One of my clients shared a success formula that has worked for his team. It’s by no means a “be all, end all” recipe, but certainly one that can be adapted for your employees.
The elements of the formula are: technique, strength, and practice.
I attended a meeting of an organization whose board I serve on. I was in the back of the room, and seated behind me were two disgruntled people who were loudly dissing everything that was reported during the meeting.
During the Q&A portion of the meeting, these people went a few rounds with the moderator of the meeting, until one of them stood up and shrieked an acerbic comment. After this drama, she declared, “I’m a communications professional and I know I’m right.”
How would you rate yourself on asking for help?
I’m not talking about being a slacker and asking others to do your job. Instead, this is about chipping away at your “I can do it all” mentality and gaining benefits from someone who is willing or even eager to help you.
I’ve been working with a leadership team where three out of four people are aligned around organizational goals, while the fourth is singing to the tune of his own agenda.
Although this leader is valued in his role, if he doesn’t work to achieve alignment with his colleagues, over time it will infect the leadership team.
Sometimes you just don’t know when your leadership makes a difference for someone. I witnessed one of these situations with a young colleague, who was sharing a story about an interaction on her team.
When I asked her if she realized the impact of her specific action, it was clear she hadn’t thought about it. Although she was genuinely pleased, it almost seemed like the surprise effect of my pointing it out was more thrilling than what she had actually done.
How prepared are you for the unexpected. “Life happens” – and doesn’t it always seem to do so at the most inopportune times?
You can perfectly plan your schedule, and then life inserts itself, throws you off base, and leaves you bewildered about how this could have happened when you were so well organized.
There are days when so much is going on that everything seems blurry. When this happens in the workplace, people can get distracted by the dangerous combination of chaos and minutia and miss important things. Lack of clarity can lead to one big blur.
When this happens to you, it’s important to regain focus and clarity as soon as possible.
A few years ago, one of my clients hosted a bowling outing as a morale/team building activity for her company. We laughed about the experience of bowling especially if you don’t play it often. She recommended that it’s easier to play when you use a lighter ball.
Of course, when I heard this, I thought about how often we do things the “hard way” in the workplace, when using a “lighter ball” would make life so much easier.
Last time, we looked at four areas of focus as a foundation for good time management when you’ve been promoted into a new managerial role. To review, these include managing priorities, determining needs of your new director reports, managing projects, and fitting in with the pace of the environment.
Today we’ll look at a way you can plan and manage your time through determining the level of importance and urgency for your tasks. This method went into broad based use from Stephen Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.
To set and attain goals is an important process for nearly all high-achieving leaders. Whether you go through a formal process to set and monitor goals, or informally record your aspirations, the desired outcome is the same.
People typically identify tasks or activities as the stepping stones for goal achievement. For example, if you want to achieve a certain revenue number in your department, you can divide that number among your employees resulting in a goal of x dollars per employee.