As a manager, not a day goes by that you don't have to think about delegating projects and tasks.  How do you decide?  How do you choose what to keep yourself? What if multiple people have the time and the skill to do the job?  A number of years ago I asked Laurie Page, a managing partner at the Bridge Group, Inc, this question and she gave me the answer I now live by.  It really is as easy as 1, 2, 3.

#1 – Does the individual have the skill to do the job well?

#2 – Do they have the time?

#3 – Do they have the passion?

I started using this set of questions as my litmus test a few years back and realized they really did make my job easier when selecting who should take on a key role. Most often you can create a long list of those who meet 2 out of the 3 criteria but the list rapidly shortens when you consider all three. Go ahead; think about a major new role in your company or a project that requires a lead or a manager who could use some help from a team leader.   If you’ve hired well you will probably have a long list of those who have the skill to take on the assignment. But who truly has the time AND the passion in addition to the skill. In a prior role we were looking to find someone to run a new team; a team that we believed would be critical to our growth in the coming year. When I added the third criteria, passion, the ideal individual quickly rose to the top of my list.

Go Ahead, Ride Your Bike Blind.  That’s a sentence I never thought I would write. That is until I listened to NPR’s Invisibilia podcast where the co-hosts Lulu Miller and Alix Spiegel “examine the surprising effect our expectations can have on the people around us. Plus, the story of a blind man who says expectations have helped him see. Yes, see.” 

The science is now clear that expectations play a huge role in our outcomes as students, workers, leaders and even friends. It’s actually pretty simple; treat people like they can achieve the impossible and you will increase your chances and theirs of success. 

If you haven’t yet listened to NPR’s new Invisibilia, which launched this past January, definitely check it out. They share lots of fascinating stories about every day behaviors and actions and how they affect our lives. The hosts are great storytellers and they make psychology and brain science understandable, interesting and applicable to our lives. 

In this case not only does a blind man believe he can see, he proves it by showing them how he rides his bicycle down busy streets all by himself. If he can do that and help other vision-impaired individuals live lives that are more independent imagine what the rest of us who have our sight can achieve with the right expectations!

As always I look forward to exchanging ideas.   Leave your comments and let's start a conversation and see what we can achieve together.

Have you ever acted out your feelings rather than talking them out?  

Let’s get personal.

Just think about the last time you were upset with your spouse, partner or close friend.  Think about how you acted prior to clearing the air or talking it out (even if in loud voices).  We all do it.  Your spouse ticks you off, and you pout, or later that evening you respond to his or her question with a snooty retort. 

At this point, you are probably already admitting you’ve done this once or twice, but you are thinking you wouldn’t do that in the work place. 

WRONG!

We all have, and if you listen carefully, you’ll hear and see it occurring in your office every day.  I remember a time I experienced it myself.  I was pissed off.   I was being micromanaged and undermined.  I knew this concept well, yet I attended a team meeting and was passive-aggressive. 

After the meeting, I was ashamed of my behavior,  but it was never clearer to me that this key phrase, if you don’t talk it out, you will act it out, holds true.  I wasn’t talking it out, so I simply acted it out, and afterwards it felt really bad.   This is just one of the many lessons I learned from Crucial Confrontations®.  There are so many amazing lessons one can learn from Crucial Conversations® and Crucial Confrontations®.  If you haven’t read the books, I highly recommend them. 

Remember, we are all human.  When we have strong feelings, they are going to emerge one way or another.  So make sure they do in conversation, rather than in action.

How many emails do you delete that simply read, “I will get back to you,” or “Let's get together to review this?”  One of my personal favorites is when I craft an email asking a very specific question and get a reply of, “Thanks.”

But this post isn't about email etiquette or picking the right communication tool, even though those are great topics.  What I am harping on today is making sure that, when you respond to someone, no matter the method, you forward the action.  What this means is that your response somehow progresses the project or conversation forward in some way.

In today's world, we are all inundated with communications.  There are times that it is completely appropriate to send back a response that is simply a thank you, but one should never simply pass the buck or use email as a way to procrastinate.  

Here are 2 simple ways to forward the action:

1.     Make sure that, when you respond, your response moves the project or task forward.  If you can't get it done the same day, then rather than typing, “I will get back to you,” make sure to consider your basic project management criteria of who, what and when.  For example, your response might look something like this: “I will get back to you with my edits by the end of day tomorrow.”  

2.     Instead of typing, “Let's get together to review,” and putting the burden back on the sender to complete the next task of scheduling the event, send a calendar invite, scheduling a time and place to review the work.  You should always do this, rather than asking them to schedule it via an email response, especially if you are the manager.  Scheduling a calendar invite is not something you should delegate;)

I believe in to-do lists, and I come up with new ways to keep these lists every 6 months.  My latest fixation is Evernote, but there are plenty of other great ways out there to keep up with your to-do list.

But this blog is not about methods of keeping up with a to-do list. This blog is about your not-to-do list. This is a list of the tasks or projects you are ignoring, consciously ignoring. The projects and tasks on your not-to-do list may be important, perish the thought, even urgent, but they simply aren’t as important as the items on your active to-do list. 

So what is the most important part of this?  Don’t forget to tell your manager that you are ignoring these tasks or projects.  It never works well when you declare that after the fact.  Seriously, make a list of the items that you are not going to work on or complete today, this week or this month, and share it with your manager.  You can (or your manager can) reassess as needed, but I guarantee this list will make you more productive, and assuming you chose the right items, more effective.