A leader’s schedule is a message. If you’re never available, people stop bringing you anything.

Availability is a form of communication, and being unavailable communicates just as loudly. If reaching you is difficult, people stop trying, and the first thing that stops arriving is the small early warning that would have been easy to fix. By the time something reaches an unreachable person it is usually already large. The calendar was sending a message the whole time.

Make one reliable window this week where people know they can find you, and be genuinely findable in it. Ten minutes after practice counts. When someone brings you something then, do not look at your phone while they talk.