INNERGISE!

The Prime Minister has had a challenging month, receiving plenty of negative comments relating to everything from deportation to pasties. He was also accused of being lazy and his attempts to have ‘date nights’ with his wife and do the school run (good on him!) hit the headlines. This highlights a challenge we all face when it comes to prioritising activities and having the biggest impact we can have in the working environment, without work taking over everything we do. Getting it right or wrong impacts our effectiveness and our wellbeing and happiness.

Whether we are in a leadership role or not, we are required to manage our day/week/month in a way which inevitably requires choices and prioritising. Every choice has an impact. Recently a Director of a professional service business chose to focus even more time than usual on a particularly demanding client, and as a result failed to address a performance management issue which needed their attention (a disruptive and lazy member of the team). The client was happy; meanwhile another member of the team became really disenchanted with the business accepting and putting up with the disruptive member of the team. They looked elsewhere, got offered a job and handed in their notice. Not a good outcome!

What typically happens is this:

• Clients and bosses wanting things get our attention ,energy and effort (even if they don’t always need it as quickly as we think)
• External and internal meetings are diarised and so we quite rightly  -assuming they are well run and add value – attend them

What happens is the discipline and diarising we apply to external and internal meetings is not applied to other responsibilities that we might have which are seemingly less urgent. Examples of this include:

• Team coaching and mentoring
• Business improvement initiatives
• Thinking time
• Personal development
• Planning
• Delegation
• Reviewing  how we do things or significant events
• Developing strategy

If we procrastinate or fail to do any of the above, the consequences can be huge. Look at the real story above as an example. The Director had failed to diarise and deal with the performance management issue, in favour of the noisy client, and lost a member of staff as a result. Let’s take another, fail to diarise quality planning or strategy development time will inevitably lead to Titanic like icebergs in our path at some point.

So here the four steps to take to become even more effective:

1. Review your role and list the people who rely on you (including those at home).
2. Identify the ‘hats’ you have to wear (business development, team leader, father/mother etc.) and map out on a piece of paper which of the hats is not getting sufficient head time i.e. which of your many roles is not receiving enough quality time.
3. Develop the habit on a weekly/monthly basis of stepping above the crazy day to day business of emails and phones and diarising those tasks that are really important and can have a significant impact.
4. Treat those diary entries with the same respect as you do an internal or external meeting – say no to other things and colleagues who want that slot, and turn off your email and phone for the duration of the time you need. People expect you to be tied up at times – the world won’t fall over without you for an hour or two!

Filling our week with the really important activities, and fitting the smaller less important activities around these is what highly effective people do systematically.

Here are comments from delegates who have attended Innergy’s leadership programs and developed the ability and habit to disciplined diarising:

“As a result of being on top of my work, that was the first time I managed to enjoy a holiday.”

“My inbox is manageable for the first time ever.”

“I am so less stressed at home and my partner’s loving it.”

“I have achieved much more meaningful work and feel better about my job.”

“My team feel valued and listened to for the first time.”

“I now manage my Blackberry – wow!”

For further information or tips contact us on info@innergy.co.uk