Let go of the Legos

Elyse Mankin One for me is staring at the mountain of work. A brand new project, especially a really large one — it can be daunting. My natural inclination is to just go, oh well, tomorrow is a day for that. Tomorrow is the day for that. But you do that too often and then this project never gets done.

So what I have found for me is to just start moving it rock by rock. If I can identify the quickest, lowest barrier wins, just get some momentum going — that helps me understand, okay, this actually isn't quite as daunting, or I've got some momentum at least to carry me through it.

Jen Weaver Welcome to Live Chat with Jen Weaver, I'm so glad you're here. This is the podcast where top support professionals unpack the tools and tactics that make exceptional customer teams.

In this episode I've kind of selfishly dived deep into the art of time management with Elyse Mankin. This is something I think about a lot and I'm always trying to optimize, so I was really excited to talk to Elyse about how her interest in time management and project management aligns with her life as a customer support leader.

She shares how the transition from individual contributor to people manager forced her to rethink her approach to priorities, delegation, and planning. We'll talk about frameworks like the Eisenhower matrix and the rule of three, and how to keep your team and yourself focused on what actually matters, even when your task list is getting longer and longer.

So if you've ever felt like you're just drowning in tasks and projects, struggling to say no, or just trying to figure out what even should be on your list for today, this episode is for you.

Before we get started though, our QA tool Supportman is what makes this podcast possible. Supportman sends real-time QA from Intercom to Slack with daily threads, weekly charts, and done-for-you AI-powered conversation evaluations. It makes it so much easier to QA Intercom conversations right where your team is already spending their day, in Slack.

All right, on to today's episode. So let me ask you this — is there a story for how you first got interested in time management, or the problem that you were trying to solve?

Elyse It was really the shift from IC work to leadership work that highlighted some of my tendencies that were not working so well for me in terms of time management.

Especially that shift from IC to leader — in the support context, the IC role is so focused on the front line that it's kind of naturally managing your time. There is a level of, you need to know when to rabbit hole and when to not, when to cut it off.

But the balancing of tasks, of priorities, of oftentimes competing priorities, of requests coming through, the reactive nature of support and support leadership — all of that was new, and I found myself really overwhelmed out of the gate.

So leveling up my time management, and figuring out what worked for me and what continues to work for me, was really important. It was one of the ways as a brand new support leader that I was able to uplevel just the way that I show up and approach work.

Jen You mentioned your tendencies that you were trying to get away from. Can you name those? Do you have particular insight now, looking back?

Elyse Certainly when I moved into management, it was really hard for me to give away my Legos. Delegating was extremely difficult, because — and I think this is probably natural just being a support person — I didn't want to bother anyone. I didn't want to impose my new tasks or responsibilities or projects on my team.

So I ended up keeping a lot of the things that I didn't need to own, and that were more importantly opportunities where my teammates could really stretch their wings and succeed. Maybe dipping their toes into an area where they've wanted more practice, or just giving them more responsibility and more ownership of their work.

So delegation was extremely hard for me. And if I'm keeping all of those Legos, then I don't have time for a lot of things. So I was constantly finding myself in this hamster wheel of feeling like I'm never able to catch up on the to-do list.

And the to-do list will always be there, that's kind of just a general principle of time. But I was focusing on the wrong things through all of that, and keeping the wrong things to focus on. So it was throwing my balance off.

Jen Later on you're going to walk us through how to figure out what those right things are to focus on. You've given us this amazing structure that breaks down into three subjects — how to manage your time personally as a leader, where to focus your time tactically, and then working with your team.

So managing your time as a leader personally — quick question, do you mix your work and personal tasks and planning all into the same process, or do you separate those?

Elyse I personally don't. And we'll talk about this in detail, but I think the level of time management too is really understanding yourself, and having that level of awareness.

For me, between work and personal, it's helpful for me to keep a bit more of a stronger boundary between the two. So I have separate processes that I go through for work and for personal. They're constantly all evolving and happening at the same time, but I think about my work planning separately than I do my personal planning.

Jen That really segues into your first topic, which is yearly, quarterly, monthly, weekly planning, breaking it down. That's something I do myself and I find really useful. How does that work for you? What system have you designed for yourself?

Elyse It's hard to manage your time if you don't know where you're going. So really being very clear of what that vision looks like for the long term is step one.

Yearly is important, but I also like to think three to five years out, to really understand what is the overall vision of this support org that I am leading and building, where do we ultimately want to go — even if it's far out. Because there are things that we could potentially be doing today that set us up for success even on the three to five year plane.

So really understanding that vision, making sure that it's aligned with leadership, that you've had those conversations with stakeholders — that is step one for me. I find that incredibly valuable, to make sure that everything else that we are doing is rolling up to that long-term plan. Because if it doesn't, then why are we doing it? There's no point in taking on that work if it doesn't align with that longer-term vision.

So the long term is really important, and then you can break it down into easier-to-bite-off chunks.

On the quarterly basis, I'm a big fan of doing retros. With the team every quarter we go through and we talk about what went really well, the moments of celebration that we have. We talk about what could be improved. I really like to follow the start, stop, continue method. I think it highlights those areas of celebration, what we need to consider pausing, and then gives the team the opportunity to say, what should we start doing? What are some ideas that could be interesting for the customer experience, for the team?

Again, it should be framed within your yearly vision, within your org vision, so that it's all rolling up to those pieces. But it's a really helpful exercise to hear from the team, give them a space to talk about it, and have them participate and be owners of their own destiny to a degree.

Jen That's beautiful. It sounds like that yearly and three-to-five-year planning you're doing with executives and with stakeholders. The quarterly you're doing with your team, bringing in that yearly information. How does the monthly work?

Elyse The monthly is a double check on the quarterly. We've said we're going to do these things — how are they going? What are our blockers? Where are areas of opportunity? What have we accomplished that we can celebrate?

It's the double check to see if we need to adjust anything, if we need to pivot, if any new business information has come in that we need to be taking into consideration. Those monthly checks are a really nice way that we can make sure we are staying not only attentive to our goals, but we're also staying flexible enough to change them if we need to.

Jen Are those meetings, and who are those with?

Elyse I like to do them within the support sync. It's a couple of checks actually.

One is with leadership. I check in with my boss regularly on the goals, on how we're progressing against them. I talk to her about what's going on in leadership — if there's anything that is starting to brew there or being talked about there, I can be aware of it and then we can pivot if we need to.

And then with the team directly, I always bring it up in one-on-ones on a regular basis, just to make sure that if there's anything more sensitive that folks want to talk about — or if they're shy — give them a different mode to engage.

Jen I just want to expand that a little bit. So before or alongside the team meetings, you're talking about these things one-on-one, and that's really supportive of people who have a different, maybe more introverted personality type.

Elyse It's just like learning — different modalities for different people. I want to make sure that there is space for everyone to engage in the way that they want to and can engage. So not only having the team discussion, which I find very helpful, but also saving space individually to see if there's anything else that we can talk through together.

Jen So then you've also got that weekly component. That's where the one-on-ones come in?

Elyse Exactly. Weekly one-on-ones.

I think it's also important to look at your metrics across all of these, but looking at metrics on a weekly basis too, just to see on the micro level what are the trends happening. Is there anything popping up that we might need to talk about, or blockers that are popping up that we can react to quickly?

Having that more consistent cadence — not necessarily a deep dive on it, that might be a little too much on the weekly basis, but at least keeping a check on how things are progressing is helpful at that level.

Jen With this whole yearly, quarterly, monthly waterfall, I've often found it difficult to take a quarterly goal and really think, what can I do on this this week? How do I go from big chunk to little weekly goal? Do you have tips on that?

Elyse I think it is really helpful when you are looking at the mountain of work, especially at the beginning of the quarter — the way that I like to approach it is, what are the quick wins that have big impact, and just knock those off the list? Because once you get that momentum going, it's easier to keep going. If you can get those quick wins as fast as possible, I find that gets the quarter rolling in a really positive way.

For the bigger things, it requires a level of understanding where the business is at, what the most important goals are. All of these should roll up to the most important goals, but if there are areas that are causing particular impact for the business, for customers, or for the team — or maybe a combination of all three — going through a prioritization exercise of what feels most severe.

I think also having a level of understanding of what's the biggest thing that's just going to take the whole quarter, so we need to start chunking it out now, so we're not waiting until it's feeling too overwhelming and crunchy.

That's always very helpful, so that you have almost a stack rank of what is ahead of you. Who might be able to work on it is another piece of it too — who on the team has the space? Or if they don't have the space, when will they? So we can start to prioritize from there.

There are a lot of different layers and factors, but prioritization and that trade-off game is really the next step. Once you have the plan, it's prioritizing the plan and figuring out what is the easiest way to chunk it up and break it out.

Jen You mentioned to me earlier the rule of three. Can you walk me through that?

Elyse I've been reading this book by Oliver Burkeman. I really loved it, it's called Four Thousand Weeks.

Jen Time Management for Mortals.

Elyse Yes.

Jen Four thousand weeks is the number of weeks in your life?

Elyse In your life, yeah. It's not a lot of time.

Jen Not a lot of time at all.

Elyse And so this isn't necessarily a business or work productivity book, it is really holistic of your entire life. But a lot of the concepts in there are really interesting.

One that he talks about is this rule of three — that you can only focus on three things at a time, or you should only focus on three things at a time. Because if you're trying to do anything more, then it's just kind of busy work and you're not really succeeding across all of those three. Your attention can't necessarily be divided across more than a certain ceiling, and the rule of three is where he landed. And I believe this is rooted in some productivity science.

Jen Actual neuroscience, for sure. Your working memory can only hold that many things.

Elyse Only so much, right. And it makes so much sense.

So for monthly planning, what I like to do is — I have my quarterly plan, these are all of the things we want to do. What feels most important in month one? Just get them all out on paper, the things that feel most important to tackle first. Then within that, what are the first three? And only focus on those three until one is done, and then you can elevate something else.

It's something that I've been playing around with this year most intensely and I've really enjoyed it. It gives me the freedom to say, okay, I know these are still on my radar and on my to-do list, but I'm also saying that they're not the most important things to be focusing on right now. These other three that I have outlined are the most important.

And so it gives me an easy out when something comes up. Or at least an easy evaluation — it's an easy criteria to say, okay, does this new project or new request help me achieve these three things that I've said are important, yes or no? Do those three things need to change, yes or no? Because sometimes they do, sometimes you need to be flexible and shift things around.

But if they're both no, then that goes either to delegation or to the backlog. That'll be something that we tackle later, or we just say no to right now.

So that's been a really helpful framework for staying focused on the things that I've already determined are the highest priority — for the business, for the team, and for customers.

Jen If you have somebody who comes to you and says, I have this emergency project that just came up — how do you communicate with them about whether or not you're going to prioritize that?

Elyse Being open and honest, asking good questions, is really how to approach that conversation.

So, is it really an emergency? And if so, why? Really understanding where the urgency is coming from, so you can make a better informed decision. Sometimes it is, and so that's helpful information to bring into your decision-making framework.

I think asking what the goals are, what the needs are, what the overall scope of the project is. Is this something that is really critical to help us meet a business goal? That's probably important to make some space for. Or is it something that feels important for maybe an inflated reason — something popping up in the queue where we've seen a couple of reports on it over the last week. But is this really a trend, or is this something that is just a bump popping up? And what is really the severity behind it?

So really understanding is step one. And then if it is something that you do need to pivot for, then go ahead and do that, and you can set expectations from there.

But if not, a clear no, and explaining why it's a clear no, is the conversation. I understand that this is important, I get what we're trying to do here, but when I compare it to these other three things that I'm working on right now, I just don't understand how I can bump these other three. These really do feel more important, for whatever reasons they do. And just clearly communicating that.

Sometimes that opens dialogue where you can still talk about it, make a trade-off decision. But at the end of the day it's all trade-off calls. So really understanding, and then just having that conversation with whoever is bringing the project or the situation to you, to make sure all the cards are on the table and that we all understand what we're trading off and why — that's how I would approach that.

Jen And I think in your role you end up being kind of the gatekeeper in that way, because you do have the business interests in mind and see the bigger picture.

Elyse Exactly. And the more you can empower your team around that too — which is why I think that all of these cadences of planning and talking about things are really important. We all know where we're going and why, and then we all have that in our brains as we are coming up against challenges or finding opportunities.

It's a good reminder for the team and for yourself to say, okay, is this the most important thing that we could be working on, or an important thing that we could be working on that helps us achieve those pieces?

Jen So you're presenting the goals for your whole team and letting them break it down in the way that makes sense for them in their weekly and daily planning.

What's your daily planning like for you?

Elyse For me personally, I go back to my rule of three. What are the things that I need to get done for today? These three buckets for today.

I look at my meetings, what are the things I need to do to prep for meetings. And then I always save space for reactivity.

The nature of support is that there's just no way around it — whether it's an outage that pops up that we need to deal with, or people leadership just in general is more of a reactive thing. You don't necessarily know or can plan on the things that your team might need from you in any given day.

So saving some space for that in the course of my day has also been really helpful, so I don't bump into something and then think, oh no, how am I going to fit this into the course of my workday, and feel stressed about it. There's always just a little bit of buffer where I can have the space to pivot.

Jen It's more of a natural limitation instead of trying to fill up all the hours of your day. You leave some buffer between things. That makes total sense.

You shared with me these three words and I'm super curious — productivity, attention, distraction. What does that mean for this process?

Elyse Again, in the context of that Four Thousand Weeks book — there's only so much that our attention can take, and there are unlimited distractions.

The whole concept of this book is, because there's a finite amount of time, we have this false sense of productivity when we just fill it with busy work and we fill it with distractions and we fill it with the shiny moments that we think are important but they're not necessarily — they're ultimately just a distraction.

So getting really bullish on what the important things are on your plate, or within your vision, or where you're headed, is critical for that.

There's also a concept here that tomorrow is not guaranteed. So really banking yourself in the future is actually where we as humans really get into trouble. It takes us away from the present. We can set ourselves up for success in the future, but using today as a means to an end for tomorrow is just a challenging human nature thing.

I found that to be a very interesting concept in that book, and the way that it applies to work is doing your best in the present moment to set the team and yourself up for success in the future.

Jen That segues us into how you decide where to focus your time. I struggle with this myself — making informed decisions about priorities.

Elyse I do think that data is foundational to this. There's also a level of the qualitative piece of it though too.

And it doesn't have to be a situation where — if you don't have the perfect data model or framework, I think that we can sometimes lose the forest through the trees, in feeling like, well, I don't have the perfect model or framework or anything set up. We're a small team maybe, or we're going through this rapid growth phase and it's kind of all hands on deck.

We're not aiming for perfection with this, and the team can be an extremely helpful data point for you. They're the ones having these conversations day in and day out. They're the ones feeling the friction. They're the ones really deeply involved with customers, and they know where the opportunities are.

Have a conversation with the team. You can do a quick gut check or a quick temperature read of what's feeling good, what's not feeling good. Those are the two basic questions that I like to ask, and see where the conversation goes from there.

A lot of the time I find that it's mirrored in what I'm seeing in the data. And that's a great point of validation too — okay, cool, I did see our conversation volume in this area of the product spike, and that makes sense because you all are having these very long involved conversations, you're feeling they're very hard and challenging to get through. So that's an area of opportunity for us.

And the way that I think about deciding what to focus on is again rolling it up to those top level goals. For our team right now, one of the big things that we are working on is efficiency. So what does that mean for us to be working together as smoothly and effectively as possible?

We just went through a large growth on our team, which is very exciting. So with new folks comes —

Jen Congratulations.

Elyse Thank you. With new growth comes a level of, is what we were doing before still working for us? Or are there areas of opportunity where we can really evolve that for the new team that we have?

So really aligning it back up to what you are trying to accomplish is, I think, the best way to decide what is important and how to use your time. Because then it gives you the question of — if my goal is efficiency, and I have project A and project B, project A is working on our automations so that we can automate a lot of the repetitive tasks, maybe project B is something completely unrelated. That's an easy one of saying, okay, well, project B probably doesn't roll up into efficiency, so not necessarily the thing to prioritize at this point.

Jen When you're using data for these, do you feel like there's a danger of setting a milestone with a specific number — 98% CSAT or whatever — that then maybe it's hard to move the needle there, and that could be discouraging?

Elyse I think that numbers should all be looked at as a rich tapestry. Pulling the lever on one will have an impact on others. And so if you're not looking at the holistic scope of your metrics, you could inadvertently be changing things in a way that you don't intend.

So while you should have clear, concise goals, the way that you measure them — I'm not necessarily a believer in one metric fits all, because they all are intertwined with each other. You really need to understand how they work together, so that when you are pulling these levers you understand what the domino effect is. In a support queue in particular, they're just so tightly intertwined.

Jen For me I immediately go to, if we're going to increase our speed we may sacrifice some CSAT. And what's our sweet spot for that?

Elyse Exactly. And what's the tolerance? That's where conversations with leadership come into play. It gets into a philosophical conversation too, of the speed versus quality one.

I'm a big believer that you can have both. But if you do go too far in one direction or the other, the opposite's going to suffer. So if you prioritize speed over nothing else, and that is the only message your team is going to hear, then yeah, the quality will suffer a little bit.

Jen It sounds like probably knowledge base and training have a lot to do with that.

Elyse All of it. Knowledge base, training. And especially as AI develops — the internal copilots. How do you tie all of your different knowledge sources in together?

Historically you've got your help center, you've got your internal knowledge, you've got previous conversations, Slack. There are so many places that a support team can go for knowledge. If we're talking efficiency, really bringing those all together in a way that makes sense and is actually helpful is a really big area of opportunity, and one that AI could be helpful with.

Jen Knowledge base work is something that I had trouble delegating as a new support manager. Can you speak more about delegating? I know you mentioned the Eisenhower matrix — it's importance versus urgency.

Elyse That's exactly it. This was one that I leaned on quite a bit as a new manager who struggled with delegation. The framework was very helpful for my brain to understand and to really matrix out the things that were coming across my plate as I learned this skill.

The concept is, if it is urgent and important, then you take it on. If it's urgent — excuse me — if it's important but not urgent, that's an opportunity for delegation. If it's urgent but not important, also an opportunity for delegation.

The matrix breaks down into these four quadrants that make it very simple to say, okay, is this urgent, is this important, and then you can act on it accordingly.

Jen And if it's not urgent and not important, then maybe just don't do it.

Elyse Exactly.

Jen And that comes down to saying no. How do you say no gracefully?

Elyse I like to lead with curiosity in this. So if someone comes with an idea, especially if it's one we're going to say no to — or even if I'm just unclear on it — I think leading with curiosity is a great way to get the clarity that you need and just engage in a bit more of a conversation.

I think it also helps folks think through what they're proposing a little bit more, especially if you can be a bit more of a sounding board. So asking pointed questions around, how do you envision this matching up with our support goals, or business goals? Help me understand the urgency, help me understand the importance. And have them walk through it from their perspective. I find that really interesting, and a great way to engage whoever is bringing this opportunity to you.

Jen What it makes me think about is relationships. If I have a foundation of a really great relationship with someone — a direct report, or up here, who comes to me and says, hey, we should do this project — and I need to say no to them, it feels like it would land so much better if I have been giving them positive feedback, if I've really been seeing them and seeing their work and valuing them. Then they know that I'm not just saying no because I don't like them.

Do you have tips or guidance on how to build those relationships, so when you do say no it smoothly preserves the relationship?

Elyse That's such an important principle in any communication. The foundation is relationships.

Whether it is directly with your direct reports, your team, whether it is managing up, whether it is cross-functionally — getting to know the humans that you interact with and that you work with is absolutely critical. There's just no way around it.

In the cases where you have a really great relationship, it makes those conversations a lot easier. You maybe don't necessarily have to go as far in depth, or always give the complete answer.

But framing is more important in those cases where maybe you have a new relationship, or maybe there is a relationship that's a little strained or tenuous. Taking a bit more care in how you are framing and communicating something is well worth the time and effort in those new or strained relationships.

Jen So taking into consideration whether the relationship is on solid foundation or whether it's a little strained, as you're saying no.

Elyse I think it's important. If someone has a feeling that maybe I just don't like them, or maybe they've proposed some opportunities that we just didn't get to action on, and they're feeling like they want to have impact but their feedback hasn't been actioned on — really understanding where that person is coming from is a cornerstone for having really any conversation, but particularly a no conversation.

Because then it gives you avenues to think about how else you might approach the situation, or other opportunities for this person to get involved. So if it's a no for whatever they're proposing, and maybe it's within the product realm, but I have this other product thing that I'm thinking about and I know that they're interested in product — it could be a segue conversation instead of just a no conversation.

We're not going to prioritize this thing right now for X, Y, and Z reason. Great idea, let's put it in the backlog. But I do have this other thing that I've been thinking about, that we're talking about with our cross-functional product partners. Is this something you'd maybe want to be involved with or participate in in some way?

Jen That sounds like it's really targeted for a particular personality type that I think we've all seen — really high achievers who are motivated by being able to create things and come up with ideas and be of impact. I just think that's brilliant, to shift over to, well, you can have an impact in this way.

And it goes back to what you said about tendencies. I'm curious about what you've learned about your personal tendencies at work, and your team's, and how to work with that in terms of time management.

Elyse Again, I think just awareness of yourself and how you show up as a human is particularly important as a leader. It's important for anyone, but I would argue especially important for leaders, because you are at the end of the day responsible for the people on your team. There are other humans whose livelihood is attached to your work and you're accountable for that, and it's something that I don't take lightly.

So really understanding how you show up in those spaces, how it impacts you, how it impacts your team, is really important.

And so for time management, for me it's understanding where are my areas where I might naturally want to put some distance, or procrastination opportunities. Where are the hiccups in how I approach work?

We are human. There will always be room for improvement, and areas of opportunity that we come across. But I think just being aware of our natural tendencies and how they show up, so that we can watch for them, number one — but then really work with them or around them, number two — is really important. And that's really dependent on the individual.

Jen Do you have any examples at the ready on what that looks like? What particular tendencies we might notice in ourselves?

Elyse One for me — we talked about this a little bit earlier — is staring at the mountain of work. A brand new project, especially a really large one, it can be daunting, and my natural inclination is to just go, oh well, tomorrow is a day for that. Tomorrow is the day for that. But you do that too often and then this project never gets done.

So what I have found for me is to just start moving it rock by rock. If I can identify the quickest, lowest barrier wins, just get some momentum going — that helps me understand, okay, this actually isn't quite as daunting, or I've got some momentum at least to carry me through it. That's one that I look out for personally.

Jen So you've broken a mountain down into smaller chunks, maybe even daily to-dos. What's your method for tracking to-dos?

Elyse It fluctuates.

Jen Me too.

Elyse If it's a project, I really tend to just lean on the project documentation that I write. That way it's really nice and visible for any stakeholders.

If I have domino tasks that come from it that aren't really related to the project, I will usually just do a written to-do list that I can check off. It also feels nice to check things off in pen, in my brain.

So I kind of vacillate between the two. But for projects, especially ones that I'm working on for the team or cross-functionally, I really like to just lean on the project documentation, so it's nice and visible. Anyone can go in and see exactly what the progress is, what's still outstanding, if there are any blockers.

Jen I know we're coming up to the end of our time. I really wanted to hear what you had to say about keeping your team on track.

Elyse It follows that same yearly, quarterly, monthly planning cadence. The team as a whole, making sure that they are aware of where you're headed and where their areas of participation lie, is really important. Not only from a buy-in standpoint, but also from making the work satisfying and giving them ownership in what they're doing, helping them be creators of their own destiny within a structured way.

The way that I always like to think about it and frame it, especially if you have a top-down decision or something that you need to work on together, is: this is the house that we live in, but how we arrange the furniture is completely up to us, and I need help with that. I would love your opinion on this. I don't need to be the interior designer by any means — I would love for this to be a team project and a team perspective.

So really giving them clarity of where they can participate and how they can participate is really important for keeping projects and visions and strategies on task. And then just making sure that they know where they're headed. Those are the two big ones for me.

And then you can talk about it weekly, you can talk about it monthly. All of those touch points between your support syncs and one-on-ones are always really helpful and critical for keeping things on task.

Jen Has there ever been a time that you've coached a direct report about time management — someone who was struggling and really moved through that?

Elyse Absolutely. And I think of it in phases.

First phase is identifying the problem, and here's the impact of the problem. For example, maybe too much rabbit-holing. It's just taking a bit too much time to go through conversations and we need to speed that up a little bit in a way that makes sense.

So what does that look like? Do you have a sense of what you might want to do to help yourself here? Because time management is a personal thing, and what works for me might not work for someone else. So I really don't like to step in with directives right out of the gate. I approach it from more of a conversation.

If you have a sense of how you might want to approach this, great. If not, I've got ideas, happy to share suggestions. We can try some things out.

I find that that is really helpful for helping someone move through. It could be maybe they just need calendar blocks — I'm a big believer in calendar blocks, my calendar is usually blocked out every single day with what I need to do. But maybe it's something totally different. Maybe it's just setting a timer. Maybe it's actually moving into a to-do list where they have everything marked out, and they're just getting lost in whatever it is that is on their plate.

I like to just start with that conversation, putting as little or as much structure around it as they want, letting the employee guide that, and then we can course correct from there.

Jen Leading with curiosity, like you said. I hear you saying that over and over again.

I'm really curious about what you said about time blocking in your own calendar. Do you do that the day before, or a week at a time?

Elyse A little bit of both.

At the end of the week I do a weekly review, and I look at the week ahead, I look at my meetings, I see what is going on, and I think of what are the things that are on my to-do list. If I have areas in my calendar where I can pre-block things, I will. I try to keep some days relatively meeting-free so that it's more deep work and I'm less context switching. So I will do that preemptively.

I don't try to do it for my entire week, because then everyone looks at my calendar like, well, where can a meeting go? You need to stay flexible for any meetings that pop up. But setting some time aside on a weekly basis I find helpful.

And then on a daily basis I do it more from a "how did I spend my time" reporting standpoint. So I can go back through and say, okay, I've spent eight hours on this project collectively this week, or whatever the case may be.

Jen Do you do that by titling the calendar event and then searching for that title?

Elyse I use colors for different types of work. All of my people management and one-on-ones are one color. If I'm in the queue still, my queue work is another color. Project work is a different color.

Jen Oh, this makes me so happy. I love it.

Do you look at this at the end of the week and review, and write down this is how much time I spent on things? Do you have a weekly review process?

Elyse Yes and no. This is one that's a little bit fluid.

I do go through and think about, okay, what were the things that were on my list this week? How did I progress against them? What feels most important at this point for next week? Do I need to do any prepping or planning so that I can leave for the weekend feeling more or less like I can check out and get a break? That brain break is really important to come back Monday ready to go.

But it's more of a light process right now. I go through and think, do I have blockers that I need to work on unblocking? Is there anything that I'm anticipating coming up in the next week that could be a blocker? And then how am I progressing towards the things that I'm working on? Or is there any opportunity for me to get more efficient, or do I need to change anything around in my approach?

Jen And for your weekly review, for any cadence for you or for your team — how do you celebrate wins?

Elyse For the team, just celebrating it in our support sync. We have an internal Slack channel, we celebrate there. We also have an org-wide kudos channel. Those are all really good spaces to celebrate the wins.

I also do a monthly support report, so anything that we've accomplished at the monthly basis goes in there for the whole org to see and celebrate with us.

On an individual level, I think it just depends on the person. One of my first questions I ask in our first one-on-one is, how do you like to receive recognition? Is it public or private? Because some people are on one end of the spectrum or the other. And the last thing I want to do is have someone who's a private person get their name shouted from the mountain tops, because it doesn't feel so good and it kind of takes away from that celebration. So any individual praise is done with the individual's preference.

Jen How do you keep track of people's preferences? Do you have a doc for each person, kind of like Harriet the Spy?

Elyse I do. My notes are in-depth for each of my teammates. And the people that I work with too — anyone who I interact with on a regular basis, I just keep notes on.

And for my employees in particular, I have the little matrix that I set up, so I know and can keep that nice and visible for myself as a reminder of how everyone prefers to work, so that I can really tailor my approach to that specific individual.

Jen If you had to boil all of this down to one mantra for support leaders about time management and working with your team, what would that be?

Elyse I think it would be twofold, but it is that leading with curiosity lens. It is getting curious about yourself, and it is getting curious about everyone else around you.

Because the most important piece of time management is that we are working effectively on the things that matter. And so to do that you need to understand yourself, and you need to understand the people around you, and the things around you in a business context. So just getting really curious, I think, is the big thing I'd leave folks with.

Jen I love that, and I've seen that over and over again in your answers. It's very human. It's a way to really care about the people that you work with, and yourself.

Thank you so much for being here. This has been an absolute delight, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom.

Elyse Of course. Thank you so much for having me, Jen, this was lovely. I had a really good time.

Jen That's a wrap on this episode of Live Chat with Jen Weaver. Huge thanks to Elyse for sharing her process with us.

I hope you're walking away with at least one new idea. But keep in mind that there is a Google Doc you can copy that's essentially your productivity plan, with fill-ins based on Elyse's tips and tricks. It has all the steps from this episode and it's linked in the show notes.

If you liked this conversation, please make sure to follow or subscribe so you don't miss the next one, and share it with another support leader who's maybe juggling one too many Legos.

Let's quickly review the steps that Elyse went over.

Step one, understand the shift that you're going through from individual contributor to leader. Leadership changes your relationship with time — you're more reactive, you have a broader scope, and there's less natural structure to your day. So the first step is recognizing that what you used to do just won't cut it any more.

Two, identify your time traps and tendencies. What's particular to you? Where does your week go wrong? What kinds of things are you struggling to delegate, or holding on to too many projects? Awareness is the first fix.

Third, build a planning cadence — yearly, quarterly, monthly, weekly, daily. What do you do at each of those checkpoints throughout your year?

Four, focus on what matters with prioritization frameworks like the rule of three, the Eisenhower matrix, and the quick wins first idea. All of those are in that worksheet which you can get in the show notes.

Five, coach your team through their own time challenges. Don't prescribe to them what to do, but ask questions, starting with awareness and active listening. Then you can design with them personalized strategies — calendar blocks, timers, to-do lists. Whatever you work out together will be the best solution for them.

Step six, say no without burning bridges. If you can lead with curiosity and context, then you'll be able to understand the ask so you can explain your reasoning for saying no. And if possible, redirect their energy toward a better aligned opportunity.

Finally, seventh, make recognition intentional and personalized. Celebrate those wins in public or in private based on each person's preference, and keep track of it. Strong relationships like this will make hard conversations in the future easier.

Again, thanks to Elyse, and thanks to our sponsor Supportman. Please check out supportman.io — if you're using Intercom, it's an amazing level up. And I hope to see you back here next time for the next episode of Live Chat with Jen Weaver.