1. The CEO tells you that she needs to see you for an hour – today. Which of these do you cancel to make time?

a. A meeting with a new client. He signed a contract last week so it’s not like he’s going anywhere
b. Your team’s Christmas lunch. If you can't eat dry turkey on the corporate card, no one can
c. Marriage counselling
d. Nothing. You alway leave some wiggle room in your diary, so with a bit of judicious shuffling, everything works out

2. You’re juggling deadlines. Which of these tasks gets put on the back burner?

a. Completing your department’s quarterly sales figures. That bloke in accounts can’t really need them by Tuesday
b. Staff bonuses. Your decisions are already two months late so another week won’t make a difference
c. Your appointment to see a doctor about the weird growth on your lower leg. It only bleeds when you wear tight trousers, after all
d. You avoid getting into situations that involve last-minute panics by carefully monitoring the progress of all your tasks and making adjustments before the situation gets out of hand

3. Happiness is:

a. Diverting all external calls to voicemail while you and your entire team spend a day on a training course
b. Discovering that you can add appointments into other people’s Outlook diaries without telling them
c. Spending the day playing golf with a major client and the evening with your team at a strip club
d. Knowing that everything is under control

4. How often do you come up with new ideas?

a. I don’t bother. I read a CMI survey that said 72 per cent of managers don’t think that the development of new products is high on their organisation’s agenda, so why make the effort? It’s not like I’m paid to be creative
b. Oh, all the time since that bright kid joined us on the graduate programme. Don’t tell him I said that though – he might get a big head
c. I had a great one just last week. Well, it was more my flatmate’s idea, but she works at a different company so I am sure she won’t mind that I told my manager all about what they’re doing. It’s not like they’re a direct competitor. Well, sort of, I suppose. Leave me alone
d. Regularly. I make a point of challenging my team to come up with innovative new products and approaches. Of course, I make sure they get the credit for their ideas

5. Have you been on a time-management course?

a. What, are you crazy? How would I find time for that?
b. Yes. One of my juniors booked it for herself but I decided that I’d benefit more so I made her run a couple of job interviews that I had arranged for that day and went on the course in her place
c. I want to but I can’t find one that runs in the evening or at the weekend and I don’t want to give up valuable work time to do it.
d. Yes. I picked up a couple of helpful tips, but mostly it was simply good to learn that I was already on the right track

6. What does the war for talent mean to you?

a. When our staff leave we poach people from our clients
b. Blah blah blah talent management blah
c. I guess I’ll just have to shoulder some extra work when everyone else quits
d. It’s a serious issue, which is why I and all my staff have personal career plans and we know where we fit into the company’s overall succession and talent management plan

Quiz answers

Now, assuming that you’re not reading this before you’ve done the quiz, here is our assessment of your results:

Mostly a: You do know that your company needs to make a profit if it’s to keep paying your salary, right? Your family is important and it’s good to respect your colleagues’ right to time off, but don’t forget to pay attention to the work part of work-life balance.

Mostly b: Employees are valuable resources, not your minions. They may well quit if you don’t start paying a bit more attention to what they need and not quite so much to what makes your life convenient. Managers should take a consistent yet flexible approach to time commitments that affect others in their team.

Mostly c: Managers have a right to a personal life. Some even suggest that managers with personal lives are happier and therefore better both to employ and to work for. Making time for your spouse/friends will also decrease the chance that they will leave you and thus hamper your ability to concentrate at work.

Mostly d: You work for the CMI, don’t you?

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