By Michael Holland - Recently as I was scheduling the next coaching session with a leader, I was able to see her Outlook calendar. She made a comment about constantly being double-booked for time slots for meetings and at times triple-booked. And that she routinely was in back-to-back meetings throughout a day sometimes numbering as [...]
By Michael Holland - Golfing is one of my favorite hobbies. A few years ago, I started looking at my scoring in 3 hole increments providing a look-back at 3 holes to see how I scored and a motivation and plan for the next 3 holes. With this rhythm, I was able to celebrate success [...]
By Michael Holland - In what feels like a quick moment, we are in an alternate world. Suddenly, we need to pivot and flex our leadership muscles to become full-time virtual leaders as the Governors ordered companies to have employees work remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The leadership context and environment you've been so [...]
At the end of a busy day I look at all I’ve accomplished – multiple coaching sessions, meetings, emails, phone calls – I hardly had a moment to stop! But was I really productive? I got a lot accomplished but what I didn’t get a chance to do was to look ahead and make real [...]
In several books by Stephen Covey, he describes a framework for prioritizing work that is aimed at achieving long-term goals by understanding the lack of need for work on tasks that appear to be urgent, but are in reality less important. He uses a time management 4 box method to categorize tasks on two continuum: [...]
You’re planning a training or off-site with your team. Everyone is excited to get out of the office and spend a couple of days together. You’ve gotten the budget approved – no easy feat - so you want to be certain to get the most from the time together. You plan the agenda Assign pre-work [...]
by Michael Holland As I drove from one executive coaching session to another, I had a 30-minute window of windshield time with an email and 4 text messages I wanted to take care of… but didn’t. Later, while I pondered the missed opportunity, I thought about my high school aged son who had recently utilized [...]
by Michael Holland “Blah, blah, bah. . . I have to get this work done. . . blah, blah, blah” There’s a fine line between working hard and being addicted to work. I see many executives and employees who work hard and enjoy most of the work they do. But I also see some who [...]
by Michael Holland Are you struggling as a leader to figure out how you’ll get everything done? Consider adjusting your “planning assumptions”: those parameters or guidelines that act as guard rails to keep you aligned on your original path. Planning assumptions are great when they help to keep you moving forward on autopilot, [...]
by Michael Holland E-mails. . . performance reviews. . . status reports. . . draft PowerPoint presentations. . . last week’s metrics. . . information from the senior leadership update. Are you the tollgate, stopping the flow of information and decisions to your team? Or are you becoming a black hole – all [...]
