Bossit is an early-stage leadership development start-up. The long-term intention is for Bossit to deliver bitesize leadership lessons over audio, through a mobile app. For now, we are testing the audio concept design by delivering a small amount of the content through this podcast. For more det…
Getting started Bossit’s an early stage start up with the ambition of helping you develop your professional and personal life skills. The long-term plan is to do this using bitesize lessons, over audio, in core leadership skills delivered through a mobile app. It will address topics such as productivity, communication, resilience, coaching, building relationships, team management, problem-solving, etc. It will offer short bursts of insights, tactical tips and tricks, questions to consider and activities to try. We’ll ask you to do something or reflect on something in order to get you to consider the way you approach tasks, people and problems. The lessons are bitesize, taking about 10 minutes each day and leveraging what you’re already working on in your day to day, to help you improve immediately and with minimal overhead on your time and energy. A series of sessions on a given topic will progress incrementally, building off of the previous session, to help you form habits and make it easier to retain what you learn. We welcome you to try out as many of the topics as you deem relevant. The cadence we suggest is once you start a series, that you listen to a session every work day unless otherwise advised. We would greatly appreciate it if you’d be willing to provide feedback on a series by completing an online survey. The survey has 10 questions and would take less than 3 minutes to complete. The relevant link can be found in the Episode Web Page link of every final session in a given series. Thanks for listening and we hope that you find Bossit useful to developing yourself as a better business leader.
Getting started Bossit’s an early stage start up with the ambition of helping you develop your professional and personal life skills. The long-term plan is to do this using bitesize lessons, over audio, in core leadership skills delivered through a mobile app. It will address topics such as productivity, communication, resilience, coaching, building relationships, team management, problem-solving, etc. It will offer short bursts of insights, tactical tips and tricks, questions to consider and activities to try. We’ll ask you to do something or reflect on something in order to get you to consider the way you approach tasks, people and problems. The lessons are bitesize, taking about 10 minutes each day and leveraging what you’re already working on in your day to day, to help you improve immediately and with minimal overhead on your time and energy. A series of sessions on a given topic will progress incrementally, building off of the previous session, to help you form habits and make it easier to retain what you learn. We welcome you to try out as many of the topics as you deem relevant. The cadence we suggest is once you start a series, that you listen to a session every work day unless otherwise advised. We would greatly appreciate it if you’d be willing to provide feedback on a series by completing an online survey. The survey has 10 questions and would take less than 3 minutes to complete. The relevant link can be found in the Episode Web Page link of every final session in a given series. Thanks for listening and we hope that you find Bossit useful to developing yourself as a better business leader.
Actioning your tasks Want to share feedback about the podcast? It would be much appreciated. 3 min survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/N72QP67 By blocking time on the calendar to do a task, without interruption, it is possible to do the task with greater efficiency. It might also stop you from mindlessly accepting calendar invites to fill the time. However, it’s best not to block out your entire day - it’s worth having some cushion time in your calendar for overruns or unanticipated tasks and challenges that arise. Having a ‘done list’ which lists all accomplishments and tasks you have completed, and not just the tasks on your list, can help boost your energy. That brings us to the end of our series on task management. Capturing, Defining, Sorting, Reviewing and now finally Actioning. Don’t forget, following the system explicitly is what will offer the true value and keeping a routine will make it easier. Best of luck with it.
Reviewing all of your lists Want to share feedback about the podcast? It would be much appreciated. 3 min survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/N72QP67 The purpose of reviewing is to ensure you stay aware of everything you have to-do, so that you can suitably prioritise and stay in control. It’s helpful to get into a routine for when and how you review all of your different lists. When it comes to your Calendar, it’s helpful to check this at the start of every day because it helps you to understand what you have to do in totality. When it comes to your To-Do list, it’s helpful to review this everyday, normally several times. It’s worth reviewing every time you complete a to-do, in order to scratch it off your list and maintain a clear picture of what’s still on your plate. You can help ensure effective prioritisation by involving others in the decision making. It can help to ask your team (if you have one) or people who know you well to look over your to-do list and share their perspective on whether they feel your prioritisation is right. The frequency at which you review your your Waiting list will depend on the way you delegate or the kind of occurrences you might be waiting on. For some people they’ll check once a week, others every day, others maybe multiple times in a day. Add deadlines to tasks you’ve delegated and order the list by the tasks that are due soonest. Review the Someday list every few weeks. Your activity today is to spend 5 minutes not only reviewing your calendar and your lists but also coming up with a routine to ensure regular review.
Re-prioritising as the day evolves Want to share feedback about the podcast? It would be much appreciated. 3 min survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/N72QP67 The plan you have at the start of the day isn’t necessarily the plan you’ll follow, or even want to follow as the day goes on. New tasks are bound to pop up as you’re busy trying to deal with the ones already on your list. You can re-prioritise by repeating the stages of capturing, defining and sorting. However, we need a way to find some kind of balance between re-prioritising and simply getting on with things. Try being disciplined and exposing yourself to new requests less frequently. This would mean checking emails, voicemails and texts less frequently and only at set intervals. Use a more simple and flexible to-do list, which is easier to adapt, making re-prioritisation faster, such as post-it notes. Agree specific working norms with the sources of your tasks, namely the people you work with. e.g., they can only interrupt you at set times. Build additional time buffer into your day when you process in the morning, anticipating that more will come your way as the day goes on. Your activity for today is to try out some of these techniques, re-prioritising regularly throughout the day to ensure you are maintaining an up-to date, relevant to-do list.
Sorting through your to-dos Want to share feedback about the podcast? It would be much appreciated. 3 min survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/N72QP67 Sorting involves categorising, grouping and ordering your tasks, which will help us to decide what task we should complete, when. Examples of categories people often use to group tasks by are: - Personal / Professional: You categorise based on the part of your life that your task relates to. - Location: You separate tasks depending on where you like to do them. - Projects: For when a task is part of a larger project or workstream. - Timings: Based on how long will it take to complete the task. - Energy demands: Understanding what your tasks demand in terms of energy and when you’re in a position to offer that. - And priority level: How important and urgent the task is to you. Your activity for today is to spend 5 minutes thinking about how you work, what kind of categorisation is most relevant to you, then start drawing up your template or editing your task manager in a way that cuts your tasks by your most relevant categories, so you can better figure out what should be done when.
Prioritising your tasks Want to share feedback about the podcast? It would be much appreciated. 3 min survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/N72QP67 Very often, urgent tasks make the most noise and grab the most attention, making it harder to ignore them or focus on other things but it’s the importance of something to you that matters most when assessing the priority of your tasks. So you need to ask yourself the question, how important is this to me and why? - Because it’s intrinsically important and I value it? Or; - Because it’s critical to achieving a goal of mine? Or; - Because it matters to someone I care about. Your activity for today is to spend 5 minutes reviewing the tasks you have on your list and ask yourself the question, how important is this task to me? Be critical and intentional about removing things that aren’t actually important and only then assess their urgency. You need to be disciplined and pragmatic here - you can only have so many priorities. When you have too many, nothing becomes a priority and it defeats the purpose of doing this in the first place.
Defining the outcomes and next steps Want to share feedback about the podcast? It would be much appreciated. 3 min survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/N72QP67 Your activity for today is to get your inboxes together and process them in one go, ideally without any distractions or interruptions. Ask yourself these questions: - Can I delete it? If so, then trash it. - Can I do it now in less than 2 minutes? If so, do it. - Is it just useful information to store? If so, store it somewhere. - Does it need to be done on or after a specific time? If so, add it to your Calendar. - Is it waiting on something else to happen first? If so, add it to a list called “Waiting“. - Is it something only for the future? If so, add it to a list called “Someday”. - Everything else goes in your To-Do list. For all of your tasks define them clearly with: - What a good outcome looks like; and - What’s the next step. For tasks on your To-Do list, add: - How long will it take; - How will it affect your energy; - Does it need to be done in a certain way or at a specific place; and - How much of a priority is it?
Capturing your tasks Want to share feedback about the podcast? It would be much appreciated. 3 min survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/N72QP67 There are two broad methods to capturing your tasks. The first is capturing what’s already stuck in your head by performing a mindsweep. You want to empty every single item from your head that your mind considers incomplete and record it in a list, that you always keep to hand. The second method is to capture them as they arise, before they settle in your mind. These tend to collect in places such as email, text, and voicemail inboxes. However, you want a “parking-lot” list always to hand where you can capture tasks that don’t have pre-assigned inboxes - such as for recording tasks that arise in meetings / conversation. Your activity for today is to spend 5-10 minutes performing a mindsweep, capturing all the tasks that are lurking in your brain. Note them down and then for the rest of the day, when a task comes up, try to get into the habit of ensuring it’s stored somewhere ready for you to process.
What is it Want to share feedback about the podcast? It would be much appreciated. 3 min survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/N72QP67 In this series we’ll be defining a structured approach to help you get a firmer grip on what you have to do, helping you to become more productive and more balanced. The system breaks down into 5 stages: 1. Capturing tasks and recording them, so that they’re not stuck in your mind; 2. Defining them, including what a successful outcome looks like and how you start getting there; 3. Sorting them by relevant metrics such as priority and category, to help you decide when and how to address them as well as track them; 4. Reviewing them regularly and being reminded of them at the right time, to keep on top of it all; and 5. Actioning them in a way that will make you most successful. Your activity for today is to spend 3 minutes identifying and logging the different sources of where your tasks generally come from. Examples are emails, texts, voicemails, meetings and conference calls, conversations with your boss, letters, things your family asks you.
Communicating it effectively and learning from it Want to share feedback about the podcast? It would be much appreciated. 3 min survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/N72QP67 Now that you’ve made a decision, it’s likely that you’ll have to take action of some kind in order to implement it, so being clear on the decision with yourself and with others is crucial to its success. Your task for today is to spend 5-10 minutes: - Consider the stakeholders that you need to inform - their relevance to the decision, their relevance to its implementation, their relevance to you and crucially how they’ll react to the decision; - Start preparing when and how you’ll communicate the decision all of them - creating a story to effectively communicate the decision, clarifying how and why the decision has been made and carefully explaining its implications; and - Prepare a way to track the success of your decision as objectively as possible so that you can learn from it.
Making the decision and committing to it Want to share feedback about the podcast? It would be much appreciated. 3 min survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/N72QP67 Sometimes there is no downside to delaying a decision; such as when you can’t implement the decision yet, when delaying doesn’t cost you any options, or when there is nothing and nobody waiting on you. If there are strong benefits to making the decision now and real downsides to delaying it any longer, then you have to get on with it and make it. If you are making a decision, first you want a transparent prioritisation of the different factors that you’re using to make it. This is important because it will help you to justify the decision to yourself - giving you more confidence in it - and it will also help when you communicate the decision to stakeholders. When it comes to assessing your choices, some people prefer to do this in the round, playing back everything they’ve discovered and worked through in their mind, but ultimately using intuition and instinct to reach a decision. Others prefer a more a structured way and there are frameworks that can help with this. e.g., - Decision trees; - A list of Pros vs Cons; - A decision matrix - a table of columns with headings made up of your different options and rows of the prioritised factors. Your task for today is to spend 5-10 minutes determining the approach you’ll follow to make your decision and then take the necessary time to process the variables, reach a decision and commit to it.
Avoiding pitfalls and blindspots Want to share feedback about the podcast? It would be much appreciated. 3 min survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/N72QP67 To reduce blindspots, follow WRAP: - Widen your options and your advisor pool - Reality test your assumptions - Attain distance before deciding; and - Prepare to be wrong. Potential blindspots include: 1. Knowable unknowns. 2. Confirmation bias: where you too easily interpret evidence as confirming your own view. 3. Over-confidence. 4. False analogy: where you wrongly think your decision is the same as one that you’ve dealt with in the past. 5. Extrapolation fallacy: where you assume that the future will play out just like the past. 6. Availability bias: where you prefer the easiest option to implement. 7. Tunnel vision: where you get so fixated on one factor or option that you miss other pertinent matters. 8. Loss aversion: where you prefer the option involving the least amount of risk, regardless of potential upside in the riskier options. 9. Sunk cost fallacy: where you consider irrelevant factors such as previously invested resources. 10. Vividness: where the most vivid option overly fixates you. 11. Timidness: where stakeholders don’t feel empowered to share their perspective. 12. Groupthink: where the stakeholders all fall in line and fail to challenge eachother; limiting diversity. 13. Anchoring: where everyone in a group gets fixated on a particular idea and fails to ever come off of it. 14. Information overload: where you collate so much information and knowledge that you don’t know how to process it. 15. Uncertainty paralysis: where you feel too uncertain to make the decision and keep collecting more data or performing more analysis to try and get comfortable. Your task for today is to review what you’ve done so far and whether any of these blindspots might be present in your own process and if so, how you might mitigate them.
Predicting the outcomes Want to share feedback about the podcast? It would be much appreciated. 3 min survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/N72QP67 Before you can decide which option to take, you need to deal with the uncertainty surrounding each of them. Unknowns can be categorised into 3 types: 1. Knowable unknowns - these are things you could know about but don’t. Hopefully you’ll have reduced these as much as you can by widening and diversifying your advisor group. 2. Inaccessible unknowns - these are things you’d know if you could get access them. For example, things a foe or a competitor might know - you can’t ask them because you’re competing with them. 3. Unknowable unknowns - these are things that are simply impossible to predict and which you just have to embrace. There is a strong correlation between astute decision making and the willingness to embrace uncertainty and accept it as a given. Your task for today is to try and adopt a humble mindset where you recognise that you can’t guarantee you know everything and embrace that. Then spend 5-10 minutes predicting the outcomes of your different options: - What are their known implications, both direct and indirect? - What are the upsides? - What risks are there and what are their likelihoods of occurring?
Generating alternatives Want to share feedback about the podcast? It would be much appreciated. 3 min survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/N72QP67 The question of “which one” is always better than “whether or not” when it comes to making decisions. There is plenty of evidence that shows a strong correlation between a higher number of alternatives and decision success. Generating alternatives as a separate exercise, after having created your initial list, can help because it provides distance in your mind from your initial thinking. Your task for today is to spend 5-10 minutes developing alternative ideas for your list: - Deliberately rule out current options so that you can consider new ones; - Learn more about extremist positions in order to take your mind to new places; - Imagine constraints don’t apply and consider, what would you do differently?
Determining your options Want to share feedback about the podcast? It would be much appreciated. 3 min survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/N72QP67 When figuring out the options available, you need to be open-minded and adopt a creative mindset. Try not to apply any constraints or consider the implications - just think imaginatively. You’ll have the ability to dismiss things later on. Your task for today is to spend 5-10 minutes exploring those questions: - Being as creative and unconstrained as possible, what are your options? The obvious, the less obvious, what comes from your experience, what comes from research and what do your stakeholders propose? - For each option, how are the factors involved and what are the implications? - Can you rule any options out by applying filters or constraints? - What do your stakeholders think of your refined list?
Involving the right people in the right way Want to share feedback about the podcast? It would be much appreciated. 3 min survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/N72QP67 A decision stakeholder is anyone who is involved in or affected by your decision. There are three different types of stakeholders: - Those who decide with you, or you require their buy-in or resources to successfully implement the decision; - Those who are affected by the decision directly or indirectly; and - Those who advise by offering you different, diverse and relevant expertise and experience. These 3 types are not mutually exclusive either, and a person can fulfil any combination of the 3 roles. Your task for today is to spend 10-15 minutes deciding who to involve and how. Consider: - Who is accountable for implementation success? - Who controls the resources required to implement successfully? - Who is affected in someway and should be consulted? - Who has the relevant and diverse expertise and experience to advise? Then decide how you want to involve these people: - In what setting should you engage them? 1-1, small group or large group. - How will you weigh their input? - When will you involve them? - And what information should you give them?
Defining the scope Want to share feedback about the podcast? It would be much appreciated. 3 min survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/N72QP67 When it comes to making decisions, transparency is your friend. You want to increase your awareness, your knowledge, your understanding and to do this, it requires you to carefully think through what’s going on. The first step here is to try and capture the context surrounding your decision as a question. Spend 5-10 minutes asking yourself: - What’s the overall question you’re trying to answer? - Who and what might be affected by your decision? - Whether it is truly yours to make and if you are free to make it your own way? - What exactly are you deciding on, by when, and what you are not? - What are the factors affecting your decision and how important are they to you? - How do the factors interact or conflict? This visibility alone is a huge first step in helping you to make a better decision because it greatly heightens your awareness.
Putting yourself in the right mind-set Want to share feedback about the podcast? It would be much appreciated. 3 min survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/N72QP67 When making a decision want to adopt a mindset of patience and confident readiness. That way you won’t be too hasty, but still ready to act when necessary. Your task for today is to take a few moments to reflect and decide: - How intentional are you being? - How patient are you being? - And how confident are you? Then carve out regular intervals, dedicated to the decision, to ensure you don’t dwell on it when you need to focus on other things. Add timeslots to your diary and include reminders to: 1. Be intentional 2. Be patient 3. Be confident
Why be a structured decision-maker Want to share feedback about the podcast? It would be much appreciated. 3 min survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/N72QP67 Decision-making requires you to predict an uncertain future and regardless of how good someone’s intuition is, no-one can perfectly predict the future. A well-structured decision-making approach helps leverage your intuition whilst filling in some of the pieces you may have missed otherwise. The premise is that you can’t always make the right decision… but you can always make the decision right. At a simple level the process will involve three parts: 1. Building awareness and insight, from your own perspective and others. 2. Considering the options and predicting their outcomes. 3. Making the decision, committing to it, communicating it and learning from it. Your task is to identify a decision that you need to make either in your work or your personal life, that is: - Relatively complex; and - You don’t need to make the decision for more than 2-3 weeks time (so that you have the opportunity to follow the process throughout the series).
Evaluating outcomes and providing feedback Want to share feedback about the podcast? It would be much appreciated. 3 min survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/N72QP67 Once delegated work has been delivered back to you, you’ll want to set aside enough time to review it thoroughly and offer feedback to the person who delivered it. Compare their work to the desired outcomes that you mutually agreed when you delegated the task. Success should be measured on as consistent and objective basis as possible to maintain a feeling of fairness and trust between you. Once you’ve done this, you’ll want to provide them feedback on whether their work falls below, meets, or exceeds objectives. If the work falls below the desired outcome, be clear on why the work doesn’t meet the objectives and the reason for proposing any suggested changes. If their work meets or exceeds the desired outcome, tell them this. Feedback should always involve recognition of success. You can opt to praise them which should help build their self-confidence and motivation, improving their experience, your relationship and making it easier to delegate to them in future. However, it would be worth going beyond just praise of their success and additionally provide them with detailed feedback on how they’ve leveraged and developed their strengths. Your activity for today is to review any delegated work that’s been returned to you recently and determine what feedback you should share. If you need help developing your feedback, consider listening to the BOSSIT series on “Sharing Valued Feedback”.
Providing coaching and support Want to share feedback about the podcast? It would be much appreciated. 3 min survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/N72QP67 If the person you’ve delegated to wants support, a way you can help them accelerate their learning and complete the tasks faster is by initially increasing the level of interaction between you and them at the start of the task, when they are setting an approach for completing it. By inputting early and often on their approach, it should mean less potential for missing objectives and less re-work required later on. If they approach you for assistance then it’s important to avoid "upward delegation”. If there’s a problem that needs fixing, or a challenge they can’t yet overcome, don't permit them to shift responsibility for completing the task back to you. Guide them on how they can do it instead of simply taking it back off of them. An effective way of guiding them is by indirect coaching through the use of open questions such as: - What approach have you used or seen used in similar situations? - What are your potential next steps and what does success look like for each step? - What obstacles exist and how will you navigate those obstacles? - What resources do you need? However, if they seem able to complete the task but appear to be lacking drive then you need to help build their motivation and commitment: - If they’re overstretched by their overall workload then they might need your help prioritising; - If they feel under-valued, then it’s about recognising them and their efforts; - If they feel micromanaged through the task then you need their feedback on how you can change your style; - If they don’t see value in achieving the goal then you’ll need to clarify it’s value to them, the team, your organisation, your client or customer, or even society; - If they believe the task to be generally unachievable then you’ll have to help coach them; and - If they’re lacking in self-confidence then you need to find opportunities to instil confidence and offer praise on jobs well done. Your activity for today is to reach out to the person you’ve delegated to and offer them support if they need it.
Checking in Want to share feedback about the podcast? It would be much appreciated. 3 min survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/N72QP67 Even though you have now delegated your task to someone else, it’s important to recognise that since it originated with you, that you retain overall accountability for its successful completion. When it comes to taking accountability, you’ll want to take a balanced approach. On one end of the scale, you don’t want to totally abandon the task or the person you’ve delegated it to. Equally, you want to avoid micro-managing the person. If you regularly check-in with the person that you’ve delegated to, you can ask them for feedback not only on how things are going with the task and whether they require support but also, you can ask them for feedback on how they feel about your interactions and this can help guide you. Your activity for today is to spend a few minutes preparing a proposed schedule for checking-in with the person you’ve delegated to, then finding a time to meet with them: - Agree a schedule of check-ins, timelines and deadlines; - Consider that they’ll likely need more time than you to complete the task; - Focus on results, not method; - If it’s not going well, take opportunities to teach instead of reclaiming ownership; and - Understand their mindset - will they take ownership and drive things forward whilst involving you? Or will they isolate themselves and exclude you?
Handing it over Want to share feedback about the podcast? It would be much appreciated. 3 min survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/N72QP67 Delegating a task tends to be a bit of a balancing act. If you offer too little guidance or clarity, it makes it harder for them to successfully complete the task. Telling someone to do something and then just walking away, leaving them to get on with it is delegating… it just often tends to be ineffective because of the lack of oversight and support. However, too much guidance and instruction can come across as painful micromanaging - one of the least wanted traits in a leader. So you want to try and strike a balance between the two; asserting the right information and asking the right questions. Try to arrange the handover as early as you can - that way, the other person has as much time as possible to prepare for and complete the task, reducing the pressure on them. Your activity for today is to spend a few minutes preparing for your handover meeting and then meet up to delegate the task: - Start the meeting as a human - be inclusive and not transactional. - Generate buy-in - explain context, rationale and overall benefits, as well as why they were chosen to do it. - Outline expectations - what’s the desired outcome, the deadline, and the resources available to them. Ensure they know what they can expect from you in terms of availability and support. - Create room for them to ask you questions - this will help them to take ownership. - Agree a plan together for how they’ll complete the task and how you can support them throughout, whilst maintaining comfort over its progression. By using questions instead of directing what you think they should do, you can create a dialogue and build a stronger rapport, as well as their confidence and sense of ownership.
Defining the task Want to share feedback about the podcast? It would be much appreciated. 3 min survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/N72QP67 Before you can fully handover ownership of this task, it’s crucial to properly define it first. That way, you can properly align with the person you’re delegating to and ensure you both understand it the same way. Your activity for today is to spend no more than 5-10 minutes forming a perspective on your task definition. Try and outline its: - Context - detail the task’s rationale and benefits. Why are you doing it? - Stakeholders - who should be involved, either for their input or their buy-in? - Scope - what should the task involve and what should it not? Are there any constraints or boundaries to it? - Resources - what be used to complete the task? - Desired outcome - what does successful completion look like, including any measurable results and timeline?
Choosing whom you should delegate to Want to share feedback about the podcast? It would be much appreciated. 3 min survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/N72QP67 When you delegate, you’re transferring responsibility for completing the task to someone else, as well as the authority to get it done. To ensure this person fully takes on that responsibility though, they’ll need to feel that they have ownership of the task, which is a problem if you try delegating the task to more than one person. So always task to an individual and not a group. Your activity for today is to spend 5-10 minutes reviewing who you should delegate the chosen task to. Consider: - Who would be motivated to complete the task? - Who has the relevant expertise & experience? - Whose learning goals match the task at hand? - Who has sufficient capacity? - Who is the task most relevant to? - How able are you to suitably support them on this task? There isn’t normally a perfect answer for who you should delegate to but you want to strike enough of a balance across all of these considerations to make you and them feel comfortable that delegating this task to them makes sense.
Identifying what you should delegate Want to share feedback about the podcast? It would be much appreciated. 3 min survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/N72QP67 Delegating can be hard because we want to hold onto control, ensuring things stay at their best. Try and shift your mindset to one where you’re ready to let go. If you can’t release control and be prepared to accept some uncertainty, then it will be hard to delegate effectively. As such, you might want to start small for now, selecting a task that you’re more ready to let go off. Your activity for today is to spend 5 minutes reviewing your list in order to choose a task to delegate for the next 2 weeks. Prioritise tasks for delegation when: - It’s not critical that you do them personally; - You have a team member that can be upskilled sufficiently to complete the task; - There is sufficient time for them to do the task without excessive pressure; - You have sufficient time to support them on the task; - The delegation is an investment because the task will recur; and - Ideally, your team members will want to do the task.
Why you should delegate more Want to share feedback about the podcast? It would be much appreciated. 3 min survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/N72QP67 Over this series we’ll run through some steps you can take to make delegating easier and more successful, such as; how to identify what to delegate, how to choose the right person to delegate to, how to set them up for success, and how to manage them throughout the task. To help you learn, you’ll want to delegate an actual task to someone during the series so that you can practice the steps as we cover them. Your activity for today is to spend 5 minutes considering what tasks you have to delegate that: - Would take hours or days to complete and can be done over the course of the next 2 weeks; and - Which isn’t mission critical. Since you’ll be practising delegation techniques, it’s best to choose a task that’s meaningful but where you won’t have the need to take it back from someone if they need more help or time with it. Write down your options in a list.
Actioning your tasks Want to share feedback about the podcast? It would be much appreciated. 3 min survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/N72QP67 By blocking time on the calendar to do a task, without interruption, it is possible to do the task with greater efficiency. It might also stop you from mindlessly accepting calendar invites to fill the time. However, it’s best not to block out your entire day - it’s worth having some cushion time in your calendar for overruns or unanticipated tasks and challenges that arise. Having a ‘done list’ which lists all accomplishments and tasks you have completed, and not just the tasks on your list, can help boost your energy. That brings us to the end of our series on task management. Capturing, Defining, Sorting, Reviewing and now finally Actioning. Don’t forget, following the system explicitly is what will offer the true value and keeping a routine will make it easier. Best of luck with it.
Reviewing all of your lists Want to share feedback about the podcast? It would be much appreciated. 3 min survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/N72QP67 The purpose of reviewing is to ensure you stay aware of everything you have to-do, so that you can suitably prioritise and stay in control. It’s helpful to get into a routine for when and how you review all of your different lists. When it comes to your Calendar, it’s helpful to check this at the start of every day because it helps you to understand what you have to do in totality. When it comes to your To-Do list, it’s helpful to review this everyday, normally several times. It’s worth reviewing every time you complete a to-do, in order to scratch it off your list and maintain a clear picture of what’s still on your plate. You can help ensure effective prioritisation by involving others in the decision making. It can help to ask your team (if you have one) or people who know you well to look over your to-do list and share their perspective on whether they feel your prioritisation is right. The frequency at which you review your your Waiting list will depend on the way you delegate or the kind of occurrences you might be waiting on. For some people they’ll check once a week, others every day, others maybe multiple times in a day. Add deadlines to tasks you’ve delegated and order the list by the tasks that are due soonest. Review the Someday list every few weeks. Your activity today is to spend 5 minutes not only reviewing your calendar and your lists but also coming up with a routine to ensure regular review.
Re-prioritising as the day evolves Want to share feedback about the podcast? It would be much appreciated. 3 min survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/N72QP67 The plan you have at the start of the day isn’t necessarily the plan you’ll follow, or even want to follow as the day goes on. New tasks are bound to pop up as you’re busy trying to deal with the ones already on your list. You can re-prioritise by repeating the stages of capturing, defining and sorting. However, we need a way to find some kind of balance between re-prioritising and simply getting on with things. Try being disciplined and exposing yourself to new requests less frequently. This would mean checking emails, voicemails and texts less frequently and only at set intervals. Use a more simple and flexible to-do list, which is easier to adapt, making re-prioritisation faster, such as post-it notes. Agree specific working norms with the sources of your tasks, namely the people you work with. e.g., they can only interrupt you at set times. Build additional time buffer into your day when you process in the morning, anticipating that more will come your way as the day goes on. Your activity for today is to try out some of these techniques, re-prioritising regularly throughout the day to ensure you are maintaining an up-to date, relevant to-do list.
Sorting through your to-dos Want to share feedback about the podcast? It would be much appreciated. 3 min survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/N72QP67 Sorting involves categorising, grouping and ordering your tasks, which will help us to decide what task we should complete, when. Examples of categories people often use to group tasks by are: - Personal / Professional: You categorise based on the part of your life that your task relates to. - Location: You separate tasks depending on where you like to do them. - Projects: For when a task is part of a larger project or workstream. - Timings: Based on how long will it take to complete the task. - Energy demands: Understanding what your tasks demand in terms of energy and when you’re in a position to offer that. - And priority level: How important and urgent the task is to you. Your activity for today is to spend 5 minutes thinking about how you work, what kind of categorisation is most relevant to you, then start drawing up your template or editing your task manager in a way that cuts your tasks by your most relevant categories, so you can better figure out what should be done when.
Prioritising your tasks Want to share feedback about the podcast? It would be much appreciated. 3 min survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/N72QP67 Very often, urgent tasks make the most noise and grab the most attention, making it harder to ignore them or focus on other things but it’s the importance of something to you that matters most when assessing the priority of your tasks. So you need to ask yourself the question, how important is this to me and why? - Because it’s intrinsically important and I value it? Or; - Because it’s critical to achieving a goal of mine? Or; - Because it matters to someone I care about. Your activity for today is to spend 5 minutes reviewing the tasks you have on your list and ask yourself the question, how important is this task to me? Be critical and intentional about removing things that aren’t actually important and only then assess their urgency. You need to be disciplined and pragmatic here - you can only have so many priorities. When you have too many, nothing becomes a priority and it defeats the purpose of doing this in the first place.
Defining the outcomes and next steps Want to share feedback about the podcast? It would be much appreciated. 3 min survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/N72QP67 Your activity for today is to get your inboxes together and process them in one go, ideally without any distractions or interruptions. Ask yourself these questions: - Can I delete it? If so, then trash it. - Can I do it now in less than 2 minutes? If so, do it. - Is it just useful information to store? If so, store it somewhere. - Does it need to be done on or after a specific time? If so, add it to your Calendar. - Is it waiting on something else to happen first? If so, add it to a list called “Waiting“. - Is it something only for the future? If so, add it to a list called “Someday”. - Everything else goes in your To-Do list. For all of your tasks define them clearly with: - What a good outcome looks like; and - What’s the next step. For tasks on your To-Do list, add: - How long will it take; - How will it affect your energy; - Does it need to be done in a certain way or at a specific place; and - How much of a priority is it?
Capturing your tasks Want to share feedback about the podcast? It would be much appreciated. 3 min survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/N72QP67 There are two broad methods to capturing your tasks. The first is capturing what’s already stuck in your head by performing a mindsweep. You want to empty every single item from your head that your mind considers incomplete and record it in a list, that you always keep to hand. The second method is to capture them as they arise, before they settle in your mind. These tend to collect in places such as email, text, and voicemail inboxes. However, you want a “parking-lot” list always to hand where you can capture tasks that don’t have pre-assigned inboxes - such as for recording tasks that arise in meetings / conversation. Your activity for today is to spend 5-10 minutes performing a mindsweep, capturing all the tasks that are lurking in your brain. Note them down and then for the rest of the day, when a task comes up, try to get into the habit of ensuring it’s stored somewhere ready for you to process.
What is it Want to share feedback about the podcast? It would be much appreciated. 3 min survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/N72QP67 In this series we’ll be defining a structured approach to help you get a firmer grip on what you have to do, helping you to become more productive and more balanced. The system breaks down into 5 stages: 1. Capturing tasks and recording them, so that they’re not stuck in your mind; 2. Defining them, including what a successful outcome looks like and how you start getting there; 3. Sorting them by relevant metrics such as priority and category, to help you decide when and how to address them as well as track them; 4. Reviewing them regularly and being reminded of them at the right time, to keep on top of it all; and 5. Actioning them in a way that will make you most successful. Your activity for today is to spend 3 minutes identifying and logging the different sources of where your tasks generally come from. Examples are emails, texts, voicemails, meetings and conference calls, conversations with your boss, letters, things your family asks you.
Communicating it effectively and learning from it Want to share feedback about the podcast? It would be much appreciated. 3 min survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/N72QP67 Now that you’ve made a decision, it’s likely that you’ll have to take action of some kind in order to implement it, so being clear on the decision with yourself and with others is crucial to its success. Your task for today is to spend 5-10 minutes: - Consider the stakeholders that you need to inform - their relevance to the decision, their relevance to its implementation, their relevance to you and crucially how they’ll react to the decision; - Start preparing when and how you’ll communicate the decision all of them - creating a story to effectively communicate the decision, clarifying how and why the decision has been made and carefully explaining its implications; and - Prepare a way to track the success of your decision as objectively as possible so that you can learn from it.
Making the decision and committing to it Want to share feedback about the podcast? It would be much appreciated. 3 min survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/N72QP67 Sometimes there is no downside to delaying a decision; such as when you can’t implement the decision yet, when delaying doesn’t cost you any options, or when there is nothing and nobody waiting on you. If there are strong benefits to making the decision now and real downsides to delaying it any longer, then you have to get on with it and make it. If you are making a decision, first you want a transparent prioritisation of the different factors that you’re using to make it. This is important because it will help you to justify the decision to yourself - giving you more confidence in it - and it will also help when you communicate the decision to stakeholders. When it comes to assessing your choices, some people prefer to do this in the round, playing back everything they’ve discovered and worked through in their mind, but ultimately using intuition and instinct to reach a decision. Others prefer a more a structured way and there are frameworks that can help with this. e.g., - Decision trees; - A list of Pros vs Cons; - A decision matrix - a table of columns with headings made up of your different options and rows of the prioritised factors. Your task for today is to spend 5-10 minutes determining the approach you’ll follow to make your decision and then take the necessary time to process the variables, reach a decision and commit to it.
Avoiding pitfalls and blindspots Want to share feedback about the podcast? It would be much appreciated. 3 min survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/N72QP67 To reduce blindspots, follow WRAP: - Widen your options and your advisor pool - Reality test your assumptions - Attain distance before deciding; and - Prepare to be wrong. Potential blindspots include: 1. Knowable unknowns. 2. Confirmation bias: where you too easily interpret evidence as confirming your own view. 3. Over-confidence. 4. False analogy: where you wrongly think your decision is the same as one that you’ve dealt with in the past. 5. Extrapolation fallacy: where you assume that the future will play out just like the past. 6. Availability bias: where you prefer the easiest option to implement. 7. Tunnel vision: where you get so fixated on one factor or option that you miss other pertinent matters. 8. Loss aversion: where you prefer the option involving the least amount of risk, regardless of potential upside in the riskier options. 9. Sunk cost fallacy: where you consider irrelevant factors such as previously invested resources. 10. Vividness: where the most vivid option overly fixates you. 11. Timidness: where stakeholders don’t feel empowered to share their perspective. 12. Groupthink: where the stakeholders all fall in line and fail to challenge eachother; limiting diversity. 13. Anchoring: where everyone in a group gets fixated on a particular idea and fails to ever come off of it. 14. Information overload: where you collate so much information and knowledge that you don’t know how to process it. 15. Uncertainty paralysis: where you feel too uncertain to make the decision and keep collecting more data or performing more analysis to try and get comfortable. Your task for today is to review what you’ve done so far and whether any of these blindspots might be present in your own process and if so, how you might mitigate them.
Predicting the outcomes Want to share feedback about the podcast? It would be much appreciated. 3 min survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/N72QP67 Before you can decide which option to take, you need to deal with the uncertainty surrounding each of them. Unknowns can be categorised into 3 types: 1. Knowable unknowns - these are things you could know about but don’t. Hopefully you’ll have reduced these as much as you can by widening and diversifying your advisor group. 2. Inaccessible unknowns - these are things you’d know if you could get access them. For example, things a foe or a competitor might know - you can’t ask them because you’re competing with them. 3. Unknowable unknowns - these are things that are simply impossible to predict and which you just have to embrace. There is a strong correlation between astute decision making and the willingness to embrace uncertainty and accept it as a given. Your task for today is to try and adopt a humble mindset where you recognise that you can’t guarantee you know everything and embrace that. Then spend 5-10 minutes predicting the outcomes of your different options: - What are their known implications, both direct and indirect? - What are the upsides? - What risks are there and what are their likelihoods of occurring?
Generating alternatives Want to share feedback about the podcast? It would be much appreciated. 3 min survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/N72QP67 The question of “which one” is always better than “whether or not” when it comes to making decisions. There is plenty of evidence that shows a strong correlation between a higher number of alternatives and decision success. Generating alternatives as a separate exercise, after having created your initial list, can help because it provides distance in your mind from your initial thinking. Your task for today is to spend 5-10 minutes developing alternative ideas for your list: - Deliberately rule out current options so that you can consider new ones; - Learn more about extremist positions in order to take your mind to new places; - Imagine constraints don’t apply and consider, what would you do differently?
Determining your options Want to share feedback about the podcast? It would be much appreciated. 3 min survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/N72QP67 When figuring out the options available, you need to be open-minded and adopt a creative mindset. Try not to apply any constraints or consider the implications - just think imaginatively. You’ll have the ability to dismiss things later on. Your task for today is to spend 5-10 minutes exploring those questions: - Being as creative and unconstrained as possible, what are your options? The obvious, the less obvious, what comes from your experience, what comes from research and what do your stakeholders propose? - For each option, how are the factors involved and what are the implications? - Can you rule any options out by applying filters or constraints? - What do your stakeholders think of your refined list?
Involving the right people in the right way Want to share feedback about the podcast? It would be much appreciated. 3 min survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/N72QP67 A decision stakeholder is anyone who is involved in or affected by your decision. There are three different types of stakeholders: - Those who decide with you, or you require their buy-in or resources to successfully implement the decision; - Those who are affected by the decision directly or indirectly; and - Those who advise by offering you different, diverse and relevant expertise and experience. These 3 types are not mutually exclusive either, and a person can fulfil any combination of the 3 roles. Your task for today is to spend 10-15 minutes deciding who to involve and how. Consider: - Who is accountable for implementation success? - Who controls the resources required to implement successfully? - Who is affected in someway and should be consulted? - Who has the relevant and diverse expertise and experience to advise? Then decide how you want to involve these people: - In what setting should you engage them? 1-1, small group or large group. - How will you weigh their input? - When will you involve them? - And what information should you give them?
Defining the scope Want to share feedback about the podcast? It would be much appreciated. 3 min survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/N72QP67 When it comes to making decisions, transparency is your friend. You want to increase your awareness, your knowledge, your understanding and to do this, it requires you to carefully think through what’s going on. The first step here is to try and capture the context surrounding your decision as a question. Spend 5-10 minutes asking yourself: - What’s the overall question you’re trying to answer? - Who and what might be affected by your decision? - Whether it is truly yours to make and if you are free to make it your own way? - What exactly are you deciding on, by when, and what you are not? - What are the factors affecting your decision and how important are they to you? - How do the factors interact or conflict? This visibility alone is a huge first step in helping you to make a better decision because it greatly heightens your awareness.
Putting yourself in the right mind-set Want to share feedback about the podcast? It would be much appreciated. 3 min survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/N72QP67 When making a decision want to adopt a mindset of patience and confident readiness. That way you won’t be too hasty, but still ready to act when necessary. Your task for today is to take a few moments to reflect and decide: - How intentional are you being? - How patient are you being? - And how confident are you? Then carve out regular intervals, dedicated to the decision, to ensure you don’t dwell on it when you need to focus on other things. Add timeslots to your diary and include reminders to: 1. Be intentional 2. Be patient 3. Be confident
Why be a structured decision-maker Want to share feedback about the podcast? It would be much appreciated. 3 min survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/N72QP67 Decision-making requires you to predict an uncertain future and regardless of how good someone’s intuition is, no-one can perfectly predict the future. A well-structured decision-making approach helps leverage your intuition whilst filling in some of the pieces you may have missed otherwise. The premise is that you can’t always make the right decision… but you can always make the decision right. At a simple level the process will involve three parts: 1. Building awareness and insight, from your own perspective and others. 2. Considering the options and predicting their outcomes. 3. Making the decision, committing to it, communicating it and learning from it. Your task is to identify a decision that you need to make either in your work or your personal life, that is: - Relatively complex; and - You don’t need to make the decision for more than 2-3 weeks time (so that you have the opportunity to follow the process throughout the series).
Evaluating outcomes and providing feedback Want to share feedback about the podcast? It would be much appreciated. 3 min survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/N72QP67 Once delegated work has been delivered back to you, you’ll want to set aside enough time to review it thoroughly and offer feedback to the person who delivered it. Compare their work to the desired outcomes that you mutually agreed when you delegated the task. Success should be measured on as consistent and objective basis as possible to maintain a feeling of fairness and trust between you. Once you’ve done this, you’ll want to provide them feedback on whether their work falls below, meets, or exceeds objectives. If the work falls below the desired outcome, be clear on why the work doesn’t meet the objectives and the reason for proposing any suggested changes. If their work meets or exceeds the desired outcome, tell them this. Feedback should always involve recognition of success. You can opt to praise them which should help build their self-confidence and motivation, improving their experience, your relationship and making it easier to delegate to them in future. However, it would be worth going beyond just praise of their success and additionally provide them with detailed feedback on how they’ve leveraged and developed their strengths. Your activity for today is to review any delegated work that’s been returned to you recently and determine what feedback you should share. If you need help developing your feedback, consider listening to the BOSSIT series on “Sharing Valued Feedback”.
Providing coaching and support Want to share feedback about the podcast? It would be much appreciated. 3 min survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/N72QP67 If the person you’ve delegated to wants support, a way you can help them accelerate their learning and complete the tasks faster is by initially increasing the level of interaction between you and them at the start of the task, when they are setting an approach for completing it. By inputting early and often on their approach, it should mean less potential for missing objectives and less re-work required later on. If they approach you for assistance then it’s important to avoid "upward delegation”. If there’s a problem that needs fixing, or a challenge they can’t yet overcome, don't permit them to shift responsibility for completing the task back to you. Guide them on how they can do it instead of simply taking it back off of them. An effective way of guiding them is by indirect coaching through the use of open questions such as: - What approach have you used or seen used in similar situations? - What are your potential next steps and what does success look like for each step? - What obstacles exist and how will you navigate those obstacles? - What resources do you need? However, if they seem able to complete the task but appear to be lacking drive then you need to help build their motivation and commitment: - If they’re overstretched by their overall workload then they might need your help prioritising; - If they feel under-valued, then it’s about recognising them and their efforts; - If they feel micromanaged through the task then you need their feedback on how you can change your style; - If they don’t see value in achieving the goal then you’ll need to clarify it’s value to them, the team, your organisation, your client or customer, or even society; - If they believe the task to be generally unachievable then you’ll have to help coach them; and - If they’re lacking in self-confidence then you need to find opportunities to instil confidence and offer praise on jobs well done. Your activity for today is to reach out to the person you’ve delegated to and offer them support if they need it.
Checking in Want to share feedback about the podcast? It would be much appreciated. 3 min survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/N72QP67 Even though you have now delegated your task to someone else, it’s important to recognise that since it originated with you, that you retain overall accountability for its successful completion. When it comes to taking accountability, you’ll want to take a balanced approach. On one end of the scale, you don’t want to totally abandon the task or the person you’ve delegated it to. Equally, you want to avoid micro-managing the person. If you regularly check-in with the person that you’ve delegated to, you can ask them for feedback not only on how things are going with the task and whether they require support but also, you can ask them for feedback on how they feel about your interactions and this can help guide you. Your activity for today is to spend a few minutes preparing a proposed schedule for checking-in with the person you’ve delegated to, then finding a time to meet with them: - Agree a schedule of check-ins, timelines and deadlines; - Consider that they’ll likely need more time than you to complete the task; - Focus on results, not method; - If it’s not going well, take opportunities to teach instead of reclaiming ownership; and - Understand their mindset - will they take ownership and drive things forward whilst involving you? Or will they isolate themselves and exclude you?
Handing it over Want to share feedback about the podcast? It would be much appreciated. 3 min survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/N72QP67 Delegating a task tends to be a bit of a balancing act. If you offer too little guidance or clarity, it makes it harder for them to successfully complete the task. Telling someone to do something and then just walking away, leaving them to get on with it is delegating… it just often tends to be ineffective because of the lack of oversight and support. However, too much guidance and instruction can come across as painful micromanaging - one of the least wanted traits in a leader. So you want to try and strike a balance between the two; asserting the right information and asking the right questions. Try to arrange the handover as early as you can - that way, the other person has as much time as possible to prepare for and complete the task, reducing the pressure on them. Your activity for today is to spend a few minutes preparing for your handover meeting and then meet up to delegate the task: - Start the meeting as a human - be inclusive and not transactional. - Generate buy-in - explain context, rationale and overall benefits, as well as why they were chosen to do it. - Outline expectations - what’s the desired outcome, the deadline, and the resources available to them. Ensure they know what they can expect from you in terms of availability and support. - Create room for them to ask you questions - this will help them to take ownership. - Agree a plan together for how they’ll complete the task and how you can support them throughout, whilst maintaining comfort over its progression. By using questions instead of directing what you think they should do, you can create a dialogue and build a stronger rapport, as well as their confidence and sense of ownership.
Defining the task Want to share feedback about the podcast? It would be much appreciated. 3 min survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/N72QP67 Before you can fully handover ownership of this task, it’s crucial to properly define it first. That way, you can properly align with the person you’re delegating to and ensure you both understand it the same way. Your activity for today is to spend no more than 5-10 minutes forming a perspective on your task definition. Try and outline its: - Context - detail the task’s rationale and benefits. Why are you doing it? - Stakeholders - who should be involved, either for their input or their buy-in? - Scope - what should the task involve and what should it not? Are there any constraints or boundaries to it? - Resources - what be used to complete the task? - Desired outcome - what does successful completion look like, including any measurable results and timeline?
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