We have built a culture that rewards responsiveness and makes employees afraid to actually focus on the work that matters.
I have been coaching my team members to turn off email, block out time in their calendar for critical work, work one thing at a time, and get as close to completion as possible before switching to something else. They understand it conceptually but still fear that something will happen if they do these things.
Here are some of the reasons I have identified:
- We have trained ourselves to be reactive. Consider how you react when you receive a phone notification. Do you immediately address it? I believe this has bled over into work.
- FOMO
- Fear they will get in trouble for not being responsive.
- Fear someone will get mad that they are not responsive
Just think of it, it sounds silly that you might get in trouble for doing the most critical work in your job. Your value is not in being the best firefighter, your value is in accomplishing meaningful things. Also, many things are not as urgent as the requester makes them out to be. The organization breeds neurotic behavior. There have been times I have told others that I will not meet their deadlines (that were created without my input). It is interesting to watch them mentally wrestle with it. We need more of this. It is not any one employee’s job to solve the organization’s lack of planning though more will get done if they apply the concepts stated above.
Here are some things I do to help reduce this fear in my team members
- I give them my authority. I allow them to say “My boss told me to” though this is rarely used.
- I keep from sending them a stream of emails anytime I get a whim. I don’t want to train them to feel the need to respond to me immediately.
- I have worked with them to define the critical work allowing them to say no to the non-critical work
- I save as much communication as I can for our scheduled 1:1s.
- I recommend they test these processes out. If they don’t like it then they can go back to the old way.
- I tell them they are responsible for determining their priorities (with my guidance), not everyone else.
- They are allowed to tell others they have to wait or they will not meet the deadline. Deadlines are made up anyway.
- I remind them that no one has noticed that I have been turning off my email most of the time since 2007.
- I make them aware they don’t want to train others always to expect fast responses.
- I tell them that there are activities they do in their job, like going onto the manufacturing floor, when they are not available. No one complains about that and most people don’t notice. It is the same with turning off communication.
- I am not watching their little messenger dot to see if they are working at their computer.
- I have worked with them to define specific justifications for working on higher-priority items.
It is slow progress but my team members are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. They look forward to less frantic work and less stress. Maybe you can take some of these ideas and apply them to your work.