in the day.

Now you may not have meetings that tomorrow you can step out of or later this afternoon you can step out of without handing that off properly. So today, ask a team member to shadow you in that one meeting that you’re thinking you can hand off. Say, hey, I’m going to have you run with this one. Really pay attention to the types of questions that come up, where I step in to interject, the things I don’t commit to or do commit to, the actions that I take on.

I want you to kind of first, as you take this over, replicate what I would have done and then start to make it your own. Having someone shadow you, that takes up no more of your time because you already be there. And then you’re getting that person to see how to hand that off in the future. So this is going to immediately save you time. And I want to push back if you’re thinking, well, there’s no meetings that I not only couldn’t hand off, but I couldn’t even ramp someone else onto taking on.

If you’re really in that place, then you have a different issue that you don’t really have a bench of people that you’ve cultivated. And so that’s why you’re feeling all that stress because you have a team of people that there’s such a big gap between what you’re doing and what they could be able to do. So there needs to be actually more team development there to get them to that place because you’re not going to find that relief.

What I’m really hoping is that there’s at least one or two meetings in a week, that’s one or two hours, potentially more, that you can free up for yourself so you can get your head a little bit above water. So we’re going to start there with the meetings. And if you can hand something off right away, then do it. And if you need someone to shadow you or you want to chat with them through the process, then do that.

But if we start to do this more proactively, auditing our meetings, looking ahead at our calendar, really planning our time, we feel like we have more of a handle on things. And I know for me, even when I have a really, really busy week and I have no time and I know it’s going to be like one of those where I just got to get through it, just looking ahead at it and thinking, okay, Monday has a lot of client work, Tuesday I’m running a workshop, Wednesday I’m traveling to something, Thursday I’m doing some content, Friday I can have some meetings.

This just knowing that even if it’s the week from hell, it will give me a little sense of peace and not feeling like, I don’t even know where my time’s going. So this is something that we really want to be doing. Okay. So the second strategy I want to share with you is, is to being a manager requires some self-management. We’re recognizing that not everything needs to roll downhill, if you know what I mean, and have our team be feeling that.

So when we’re feeling like, oh my God, I can’t, I got to, this is all stressful, we have no time and all these things, and you’re communicating that energy and you’re communicating that sense of stress and we don’t have time and this is all happening. Your team, that translates to them times a hundred, they get freaked out. And then they start getting derailed and like, well, I was going to work on this, but I was going to…

They start prioritizing things wrong, let’s just say it, or not the way you would do it. They’re making decisions out of fear and out of being nervous and not wanting to upset you or not running the rock boat. They start to interpret this of like, I’m messing up or I need to move faster, I’m not doing this thing. And yeah, you may want them to go a little bit faster, but that’s not exactly what you meant.

It’s not like the world’s on fire and all this has to get done in some haphazard way because when that happens, we start having little mistakes and little quality issues and things like that happen. So when you’re feeling really underwater with time, thinking about, okay, what do I need to do to be able to communicate a sense of stability to the team? And it might mean that everybody has to move faster and that’s what you need that day or that week.

So thinking about, well, how do I communicate that in a way that’s not freak out alarming? And it would be instead of saying like, hey guys, like, I don’t know, this week’s going to be crazy. Like we all have to put all hands on deck, like, and it’s like this urgency thing, getting the team and saying, hey everyone, there’s a lot going on. We’re going to be doing a sprint for a while. How can I make this, how can I be more clear?

How can I load balance where needed? Folks are all going to really need to be pushing here. So please be coming to me. I’m going to check in with you end of each day or end of each week to make sure we’re really moving through things. When you need a decision for me fast, here’s the process for that. You can ping me on Slack or send me a text, you know, you start to make it easier for folks to be able to move faster.

And that’s really the biggest piece. Now the third thing is by making things easier, we have to actually have to hand stuff off. And I said earlier, when we’re feeling really spread thin and we see our team’s really struggling, we may feel like the last thing I can do is hand stuff off. Well, that doesn’t make any sense. But when we hand off things that are the right set of tasks for a certain team member, they are either part of what that person’s already focused on, or they have something to do with the career goal that person had, like, hey, maybe that was trying to build visibility or leadership skills or management skills and something or whatever.

Or it’s something that, you know, someone maybe does have bandwidth for if you refocus their priorities. We start to again, get our head above water, right? So we’ve practiced the self-management, the framing, we’ve practiced getting a little time back in meetings. And now we’re thinking about, well, what is meaningful work that I can delegate? Because yeah, it’s not always awesome to just say like, well, okay, it’s sending out the action items or like, you know, doing something really tactical.

Maybe that doesn’t feel like the best thing to hand off, although it can be handed off. But when you frame that with an example and say, hey, you know, for the next week or two, I’d love for you to take on, you know, sending out the meeting actions and chasing those things down. I know it can feel really tactile and it’s an opportunity to really get some visibility with leaders across the company by sending this out.

Or, you know, it’s an opportunity to really get under the hood on the kinds of challenges that we chase down and the kinds of things that are harder to get closure on. So that’s one of the benefits to you. I know it’s tactical and it’s going to really be helpful. So will you take this on? Right? So when we give a little bit of context as we’re delegating, or we connect it to something that person cared about, they are so much more likely to be bought in.

So that’s the third thing as we’re delegating, putting some meat on the bones. Now we’re clearing up even more of our time and the last piece, and I know this might feel the least in our control, is to recognize there is a cut line and there are things that will not get done. I said it, there’s only a certain number of hours in every day, weeks in a quarter, months in a year. And I think a lot of us get in this place because it’s the pressure we’re on from our own executives or stakeholders or board or investors or clients that we’re going to get done so much.

And we’re just going to like, it doesn’t matter, add, add, add, add, add. And we say yes to so much stuff. And the reality is there is a cut line, there’s the stuff that gets done that’s above it, and there’s the stuff that doesn’t get done. And if we’re in denial of the things that’s not going to get done, then what’s happening is we’re two things. We are asking our team members to agree to timelines that are unreasonable and that they know aren’t going to get done, but they feel like yes is the only answer.

So that’s a real accountability blocker, real integrity blocker as well, because we’re asking people to just say yes when it’s no. And then two, when you have too many priorities, you’re leaving it to your team members who maybe aren’t the best equipped to decide which things should go above the cut line and which should go below it. I’ve worked on teams before where they had the P0s. So in tech, P0 is like the thing is broken, it has to get done, otherwise we can’t ship this product or this has to be done immediately.

They have 30, 40, 50 P0s with like an eight-person team. So the team ends up having the real P0s, I’m doing air quotes for the listeners, and then the ones that everyone has agreed to. The real P0s are probably five or six items because that’s how much stuff realistically can get done. But people agree to, yeah, we’ll get it all done knowing, okay, well, where’s the real list here? This puts folks in such a weird position, right?

To be agreeing to something they know they can’t actually do. And I don’t mean we can’t have stretch goals. I don’t mean we can’t have really hugely, wildly ambitious goals. And then there’s a point in which it is physically impossible, it is not in this universe for this team to be able to get done, and we’re still agreeing to it, we’re still saying yes to it because we don’t want to piss someone off. That’s that set of things that we have to get really, really honest about.

And if we aren’t getting honest about that, we’re always going to feel overloaded with things because, sure, there is an infinite amount of things to get done at any given time. So we’ve got to get honest with what that list is. And again, it can be ambitious, it can be aspirational, but it can’t be not in this realm of reality because that’s where people just feel like, well, what’s the point? I’m just going to work through whatever and I’ll figure it out as I go.

So I think as a leader, it is really, really your responsibility, and this is a hard one for my new managers listening, to find what that cut line is and have a conversation with your own manager or your stakeholder, or if you’re a business owner, look across it with maybe your investors or look at with your CFO or whoever’s kind of you’re feeling accountable to and say, hey, what is really going to get done? And what’s going to come in the next planning cycle?

And that to be okay. When I’ve been managing in the corporate world where I’ve been on teams many times where you’ve just had to say yes to everything and you couldn’t, if you said no, you weren’t a team player. I know a lot of us are working through that right now. In those situations, it’s a conversation around risk mitigation. And this is one of the strategies I’m giving to you here. This is one of the things I teach so often in my workshops with managers.

It is not about, I can’t get it done or my team members are going to freak out or blah. It’s not about that. It’s unfair that we can’t say, hey, we’re burning folks out and this is chipping away at wellbeing and this is really unreasonable. It’s hurting our team’s productivity. I wish we could say that. But the best way that lands when you’re talking to folks that are looking at the bigger picture is to talk about risk management and saying, hey, here’s the likelihood of getting this done.

Here’s some shifts we can make to increase that likelihood. Make it as objective as possible and talk about it in that way and you will be having such a different conversation about what’s doable or not. Then you’re talking, you’re looking at like a, I don’t know, that gave risk or like sellers are going to contend. I played like 10 years ago. I don’t remember if this is exactly, but like you’re looking at those pieces is like, what’s possible?

What can we move? And it’s a strategic conversation instead of an emotionally charged conversation because you’ve already burned out. You haven’t slept in three days and you’re freaking out. When you make it objective and you talk about the real cut line, it becomes a conversation of trade-offs. So these are the strategies we do to get more time in our day, in our week, in our quarter. Nobody has time right now. I get it. But if we’re not doing these things, and this is why I teach these things.

And so if your team is struggling with this, spending the hour or the few hours to build and practice these skills, it is worth it. When we decide helping our teams manage their time by not investing in helping them manage their time, when we decide that, we’re just kicking the can down the road. And the worst thing is it’s expensive because they might prioritize the wrong stuff. So investing in these conversations and sharing these tools and trying these things, even if you feel like, well, how do I even have time to stop and do that?

That is worth it. It is worth it because you are going to free up so much time. Every single one of these strategies is going to free up between one to three hours every single week. So I talk about four different things, right? If you had five more hours back in your week, you could actually go to pick up your kid from school, or you could actually finish your to-do list, or you could actually sleep through the night.

You could do something else. So I’m really encouraging you to pause, like go through these one by one, or send me an email at helloatleahgarver.com and we can walk through this on your team with your managers. Because when we do this, we create that relief that we are all so desperate for right now. All right, see you next time.