That executive coach told me to stop taking every meeting. I thought she was nuts.

Three months ago my coach said cut my calendar by 40%. I laughed. That's impossible in my role. But I tried it for 2 weeks in April. Blocked 3 hours each afternoon. No calls. No emails. My team actually started solving their own problems. Cross-team decisions got faster. Now I stick to 10 core meetings a week max. Has anyone else had a coach push a hard limit like that and see real results?

2 comments

2 Comments

harris.emma1mo ago

40% seems extreme. Not sure how anyone in a real leadership role pulls that off without stuff falling through the cracks. My guess is you're lucky enough to have a team that didn't need much hand holding to begin with. Most of us are dealing with people who need constant redirection and disorganized cross functional teams that fall apart without someone cracking the whip. That whole "your team started solving their own problems" line sounds great on paper but in practice half my people would just let things burn if I backed off that much.

the_sean1mo ago

Wait, does your team actually just sit there and let things burn if you're not on them? I had a guy once who would literally watch a server error email come in, shrug, and go back to scrolling his phone because I took a day off. Ended up costing us a client because nobody restarted a cron job that died at 3am. That wasn't about me needing to crack the whip, that was about someone who saw a problem and decided it wasn't his problem. So yeah, backing off 40% only works if your people aren't waiting for you to point at every single fire.