How Effective Leaders Get Results

Leadership often means doing stuff no one else wants to. Broaching touchy topics. Making unpopular decisions. Accepting responsibility. Charting a clear path in a haze of uncertainty. Questioning the status quo. These aren’t exactly easy (or glamorous) undertakings — especially if you’re relatively new to leadership and accustomed to letting others take charge. But the good news is you don’t have to dramatically overhaul your behavior to take more initiative.

You just need to make a few small, doable tweaks to your regular planning and communication habits. This article will help you make changes, whether you are leading collocated teams, remote employees, or a mix of both.

1.?Most leaders are asked to do more than is humanly possible.

If you pretend you can handle anything and everything that comes your way, you could end up not only burning out, but also failing at your job.

To tell if you might be falling into this common trap, ask yourself:

How do you start your days? Do you sit down at your desk and simply react to whatever seems most urgent? Every role requires a certain amount of this — for example, maybe your team is responsible for resolving customer complaints as they crop up. But you can’t afford to consistently get so bogged down in the crisis du jour that you lose sight of bigger, more important parts of your job, like ensuring your team is working toward key goals, or diving into a longer-term, high-profile project early so you have enough time to do quality work.

To keep your priorities straight, set aside a few minutes at the end of each workday to make a list of your 3–5 most important tasks for the next day

2.?Clearly and explicitly communicate your expectations.

Think your team knows exactly what you expect of them? Unless you’ve talked about your performance standards head-on with each of your direct reports — and done so effectively — don’t be too sure. They aren’t mind readers.

Admittedly, it can be nerve-racking to level with your team about standards they may fall short of or that earn you the label “tough.” But excellence rarely happens out of the blue. If people are going to achieve it, they need to know what it looks like — and what it doesn’t look like.

With this in mind, take some time to capture, in writing, how you define great performance for the different roles on your team. Shoot for accuracy and specificity.

?Instead of just “reliable,” try: “Meets or beats deadlines at least 80 percent of the time.”

?or:

?“Completes work at such a high level, it requires an hour or less of a senior team member’s time to review.”

3.?Follow these steps to become a feedback pro.

Ever find yourself on either the giving or receiving end of a surprising feedback revelation? A stellar direct report thinks you don’t like her work, for instance, or your manager rarely reads your emails because they’re so long?

If so, you’ve learned that feedback is too important to let circumstances alone dictate when or if it’s shared. You and your team need regular feedback to know where you stand with each other and what areas need work.

A good feedback culture is built on trust, so if you don’t already have a strong foundation of trust with your team members, boss, and peers, you’ll need to build one.

? Shift your mindset to focus on the main purpose of feedback: to learn. It’s common to get hung up on the challenging aspects of feedback — the discomfort of telling someone they’re underperforming, for example, or the sting of discovering you’re not viewed as favorably as you imagined. But the short-term pain is almost always worth the opportunity to grow — or, at the very least, enhance your understanding of someone else’s perspective.

? Pay closer attention to less obvious forms of feedback such as body language, in meetings or on video conferences. Feedback is all around you, all the time. If your manager shrugs and avoids eye contact, maybe you should ask a follow-up question to learn more about what’s not being said. If your team chronically checks their phones during meetings, maybe you’re focusing on the wrong issues or unnecessarily hijacking people’s time. And if a peer manager reaches out to you for advice, maybe you’re more respected and appreciated than you realize.

? Consciously provide and collect feedback by explicitly scheduling it into your routine. You can start by setting a quota for the number of times you give feedback to each person on your team. Once you have that down, you could create weekly, monthly, or quarterly reminders in your calendar to focus on feedback in other ways

4.?Schedule a regular phone or video chat with team members who work remotely.

If you have team members who don’t work in the same office as you, it’s easy to assume “no news is good news” and passively let days slip by without much, if any, contact.

Many have found themselves working remotely when it didn’t use to be the norm. Remote workers are sometimes more productive because they aren’t getting distracted by random conversations with co-workers. But the lack of regular communication can take an emotional toll and leave them feeling out of the loop.

Choose video or phone chats over emailing or instant messaging. That way, it’s easier to read your remote team members’ expressions and moods. It may also help to clearly convey why you’re checking in — not to be a micromanager, but because you want to make sure they’re heard, supported, and informed

Your organization’s success depends on strong individual performance.

No matter how competent your people are, they won’t generate sustained and lasting results unless they’re able to effectively lead themselves; influence, engage, and collaborate with others; and continually improve and renew their capabilities.

FranklinCovey provides leadership-development solutions to help individuals and leaders at all levels. Our world-class learning solutions— delivered Live-Online, On Demand, or Live In-Person—are designed to build exceptional leadership skills throughout your organization.

For more info email us at [email protected] or visit our website www.franklincoveyme.com