The intentional leader’s playbook: reclaim your calendar, refocus your energy
Does this happen to you? It’s late in the workday and you’re preparing to log off when: ping! An unexpected meeting suddenly appears on your calendar, scheduled for early the next morning.
You’re not alone. I work with many leaders who deal with this regularly. Most organizations now give everyone access to each other’s calendars. It’s efficient in theory, but in practice, it can be highly dysfunctional, because it allows anyone to drop something onto your day without your input.
Most leaders I coach don’t need more hours in the day, they need a calendar that reflects what matters most.
When we look at their schedule together, we often find a week full of other people’s priorities: back-to-back updates, recurring check-ins that have lost their purpose, and very little time for actual thinking, relationship-building, or strategy, the things that truly deserve their focus.
Your calendar is your game plan. It shows how you’re going to invest your time and your energy, so you need to be intentional with it.
Your calendar is your operating system
I am always amazed by the number of seasoned leaders who don’t block out time on their calendars to do their real work: strategic and creative thinking, and problem-solving.
If your calendar is 100% reactive, it sends the wrong message to your team.
I worked with a client recently who told me they play catch-up on evenings and weekends because they are so busy in meetings that they can’t actually do any real thinking.
They’re going from meeting to meeting, responding to emails, and reacting, but the most critical work, deeper thinking, problem-solving, and forward thinking, gets pushed off.
If your calendar has no white space, you are signalling to your team that deeper thinking is not valued.
Audit your meetings
You can’t make a family budget without first knowing where your money is going. Ditto for your work calendar, let’s audit your schedule and see where you’re spending your time. Print your calendar for next week, or view it in week mode.
Now, I want you to label each event with one of the following categories:
Inform: One-way updates or status sharing
Decide: Requires alignment or decision-making
Innovate: Problem-solving, creative or forward-looking
Connect: Relationship-building or development
Do you see a pattern? Ask yourself: where am I over-invested (endless updates?), where am I under-invested (connecting, thinking, coaching?), and which meetings could be shortened, combined, or delegated?
What I often find with my clients is that they see very few entries of the last two categories, innovate and connect, in their calendars, which are the most important.
Effective leadership comes from your deeper thinking and how you’re connecting with people.
If you spend 80% of your week on ‘inform’, you’re managing, you’re not leading.
Redesign your calendar for maximum impact
Once you see the patterns emerge in your calendar, you can restructure it. I suggest creating themes for your days. Monday might be a strategy day. Tuesday could be more team-focused, and Wednesday for stakeholders, and so on.
The second thing, and this is really important, is to protect deep work. Schedule two-hour blocks, phone off, door closed and label it “Strategic Thinking” so your team understands the purpose.
This is actually why you’re getting paid, when you’re actually thinking, being creative and solving problems without disruptions.
Mid-level managers have the hardest time with this. They’re accountable to their teams and their own work, yet they’re also fielding constant requests from leaders above them, people they feel they have to respond to immediately.
It’s also essential to build in thinking space between meetings. It can be just 10 minutes. If you’re in back-to-back meetings, when are you supposed to think, process what just happened, or recover, mentally and emotionally, from the curveballs that get thrown your way? That space allows you to compose yourself and be present for the meeting that follows.
Make room in your calendar for connecting outside their organization. This can be a short 20-minute weekly coffee to start networking and build relationships, setting you up for future success.
Lastly, try to start and end your meetings intentionally: Begin with “What’s the outcome we want?” and end with “What will we do differently?”
Some meetings may be redundant or unnecessary.
Role model the change
If your team sees functional calendar behaviour from you, they’re more likely to do the same. Start your positive modelling by not jamming meetings into your team’s calendar, and let them see Strategic Thinking time blocked off on your calendar. Don’t forget to celebrate someone who cancels a redundant meeting!
The calendar is an easy place to get lost. You don’t need to overhaul everything at once. Start by reclaiming one hour this week and making it the priority meeting on your calendar.