Juggling Glass Balls

In life we are always juggling our priorities and our time.? As a leader you could be juggling ALOT of balls.? But you have two distinct kind of balls that you are juggling, there are glass balls that will break if you drop them and there are rubber balls that will bounce back if you drop them.? As a manager your people are your glass balls.? You cannot take your focus off them, because if you do, you may drop them, and they could break.? Everything else is a rubber ball, you still need to juggle them, but they aren’t as fragile as your people.? Rubber balls can be so many things and will change depending on what is important to growing your people at a specific time.? They can be operational issues, calls with the back office, internal interviews, calls with cross divisional partners, paperwork and so on.? And again, they will change, there is no black and white guide to what you can and should say no to and reschedule.? But I do know this, your people, and your focus on them cannot be rescheduled or pushed off.? That is why we are in leadership to grow our people.

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Here is some advice on how to focus on those fragile glass balls.

• Make sure you have made your expectations crystal clear for them.
• Hold them accountable to those expectations.
• That may require you to ask them to update you daily on certain things.
• That also will require you to make time to watch them work and be side by side with them for coaching.
• Be consistent with your follow up, make sure it happens regularly.
• CARE about your team members.

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In todays world it can be so easy to think everything is the most important thing, we have more being thrown at us, being asked of us then ever before. But a lot of those things will bounce if we drop them, but that isn't so with people,? so please take great care of those glass balls.