Help Your Team Help You

We do an enormous amount of writing here about how to prepare well, and not waste other people’s time… especially if that person is your boss. We all know how important it is to be able to communicate well to people above you on the org chart.

But let’s flip that around for a moment. Now you are the boss. And you don’t want your time wasted. You want your team to be able to get to the point with you, anticipate your questions, and communicate with you in an effective way. My colleagues and I can coach them on how to not waste your time. But so can you. If you want efficiency in your organization, consider spending some time writing down the things that you always appreciate knowing, the questions you always want answers to. If you like your information in a certain way, write that down also. If there is a certain statistic that matters to you, write that down.

And once you have accumulated this list of things that you rely on or care about, you know what you should do next?  Share… it… with… your… team.

Don’t be mysterious about it. If there are some things that matter to you, make those things known. Help them help you.

Here is how I think about it… if someone on my team has something they want to pitch me, if they are prepared for that conversation, they can usually get me on board (or at least open to continuing the conversation) in about 10 minutes. If it takes longer than that, then it is highly possible that they weren’t prepared enough. History backs me up on this.

So, if you want your team to respect your time, don’t leave it to them to figure out how to connect with you. Don’t be mysterious. We aren’t mapping the human genome here. Make it easy for them. If there are things that are important to you, tell them what they are. Everyone wins.

Have a great day.

Does your team:
– Take too long to make decision?
– Fail to ask for what it wants or needs from you?
– Make things too complicated?
– Deliver unconvincing or disorganized presentations?
– Have new hires who are unprepared to communicate in the workplace?

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Brett Slater

A book about change

The Latimer Group’s CEO Dean Brenner is a noted keynote speaker and author on the subject of persuasive communication. He has written three books, including Persuaded, in which he details how communication can transform organizations into highly effective, creative, transparent environments that succeed at every level.