by Mandy Green, Busy Coach
Helping your assistants succeed isn’t just about lightening their workload—it’s about creating a culture where everyone wins. When your staff is empowered, they deliver results. And when they’re delivering results, you’re freed up to focus on leading your program with clarity and confidence.
To be blunt, most assistants are not reaching their potential because of how they are being managed day by day.
They are at the mercy of doing what their head coaches need them to do. For the most part, when an email gets sent, or they stop by because something needs to get done, it is expected (depending on the coach) that the assistant stops what they are doing and gets after what the head coach needs done immediately.
Not only do assistants have to deal with the head coaches’ interruptions, they get a dozen other little interruptions every hour with new emails pertaining to other responsibilities they have coming in, phone calls, text messages, etc.
If you do the math for these poor assistants, they literally can’t focus on one thing for more than 5 minutes.
There is just no way that a head coach can expect their assistants to get everything they are expected to do done, when they are constantly being interrupted.
Many assistants will speak up if they need a faster computer, or a better software system, or for other “hardware” things like that. But what coaches have told me, especially young assistants, is that they are not comfortable sitting down and telling their boss that they need more quiet time to work, or they are having a hard time working because they are constantly getting interrupted, or that they hate when you accumulate a week’s worth of recruiting emails at a time and then forward a them all at once, etc.
So today, I want to talk to you about 2 simple changes you can make to help your staff be more productive, help them provide more value to you, and make their success easy.
Set Email Boundaries to Boost Productivity for You and Your Assistants
Establishing set times for checking email can be a game-changer for both head coaches and their assistants. Instead of reacting to email notifications as they pop up, designate specific chunks of time each day to focus solely on email, such as 30 minutes in the morning, 30 minutes after lunch, and 30 minutes at the end of the day. This focused approach not only makes you more efficient at processing and responding to messages but also reduces disruptions for your assistants. When you limit email checks to two or three times a day, you eliminate the habit of constantly forwarding or pinging them with new messages. This creates larger blocks of uninterrupted time for your assistants, allowing them to focus on their work and contribute more effectively to the team’s success.
I got this great email from a coach after a conference I spoke at about this point.
Thanks for this! While I generally think I tackle my inbox pretty well and don’t get overwhelmed I pulled some great tips for myself in regards to limiting the “rolling email forward chain” that I was doing to my assistants for recruits and now limit it to morning forward chunk and after lunch forward chunk, which they have already said THANK YOU! to and it’s only been one day!!
Elizabeth Robertshaw, Boston University Lacrosse
Are you allowing your assistants time to concentrate? Are you guilty of always stopping by for impromptu conversations rather than scheduling regular one-on-ones? Have you discouraged your staff from blocking off quiet work periods on their calendars, telling them instead to be accessible to each other at all times? If so, you might be impeding your staff’s productivity. While coaches you work with of course need to be accessible and you don’t want to ban spontaneous conversations, coaching is a profession I believe where you need to balance that against your assistants’ need to focus. If you’re constantly interrupting their workflow or insisting that others be allowed to, their inability to deeply focus will be reflected in your team’s output.
Your success as a head coach doesn’t have to come at the expense of your sanity—or your staff’s.
By implementing just a few of these strategies, you can set your assistants up for success and reclaim your time as a head coach.
If you’re ready to fast-track this transformation, email Mandy at mandy@busy.coach. She will provide you with the systems, strategies, and support to make it happen seamlessly.