What do you do if you're juggling multiple coaching and mentoring projects with tight deadlines?

Each time I've felt overwhelm as a coach, it's because I overcommitted to doing too many things. Use this moment to create awareness for the next time, and be more selective and patient for your results. Quality output and clarity of mind requires rest and focus. Working from an anxious state may make you feel busy, but the quality will suffer and you won't be truly productive. If you've found yourself buried in projects, the only thing you can do is put your head down and get to work. Prioritize the tasks, utilize your calendar or project management app, and be ready to do more than typical working hours. Get through this phase, learn from it, and start managing your time and sanity better.

Tight deadlines when it comes to coaching are challenging because humans aren’t machines and they can’t be treated like machines either. I tend to restrict the amount of coachees I have so I can give them my full commitment. If you’re coaching full-time, I think it’s important to restrict the number of coachees you see and the number of sessions you have per day as it’s key that you do the preparation before and after each session. That’s what makes a person an efficient coach.

The first and foremost thing to keep every project in under one roof for having full visibility of all projects. The second most important would be to have clarity on the goals, timelines and expectations set at the time of start of the project. The third thing would automatically come out on the basis of second point that is setting priority as to which one has to finish when and why. There may be some flexibility also be required, if something is changes during the project. We should see if the delegation based on the responsibility set initially is done properly or not. Reviews are at the same time very important and in last need to use available technology which will make things easier to juggle with.

As we witness, our 'Left Brain' activities like 'Logic, Structure and Mathematics' are getting replaced by AI/ML based tools, focus more on 'Innovation' related tasks which is the work/duty of 'Right Brain'. So, Leaders should focus more on 'Innovation' by utilising the right brain:-). This way it will help you to 'de-prioritise' some tasks from your to-do list. Most of the key customer challenges/problems (in any vertical) require 'new innovative thought/action/tool/process/practice. If you are not part of this then 'you are part of the problem':-)

Prioritization!! Keep up-to-date with calendar. Reserve some white space on calendar to re-energize for all engagements. Be agile.

You can create lists and plans of things you want to do and spread them around a day or week, but please try to find time to list all the things and activities that help you relax (hot bath, yoga, breath exercises, massage, etc), switch your mind (gaming, sightseeing, crafting, trying new things, etc) and charge your mental energy (motivational movies, sport, charity and volunteering, talking with mentors, etc). After you have made this list - schedule these activities among the week, so you have them distributed and mixed together with work activities. Ideally to have relaxing and energy charging activities not only during the weekend but also in the middle of the week.

Utilisez des outils de planification pour établir un calendrier détaillé de vos projets, y compris les séances de coaching, les périodes de préparation, et les échéances. Réservez des blocs de temps spécifiques pour chaque projet pour vous assurer que vous leur consacrez l'attention nécessaire sans vous éparpiller.

scheduling my tasks helps me prioritize my due dates according to priority and how to utilize my time effectively. I faced this challenge when I had to schedule multiple field coaching visits for medical representatives to help them enhance their performance.

Managing multiple projects or clients can be challenging. So, scheduling the time for clients or projects is of paramount importance. Streamlining the notes as per the clients, having good amount of time gap between each coaching conversations will help you transition your thoughts and will make the conversations more effective. Tight scheduling is a strict no no, even though it is very easy to ignore the power of small breaks. It will lead to a burnout and also a mixup of cases and conversations in few instances. Remember to use the Pomodoro technique. It gives you just enough time to your brain to exit the last conversation and enter into the new one. It also helps you to continue to access your conscious as well subconscious brain.

One thing that have helped when I have pressing deadlines is to revisit my schedule so that I may better prioritize things from most important to least importance. By doing that allows me to be strategic in completing higher level task.

Establish clear boundaries to protect your time and energy. Learn to say no to additional commitments that may overload your schedule and prioritize self-care to avoid burnout.

Sometimes our work is "nothing personal, but business". Be always ready for this and prepare your clients from the session 0. I recomend to start from sharing some ground rules and communication protocols that will help you to set boundaires from the beginning.

Establishing clear boundaries is crucial for maintaining a healthy work-life balance. Communicate your availability to your clients and assertively define your non-working hours. This ensures you have dedicated time to recharge and prevents burnout from encroaching on your time. Boundaries are also vital within the scope of each project. Clearly define what is and isn't included in your coaching or mentoring sessions to prevent scope creep, which can add unexpected time pressures and disrupt your schedule. By setting boundaries, you create a framework that allows you to focus on your tasks efficiently and maintain your well-being.

Communicating your availability to clients and sticking to those hours is essential. To avoid scope creep, you should also be clear about what is and isn't covered by your services. By setting boundaries early, you can manage both your and your client's expectations, preventing last-minute surprises that could disrupt your schedule.

Be bold and transparent with tour clients when you cannot be at your best. Most clients will thank you and might be willing to wait a bit more for you to bring the best value for them.

As a coach, I think that one way to be able to meet coaching deadlines is by delegating tasks especially when you have multiple to attend to. This helps to prevent burnout and also ensures you are on schedule with your clients. You can delegate tasks to your team members or anyone you can rely on to get the work done. I believe delegating tasks is a powerful tool in managing multiple projects or tasks.

If possible, delegate tasks to trusted colleagues, team members, or assistants to lighten your workload and meet tight deadlines more effectively. Delegating tasks allows you to focus on higher-priority responsibilities while ensuring that all project requirements are met.

I believe Delegation is one of the keys to manage multiple projects or coaching and as you aim for delegation you will do other tasks on the way. To be able to delegate you will 1st prioritize in a way that you can be included in projects that need ur personal attention while delegating others. While also working on building trust in other people as you build their skills to handle what you delegate.

Depending on the projects in hand, some might be delegatable. It is best to identify them as such, the moment the assignment is accepted, especially when multiple projects are on going at the same time. At the initial stage, identify also who from your network or team can support or be assigned some of the tasks in order to keep a workload balance that doesn't effect the deadlines set.

Be generous and dare to ask for help, the people around you will thank you for that. Who doesn't like to be consulted and feel like their opinion matters?

Start from something simple, either use tools that are available in your company or your client's company, or use a tool of your choice. You may need to start from visualising lists of tasks and calendars as well as a tool to store knowledge base, agreements and plans. Standard Project management tools other than MIcrosoft Office may include Trello, Jira, Confluence, Miro, Outlook, Teams, Zoom and others

Whatever approach you use it needs to be yours - if it doesn’t reflect you, you won’t buy into and your approach will fall by the wayside. Even if you have the most perfect approach it might need tweaking over time or need to be moved to a different tool that makes things easier for you - mostly if it’s not simple for you releen you will probably have a hard time sticking with it. So experiment!!

It can be difficult to choose a lane and method when the client has software they are utilizing already. Depending on project scope and amount of team involved, I will sometimes find it easier to work within their project software. That being said, I keep my project hub of work and files all in my home base. All tasks for me are in my main hub and not spread across multiple accounts to ensure I don't miss something important.

A key factor in any project, is to take advantage of the available project management tools. With multiple projects this becomes a must. These tools especially the ones with visualizations and includes for example kanban makes it more effective to manage expectations and tasks in the pipeline.

As a coach, I feel you should be updated with latest technological advancement such as the use of artificial intelligence tools in managing your schedules. Sometimes it can be overwhelming trying to keep tab on paper. Google has many of these productivity tools in place!

Reflect regularly on the value add engagements and the dormant ones including the ones where the client is not responsive, seek closure of such engagement Reflect on how the engagement is helping to grow and develop ones own skills to in turn support the client

Use journaling as a way to record your actions and your client's reactions so you can evaluate your progress over time and gauge your impact.

Regular reflection is a valuable approach for effectively managing coaching and mentoring projects with tight deadlines. It is important to carefully assess your progress, recognise any obstacles or barriers, and adapt your strategy accordingly. Taking time to reflect enables you to gain valuable insights from previous experiences, streamline your work process, and stay focused and clear-headed when juggling multiple projects.

Whatever you do, unless you reflect back regularly and replan and reprioritize your tasks you are going to fail in achieving the expected goal.

Prenez régulièrement du temps pour évaluer votre charge de travail, l'efficacité de votre gestion du temps, et l'avancement des projets pour ajuster votre approche si nécessaire. Sollicitez des retours de vos mentorés pour améliorer votre approche du coaching et de la gestion de projet.

Another important aspect when working on tight deadlines is to consider synergies across multiple assignments. This provides opportunities to group similar tasks together thereby making time more time for tasks that require specific focus. Along similar lines, it is also crucial to not get too deep in areas where a little less involvement would suffice.

N'oubliez pas de continuer à investir dans votre propre développement professionnel et personnel pour rester à jour avec les meilleures pratiques en coaching et en mentorat. Engagez-vous avec une communauté de coaches et mentors pour partager des expériences, des conseils, et obtenir du soutien.

It is important to consider in such projects the support and intention to find opportunities for creating new coaches and mentors from your team or others from the project. Knowledge transfer and sharing have a magnitude of benefits to both the coach and their trainees in building their experience.

Coaching and mentoring is a very crucial process in empowering another person. It takes out a lot of your time and energy as you need to be focused on your coachee/mentee and ensure that you provide proper timely sessions and follow ups. This isn't a one time process, it's an ongoing process until your coachee/mentee reaches their goal. The best method is to schedule your coaching and mentoring sessions in advance and send out proper communications. This sets the expectations as well as gives you enough time to plan your sessions. Planning and scheduling buys you time and energy to provide effective, and successful coaching and mentoring sessions and above all helps you manage any tight deadlines.

Kenne dein WIP Limit und berücksichtige es. WIP steht für work in Progress. Dadurch kannst du festlegen, wie viele Auftr?ge du annimmst.