| I would say asking for a fixed time commitment is not reasonable, that’s not vacation. However, as a manager it can be hard to truly disconnect and take vacation without either (a) missing a big decision and not being happy with the decision that was made, or (b) delaying the rest of the team by asking them to wait to make a decision until you get back. So your options for this are: (1) Have a designated substitute person who will cover your responsibilities while you are out. As a manager this is an important part of your job actually, succession planning. You should be teaching and grooming someone to replace you when you leave. This should be a person who you trust and who you work with a lot, so whatever decision they make will be okay with you. Then you have to be zen about it and actually accept whatever decisions they make while you were out. (2) Try to pull forward any decisions that you can, so that everything is settled before you leave. There’s a lot you can probably decide in advance, but obviously that doesn’t help with the random unknown things that can pop up at any time. If you do both of the above then it really is reasonable to disconnect. You should be able to tell your boss your goal is to truly disconnect, and he or she should respect that. If your boss pushes back on these things, then you should seek to understand why. Is there a specific meeting or a specific conversation that can only happen during your vacation and your boss really wants you to be there for it? I don’t think it’s crazy to join in a specific conversation during a longer vacation if it’s something that you really care about and it can’t move. Ask yourself if it’s gonna drive you crazy not knowing what decision was made until you get back :) However, as everyone else has said, you aren’t really disconnecting if you have some things from work you need to check on during your break. This is a legitimate struggle for managers, and it means that sometimes you take partial breaks where you get some rest but not a full vacation because you can’t completely cut out. It’s OK to take partial breaks sometimes, but not ideal, you also need full breaks. Therefore is my final suggestion is this: As a manager you end up scheduling your vacation time around your work. Meaning, you probably know when the team is likely to have a stretch where nothing major is going to happen, and that is when you should take a true disconnect vacation. Obviously you can’t predict the future perfectly, so you need the first two techniques to compensate for whatever unknown things may pop up while you are gone. However, as you get used to being a manager you will start to have a good feel for when you really need to be around and when you don’t, and the best thing to do is to take vacation when you don’t really need to be around. You’re not an IC anymore, so you can’t just peace out and leave your manager to deal with it ;) I hope this helps. Good luck, and welcome to being a manager :) |