Coaching an employee through managing their workload

Time management is still at the front of my mind right now, because I’m getting ready to teach another session of Strategic Approaches to Managing Your Workload at Library Juice Academy in May and promoting my new small group coaching program built around the same theme, Tame Your Workload.

This time, instead of focusing on how you can make time for coaching, let’s flip that around: how can you use a coaching approach to help an employee learn to more effectively manage their own workload?

In professional coaching, we focus a lot on understanding the “who” – getting to know each client as a unique individual, learning what their most important values are and what motivates them, and helping them connect those values with the strategies they want to use to reach their goals.

Managerial coaches don’t always have the time or trust needed to get as deep into exploring this, but this focus is behind my emphasis on taking time to understand what’s really contributing to the behavior you’d like to address.

So what factors are leading that one member of your team to constantly take on more projects than they can reasonably handle?

For context, let’s focus on a scenario in which you’ve been noticing this pattern for a while, but they aren’t yet acknowledging their agency in managing their workload or don’t see a problem with it. They’re already doing way more than is reasonable for their position, and that means that they don’t have time to do the projects they most enjoy (that keep them engaged) and/or are only doing mediocre work because they just don’t have time to do anything particularly well.

And they just volunteered to take on yet another project or committee assignment.

One way to open this conversation in your next one-to-one could be to ask something like “what factors led you to volunteer to take that on?”

This is curious and open ended, but may shock some people. My experience is that library workers are so accustomed to just doing things because somebody needs to do it, that they don’t always stop to think about whether they need to be the one to do it. And many feel obligated to try to accommodate every request, even when it’s not really their job to do what’s being asked. So don’t be surprised if they’re not sure how to answer if this is the first time they’ve been asked this question!

As always, the coaching conversation depends on how they respond, but in the scenario I’m picturing, this may be a good time to share some feedback.

“I’ve noticed that you take on a lot, and are often the one to volunteer for new projects/committees/whatever if no one else volunteers immediately. You clearly care deeply about supporting our [students/patrons/whatever term fits here]. But, here’s my concern:

• Your workload doesn’t allow for work/life balance. You’re too valuable to the team to have you burn out. How can we work toward a sustainable balance?”

OR

• Having so many other responsibilities is taking away from the time that you need to devote to projects that will help you earn promotion (and tenure). I know you can do excellent work on [whatever they need to prioritize], but we need to carve out more time for you to be able to do so. What would help you prioritize time for that?”

OR if the person has responsibilities for supervising others,

• Having a supervisor with such a heavy workload sends mixed messages to your team, when the library is working to support employees having work/life balance. You set the tone and expectations for your team. What would help you identify priorities to protect your team’s work/life balance?”

So, we start with an acknowledgement, letting them know that their work is seen and valued. This isn’t just the beginning of a “compliment (aka BS) sandwich”, because it’s not just any old compliment. It’s just making sure they know that you see their effort.

We have a clear statement of what you observed and why it matters, in as non-judgmental wording and tone as possible. You’re not berating them, you’re just bringing something to their attention.

And then, we ask questions.

The questions that I included above may or may not lead directly to the root of the challenge, so you will probably need to ask some follow-up questions. Getting to know what’s behind their challenges will determine how best to move forward. Someone who struggles with prioritization will need different support than someone who fears “getting in trouble” if they say no, and both will need different support than someone who keeps taking on more because they feel unseen and underappreciated and hope that doing the most will lead to more praise.

As you move through this, keep your focus as much as possible on asking them what will work for them, instead of telling them how to prioritize their time. When they get stuck, share strategies for working through this process instead of just giving them your answers.

Of course, having a solid grounding in managing your own workload will help you more effectively help your team members manage theirs!

As of the time that I’m writing this, there are still 10 seats open in the LJA course in May (the website doesn’t always reflect all enrollments) and 10 spaces open in Tame Your Workload in June and July. I hope to see some of y’all there!