As each project is unfolding, stay on top of things and correct or redirect when necessary. This motivates colleagues (who don’t feel abandoned) and helps you catch problems early on. Recognize key milestones, such as completed steps and sub-components, along the way. Obviously, inexperienced colleagues will need more direction, tighter controls and oversight than seasoned ones.
Read MoreDid you ever look around in amazement at people around you that don’t appear to be all that extraordinary yet have achieved extraordinary things? These are people who have greatly succeeded in business, in politics, in the arts, in sports, or in some other space, but in many respects seem pretty much on par with you (or even inferior to you) in terms of their core abilities and talents. How is it, you wonder, that they “made it” in such a robust manner while you continue to middle along in relative obscurity, earning a pedestrian income and feeling somewhat unfulfilled?
Read MoreDelegation offers many benefits to managers, direct reports and organizations. And yet it remains one of the most misunderstood and underutilized techniques in leadership practice.
Read MoreRecent years have witnessed a rise in software tools specifically designed to aid collaboration through video meetings, real-time messaging, and content sharing. Collaboration software, also known as groupware, can help any team, from the smallest startup to the largest enterprise, to share content quickly and easily, in the form of documents, messages, videos, and other formats. Collaboration tools offer, among other things:
Organize discussions into channels, making them easier to maintain and follow
Support voice and video calls, streamlining communication
Integrate with various popular apps (Google Drive, Trello, Dropbox, etc.)
Provide easy navigation through documents and other content
Time-blocking works since it helps us to focus on getting our work done right then. This is critical because our brains need constant focus when we’re at work. Absent focus and discipline, Parkinson’s Law will likely kick in. This law states that our work expands to fill the time available for its completion. So, a task that should require 20 minutes may take double or triple that if we don’t focus on it and instead just “let it happen.”
Read MoreIn an earlier blog post, I shared some reasons that so many leaders do not delegate more often and presented arguments why they should. I also spelled out seven steps to more effective delegation. In this article, I will delve into who to consider when seeking to delegate tasks and projects.
“The way you delegate is that first you have to hire people that you really have confidence in. You won't truly let those people feel a sense of autonomy if you don't have confidence in them," Robert Pozen said.
Though the term delegation may be defined consistently as the shifting of responsibility for a task or project from one person (usually a leader or manager) to another, the situations in which it is applied can vary greatly. And in many cases, the leader is doing something very different than delegating.
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