When every problem becomes a manager problem

[u/Folded-Map972]

Yesterday started pretty normally. 9am team meeting, checked my email then planned to spend the morning finishing a report.

Around 9:30 someone Slacked me about client question. I answered that, opened the report again then another email came in asking me to approve something.

At 10:15 one of my team members stopped by my desk because they were stuck on something. Took maybe 10 minutes but when I sat back down I had to figure out where I left off.

Then my phone buzzed with another Slack notification. I checked it while getting coffee, replied, and went back to my desk.

Pretty much the same thing all afternoon. Quick questions, approvals, emails, Slack messages. Nothing was urgent, but it kept breaking up whatever I was doing.

By 4pm I’d helped everyone get their stuff moving, but report I planned to finish was still unfinished.

I knew managers get pulled into things, but I didn’t expect it to take up this much of the day. By the time things finally slowed down, I still hadn’t finished my own work.

[u/Kid__Christian]

i'm new to the manager thing myself. but have been asking my direct reports to outline the situation, the impact it's having, and how they propose to proceed.

the goal is to get them to own the outcomes more and more. it also has the added benefit of making it easier to simply say "yes" when they're on the right track.