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Learning From your Work Calendar

Guest post by: Debbie Payne

Article Overview: As a leader, what does your calendar say about you? Where are you spending your time? Is it where you want to spend your time?

Learning From your Work Calendar

Often we are governed by our calendars. How far out are you booked? Does this give you comfort or make you feel overwhelmed? Ive noticed that people are affected differently. Do you love an empty calendar or does the space terrify you? Is a full calendar comforting or is being that busy make you feel good?

I have chatted with a few people lately about their calendars. Some are using electronic, some using paper diary, some using wall calendars, and some are even carrying around their calendar in their head! I think my head may explode if I did not record things down somehow. Do you race to fill up space that becomes free or relish it and enjoy? We react differently to home and work calendars I found out. Work seems like it should be scheduled and so we do. Home may be scheduled and may not be, depending on what one wants to do. Some are heavy schedulers, constantly juggling, rearranging, and shuffling people and appointments. Others let someone else look after their plans.

We live in a time-bound world where as leaders we often feel our time is not our own. Who does it belong to? The organization owns your time while you are at work. Sometimes we forget this. I recall a manager telling me once he was "too busy" to attend the annual managers meeting. That he was deciding it was not important enough to attend and that is work should come first.

As an entrepreneur you have clients, suppliers and others all seeking your time. Are you working on what you need to so your business can grow?

The message one sends in our actions, our responses, our calendar bookings speaks loudly about us as leaders. Our calendars reflect our leadership behaviour. What was that? Our calendars reflect our leadership behaviour. If you analyze where you spend your time, who you spend your time with, what you spend your time on it will tell you what you seem to value. If it does not then perhaps making space in your calendar for what you do value as a leader will shift your behaviour.

Activity: Revview your calendar for the last month. What were you doing with all that leader space?

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Article Tags: appointments, bookings, br, entrepreneur, full calendar, leadership behaviour, paper diary, schedulers, wall calendars



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