DELEGATE

Jan

2023

Tips For Time Management

I was facilitating The Maxwell Leadership Game with a group of people recently, and everyone was sharing what they do to prioritize their time. As an entrepreneur, I know that time is money and that prioritizing my time is essential to staying productive and growing my business. However, I also understand that this isn’t always easy to do – we’re all busy, and it can be hard to know where to start when making the most of our time.

Below are some tips for prioritizing your time so you can make the most of your day and overcome the overwhelm to continue moving toward your goals.

Set Goals and Deadlines

At the beginning of each day, write down the top three goals you need to accomplish and deadlines to help you stay focused and on track. This will help you prioritize your tasks and ensure you keep sight of what you need to accomplish.

Utilize a Calendar

I was resistant to this idea for a long time, but as life got more complicated, it became essential. Whether this is “old school” or digital, use it to schedule your tasks and appointments so that you can stay organized and ensure you don’t miss any important deadlines. For example, I use a digital calendar that my wife can see both for accountability and so she can add family appointments, so I keep them in front of me.

Plan Ahead

I mentioned setting goals that keep us focused on the big picture. When working with clients one-on-one, we often discuss how they can plan ahead. For example, taking Sunday night or getting in early on Monday morning will help you plan your week. Some people have created an end-of-the-day routine and beginning-of-the-day habit to plan their day. Whatever the way, it will help you stay on top of things and ensure you’re getting the most out of your day.

Take a Break

Just the other night, my oldest son and I were discussing this. Breaks are essential for your productivity and your mental health. So take a few minutes each day to step away from your work and recharge. This can be anything from walking to listening to a podcast – whatever helps you relax and reset.

Delegate Tasks

Feel free to delegate tasks to others if you’re overwhelmed with your workload. If you don’t have a team, find people such as virtual assistants and use resources such as Fiverr.com or upwork.com to get help at reasonable prices. You don’t have to do everything alone – take advantage of the people and resources available to help you get things done.

Prioritizing your time is essential to staying productive and growing your business. Which of these tips do you need to apply this week? Need more detailed help and tools, contact me and let’s discover any way I can help you improve your self-leadership in this area. As we lead ourselves better, we will be even more effective in leading our teams. Lead Well!

Aug

2022

The Four D’s of Empowering

“Empowerment comes from teaching others things they can do to become less dependent on you.”

Ken Blanchard

I was facilitating The Maxwell Leadership Game with a group of leaders in an organization. During the training we entered a discussion about how overwhelmed they felt. At one point I asked them how many of them could train somebody else on their team to do some of their work.

Most every hand went up. Next, I explored if they were doing it. Soon they started explaining reasons they couldn’t or haven’t done it.

Empowerment is a great idea, but we may not always truly be empowering someone. Below are four approaches to empowering we may use with our teams. Two of them do more to disempower than empower others.

Dump

I once worked alongside a team and the leader would tell his team a task to do and then leave. Since I was not directly reporting to this leader, I would learn their frustrations. They would be confused because they did not know what success looked like for this task.

As a leader if you dump on your team chances are they feel they can never meet your expectations. Dumpers drop the task with no expectation clarification and then return frustrated because the team didn’t do it the right way. But they did not know what the “right way” was.

Dominate

With this type of empowerment we may think we are helping, but unintentionally we frustrate our team. When we take the posture of dominate, we provide the “what” and ALL of how we want something done. Another word for it . . . micromanagement.

As leaders if we tell our team what we want done and then swing to the opposite extreme of dumping by giving every single step then we disempower our team. We may think we are helping them, but the unintended consequence is the team either feels we do not trust them or controlled. Also, we are failing to equip them to do the job without us and possibly learn better ways to complete the job.

Direct

With this approach we are stepping closer toward matching the definition from Blanchard above. This is an improvement from dominate. Maybe this is a new task for someone. They may need more details on what to do or not do.

As the leader give them broad steps they could take, but not all the details. This gives them the tools they need, but they have the freedom to come to you with questions while figuring it out on their own. This stage will involve balancing asking lots of questions to help them think into how to complete the task with telling them some steps they may not know.

Delegate

Allow me to describe this at the 10-80-10 principle I have learned from others. Imagine you are building a playground for children under the age of eight. You will install a fence to protect the kids, but the playground could look very different depending on resources, creativity, and more. This is what this principle looks like.

You know what you want. Paint a clear picture at the beginning of the outcome you are looking for and key boundaries the team cannot cross. Let them go to do the work, this is the 80. Be available if they need you for questions. Near the end connect to see ways you could uplevel what they have created or help them complete it.

When we walk the tension of providing support with allowing room to grow, we create an empowering environment. It takes time and energy to do this, but this is how we develop leaders and not just order takers. Need help thinking into how you can better empower your team? Contact me for a powerful coaching session at no cost to you. Lead Well.