How to ‘wear many hats’ at work
Choose the right hat for the occasion.
Entrepreneurs have always needed to wear many hats and you can also find the phrase in startup job descriptions for different job roles.
Now it seems to be more common for almost everyone (including the effects of extra workload from the covid pandemic).
People who wear many hats use different skills in their role. They perform a variety of tasks or work across many different functional areas.
I have always sought to work on different projects and a wider scope than usually my specific job role requires. So this phrase resonates with me. Although I also understand there is a potential risk of burnout if it’s not managed well.
I have been thinking more about role-definition at work over the past few months. As I support managers in their hiring processes, I also noticed how they often want their team members to wear many hats.
The common theme is VARIETY. Variety is everywhere in knowledge work. It is a by-product of the work environment of continual change. I enjoy variety because it keeps work interesting by working on different tasks and with different people.
The challenge with variety is that it can get in the way of focus and productivity.
My key question is: How can I work with the variety and constant change in the work environment and still achieve focus?
Awareness
Being aware of what you’re doing in the moment is difficult. It might feel strange at first and complicated.
By noticing what hat you’re wearing, you can match up the jigsaw pieces of your skills to the task at hand. Then you can create a way of working to be at your most productive.
Figuring out which task I should do next is a challenge.
How do you know what to prioritise? What skills do you need for different tasks? How do you approach specific tasks?
All these questions involve micro-decisions every day when we show up at work.
We either spend huge amounts of brainpower deciding on the most efficient way to prioritise tasks. Or we don’t think about it at all. This is a risk to our productivity.
I found that to be most effective at work I must have awareness of the context, skills and the mindset required for my tasks.
I try to use timeboxing to construct my work days. It’s useful to allocate specific timeslots for tasks. You remove the constant micro-decisions about which item on the to-do list you should tackle next.
Timeboxing helps you know what task you should be doing when.
To determine how you should be doing those tasks, think about which hat you’re wearing in the moment.
There are different types of hats. Here are some (common types). Which hats do you need/use at work?
Types of hat:
Functional hats (marketing, sales, logistics, engineering…)
Situational hats (strategic, managerial, execution…)
Skill-based hats (communication, coding, data analytics…)
Assess your wardrobe:
At the end of each day/week:
- Make a list of your key tasks (if you practice timeboxing this will be easy to get from your calendar)
- Add smaller tasks (eg. emails, types of conversations with people, calls etc. that may not be in your calendar). Be as granular as possible (eg. instead of ‘emails to team’, having ‘email to persuade CEO to signoff a new project’ and ‘email to give direct report instructions for their task’ will have different requirements in skills you’re using and the way you are showing up to do them).
Ask yourself:
- which hat were you wearing?
- what made you do that task well?
- what were you doing/saying that contributed to the result?
- which hat could you have worn instead?
This process helped me to:
- Get clarity on what’s needed from me and my role (which is the no.1 most important thing for an employee to be effective)
- Notice which hat to wear for different situations
- Be more aware of my hat preferences — some of the times I am wearing the wrong hat is because I find it less comfortable doing something in that way. It was useful to realise my own discomfort was getting in my way.
I would love to hear if you feel like you have variety in your role, you need to wear many hats at work and what you do to stay productive.
And if you are a manager or lead a team of people wearing many hats, read these recommendations for helping your employees be successful.
