5 TIPS TO IMPROVE YOUR PERSONAL EFFECTIVENESS AS A LEADER OR MANAGER

 

FRANK OFILI

In my previous article, I stated that everyone is a leader, or at least a potential one, no matter what position they occupy. As a manager or leader, there usually is lots of demand on you. How personally effective you are, will play a significant role in determining the results you get. The bottom-line is to turn out a result that positively affects people.

Below are 5 areas where, with improvements, you can become more personally effective:

1. Organizing your time
2. Managing your Manager
3. Working out What you do best
4. Delegating
5. Organizing your office

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ORGANIZE YOUR TIME
In his Book “Think Like A Winner” Yehuda Shinar stated that “….we all have the same amount of time; the only thing that matters is how we make use of it…..” We only have 24 hours in the day so what determines whether we are effective or not is how we use these 24 hours each day. As a manager or leader, do you really know where or how you spend your time? I know that the vast majority of people I work with would tell me that they spend much of their time in the office working, but the question is what exactly do you spend your time doing in the office? Face-booking? Gossiping? Idling around waiting for 5pm closing time? Or looking for the most efficient and effective way to do your job? Do you even know what your key priorities or results areas are as a manager? And what do you normally do after work? I used to operate on the basis of what the day brings until 2009 when I attended a Leadership Seminar organized by Sam Adeyemi. The seminar taught me how to do the following:

1. Determine my key deliverables by meeting regularly with my boss to agree on what my key result areas (his key expectations) were

2. Do analysis of where and how I spend my after work hours. I found out that I used to spend so much weekend time with friends at Bella Gardens, Ajao Estate, drinking and watching English Premiership League matches. The funny thing was that I had DSTV at home always recharged. Why I could not watch the football matches at home, I could not understand, but I made a decision to stop. Since then I find I now enjoy quality weekend time at home and even have enough to plan my week ahead

3. The result of my time analysis also showed me that I now also have enough time to do some writing – something I enjoy doing a lot. From 2009 to date I must have written close to 200 articles. The feedbacks I get from these writings have been tremendous and encouraging. I am now more focused.

MANAGE YOUR BOSS AND YOUR SUBORDINATES
Senior people can often interrupt or get in the way without even being aware of the impact they are having. Ditto your subordinates. Imagine this scenario: you are in the middle of working through something tasking and complex when your boss wants to ask you that quick question or just quickly look at something. Or may be it is one of your subordinates who comes in seeking clarification of something. If it is something mentally challenging you were working on at that point in time, you can be sure these interruptions would derail your mental thought processes.

Make a point of meeting with your boss early in the day to know what assignment he has for you. Do this also with your immediate subordinates. This will have the effect of minimizing routine interruptions. I learnt this from my former boss at Dana Group – Mr. Sundarajan Srinivasan. Any day he had some mentally challenging work to do, he would call me early in the morning and lay out his day’s task, and ask if there were areas I needed clarification so that he would do so immediately because he would not want to be disturbed afterwards. I use this same approach with my subordinates. But a smart fellow would not wait for his boss to take the initiative. He would initiate it himself without the boss being aware of it. You might need to start with a 15 minute meeting every morning and gradually move to a weekly meeting. Find out what will work best for both of you. You may need to:

1. Set up a process with your boss where you check progress on key issues. In doing so make sure that this is scheduled regularly and that key actions are captured.

2. Agree how you will deal with the crisis or urgent requests that will arise from time to time in a way that is effective and efficient.

WORK OUT WHAT ONLY YOU CAN DO
There are likely to be a few things that only you can do because they require some specific qualification or specialized knowledge which you possess. Or that by virtue of the position you occupy, only you and you alone should do it. Chances are that there are things you are doing out of habit. There are things most managers or leaders keep doing because they think it will take too long to train someone else to do it. They then tend to always want to do it themselves believing it will be quicker that way. If you are one such manager, you are wrong. Handle those tasks which only you can or should do. Delegate the rest. But before you delegate, first categorize the tasks into three: (a) those only you can do, (b) those that could be released to someone else with some training (having done this, train someone immediately to handle them as a matter of routine) and (c) those you can stop doing altogether because they are no longer necessary

DELEGATE
Most managers struggle when it comes to delegating. They might be worried that they will lose their job because they do not have enough to do. They might be reluctant to pass on tasks for fear that someone else will not do as good a job, or even that they will do a better job. They might be convincing themselves that they do not have the time to train someone else. The truth is unless you start to delegate you will never be as efficient and effective as you could be as a manager or leader. This is because you will spend much time, effort and energy on tasks that take you away from your key results areas. You might even see your own performance dip as you try to do everything by yourself. What you need to do is determine what you can delegate and start doing it right away.

ORGANIZE YOUR OFFICE
Your work area is a critical impression point. You have to keep it neat. It is impossible to work at your most effective if your office is disorganized, untidy and disheveled. Many people like to hold on to stuff just in case they might need it. I confess sometimes I find it difficult to dispose of some things. However chances are by holding on to needless stuff you get a lot of irrelevant things lying around in your office. You might have files or bundles everywhere but are they really organized? Unless you can put your hand on things quickly and easily, chances are your office is not organized and you are probably working in chaos. Back then at Dana Group, I used to have a colleague who was so unorganized; his work area so untidy that I often wondered how he managed to get anything done in that condition. With time being so precious you cannot afford to be spending time looking for things and the easiest way to do this is to set up a system. If this is not your area of expertise, find someone who is and get them to help you set up a system. Remember that a system for finding things applies also to files saved on your computer as well as those in hard copy. With the vast majority of things being received or stored electronically, you need to organize your electronic files with the same diligence and discipline as your paper files. Solution is to set aside some time to de-clutter your office. Set up a system that will help you to be more personally effective in the future.

FRANK OFILI