Skip to main content

Effective Leaders Communicate both Priorities and Deadlines

Effective leaders understand that good communication also involves the ability to give clear direction and productive feedback.

Here is another of my leadership communication skills tips to help you communicate your message more effectively:

Communicate both priorities and deadlines. Sure you can walk up to an employee and ask for a list of tasks to be done. But without context, the employee might not do the tasks in the order you expected or might not complete them in the timeframe you wanted. Effective leaders communicate priorities and/or help employees prioritize.

Effective leaders also are not afraid to ask, “When can you get this done?” Whenever possible, it is a good idea to create deadlines together. An employee might have several other projects going at the same time, and while you might not want to compromise time, you don’t want to sacrifice quality.

ACTION During the next few weeks pay attention to how often you communicate priorities and deadlines. 1. Are you communicating priorities and helping the employee prioritize? 2. Are you giving them the deadline and/or creating the deadlines together? These two questions will help you become more aware of your need to improve on these two areas.

I will be sharing more areas that can help leaders communicate their messages more effectively.

So be sure to check back.In the meantime, if you have any successes or questions about leadership communication Let me know and I will share them with my readers. E-mail Patrick

Comments

Anonymous said…
Thanks for this interesting post. Knowing how difficult excellent communication is to achieve, I am looking forward to your next several posts to achieve some clarity.

With respect to prioritizing, I see a key component to be making sure that our employees feel safe in asking (professionally of course) for some help with competing priorities. It isn't unusual to have a leader or manager assign more than one "hot" task to the same employee!
Thu May 21, 01:07:00 PM 2009
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Building a team “Family Style”

Building a team “Family Style” I come from a big Italian family. All four of my grandparents came to America from Italy (okay my Mom's father came from Sicily!). My extended family, just on my Dad's side (including aunts, uncles, cousins…), totaled almost 100 people. So I am very well versed on the concept of working together in groups. When I look at team building I think of it as ‘family building”. Here is what I mean: 1. First, think of the group as “Family” not a team. Family in this context is a group whose members are related in origin, characteristics, or occupation. So since you are related in occupation, you qualify as a “family” I’ve always considered my co-workers, clients and other business relationship as my “business family”. I have used this concept with organizations when I have served: as president, as committees chair and on committees/teams. I find it more powerful to think “family” versus team. 2. Find ways to get people to work/play together. You build stro...
1 comment
Read more

7 Ways to Say No

7 Ways to Say No Going along with my theme from my last post "Not to Do List" I though I would reprint an article I wrote on ways to say "no!" I think many people struggle with telling others “No”. The reason they struggle is because they think they only have two choices. They can either say “yes” or “no”. I try to avoid “all or nothing” thinking. I believe that there are many alternative between the extremes. So here are several different ways I share with my clients on how they could say no: 7 Ways to Say No: 1) Say NO… with a straightforward explanation – “No, I’m uncomfortable doing that!” 2) Say NO… and give an alternative – “No. I can’t do that today, how about first thing in the morning?” 3) Say NO… and clarify your reason – Help them understand your position. Explain the why. “No. I can’t help you because I made commitment to my family to not work on weekends this month.” 4) Give Preface then Say NO… – “Each year we choose 3 charities to support and I am sor...
1 comment
Read more

Effective Leaders Summarize

A good leader understands the key role communication skills play in their success. Effective Leaders Summarize. A summary is a good way to close a dialogue. The longer or more complicated the message, the more important it is to summarize what was said. People tend to remember the most recent information presented. So in a longer conversation or meeting be sure to do a brief summary. This is also a great way to check for understanding. ACTION: An effective way to close a conversation or meeting is by going over the key points that were discussed. Either you can summarize or you can ask the others to summarize from their perspective. For any action that needs to be taken, be sure to mutually discuss deadlines for their completion. In the meantime, if you have any successes or questions about leadership communication let me know and I will share them with my readers. E-mail me by clicking here
Post a Comment
Read more