15 Time Savers for Busy Leaders

Every week I work with leaders who complain bitterly that they simply do not have enough time to do all that “leadership” stuff. Frankly, they are right. Before they can do their real jobs, they must stop doing the things that waste their time. How about you? What percent of your week do you spend on the work of leadership? If you are not happy with the answer, consider making some changes.

Stop doing what others can do, and start equipping others to be responsible.
Stop covering for non-performers, and start holding people accountable.
Stop correcting errors, and start creating clear goals and expectations for what error-free work looks like.
Stop mediating conflicts, and start building team member relationships.
Stop expediting, and start analyzing and fixing work processes so that it is no longer necessary to expedite.

Here are fifteen things you can do today to set yourself free from endless time-wasting activity:

Listen to your staff. Stop and give people your full attention when they speak. Paraphrase to indicate understanding of content and emotion. Look for the facts, and avoid making judgments about people. Get to know your staff. Discover their needs, desires, and motivations.
Listen to your leadership. Talk with those who have entrusted you with leadership so you understand their priorities and expectations. What do the owners and Sr. Managers expect from your department?
Listen to your customers. Listen to the needs and wants of customers, clients, and patients. Listen to your internal customers. Discover what other departments want and need from you.
Build bridges. Swallow your pride and forge alliances with other departments and individuals to become more effective, and model relationship building for your team.
Clarify roles and responsibilities. Take time to talk and agree on who does what, and what is expected, from every individual.
Clarify goals and targets. Ask for commitment to specific, measurable indicators of job performance, in terms of productivity, customer satisfaction, financial performance, and high respect on-the-job behaviors.
Delegate effectively. Use a thorough checklist to delegate stewardship for job assignments. Talk and agree upon results, guidelines, resources, accountability, and the importance of the assignment to the team.
Teach, train, and model. Spend time showing others how to do things that currently eat up your time.
Give specific behavioral and job performance feedback. Tell people about what you see and why it matters. Share observations about what they did and why it was helpful, or could be improved upon.
Stop tolerating non-performers. Set clear boundaries for job performance and let performers, as adults, choose whether to work within those boundaries, or leave.
Encourage teamwork. Invest time in team planning, team discussions, and team-based problem solving.
Analyze and improve work processes. If you notice repeated patterns of problems, talk with the people involved and find the root cause. Then fix the root cause.
Create “line-of-sight” to the organizational mission. Make sure every person on your team can describe how their specific job contributes to the mission/purpose of the organization.
Create seamless handoffs. Build good relationships with other departments.
Exercise courage. Each of these steps takes a lot of guts. People will not necessarily applaud you if you get some things “cleared up”, but in the long run the high-performers will appreciate it, the poor performers will quit, and team results will improve. Have faith and hang in there if people push back and question your leadership. Offer them good business reasons for every decision you make. Ask for their commitment. But also get comfortable with the fact that some people will not get on board and will leave, and that is OK.

Gene C. Mage is a leadership Author, Speaker, and Syndicated Business Columnist. For more ideas for improving your leadership, visit www.makingitwork.com.