Leaders, Are You Ready for 2024?

In my last article, we explored how your team performed in 2023 and what they might need to thrive in 2024. Today, I'd like to focus on you. These five thoughtful questions are designed to help you conclude this year on a positive note and set the stage for a successful 2024.

Photo by Rebrand Cities

1. What Can You Do for Yourself?

As the year winds down and we look toward 2024, consider what changes could simplify your life. If constant distractions and interruptions are a challenge, discussing ways to streamline communication with your team could be beneficial. Alternatively, if you find coaching your team challenging due to time constraints, our New Lens® app might offer the supplementary support you need.

2. Are You Getting the Support You Need?

In our fast-paced lives, it's easy to neglect our personal connections. These relationships, however, are crucial, especially during busy or stressful periods. Don't hesitate to reach out proactively for support. For instance, you might ask a partner to encourage you to start your day with a walk or run if they notice you're overworking and becoming irritable.

3. How Will You Balance Results and Relationships?

As high performers, it's common to focus intensely on results, sometimes at the expense of nurturing relationships. Remember, effective leadership is about achieving goals through and with others. To build stronger relationships in 2024, consider setting aside 15 minutes each week for relationship-building activities, such as sharing articles or making introductions.

4. How Much Did Your Behavior Reflect Your Intentions?

It's important to realize that others assess not only your accomplishments but also the experiences others have working with you. Your intentions are vital, but if they are not reflected in your interactions, they may fall short. Regular feedback from peers can be invaluable in ensuring your behavior aligns with your intentions.

5. What Team Issues Did You Play a Role in?

Every team faces challenges, such as conflict, low performance, or stress. To prevent these issues from spilling into 2024, it's helpful to reflect on your contribution to your team's dynamics. For example, I advised a leader who was inadvertently enabling a problematic dynamic by taking over urgent tasks. By helping her team reprioritize instead, she made a positive change.

What insights did you gain from these questions? Were there any surprises? As you continue to develop your leadership skills, consider exploring our range of products and services, including the innovative New Lens® app, designed to make leadership coaching more accessible.

Here’s to being intentional in shaping what your leadership journey looks like in 2024!

How to Stay Focused Before the Holiday Break

The fast pace of work seems to get even more hectic as the year winds down and the holidays get closer. You probably have more work to do than you can actually complete in a day, and distractions are everywhere. It's easy to feel scattered and that you aren't accomplishing anything meaningful. So today I want to share some ways to regain your focus and make the final workweek of 2019 a productive one. You can also use these strategies to get 2020 off to a productive start.

1. Prioritize the Right Work

The first strategy is to always focus systematically on what matters the most. In other words, focus on the “right work” — the work that will have the biggest impact on business results. That typically includes just three or four priorities. How clear are you about what those should be? If you haven’t recently identified where you should focus to have the biggest business impact, given your role and skills, take a few minutes to do so.

Raising your awareness about this will help you start making different choices about how you spend your time. You may be juggling a lot of balls, but are they the right ones? Make sure you take some time to evaluate that. 

2. Set Aside Reflection Time

During this hectic season, you need quiet time more than ever. Book an appointment with yourself to step away from your tasks and just reflect. Whether you're identifying the right work, finding ways to create more capacity in your schedule or preparing for what’s coming up next year, blocking time will allow you to be much more deliberate.

3. Shut Out Distractions

Also recognize when you need uninterrupted time to complete important work. Leave your desk if you think you’ll have too many distractions. You can go to a conference room or another quiet area of your office. Sometimes it can help to work a little bit from home before you come to the office.

4. Take Control of Email

Another big distraction is email. Put some more structure in place for how you manage your inbox. When I ask people if they get more than 100 emails a day, most say yes. And a lot of them get distracted by each email as it comes in because there’s a notification. So, regardless of what they are doing, they get derailed by an email that might not be that important compared with what they should be working on.

A great first step toward getting a handle on email is turning off notifications. Resist the temptation to constantly check your email. Instead check it at specific intervals throughout the day. 

5. Tell Others What You're Doing

No matter what strategies you use to stay focused, communicate them to others. For example, let others known about your new approach to email so that they know how to get hold of you if something urgent comes up at a time when you're not checking email. You might say, “Text or call me if it’s something that can’t wait.”

These conversations help others understand that you are taking steps to increase your efficiency, responsiveness and ability to get the most critical work done. It will get them thinking about your effectiveness and what they should be doing to improve their own. 

Pick at least one of these strategies to try and notice how the changes you make affect your productivity. For more tips like these, check out "Staying in the Driver's Seat," one of the titles in my Leadership EDGE℠ series.