Do you find yourself wanting more as a manager? Are you looking for ways to stretch your leadership muscles and grow professionally?
Here are some tactics you can use to get energized and noticed by your team and others.
Boost your productivity
Productivity is not simply about time management but finding time to focus on priorities, and getting things done is part of it. Here are some tips to help you.
- Make meetings mean something. When you bring people together to meet, there should be a purpose for the meeting, an agenda and some actions. Before attending or calling a meeting make sure it’s necessary and meaningful.
- Take a disciplined approach to your day. Give yourself focused time to work on key projects that require your concentration. Take advantage of technology to pause your inbox or Slack channels while you are doing focused work. No one can multi-task and if you focus, you will get the work done faster and likely better than if you allow interruptions.
- Keep to the knitting. My hobby is knitting. Completing a knitting project takes time and concentration. The reward is a garment or object that you can show with pride. The same is true of your long term goals. Do a bit (knit a row or two) daily to make steady progress. Make conscious decisions about what you do and make sure those help you achieve your goals.
Unleash the power of your team
Leaders who find ways to help their teams achieve more get noticed and are also able to work on higher level goals. It’s a win-win.
Imagine if you were able to give five members of your team an extra hour a day to do meaningful work. What would that do for the team’s ability to meet their goals? Here are some ideas:
- Identify and remove blockers. Find out what things are preventing progress and find ways to eliminate them. You may even find that you are a bottleneck. By removing roadblocks for your team you allow them to get more done, because they're not left waiting.
- Give time back. Look for meetings that are not useful or invite only the people necessary to meetings. When someone attends a meeting, they should have a purpose for being there. You can also stop preparing reports that no one reads or collecting data that serves no purpose. By eliminating meaningless efforts, you give you’re your team time to spend on key projects.
- Find tools and processes that speed up routine work. Think about systems or frameworks you and your team haven't used before, including using AI tools. A caveat here, don’t be a hammer in search of a nail. Evaluate the new ideas and eliminate them if they don’t work.
- Take advantage of the brain trust. Your team is a brain trust. You don’t have to have all the ideas. Encourage them to bring forward their ideas and experiment.
- Don’t tolerate toxic people. Take action on people who are dragging the team down. These people may seem super productive but their achievements may be coming at the cost of team morale.
Become the best you
Now that you and your team are making the best use of your time and talents, it’s time for you to assess your growth as a leader. To do this you can:
- Take charge of your learning. This means looking for ways to develop your skills. You can do this by taking courses, reading or stretching withvolunteer activities.
- Observe other leaders. Every leader is different. Take some time to observe how others are approaching their leadership. You can make some mental notes about how-to's and how not-to's by simple observation.
- Learn from your successes and failures. After a key event or project, take some time to consider what went right/wrong, what you could have done differently and how you can apply those lessons in the future.
- Engineer your unique leadership model. Define who you are as a leader - what fits your personality, style, and what you've seen work for you. Of course, some styles and behaviours will fit you beautifully and others won’t. Experiment. Over time, you'll find that you can add to your repertoire so you're not reliant on a single tool or approach. You'll have multiple approaches to try in different situations, and you'll start to understand the nuance of leadership to help you know when various tactics apply best.
Would you like help growing as a leader? Let’s talk.
