Against the clock: finding time to be coached on time management
In his book, ‘The Inner Game of Work’, Tim Gallwey cites an interview about coaching. Specifically the interviewer asks: ‘I would guess sooner or later, every client who wants coaching needs help with time management?’
I will return to Gallwey’s response shortly. But I was inspiring to consider the issue of time management following a recent blog by a coaching colleague. The blog led to an exchange of thoughts on whether it was practical to impose a set of behaviours, or even a ‘stop it’ list on a coachee, at the outset of the coaching. (See: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/7-things-you-need-stop-doing-achieve-your-goals-pedja-jovanovic?trk=hp-feed-article-title-like).
In some ways this goes against the spirit of coaching; the need to understand behaviours and attitudes which prevent (the coachee) moving forward should be self-generated. On the other hand, it is important to set boundaries that will create the best environment to support progress.
I think the term ‘time management’ isn’t specific enough. The problems that my clients (and would-be clients) experience is well expressed by David Allen in this book Getting Things Done. Allen states: ‘A basic truism I have discovered over twenty years of coaching is that most of the stress people experience comes from inappropriately managed commitments they make or accept’.
Now Allen comes up with a practical and elegant system to address this. The big problem is that it takes time to get to know the system and implement it.
And there’s the rub.
Of the people I meet expressing an interest in coaching, I would say eight out of ten of them are in some way over committed in their lives; it’s common to become addicted to being busy. I can usually do some good work with five of these eight, on organising their time appropriately. But the other three might go by the wayside; in an over-committed life they can’t find the time to commit to coaching.
So I think certain situations require the coach to hit the ground running. In a preliminary session, should a coach detect time management/commitment issues on the part of the coachee, or the coachee indicates this themselves, it might be wise to immediately intervene. Otherwise you might find session 2 slips, is delayed some more, then momentum is lost, it’s cancelled then the coachee is lost too!
For people needing coaching on this I will return to Gallwey’s answer.
He states: ‘The best we can do is manage what we DO with the time we have. Here are a few critical variables: (1) knowing how long the things you do take you; (2) knowing how much of your time you have already committed, so that you don’t commit more than you have; and (3) being aware of how your use of time matches up with your priorities.’
I might say to my clients, right at the start: ‘The coaching we will undertake will take 12 sessions – one hour of contact with me per week, with one hour of working on things between each coaching session. Is there something lasting two hours you can drop, or be prepared to drop immediately, if you have to?’
That might be needed to give coach and coachee a chance to make headway on time management.
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