Leadership Viewpoint

Asking friends what wastes their time revealed that we really do have control over the biggest offenders. The responses I got from them were the computer and the television. Clearly this is a choice to lose time! Here are some ideas about how to enjoy them without wasting time.

Computer
Intended to be a tool and occasional source of entertainment, people become addicted to the games, or sometimes get caught up with fixing irrelevant details of various publications. Hours pass, and the next thing they know they’re behind schedule. If you’re like me, you get into whatever you’re doing and don’t notice the time. My solution is simple; set an alarm. On the computer, I use Outlook to notify me. This way, I spend a planned amount of time, whether for work or for fun, and my time is used consciously. Recreational use is fine, so long as it is done in moderation. This is a simple way to ensure that it doesn’t get out of hand.

Television
This is perhaps the biggest time waster in the U.S. today. I know, you only watch PBS and one other show; yeah right! Americans spend an unbelievable amount of time in front of the television, most of it recreational. It seems like a good idea at the time, yet if you were on your death bed, there would be so many things that you didn’t do because of the time spent in front of the TV. With that in mind, decide consciously how much time you are willing to devote to TV, and also decide what else you really want to do. Plan your time consciously, and the end result will be far superior to the mindless hours that many people spend with their TV. Learn a hobby, visit with family and friends, travel, build a second income; the list is endless, and you can do it!

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They come in all shapes and sizes. People and behaviors that demand and then waste our time seem to blanket the day. What to do?

Junk Mailers
They hit us at home, at the office, in snail mail, via email, and even in our blogs. They put flyers on cars, and load up our newspapers with their brochures. We are inundated, and the effect is that we tend to look past the messages that we would actually like to see because they are lost in the shuffle.

Eliminate – Don’t even set the junk mail and flyers on the table. Sort it immediately and file it directly in the garbage can.
Systematize – Consistently employ spam filters, junk mail filters, and visually scan out the junk.
Delegate – Even if you don’t have a staff, delegate physical organization to specialists. If this doesn’t come naturally to you, find an ‘organizer’ and have them set up your work space for efficiency.

Phone Interruptions
Some people prefer phone calls for simple issues that don’t require discussion. The problem with this is that it interrupts, and likely doesn’t match your schedule or priorities. Then, once they get you on the phone, they talk, and talk and talk!

Eliminate – Tell repeat offenders that you really prefer email, or that you cannot spend time with them during the workday, or, when feasible, to go away altogether (depending on who it is!).
Systematize – Caller ID is a huge help with this. Screen your calls. Then, when it is convenient for you, respond to their voice message via email whenever no discussion is required.
Delegate – Often the people who drive me crazy are the favorites of one of my colleagues. If that happens with you too, see if you can have the colleague act as the primary point of contact.

Improving our use of time takes constant vigilance. Send consistent messages to those around you and do everything possible to clear your life of the distractions that deter your efforts.

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Think about the people that you choose to hire. Now think about the ones that you would rehire. My bet is that they meet Bob Burg’s criteria (Endless Referrals) of being people that:

You know
You like
You trust

This, essentially, is the point of business networking. If people don’t know you and cannot find you, they can’t hire you. Hence, at the most superficial level, you must get your name out there and raise awareness. This is by far the easiest of the three criteria.

If they know you and can’t stand to be near you, they will not hire you. Therefore, the ability to get along with others is a necessity. There are a myriad of sources to learn how to get along with other people and how to network, yet many people do a very poor job of it. They arrive at a meeting, talk about themselves and stuff unsolicited sales materials into people’s hands. To connect with others well, ask them about their successes and interests. Get them talking about, and show an interest in, positive aspects of their lives, and they’ll think you’re a wonderful conversationalist. Importantly, don’t talk about yourself unless you are asked. Additionally, be careful to give them appropriate personal space. In the U.S., that’s 2 to 3 feet away from their face. People that creep in too close make others uncomfortable.

Once they know you and like you, you have a chance for them to learn to trust you. Trust takes more time. At a business level, trust is based simply on doing what you said you would do when you said you would do it at an appropriate quality standard. It sounds basic, yet pitifully few businesses do it consistently. Before a businessperson will spend money with you, they may want to see you in action a few times. This makes volunteer work with community and professional organizations very important. It is not sufficient to just show up on occasion. Moreover, you must contribute to the greater good and demonstrate your skills, character and dependability.

For more information on this, check out Bob Burg’s book, Endless Referrals. It’s simple, clear and concise.

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Perhaps the most challenging trait for fast paced leaders is working with others who are paced differently. We’re not referring to people who aren’t peers with respect to intelligence, rather we mean that the pace or style of their thought processes and communication are different. When a leader expresses frustration, whether verbally or through facial and body gestures, with somebody else’s slower or just different processing style, communication can shut down and become uncomfortable for everyone present.

From the fast paced person’s perspective, the slower paced style may seem pedantic and boring. It may even feel as if it will take the process off track by interrupting the natural flow of thought and ideas. For the slower paced person, the fast pace may appear to skip important steps, taking on unnecessary risk and leaving people out of the process. The fast pace may feel like pressure and unnecessary rushing.

In reality, it’s when the two styles can work together successfully that the best, most comprehensive solutions typically come to the fore. Often, it takes a third style, someone that can facilitate the two more extreme styles, to assist the process. It’s ideal to structure meetings on important issues accordingly whenever possible. When it happens in unplanned situations, it helps to remind yourself that the diversity of approaches may lead to a better solution. Then accommodate your colleague’s style and pace as gracefully as possible, and clearly communicate your appreciation of the differences.

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Think about the very best presentations you’ve ever witnessed. What did they have in common? Now recall a really poor presentation. How was it different? My hunch is that the great presentations had the following in common:

Enthusiasm or passion – the speaker seemed to really care about what he or she was talking about. It was conveyed via gestures, voice emphasis and substance.

Connected to you – the speaker spoke in terms that you could relate to, about a topic that was relevant to you in some way. It was neither above nor below your intellectual comfort zone. The odds are that you also agreed with some aspect of what the speaker discussed.

Simple and easy to follow – the speaker didn’t clutter his or her case with extraneous information or marginal points. Rather, the talk was focused and clear. Points seemed to flow appropriately and hang together well.

Clear visual aids – whatever was used was large enough to be seen, and clear. It actually supported what was said rather than the other way around.

Now let’s recall that really poor presentation. The odds are that at least three of the four items listed above were badly compromised. Perhaps the speaker’s nerves or speaking style got in the way of enthusiasm, or worse, the speaker was forced to talk about a topic he or she didn’t believe in. If it didn’t seem to make sense, the issue could have been one of organization or clutter. Maybe it was just not a topic that you could connect with.

The next time you are asked to make a presentation, keep it simple, enthusiastic, clear and connect it to your audience. Preparation is the path.

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Most of us have worked for people who have control issues. This is the person who supposedly assigns responsibility for a task, and then is constantly ‘butting in’ to the leader’s efforts as the job progresses. Assuming that the person who has been put in charge of the project or task is competent, some of the behavioral differences between ‘oversight’ and ‘controlling’ include:

Oversight
Regularly scheduled checkpoints and milestones
Controlling
Popping in uninvited and asking specific questions

Oversight
Asking if there is an area where assistance is needed
Controlling
Initiating assistance where none has been requested

Oversight
Referring routine questions to the person assigned the responsibility
Controlling
Answering questions about the project personally

Oversight
Guiding the project leader through any emergencies
Controlling
Taking over to ensure success in an emergency

Oversight
Setting communication and progress norms with the project leader
Controlling
Calling/emailing and requesting information ad hoc out of curiosity

If you have an assignment where the senior person is exhibiting the ‘controlling’ behaviors, it is incumbent on you to formally initiate an agreement on a better way forward. It is fair and reasonable to let others know how you like to be managed and how to obtain your best performance.

If you see yourself in any of these controlling behaviors, don’t be surprised if you find that one of the following occurs:

1. Tension and avoidance from the person to whom you gave the assignment
2. Lack of initiative from the person to whom you gave the assignment

Competent people naturally want to have room to operate as they see fit. Cramping their style and ‘butting in’ causes stress, and is often noted as a contributing factor to turnover in exit interviews. To avoid this situation, establish and stick to an oversight plan that will provide you with adequate timely information to be supportive (and manage up) without taking over or ‘butting in’. Understand too that this is more art than science. As such, ask the project leader how he or she would prefer to be managed. Each person is different, so try to accommodate that and you’ll go a long way toward successful oversight.

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We hear about the wonders of multi-tasking pretty much everywhere. We are all supposed to have a dozen things going on simultaneously, and everything will be done quickly and efficiently, almost as if there were twelve people, each handling one task. How’s that working out for you?

Of course, we all juggle multiple priorities – they are part and parcel of life today. There is, however, no substitute for the sheer power of focusing on a single, important task and really attacking it voraciously, especially when there has been some reasonable amount of warning and prep time. That’s the reason senior management teams hold retreats, and why we pay lots of money for market researchers to conduct ‘focus groups’. It’s a powerful and effective way to accomplish a goal.

Imagine if you could put the power of focus into the most important issues that you are facing. Envision how much you could accomplish and the incredible relief you would feel. Consider this secret weapon of great time managers. They multi-task the little stuff and focus on their priorities. To obtain ‘focus time’, you must get rid of the little nonsense that eats up your time. My battle cry for those issues is:

Eliminate———–Throw low priority items away.
Systematize——–Great for repetitive tasks like reports.
Delegate————Absolutely everything that anybody else can do.

For the important issues, make the world go away. No phones, no email, no interruptions, and a clear workspace. You may need to enlist the support of colleagues, family, friends, etc. to make it happen. Then give yourself an hour or two to attack the topic. It’s amazing what you can accomplish. Do it regularly and you’ll outperform the vast majority of businesspeople.

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As I reviewed my site statistics, I found that more people are interested in this topic than any other, so I figured I’d share a bit more on the topic. I laugh thinking that my stay-at-home mother never would have worried about this topic – truly this is a sign of the times. And the truth is, I gave her a hard time over the holidays last month when she marveled that her son had cooked a dish for Christmas dinner, while simultaneously taking it for granted that her daughter-in-law did pretty much everything else (while also working full time). My mother’s retort was that she takes it for granted that a woman will successfully multi-task!

My suspicion is that my mother’s thinking is commonplace, and that this type of thinking continues to put tremendous pressure on women to perform at unrealistic levels. As women try to live up to these unrealistic expectations, we become frustrated and place pressure on the men in our lives to help us, and then they feel the heat too. Of course, in households with a solitary adult, especially those with children present, the challenge of balancing work and home is often magnified. So what to do?

First, manage expectations. Communicate realistic expectations to those around you. This means sharing, with some clarity, exactly what you expect of both yourself and those around you. This applies both on the job and at home.

Second, set clear goals for each area of your life. There’s an excellent article (if I do say so myself!) that will walk you through this process here: http://www.adv-leadership-grp.com/Goal_Setting_Article.html.

Third, plan your time accordingly. This means scheduling fun, work, chores, down time, etc. People often tell me that they don’t think they should have to ‘schedule’ fun. Guess what? When they don’t schedule it in, they often don’t make time for it. If it’s important, be sure to actually schedule it.

Fourth, review what you’ve laid out every month or so, make any necessary adjustments and communicate those adjustments to everyone that matters in your life. Continually communicate and manage expectations. The more you communicate, the higher the odds that others in your life will find ways to support you and accept the resulting outcomes.

Of course, all this took your time, so go do something relaxing for yourself!

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As a young manager, I knew pretty much everything. It was beautiful then, having such certainty over so many issues – and being so open and willing to share my knowledge so freely with anybody that would listen! It’s incredible to reflect back on how much certainty I have lost over the years; how much more gray the world is than the black and white clarity I used to see.

Academia, textbooks, articles, even snippets from a daily blog seem to present the world as if it were concrete and predictable. Reality is quite different from that. There are real, live people that each of us care about who may be hurt by our clear, sharp opinions. We watch pundits on TV, who are paid well to violently disagree, attack each other verbally, and too many young managers use them as role models. They then enter the workforce and express themselves accordingly. The ensuing carnage isn’t pretty.

Real leadership must include picking our issues, and then expressing our viewpoints with sensitivity and respect. It’s far more art than science, and observing a great leader is much like viewing a piece of art. It leaves you in awe and full of respect and appreciation. If you have such a leader in your life, you may choose to model your behavior accordingly. If you are not yet garnering that reaction from your colleagues, you will no doubt want to reconsider your approach over time. When an issue is truly important to me, I often stand back and evaluate the stakeholders, those who will be impacted by my opinion and stance. I try to imagine the way it looks and feels to them before I publicly express myself, and then, if and when I open my mouth, I do it with their perspective well considered.

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Perhaps one of the most challenging spots a leader can find him or herself in is joining a group that is already in progress. The whole point of bringing in ‘new blood’ is to shake things up. Yet, a group that is already formed has norms, often unspoken, that make it nearly impossible to join it successfully without distressing at least some colleagues. If you are a people pleaser, your natural human instinct to belong must be tempered so that you can make a positive impact.

A wise boss told me years ago that employees are uniquely valuable during their first week of work – before they gain internal ‘perspective’. At this point, they bring a fresh viewpoint, devoid of bias and full of naiveté. It is at this point that they have more in common with normal consumers than they ever will again. Hence, it is critically important to listen to them closely during that first week, and equally important for them to speak out, no matter how daunting that task may seem at the time.

As leaders, we must listen well, and also clearly communicate those first, naive; impressions to existing teams. If business as usual were going well, they wouldn’t need us. Our role is to open our mouths, and hopefully their minds, to express new questions and approaches. Some guidelines for this situation include:

1. Whenever possible, pose ideas as questions.
2. Credit the team members for the accomplishments that have already occurred.
3. Make it clear that your objective is to build on their foundation, not discard it.
4. Listen actively, providing plenty of verbal and visual feedback so they know you really listened to them.
5. If and when you are convinced that you are right, pick your issue and stick to it. That is why you are there.

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