Photo By aussiegall
Leadership means many things to many people. To me, leadership is about consciously taking control of a situation and having the confidence to take action to solve problems in the most efficient and effective manner possible.
In the book “The BIZ – Little Things that Make a Big Difference“, David Freemantle sheds some excellent insight into what is important in motivating teams to work harder. To Freemantle, one of the keys to success is to “Make People Your Top Priority”. This sounds all fine and good. But how does one actually go about putting this into practice? This is where I see extreme value in Freemantle’s book because he actually gives tips on “how” to make people your top priority especially for new managers or leaders.
Freemantle says you need to give people your top priority. I interpret this as actively scheduling time for each team member. Here is an example of how a manager / leader would spend time in order to show that people are a priority. Its a beautiful point and to me it is SO true.
78 High Priority Minutes:
One minute looking at Fernando’s new car
Two minutes joking with Eddie about the football
Three minutes hearing Jamil’s sister’s wedding
Four minutes reviewing Ayshath her project report
Five minutes listening to Andrew’s account of this meeting
Six minutes advising Carlton on his budget figures and plans
Seven minutes congratulating Mercedes on her sales success
Eight minutes counseling Colette on her relationship problems
Nine minutes discussing Jackie’s proposed update for the website
Ten minutes with Ann helping her rehearse a presentation to the CEO
Eleven minutes folow up with Beatrice concerning her transfer request
Twelve minutes on a team meeting to update people on last week’s results
Isn’t that that so simple but so true? My previous boss was exactly like that and he won the loyalty of manner of his employees. He showed and demonstrated he truly cared. And it wasn’t anything in particular that he did that made him give this impression. It was how he went about just checking on people on a regular basis to make sure everything. If you are a people manager or a people leader, do you make time out of your busy schedule to do this with each member on your team? If not, you may find that better success if you do given that its NOT an exhorbitant amount of time required.
No doubt, I fully agree with Freemantle that its a best practice to make people your top priority. What I’ve been doing is scheduling some time with each member on my team to just remind me to actually go to each person and talk about whats going on with them. Every 2 weeks, I’ve been scheduling on my Microsoft Outlook calendar to spend up to 15 minutes for each individual (some longer, some shorter). At the end of each 2 weeks, I basically check off each name on my team member list and I know I’ve done my duty to Make People A Top Priority.
Key Action Points Back At Work and Outside of Work:
1. Schedule the time for each person to find out what’s going on with each resource. Remember, its not always about work each during each and every single session. But you will find that the employee will open up more to you
2. Try it outside of Work. For example, schedule time to spend with your family / siblings. Give them a call out of the blue, just to chit chat. You’ll find that as you do this more, your people network invariably grows and enables you to have more contacts – which is also a good thing.
