The Most Difficult Person to Manage

We have met the enemy and he is us. – Walt Kelly (from his comic strip ‘Pogo’)

We all have areas of growth that we must continually work at or else they can become barrier that can prevent us from growing in our career.?For me, it was time management.?I spent a lot of time concentrating on what tasks were to be done in my head.?That was easy in my earlier years, but as I got older, it began to be a bit more challenging to remember everything.?In fact, what I noticed is that spending several years juggling all the various responsibilities in my head took away from my innovative side that could have made valuable contributions to my team.?My mental capacity was filled with priorities and duties that needed to be done, and when I was overwhelmed by the sheer volume of them creating performance issues, I had no system to fall back on.?As a result, little things would slip through the cracks, and that eventually led to some bigger issues.?Thus began a journey to figure out how to better manage my time.?Friends had given me tools like Franklin Planners, but those empty pages became like more glorified loose-leaf paper that all went to waste at the end of the school year.?My electronic calendar (back then, Blackberrys were the thing), was a glorified toy.?Not a serious instrument of change.

Finally, I went to my first ‘Time Management’ class.?I learned some various tools and techniques that helped me along the way.?Simple little things such as labeling tasks and prioritizing them as A’s (those things that must be delivered), B’s (those things that are important but can wait), and C’s (those things that are nice to have but the world won’t end if not done).?Then, I remembered to start my day prioritizing the As over Bs and Cs.?Next, the seminar talked about how you can utilize a calendar to ensure that you had time to take care of those A level tasks.?It allowed me to better utilize my Microsoft Outlook calendar to the utmost degree.?Before I knew it, all my tasks were being completed on time consistently.?While managing time is a topic I will take up on another day in more depth and detail, the importing learning today focuses on managing something far more challenging and in depth.?You.

The most difficult person to manage is you.?I read a blog titled The 10 Most Difficult People (https://www.mindtools.com/blog/the-10-most-difficult-people-and-the-5-best-ways-to-deal-with-them/), and it summarized each person. Reading their titles, most of us can figure out who that person is and what they are like.?They are as listed The Know-it-All, The Interrupter, The Ignorer, The Bore, The Prima Donna, The Work Martyr, The Whiner, The Negativity Spreader, The Rainmaker (Superstars that do things differently even when it breaks team norms), and The Boundary Crosser.?This fascinated me because I knew each of these individuals.?While I knew individuals just like them, I could more importantly see a piece of each in me even to this day.?The difference was over the years, I had either learned mastery over most or ‘managed’ the other of those traits.?Some were fairly easy to master (ex. A mindset always on something to learn to avoid being a ‘Know-it-All), and others were huge challenges that I still have to manage (admitted recovering ‘Work Martyr’).?It is the challenges that make both the additional pitfalls and acknowledgement of our own failures hard for us to see.

So how can we better self-manage ourselves??Rather than give a remedy that solves every individual challenge, here are five tips that provide a good framework to help:

• Know Your Strengths & Weaknesses – The famous line from the Shakespeare play Hamlet goes, “This above all: to thine own self be true.”?Know your strengths so you can leverage them for personal growth, and know your weaknesses so you can manage them more effectively.?If you are unsure what they may be, try strength-based personality tests such as StrengthsFinder (https://www.gallup.com/cliftonstrengths/en/254033/strengthsfinder.aspx) and StandOut (https://www.tmbc.com/standout-assessment/) to learn more.?These helped me know my tendencies so that I could understand both my biases and potential pitfalls.
• Invest In Your Development – Know how you best learn things and use it to understand how to better utilize those strengths and manage those weaknesses. Whether it is reading books or blogs, going to conferences and seminars, or taking classes, utilize them to help build new positive habits and effective tactics.?I go to a conference every year deliberately for that purpose.?While many jobs help with professional development like online classes and tuition reimbursement, it is ultimately up to you to both use and develop them.?If your job does not pay for it, invest in it yourself, and do not make excuses.
• Know Your Boundaries – Boundaries are an effective way to know when you are crossing into areas that have caused you to fail.?These keep us from falling over the cliff and often correct us to ensure we do not fail from toxic behavioral tendencies.?The greatest aid I got in an area of weakness was to set a boundary for it.?For example, to deal with my ‘Work Martyrdom,’ I deliberately stopped answering emails while either on vacation or other off days.
• Choose Courage – Dr. Brene Brown said one of my lifelong mottos.?She said, “You can choose courage and you can choose comfort, but you cannot have both.”?If you feel comfortable in job role, check yourself to see if you are becoming stagnant and need a challenge (remember, ‘Work Martyr’ tendencies ??). I am not saying always push for something more.?We should learn to celebrate successes and enjoy a momentary lull but prepare for the next opportunity.?If something frightens you because of the chance of failure, that is a pretty good indication it is something you need to jump into doing.?That’s why I started writing these newsletters.?It scares me, but I have people who believe in me.?This will ensure your development never gets stale.
• Solicit Feedback – Find a trusted partner to both share this information with and hold you accountable to them.?It could be a mentor, a peer, a trusted friend, and even your spouse.?Share your strengths and weaknesses so they can confirm if you are consistently following through on your development path.?This must be someone supportive of you but will also call you out when you are not following through on any of these.?Furthermore, they can serve as a sounding board when you need to discuss any of these topics.

We as leaders must be dedicated to serving our teams.?We observe performance, focus on metrics, and coach, develop, and educate them to be the best they can be.?Why would we not give the same consideration to ourselves??Managing others is a privilege and honor both given and earned.?As such, we need to be at our best by also managing ourselves.?Let us commit to being better leaders by simply looking in the mirror and remembering who we see.?It is the most difficult person we will ever manage and the best equipped person to manage them all in one.