‘But Nathan, they don’t respect my time!’ ⏰

That’s right. They don’t respect your time because you don’t respect your time. And if you don’t, why should they?

This was part of the conversation I had with a manager I was coaching. He was explaining why he didn’t complete something that he committed to in our last meeting. His excuse?

His team kept interrupting him to ask questions.

So, I asked this leader: ‘How do you respond when someone opens your closed door and asks a question?’

It turns out that he did the same thing every time. He answered the question without first thinking about whether or not it is a question he should have to answer.

But if every time they open the door, he gives the answer they’re looking for, why would they stop that? That’s when it dawned on him. He wasn’t respecting his time or helping them develop.

So, what should we learn from this? The first job of any manager is to NOT do your people’s work. And that includes not answering questions that they should be able to answer themselves.

That creates a host of things you don’t want. It makes you the bottleneck for everything. It ensures that you will rarely get to your work. And it prevents your people from developing the ability to figure out more and more things on their own.

So, when they do ask questions that they should be able to answer, just respond with this:

“What would you do?”

Then, you must be okay with whatever they suggest, even if it isn’t exactly what you would do. Because if you correct or adjust their answer in any way, guess what will happen the next time they have a question?

They’ll come knocking on your door.