There’s Nothing Like A Deadline To Keep You Focused!
posted on February 17th, 2010 by Robyn Pearce
I know this delegation tip might seem pretty obvious, but sometimes even the best of us miss the obvious (including me!) Today I want to encourage you to set sensible deadlines when you are delegating, communicate them clearly, and give your staff the chance to say whether they can perform to that deadline.
Your employees will love knowing they can comunicate with you directly on workload issues and you will be surprised at how the knowledge of a deadline will really maximize your employees’ potential as they set about achieving it. When you engage with your staff and set mutually agreeable expectations you are likely to get the best productivity you can out of them.
Encourage your staff to tell you if they don’t feel they can achieve a task within the required time. It is much better that you know at the beginning – at least you then have time to find another person, or renegotiate the deadline.
The very idea for today’s topic came from my assistant, Sanchia. She wasn’t feeling particularly well and was worried she wouldn’t be able to reach a deadline we had agreed for today. She came and told me about it, I realised it wasn’t really that urgent after all, and Sanchia is now going to do it by tomorrow. A great outcome!
Before I sign off I wanted to say an enormous thank you to all those people that have already signed up to attend my upcoming tour with the 3 Divas – what an amazing response we got from the last blog post!
Spaces are filling up quickly so if business profit, effective team communication and delegation are topics of interest to you, make sure you quickly secure your spot at one of our events in Auckland, Wellington or Christchurch.
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Thanks for the encouragement. Sometimes I simply add things to my staffs to do lists without gaining any type of agreement. I know we all have competing priorities and I need to respect their time constraints too. Through open dialogue I think we could most likely accomplish more. By utilizing the strengths of my entire team, not just the few I tend to “go to” I can build even stronger partnerships. Thank you for the reminder.
Hi Liz, thanks for your comment! I too have been at fault in the past of getting so delegation-efficient I have delegated everything out and left my staff feeling overwhelmed. Meanwhile I thought I was doing brilliantly at sharing the work and freeing up my own time! Good communication with our staff and colleagues is vital, and it makes a real difference to productivity when everyone understands what needs done and by when. All the best with your quest to build stronger partnerships with your team – let us know how it goes!
Hi Robyn
Thanks for this tip on a deadline. There is nothing like it to get me to put the big rocks into my container first.
I cant believe how an email that looked interesting yesterday does not even feature when I am marching to the beat of my deadline. Goes to show just how much slack I give myself. And we all know that slack never got traction for anyone!!