Category: time

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Six Things to Remember While Writing Feedback

Over the two decades in the many leadership roles, giving/writing feedback was one of the most arduous of all jobs — across dozens of roles, organizations, countries, and cultures. If you are a manager or a team leader — you are solely responsible for the feedback you are giving your team, both on content and method.

So, what is the secret of giving/ writing feedback?
Feedback giving/ writing is both an art and a science. It is an extremely critical component of team building and as much as it is for developing one’s own career. I have condensed the feedback process into six points that can work in any situation. Good feedback will help your team be high on energy and ideas, become awesome in execution and develop a great attitude.

The secret sauce, ironically, is not about the receiver of the feedback. It is about asking yourself (feedback giver) these six vital questions.

  1. Am I being specific?
    It is extremely critical to be as specific as you can be. It is easy to get carried away with analogies and incidents related to the point being discussed. Such meandering, however well-intentioned it may be, often leads to dilution of the message. It may even lead to a defensive mindset being triggered for the receiver. State facts and give examples in support of the feedback being given. Nothing more, nothing less.
  2. Am I showing the way to grow and develop this person?
    Your job as a reviewer is to develop and grow people. Pointing to shortcomings does not help in any case. In fact, it would work counter-productive as the receiver pulls up the defences and closes their mind to any suggestions.
  3. Can this person really do something about this?
    Think before if this person can do something about this or if you can help to change this behaviour? If the answer is no, that specific feedback is best left unsaid. Yes, think about it. What is the purpose of feedback on which the person cannot act?
  4. Will this add value to this person?
    Focus your feedback on its value for the receiver. If your feedback will not add value to the receiver in the current state, resist from even saying it. Often, it is for us to offer some advice because it is dear to us and (however well-intentioned) do not think of the value it would add to the other person.
  5. Does this represent facts?
    Write feedback promptly when the incident is fresh in your mind. Do not let other unrelated incidents influence your feedback. Good managers maintain a small notepad, to jot down incidents when they occur. This small notepad is worth terabytes of data that may be residing in our memory. Maintaining and referring that small notepad, will always bring us back to the facts at hand.
  6. Finally, let silence do the heavy lifting.
    Silence is an extremely powerful tool. Any good negotiator would tell you that people tend to underestimate the power of silence when it comes to sales and social dynamics in general. “Saying nothing is way more powerful than spoken words” they would vouch. Silence during feedback not only defines alpha roles but also build the readiness to assimilate, process and draw on an action plan in the receiver’s mind. You must recognise the five signs that indicate silence is needed
  • Interrupting by talking over someone else
  • Formulating your response while someone is talking
  • Using a break in the conversation to create a distraction to change topics
  • Talking in circles
  • Monopolizing airtime

With these six simple steps, you will see your self a lot more effective and sought after by your team and people Try it out!

This article first appeared on the Times of India Blogs on March 22, 2019.

_____

Rajesh Soundararajan is an entrepreneur and co-founder of Futureshift Consulting, a boutique consulting outfit that helps organizations chart their business, marketing and technology strategies that generate demand, drive predictable revenue and achieve impactful outcomes.

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aspire Boss career CEO Leadership Lesson time travel

Aspire to be a CEO: Avoid travelling with your bosses!

This rule is some what counter-intuitive.
Most aspirants to the top jobs, usually jump at the opportunity to travel with the superiors. They think that travelling with bosses gives them that extra time to shine. Don’t do it. Good senior executives judge on results, not on clever conversations.

Good top managers are also busy and unless you are working ion their projects, in less than ten minutes they get back to what they are working on.
You must spend your travel time working . Airplane time is work time, so you may want to fly by yourself and gain those extra few hours.
If you travel with a top executive and end up working on the flight, they would think you are doing it to impress them. Worse still, they want to read a book, relax, take a nap or may be watch a movie and they will be unsettled by your industriousness. Even if you have to fly the same plane, sit in a different section.
Hotel time is also work time. If you travel with superiors they may be obligated to ask you for dinner. If they don’t you will feel hurt. Either ways your valuable time is wasted.

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Aspire to be a CEO: Learn the Four Rules of Time

Four Rules of Time
There are four rules of time.
1.     The first is that time is perishable.
This means that it cannot be saved. In fact, time can only be spent. Because time is perishable, the only thing you can do with it is to spend it differently, to reallocate your time away from activities of low value and toward activities of higher value. But once it is gone, it is gone forever.
2.     Time Is Indispensable
The second rule of time is that time is indispensable. All work requires time. No matter what it is you want to do in life, even looking out a window or sleeping in for a few extra minutes, it requires a certain amount of time. And according to the 10/90 Rule, the 10% of time that you take to plan your activities carefully in advance will save you 90% of the effort involved in achieving your goals later. The very act of thinking through and planning your work in advance will dramatically reduce the amount of time that it takes you to do the actual job.
3.     The Currency of the Future
The third rule of time is that time is irreplaceable. Nothing else will do, especially in relationships. Time is the only currency that means anything in your relationships with the members of your family, your friends, colleagues, customers and co-workers. Truly effective people give a lot of thought to creating blocks of time that they can then spend, without interruption, with the important people in their lives.
4.     The Key to Goal-Achievement
The fourth rule is that time is essential for accomplishment.
Every goal you want to achieve, everything you want to accomplish, requires time. In fact, one of the smartest things you ever do, when you set a goal, is to sit down and allocate the exact amount of time that you are going to have to invest to achieve that goal. The failure to do this almost always leaves the goal unaccomplished.

Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action:
First, decide today to redirect and reallocate your time away from low-value tasks and toward high-value activities.
Second, make a plan to spend more time face-to-face with the most important people in your life. The more you think about the use of your time, the better you will become.
By: Brian Tracy
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PASSing the E-mail test

The US economy loses over $900 billion annually in lost productivity and up to 28 percent of workers’ time due to information overload because of email. The impact is severe – not enough strategic thinking time, lack of work/life balance, and workflow breakdowns.
With billions worth of lost productivity each year, many companies are questioning the value of e-mail and how to bring it back into balance. It would appear on the surface that e-mail is a big problem. However, is e-mail really the problem, or is it the approach to e-mail that’s flawed?
It is easy to see that the real issue is the behaviors employees have adopted and developed around approaching their inboxes, such as:

  • compulsively checking e-mail
  • loosely constructing e-mails
  • holding 1000s of e-mail messages in the inbox

To get e-mail under control, we must first re-examine these approaches, recognize that they may not be working, and replace them with behaviors to manage e-mail more effectively, not just as individuals but as teams and organizations.
I suggest you apply the popular McGhee E-Mail PASS Model the next time you write an important e-mail. It is seen that users spend 32% lesser time, 81% and fewer messages in their inbox when they use this model.
Ask yourself  these four questions while composing e-mails that are lengthy and take more than two minutes to write.

  1. P – What’s the Purpose of your communication and does it relate to a Meaningful Objective? (If it doesn’t relate back to your Meaningful Objectives consider renegotiating or disengaging.)
  2. A – What Action is involved and does it have a due date? (Be clear about what you want the recipient to do: take physical action, respond only, read only, or simply review as an FYI. When using time lines be discerning and make sure they mean something and hold people accountable to your timeliness.)
  3. S – What Supporting documentation do you need to include? (Identifying the supporting information that the recipient needs in order to complete the requested action successfully. This will reduce the likelihood of your message coming back to you with questions.)
  4. S – Have you effectively summarized your communication in the Subject Line? (Follow three elements to a good Subject Line: clarify the meaningful objectives or projects that the e-mail message relates to, clearly indicate the action requested, and identify a due date, if there is one.)

So the next time you write an email, let people talk about your ability to PASS the test.

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action aspire career CEO Leadership Lesson manage rules time

Four Rules of Time

There are four rules of time.
1. The first is that time is perishable.
This means that it cannot be saved. In fact, time can only be spent. Because time is perishable, the only thing you can do with it is to spend it differently, to reallocate your time away from activities of low value and toward activities of higher value. But once it is gone, it is gone forever.
2. Time Is Indispensable
The second rule of time is that time is indispensable. All work requires time. No matter what it is you want to do in life, even looking out a window or sleeping in for a few extra minutes, it requires a certain amount of time. And according to the 10/90 Rule, the 10% of time t hat you take to plan your activities carefully in advance will save you 90% of the effort involved in achieving your goals later. The very act of thinking through and planning your work in advance will dramatically reduce the amount of time that it takes you to do the actual job.
3. The Currency of the Future
The third rule of time is that time is irreplaceable. Nothing else will do, especially in relationships. Time is the only currency that means anything in your relationships with the members of your family, your friends, colleagues, customers and co-workers. Truly effective people give a lot of thought to creating blocks of time that they can then spend, without interruption, with the important people in their lives.
4. The Key to Goal-Achievement
The fourth rule is that time is essential for accomplishment.
Every goal you want to achieve, everything you want to accomplish, requires time. In fact, one of the smartest things you ever do, when you set a goal, is to sit down and allocate the exact amount of time that you are going to have to invest to achieve that goal. The failure to do this almost always leaves the goal unaccomplished.
Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action:
First, decide today to redirect and reallocate your time away from low-value tasks and toward high-value activities.
Second, make a plan to spend more time face-to-face with the most important people in your life. The more you think about the use of your time, the better you will become.
By: Brian Tracy