Middle-management football is the devil. At least, that’s what I came to believe after busting my anterior cruciate ligament during a game. For just six minutes of play, I had one operation, two-and-a-half months working from home, five months on crutches and just over a year of physiotherapy.
But apart from the bits that hurt, I was able to take a lot of positives from the experience—improved self-discipline, strengthened friendships, breakfast in bed… I also found that some things, unlike my knee, get stronger after you break them. I had to rethink and rebuild my work routine and way of communicating to allow me to go to physiotherapy and work more from home.
It turns out this helped me be far more productive than I had been before the injury. As a result, a few weeks after the injury, I was promoted to managing editor and took on a growing team of writers.
So here are the five lessons about leadership and management that I learned after being forced to re-evaluate how I got things done.
1. Make More Effective Communication Your Priority
Maybe counterintuitively, less is more when it comes to communication. When I was laid up, I resisted the urge to constantly call and email people, because I knew it would be distracting and unproductive.
According to a Work Management Survey by Wrike, 46% of people say they rarely or never leave work meetings with a clear action plan or knowing what to do next.
Combat this by making sure you set short meetings with a clear agenda ahead of time and then summarize the action points after the meeting. Things move a lot faster when people know exactly what they’re doing.
2. Do Not Micromanage
No one likes a backseat driver. Unfortunately, too many so-called leaders end up micromanaging their teams. While the responsibility is ultimately yours, you have to trust your team. If you don’t, what are they there for anyway?
In a sense, I feel I was lucky being promoted after my injury. There was no chance I could be a micromanager—at least, my snooping power was severely limited by my absence. In any case, I quickly learned that a trusted team is a motivated team.
It is important to give people under you the power to make decisions (and get them wrong). Of course, mistakes will happen, but that’s how people get better at what they do, after all.
3. Be Flexible
With a leg that couldn’t bend, physical flexibility was impossible, but the other kind was abundant.
My bosses were extremely trusting with me; I was able to work when I wanted, how I wanted, and I got results for my clients. By affording the same to my colleagues—journalists who occasionally wanted time from the office out to pursue breaking stories—it meant team members weren’t watching the clock, they were more concerned about keeping the clients happy and producing strong work
According to the study Work Schedule Flexibility: A Contributor to Employee Happiness?, worker happiness, productivity and retention correlates with freedom to pursue personal projects.
4. Give Your Mind Positive Space
Positivity involves a lot more than being cheerful in the mornings (that’s good, because I'm definitely not). I was able to treat my thrice weekly physiotherapy sessions as a way of clearing my mind, exercising, even meditating.
By thinking of this time as a way of creating space, I was a lot less stressed, I became a better problem solver, and over time felt like I was able to mentor and manage my team more effectively.
Meditation is proven to improve cognition, reduce stress and anxiety and increase productivity. No matter how busy you are, no matter how stressed, find time to disconnect during the day. It will help you relax, find clarity and solve problems without adrenaline or undue haste.
5. Don't Make Yourself Indispensable
If you went away for a week or a month, could your team get the work done?
Perhaps that's an uncomfortable question. If the answer is a definite yes you might be left wondering if you add any value at all. If the answer is squeaky no, then it means you're doing a bad job creating processes and systems that work—also, your team is probably lacking autonomy (see point #2).
So what is your job? Certainly, to take responsibility for the smooth running of your department, continual improvement, motivation and incentives, discipline, mentorship and so on. But on no account should you think that your team relies on you alone to succeed.
Long term, you set the objectives, steer the ship, but short term—other than your own specific tasks—you must trust your team to get the work done and also hold them accountable when they don't.
While I certainly wouldn’t ever recommend rupturing your ACL, I would start thinking more about the leadership role you play and how changing your routines and systems could benefit your team communication, motivation and eventually send your productivity through the roof.
George Chilton is creative director of content marketing agency Hubbub Labs. You can follow him on Twitter at: @designerlessons and Hubbub Labs at: @hubbublabs.