Efficiency Secrets for the Beginning Leader

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Yesterday you were an ordinary employee, and today you should lead a team of several people. Colleagues do not yet see you as a boss, and demand already as a leader. A few tips will help you turn the situation in your favor with minimal loss to you and those around you.

You and subordinates

The first thing you will encounter is the unwillingness of subordinates to perceive you as a leader, the desire to "out of friendship" release uninteresting or difficult assignments on the brakes.

The employee must understand why he is doing something

If he does not see the goal and does not share it, then most likely he will not complete the task or will do something more interesting and creative at work, but not at all what you need now. And still nobody canceled procrastination.

At the moment of setting the task, it will not be superfluous to clarify whether your subordinate understood correctly what kind of result you need. Remember, your employee does not have access to all meeting materials in which you discussed in detail the strategy and product concept. You give the employee only the squeeze, the final decisions. Some things that seem obvious to you, you may forget to convey.

The employee must understand in what time frame something needs to be done

If there is no deadline, then there is no demand for the unfulfilled task. For creative tasks, the deadline of which is difficult even for a manager to estimate, and for large tasks that require a lot of time, it is important to outline intermediate checkpoints. Remind the employee about them not on the day of the interim result, but a couple of days before it. Thus, you will give him additional time to prepare and help to “save face”.

What if the task seems to have been set correctly, but the result does not correspond to your ideas? It makes no sense to look for the guilty ones, it is better to figure out what actions will help to avoid a repetition of this situation in the future.

You and the boss

The second difficulty of a novice leader is the unwillingness of your superiors to take off some of your daily tasks from you. It will be especially difficult the first time when you have already taken on new responsibilities, but have not fully transferred the old or old responsibilities have already been transferred, but the new employee still needs your advice and support. Typically, this adaptation period takes about 2 months.

Be patient and agree on a specific amount of time, say from 14:00 to 14:30, which you will devote to the questions that the newbie has accumulated. Of course, with extra urgent questions, he can turn to you outside of this time.

It is worth resorting to timekeeping to identify clear time sinks. Then you have to pluck up the courage and go to the chef with the calculations. If an hour of your working time has cost more, then it is reasonable to delegate some of the routine operations to your subordinates.

You and you

Leading others is difficult, and leading yourself is even more difficult. It is important to be proactive. A proactive person takes responsibility for his own affairs, tries not to postpone unpleasant tasks for later, he determines the direction of his activities and development. This helps not only in work, but in life in general.

Be confident. In the product that you create, in people, in yourself.

Remember that friendship has limits when it comes to work. You are responsible for the result as a whole, but you do not have to do everything for your subordinates and constantly double-check. It makes sense to sometimes let go of the reins and give employees the opportunity to solve some problems on their own.

New duties inevitably require pumping of planning skills: now not only personal tasks, but also assignments for subordinates are scattered for a week. How to understand what needs to be done first and what can be pushed onto the far shelf? This issue is especially acute when there are many tasks, they are diverse, and require different amounts of time to complete. The Eisenhower Matrix is very helpful in prioritizing.

There are many applications that help you collect all your tasks into one program. The main thing is to remember that if we devote enough time to planning our own and others' work, then we will be able to complete all tasks in a fairly calm mode.

There is another valuable rule about the order in which tasks are performed. First of all, you should complete the launching tasks - those without which your colleagues from other departments cannot start their work. If the layout designer is expecting a verified layout from you, which will go to the printing house tomorrow, and the CEO asked you to file a report today, then you should start with submitting the layout first.

How to do everything: 4 simple tricks

If for operational work you use instant messengers that obsessively blink at the bottom of the screen, and you also receive an e-mail through which you receive less urgent tasks, it can be difficult to concentrate. In such a situation, several tricks can help.

1. Start your working day earlier and work in the morning, when there is no one else in the office, there is a pleasant chill and you can only hear the measured hum of a sleeping printer.

2. Work a day or two from home if the workflow allows.

3. Enter with your colleagues the right to hide in the "hole" if the presence in the office is nevertheless necessary. In advance, a day, or even two, announce that on such and such a date you are in a "hole", so it is highly discouraged to distract you.

Turn off instant messengers, check your mail in the morning or in the evening, at 5 o'clock. This way you will not miss the questions that require your attention and will concentrate on the task as much as possible.

At first, you will be distracted, forget about the "hole", not understand why this is needed. Over time, when at least a quarter of colleagues try this method on themselves, the employee in the "hole" will become inviolable.

4. Buy noise canceling headphones if you're the lucky open-space guy. Yes, they cost a lot, but you will be spared the noise curtain that your office neighbors inevitably create.

You have already taken the first step: become a leader. Responsibility has grown, but work has become much more interesting. Write in the comments what difficulties you encountered. Let's try to find a solution together!