Weird Manager Questions

Thanks for joining me in another installment of Weird Manager Questions! If this is the first you’ve heard of these, you can catch up why checking out 1:1 101, THE OTHER ONE and THE OTHER ONE. The TL;DR is these are questions for the end of your 1:1s if neither of you wants to take the time back, and because they are not required, they can be more on the “getting to know you” side of things.

Today’s weird manager question is:

How do you spend an average day?

This question is best asked when your employee is feeling, well, kinda blah about everything. There’s no one big pain in the butt that’s causing them stress- they’re just… not feelin’ it, you know?

Draw a rectangle. Ask them to divide it up into how they spend an average day. If their days are widely variable, ask them to smear that average into whatever makes sense in their brain. The goal isn’t necessarily to get them to accurately calculate their hours spent, but to understand how they perceive their time is spent. This means that they can group activities in whatever way works for them and the only thing you should do is express curiosity if it doesn’t match up with your perspective.

Now draw another rectangle. Ask them to divide it up into how they want their average work day to look like. This usually illuminates that what’s bugging them is too much of a certain type of work or not enough undisturbed time to focus on the parts that they enjoy. And you know what? That’s usually actionable. You can start to come up with plans on how to protect your employee’s time and redistribute the parts that drain them (similar to THE MATRIX ONE).

If your team member feels like they are spending too much time in meetings, figure out which meetings they can cut. Or if an honest review shows that’s not feasible, see if not turning on their webcam or something else would ease some of the stress of the meetings.

If you get what feels like a sassy answer, consider that this might actually be a clue to what they need to feel productive- for example, if they say their average day should be 100% PTO… maybe your person needs a vacation. A real vacation. And if they say they want 50% of their time spent on something that’s not their job… maybe you should start making a plan to help them transition to a job where they can do what fuels them rather than holding them hostage to a role they don’t enjoy.

The most important part of this exercise is coming back to it after 2-4 weeks and seeing if your plans have worked, how their average day has changed, and most importantly, if it’s helped them feel better about their work life.

Pandemic reflection paragraph: The longer lockdown has gone on, the more I’ve moved from thinking of work/life balance as being a time split to being an energy split. We get admonished to do self care things on our own time to balance out the work things. But all that does is prepare us for more work. Not for more life. Plus, I actually enjoy my life more when what I’m focusing on at work is energizing and aligned with what I value. Maybe work/life balance should be less about “undoing” the stress from work so you can have a totally separate life and more about ensuring work doesn’t generate the amount of stress that requires an hour in a float tank to lower your blood pressure.