Good managers know who sends in what tickets. Being off doesn't change that.
I enjoy taking time off like everyone else. I'm not checking in every hour. I'm not hovering. I'm not available for every question that could wait. But awareness doesn't clock out. I know what tickets have come in. I know who's tried to reach me. I know my department well enough to know when something needs me and when it doesn't.
Recently, a VP ticket hit my queue during PTO. I didn't wait for someone to flag it. I saw it, I assessed it, and I handled it. Nobody called me. Nobody asked me to. I just knew it mattered. I wanted the case handled properly and quickly. It doesn't matter my team was on — I trust them — but I had a few minutes of downtime so I did it. Could my team have handled it? Yes.
That's not a failure to disconnect. That's what good leadership looks like from the outside of the building.
The Invisible Work
Not everything deserves your attention on a day off. Here's how I decide.
Rank matters. A VP ticket hits different than a standard user request. That's not politics — that's reality. Senior relationships take years to build and minutes to damage. When I see a VP in the queue my mind immediately goes to triage — is the user able to work? Is it software, hardware, internet, permissions? Is my team even the right place for this? If it belongs somewhere else I redirect them to the right person fast. A good manager knows those relationships matter. Getting a VP bounced around or left waiting is not an option.
Urgency matters — but not always in the way you think. Will the world end if I don't respond right now? That's the honest question. Someone can't access a CRM we don't manage — that's not urgent, that's a redirect. But a user who can't access a project management tool they use once a week can wait. A user who can't access the system they're presenting to a client in an hour can't. Same ticket. Different stakes. Urgency isn't always loud. Sometimes it whispers.
What This Actually Looks Like
I'm living my life — and I'm aware of my team's responsibilities when I am away.
When I have a few minutes — waiting somewhere, downtime between plans — I'll scroll through my e-mail and ticket queue. Not obsessively. Just enough to ask one question: is anything dependent on me? Would I be a blocker?
That's the habit. Everything else flows from it.
If the answer is yes, I figure out what I have available. I don't always bring my laptop on time off. If I'm at home and able to jump on without disrupting my day or my plans, I handle it quickly and get back to my life. If I can't, I send a quick instant message to whoever is handling it — ask if they need help, give them the context or advice they need to move forward. The work gets done. My day stays intact.
There's a difference between being on-call and being a good leader. On-call means you're reactive, tethered, waiting. Awareness means you know your organization well enough to recognize when something needs you and when it doesn't.
Most IT leaders get this backwards. They stay plugged into the noise — the routine tickets, the questions their team can answer, the things that could wait a week — and they miss the signal. The VP. The outage nobody flagged. The thing that needed judgment, not just a response.
Away Isn't Not Paying Attention
There are two extremes that destroy a team’s autonomy. The leader who fully checks out leaves the team feeling exposed — fearful of making a high-stakes mistake with no safety net. The leader who never checks out implies the team is incapable of functioning without them. Both are forms of ego.
The leader who manages PTO on their own terms is practicing something different. Intentional presence. It proves you’ve built a system that works — but you haven’t abandoned the humans running it. You aren’t hovering because you don’t trust them. You’re keeping a rhythmic eye on the moments that matter because you’re still their safety net.
When you handle something from a backyard or a beach it’s not because you’re a martyr. It’s because you’re the Chief De-escalator. You’re telling your team: I trust you to handle the 99%, but I will never let the 1% bury you. That creates a kind of psychological safety a fully disconnected leader can never provide. Your commitment to them isn’t tied to a clock or a physical desk — it’s tied to the mission.
PTO is not ignorance. It means when something matters I handle it when I can — on my terms, not in reaction to someone else’s panic. I’m not reacting to the noise. I’m absorbing the things that matter so my team doesn’t have to.