The Tuesday Evening Test
How much of your working day really belongs to you?
The Tuesday Evening Test is a ten-minute self-test for leaders. It shows how much of other people's responsibility has piled up on your own desk over the course of an ordinary working day.
A tool from “Als Mensch führen” by Thomas Knoop
The Camino de Santiago is a pilgrimage route, and a Dutch pilgrim put that to use. She had watched me in the middle of making someone else's problem my own, and asked whether we were not, after all, on a religious path. Then she recalled one of the Ten Commandments, thou shalt not steal, and extended it by half a sentence. You should not steal other people's problems either, they are theirs after all. Until that evening I had considered myself helpful.
The thought is uncomfortable because it describes behaviour that leaders are rewarded for. Whoever takes on a responsibility usually settles the matter faster and more cleanly than the person it belongs to. The cost shows up in two places. The competence that could have grown does not grow, and your own day fills up with tasks that other people are actually accountable for.
The Tuesday Evening Test makes that second part countable. It takes ten minutes, needs a sheet of paper, and works on any ordinary weekday evening. I recommend Tuesday: far enough from the start of the week and not yet coloured by Friday.
First round: who carries the responsibility?
Write down what occupied you today. Not the meetings, but the topics, meaning whatever you actually thought about, decided or discussed. Ten to fifteen entries make an ordinary day.
- 01
List the topics
Write down the day's topics in any order. One keyword per line is enough.
- 02
Assign the responsibility
Ask two questions about each topic: who raised it? And who would actually have to take the next step? Note both names. The second answer is the decisive one.
- 03
Count
Count the lines where the next step actually belongs to someone else and has landed with you anyway.
That number is the result of the Tuesday Evening Test. The fact that many topics were raised by others is not a finding but leadership: dealing with other people's topics is the work. It only becomes a problem when their responsibility stays on your desk as well. That is the transition the test makes visible, the point at which support quietly turns into taking responsibility over.
Second round: what is in your hands?
Take the same list again on one of the following evenings. This time accountability no longer matters, the reach does. Sort each topic by whether you can actually act on it or whether you merely think about it. Stephen Covey coined the images of the circle of influence and the circle of concern for this. The economy, a board decision, the behaviour of someone you do not lead, all of it sits in the circle of concern, causes worry and offers no handle.
For every topic that falls into the circle of concern, one question helps: what have I done so far to make it better? If the answer contains an action, the topic does belong within your circle of influence after all. If the answer consists of thinking, being annoyed and waiting, you know where the energy went.
Two questions for the day after
The Tuesday Evening Test takes effect only when it changes the following day. Two questions are enough for that.
Ask the first of yourself, the moment someone brings you a problem: whose competence grows if I solve this now? The answer is uncomfortably often the same.
Ask the second of the other person, instead of offering a solution: what do you need from me to move forward here? You will find that the answer is rarely “the solution”. Usually it is an approval, a piece of information, or simply backing. You can engage closely with a team member's problem without taking the responsibility for it away from them.
The Tuesday Evening Test makes two principles from “Als Mensch führen” visible in everyday work: responsibility stays with the other person, and your own energy belongs where you actually have influence.
Where the Tuesday Evening Test comes from
The Tuesday Evening Test is one of nine practice sections from my book “Als Mensch führen”. It answers the question of how much of someone else's responsibility you are carrying. Why people take it on in the first place, what they gain from it and what it costs them fills 141 pages. The book is written in German.
If you would rather not sit with it alone
An honest result is uncomfortable, and your own blind spot stays blind even after the second round. If you would like to go through the result of your Tuesday Evening Test with someone who is allowed to disagree, an introductory conversation is the simplest way to start. It is free and commits you to nothing.