Many family business owners and leaders have no real intention to make the lives of those around them miserable. Yet many times, I find, that they manage to achieve just that. In various instances the root cause is due to the fact that many family business owners and leaders are actually poorly trained managers that create unnecessary work and stress. One of the top three skills they need to improve upon is “managing time and delegating.” Please believe me when I say that poor time management is a huge factor in bad management. Bad time management is normally the result of the lack of mindset that sees planning, systems and procedures as important, with the only focus being “getting the work done”, where the end justifies the means. Many times I see family business owners and leaders not in control of their own time – with the end result being the overloading of their teams, creating unnecessary emergencies and neglecting to provide essential support.

First of all, family business owners and leaders need to understand, that if they struggle with time management, this will surely have a negative trickledown effect. It will likely create a culture whereby people either have to find a way to avoid you or even worse the family business owners/leader ends up debilitating the people who work for them – with possible severe consequences even from a mental health perspective.

Below are some key areas where family business owners and leaders are mostly likely to fall short in their time management — and ways to overcome them. After all, there is always opportunity for growth and change.

Fear of losing control – Many family Business owners and leaders are afraid of losing control. Their plate is overflowing, the become the main bottleneck of the business, decisions keep being postponed. yet they want to micromanage every aspects of the business or to be more precise they want to micro manage every aspect of the day-to-day operations. They constantly work in the business and not on the business. This means that family business owners have no control on their time, demotivate all persons around them and always feel drowned & helpless as they operate very much like a hamster running on its infamous wheel. Family business owners and leaders here need professional external help to get them off their bad habits.

Delegating Work Without Any Concept of Your Team’s Capacity
As a family business owner and leader, you should assign and delegate to your team members. But there comes a point at which the people who report to you will be at or beyond their capacity. When you don’t recognise when they’ve hit their limit, you run the risk of overloading your team, which can lead to unsustainably long hours, reduced work quality and in some cases, paralysis because they feel set up for failure. To avoid these issues, family business owners and leaders need a system to capture what individuals are doing, what you’ve delegated, and how much capacity they have left. You can do this by having a shared task list for each direct report that you add to every time you assign a new task. Then, review these taskS regularly with your team. You could do this during weekly staff meetings or in one-on-one meetings. if your team members raise concerns, don’t brush them off or expect them to “just deal with it.” Help them by guiding them on how to prioritise, set boundaries, and be more efficient.

“Everything is an Emergency” Syndrome
Creating unnecessary emergencies because family business owners & leaders are not able to plan and have thus neglected to tell their teams about a task earlier, is fast-tracking them for burnout. Yes, there are times when last-minute turnarounds are unavoidable. But in all other situations, employ these strategies. As soon as you’re aware of a new task, ask yourself, Could I delegate this? If the answer is yes, do so as quickly as possible. For example, you could immediately forward an email with a note asking your direct report to set up a time with you to discuss how to get the item done. For larger projects, there should be some overarching roadmaps outlining key deliverables and milestones. If these don’t exist, work with your team to create them. You’ll want a clear, consolidated document of deadlines, what needs to be accomplished by those dates, who is responsible for completing the work, and who needs to sign off on it before it’s finalised. These roadmaps will then give everyone insight into where they are in the process, and what needs to be done for everything to come together on time. Additionally, put a recurring reminder in your calendar at the end of each quarter or month to review the roadmaps and any other upcoming commitments. This helps you to delegate commitments before they become emergencies. It’s infinitely better to let people know weeks — or even months — in advance that you need something done instead of springing things up on people. People cannot operate with emergencies all the time!

Never Being Available
Most people don’t like being micromanaged. But they do want to know that they can access the support of the family business owners & leader when they need support and direction. Integrate this into your schedule by making — and keeping — regular one-on-ones with your team members so that they feel like they have dedicated time to ask you questions, get feedback, and align priorities. You could meet with someone as frequently as multiple times a week or as little as monthly based on their needs. Mark them as recurring events and strive to cancel them as infrequently as possible. Additionally, have “office hours” where your physical or virtual door is open to your team. Use this time to get through simple tasks like email so you can easily redirect your attention when someone uses this time. And if anyone pops in asking for help, give them your full attention immediately. Let your team members know how to contact you for emergencies and be as responsive as possible. You don’t need to always be on call for your team, but there can be times where they really do need an answer as soon as possible.

Withholding Positive Feedback
It can feel time consuming to respond to every team member about every project. But a little appreciation can go a long way. Gallup data shows that among those individuals who received meaningful feedback in the last week, 80% were fully engaged. If in the rush to keep up, you struggle to acknowledge your team, start small. It could be as simple as confirming receipt of a deliverable with a simple, “Thanks so much. I’ve received it and will review.” This can help prevent your team members from becoming demotivated when they send you things and hear nothing, assuming you don’t care about what they’ve done or that they’ve done poorly. When you have had a chance to review something and feel someone did a good job, give positive feedback either in person or through a message. Sometimes you’re so focused on checking a task off your to-do list and getting on to the next thing that you can forget there’s an individual on the other side of the email attachment. Never assume people just know that you appreciate their work. Finally, where appropriate, give credit where credit is due. Take time to reflect for a few minutes before presentations on who were the most significant contributors to the project. If something was a team effort, remembering to say so can greatly reduce the probability of your direct reports feeling resentful.

I can never stress enough the importance for family business owners and leaders to get their own time in order, by not micromanaging, by delegating appropriately, by planning ahead as much as possible and by supporting & being available for your team/s. Doing so will make family business owners & leaders less stressed and your team members will thank you for it.