Make That Boss Happy Managing Your Boss's Expectations: 5 Things To Think About. "The more we manage expectations, the better we can manage the future." Stanley L. Boswell, Jr. It's almost always useful to understand and manage our counterparts' expectations, especially our Boss's. It minimizes the chance for disappointment and maximizes the chance for satisfying the Boss. Here are five tactics to consider, practice and get good at (and, where possible, get in writing): 1. Confirm boss’s expectations. Duh! But far too often we think we understand (when we don't) or we're afraid to look dumb is we ask for confirmation/clarification. 2. Get commitment on priorities. Here we want to make sure that the new task is important and valuable enough to replace one of your current Top 3 tasks. If so, then one current task has to be re-assigned, delayed or killed. Don’t commit to new tasks until priorities are re-evaluated. 3. Reach common agreement on what = su...
You are the Message (NOT PowerPoint) Want to be remembered? Get in the face of your audience. Make sure they can see you and you can see them. Which is more likely to get and keep your audience's attention for 60 minutes: a real human being with a powerful message or a PowerPoint slide deck? Maximise your ability to sell your message by using the 80 / 20 Rule: 80% You / 20 % PowerPoint Connect with your audience in a human way by owning the spotlight. Don't let PowerPoint steal your thunder, dominate the sho w, and put your audience to sleep.
Yo-Yoing Between Tasks? Why Switch When You Can Batch? A study of Microsoft employees found that when they were interrupted by an email, they needed fifteen minutes to fully regain their train of thought. Switching back and forth between tasks is costly in time and energy. To see this switching cost in action, try this basic exercise: Say “abcdefgh” then immediately after that say “12345678”. Notice how long it takes you to do this. Now mix the two: say “a1b2c3d4e5f6g7h8”. It takes more time and mental energy while switching between letters and numbers. A useful tool to combat our switching habits at work is “batching “. You can work fewer hours, and work less hard during those hours, by batching your tasks more effectively. Batching means grouping together similar tasks, so you spend less time and energy switching between different types of activity. In the “a1b2c3 . . .” exercise, it’s like handling all the letters first, in one batch, then handling the number...
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