What if your calendar was a trusted strategic partner, rather than a visual reminder of an overwhelmed schedule? This week I’m sharing how to gain back the time you need to maximize your focus, presence, and results.
Once upon a time there was a leader whose days were jam-packed. She rushed from meeting-to-meeting and topic-to-topic every day. Late at night she worked through her email and responded to as many text messages as she could, before she checked “tomorrow’s schedule” and collapsed into bed.
This leader felt like she was running at maximum capacity but knew her schedule left no room for the important things only she could do. She was insanely busy, but her attention was fragmented and she constantly felt fatigued, as her time was spent on immediate, tactical needs.
She knew she was halfway listening in many meetings, and often her engagement was surface-level or routine, at best.
With her schedule so packed, decisions felt more like gambles than strategic plays, as she had no time to analyze and reflect, or for forward-looking thinking and planning.
As a leader, she needed to do more. But where would she fit in anything else? What she was doing would not work for the long-haul, and she knew it. Knowing this had become another stressor, on top of a very long list.
Sound familiar?
If you relate, good! Awareness is always the first step towards the next best thing.
The practice of zooming through days with no “white space” on the calendar is pretty common for senior leaders and executives. Not coincidentally, those jam-packed days are often filled with items that would not make the list of “the best use of our time.”
Research from Harvard Business Review shows how leaders allocate their time is one of the most powerful drivers of their effectiveness. Yet most senior leaders spend the majority of their time in meetings, reacting to immediate demands.
Your Calendar, Your Strategic Partner
As a leader, your time is a valuable commodity – arguably the most critical. And there are only so many hours in a day. Perhaps shockingly, those available hours are the same for you as everyone else. 🤯
The higher you climb up the leadership ladder, the more in-demand your time becomes. The more in-demand it becomes, the easier it is to end up with a calendar so full you don’t even have time for a “bio break.”
This is why developing habits (boundaries) that prioritize the things only you can do, and the things that really are priorities, needs to become a non-negotiable.
Turning your calendar into your strategic partner is the best way to build habits that maximize your capacity, reach, influence, and results. Used strategically, it has the power to hold sacred space for things only you can do, and must make time for, if you will be successful for the long haul.
Start with Adjusting Your View
Think about what a calendar looks like when it’s new: a lot of white space.
Our goal is for you to have “white space” available to you each week. With it, you’ll have time to say “yes” to a valuable impromptu meeting. You’ll have time to review and analyze data that will help you make well-informed decisions, and even do some things you WANT to do, but there’s been no time available.
To successfully employ your calendar as a trusted partner, it needs to evolve from being a “first come, first served, always open” space, to an intentionally strategic one.
When complete, your calendar will be populated with things that enhance the value you bring to your organization, its stakeholders, and your team.
To shift your view, identify how your calendar may be limiting your capacity, then name the benefits you’ll gain from turning it into a trusted strategic partner. When you have a clear line of sight to the benefits, you can commit to making changes.
Define Your Boundaries
Once committed to this shift, it’s time to take a hard look at “what is” and decide what you want it to be instead.
If you start the day with an hour of “white space” in the afternoon, does it get filled before the morning ends? No shame! I’m only asking that you objectively understand how your calendar has been used historically.
Now, how do you want to use your calendar moving forward? Strategically.
To get there, some things will no doubt need to be removed from your calendar.
This exercise can be hard for leaders who feel like if they have a minute and someone else wants it, it’s their job to give it.
It’s also hard for leaders who have a touch of FOMO (fear of missing out), or those who need to be in control at all times.
It can also be tough for leaders to introduce a new strategy, in a culture that supports widespread burnout.
Regardless of your situation, I’m encouraging you to push out of a comfort zone that isn’t serving you well.
It’s time to set new boundaries that support your strategic leadership capacity.
Make Space On Your Calendar
You know to make meaningful changes something else has to get out of the way, right? Great.
Start with reviewing all of your “standing meetings”: daily, weekly, and monthly.
- Why am I attending this meeting?
- What is my role in it?
- Do I leave this meeting with action items for me / my team?
- Which meetings could I delegate? (Think people development!)
- What value comes from this meeting and my presence at it?
- Could this meeting be combined with another?
- Could this meeting be shifted to monthly or quarterly?
- Has this meeting outlived its value?
Objectivity is critical as you analyze your standing meetings and determine which must stay and which can go.
Discern between “nice-to-know” and “need-to-know”. Remove yourself from the “nice-to know” and consider which of the “need-to-know” you can delegate.
The only way to assure you have time to be a forward-looking, strategic leader is to make it.
Three Types of Leadership White Space You Need
Assume you’ve analyzed your calendar and moved a few items off your weekly calendar. Great job!
Now, look at it again through the lens of planning three types of space for yourself each week. Use the time you gained through delegating, declining, and redesigning standing meetings, that can now be blocked on your calendar for the things only you can do.
- Micro-space: 5–15 minutes between meetings to give you a chance to reset, prepare, and avoid cognitive carryover.
- Strategic space: 30-minute to 1-hour time blocks. Schedule that overdue 1-1 meeting, connect with a colleague who sharpens you, and attend your coaching session. 😉
- Macro space: 1.5–3-hour blocks. You may not get this time every week, but what could you accomplish if you reserved it for yourself twice per month? This is space for deep thinking, planning, and high-value commitments. If this time is shared, it should have a direct benefit to you, your team, and/or the whole organization.
Prepare for Resistance
Humans don’t typically change in dramatic shifts (caveat is in the face of crisis or tragedy). We make positive, lasting changes incrementally.
It may be helpful to complete your analysis, then start with small changes. Maybe delegate one meeting, and transition one weekly meeting to monthly…
For those of you “all or nothing” types, go all-in with making your calendar one of your most valuable strategic partners this week!
BUT! Remember to communicate these changes to the people who need to know.
If you’ve decided to decline a meeting or send a delegate, let the meeting leader know and advise the whole group they are in great hands with your delegate.
Remember, my last blog talked about change being scary – this is change. Ease fear and resistance by communicating your what and why up front.
Make a Commitment
Making adjustments like these may be challenging. It is predictable that you’ll find reasons to revert to your old ways and others will push against your new boundaries.
I encourage you to be politely relentless in honoring your commitment to yourself. When something urgent comes up, you’ll be able to handle it without derailing everything else – because you’ve built micro, strategic, and macro time into your days
The Wrap
Remember the overwhelmed leader from the beginning?
Her calendar didn’t become her strategic ally overnight, but her approach to it changed significantly over the course of a week. Within sixty days her new approach was fully implemented, and she was feeling so much more effective.
Her calendar shifted from “open time is available time” to being populated with high-caliber intention.
As she mastered including micro, strategic, and macro space in her calendar, her confidence in her own decision-making soared. She found her energy levels were consistent through the day, and she started enjoying the connections and what she contributed and learned by being fully present in the meetings she did attend.
This leader didn’t find some new way of importing more hours into the day, and she was not shirking responsibilities. She simply learned to employ the skills of a strategic partner that had been there all along: her calendar.
This week, I invite you to experiment with blocking 30 minutes on your calendar for leadership white space. Use that time to analyze your calendar and begin working towards turning it into your strategic partner.
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Author Karen Pelot, MBA, MDR, PCC is an award-winning executive and leadership development coach. She is the Principal and lead practitioner at PERSPECTIVES, and excels at helping leaders create high-trust, high-accountability, high-achieving teams. Reach out today to schedule your free strategy session.
