Law Practice Today

Part Three:

Manage Your Staff

 Armed with your life/work strategy and an understanding of how to manage your time more efficiently, it is now time to incorporate others people into the process. Perhaps the most underutilized resource in the arena of time management is delegation.

Delegate

Delegating is an often overlooked, yet essential skill to master as you advance in your career. Its purpose is to enable you to dispose of simpler tasks to free you up to perform tasks which are of greater value to you personally or your organization. The time it takes up front to orchestrate a plan of action, explain the desired outcome, and monitor the progress of each staff member ultimately requires less time than it would take to execute the entire action plan yourself. That is, if you delegate correctly.

You are hampering your ability to delegate effectively if you:

• believe can do the task better/faster yourself;
• worry that a subordinate might not do the task properly and, because you are ultimately accountable, your professional reputation may be at risk;
• fear that if the subordinate does do it well, you may be viewed as “non-essential” or expendable.

The truth is you probably can do the specific task better and faster. However, as you move up the hierarchy, additional responsibilities will also require your attention at work and at home. With the same amount of hours in each day and multiplying responsibilities, you have to use every available resource to get all the work done. Accept the fact that occasionally, it will take more time to explain to someone else how to do something than it would take to do it yourself. Delegate it anyway. The next time, it will take less time to explain. More importantly, you will be developing your team for the future and, thus ultimately gain the desired leverage and control you are seeking. And remember, people rise or fall to the level of expectation. Delegate tasks and hold people accountable. The better your team does under your leadership, the more value you will bring to your organization. No one ever lost a job for being too productive.

Remember, “the success of every project depends on the initial planning stage.” Invest the time at the beginning of the project to think through the project to its conclusion. This will enable you to clearly define the goals and objectives, assign the tasks and assess the progress to ensure you get the end result you want. You must develop a strategy to deal with any potential problems before they arise.

Imagine you are managing a project with a definitive deadline. Distracted by other obligations and responsibilities, you do not invest the time to think through the project to its conclusion. As a result, you don’t consider how long the main task will take. The ancillary tasks you completed earlier become outmoded and need to be updated, creating more work and more stress. You are forced to race through a task that ideally requires more time and attention and then something you completely forgot sends you scrambling and working late into the night. The people involved are crabby and stressed. The job gets done, but the cost is high.

To avoid such nightmare scenarios, at the start of each project consider:

• What is the goal or desired end result?
• What is the deadline for the project?
• Can some of the tasks be carried out in parallel?
• Are there competing projects within the department or institution with higher priorities that are going to take up key resources?
• How many people are needed to accomplish the goal? How many people are available to work on the project? What type of skills do they need to possess?

Once you know who is on the team and have a sense of their strengths and weaknesses, you will want to decide what level of delegation is appropriate for their skill level and your comfort level.

As you work more and more with people and trust develops, you will get more comfortable delegating at higher levels. Treat delegating as a chance to build rapport. Chat with subordinates about what needs to get done, how they intend to do it and why it is important. Investing 10 minutes in the process takes extra effort up front, but there is sure to be timesaving payoff.

Always operate under the principal that you can never be too clear. As the delegator, it is your responsibility to ensure your team knows:

• Goals and Objectives of the project. Too many busy professionals delegate under the command and control style of “Do this because I said so.” They believe it will take too long to explain the details. However, if everybody understands the overall objective (which typically can be explained in 3 sentences in less than 30 seconds) or how their segment of the project ties into the overall goal or impacts other aspects of the project, they will be more cooperative. )

• Operating Procedures. Confirm how information will be shared (e-mail, voicemail, meetings, etc.), who else is working on the project and any other peculiarities specific to this project.

• SPECIFIC Deadlines. “ASAP” is meaningless. So is “In a few days.” Try, “I need it in an hour” or “I need it Wednesday afternoon.” Leave no room for ambiguity. Setting specific deadlines and allowing your team to manage their own workload will ameliorate your constant need to hover and inquire “Is it done yet?” to the relief of both you and your team members.

• Expected performance standards. Even if you believe people should know what is expected of them—take the 10 seconds required to state the obvious. You can never be too clear.

• How they are doing along the way. When appropriate, provide on-going feedback to allow for corrections to be made as the project progresses.

Provide Feedback

Delivering meaningful feedback is the most essential communication you can provide. Most people hate the thought of it. Not only is it time consuming, it can be emotionally draining. What if the listener cries? Or gets defensive? Or threatens to sue? Perhaps the feedback will fall on deaf ears. Why bother?

We bother because the cost of not sharing feedback outweighs those obstacles. If people aren’t told they have done something incorrectly they will continue to repeat the behaviors and you will continue to be frustrated. At work, productivity will drop, people will likely lose their jobs and the Firm will lose talent and money. At home, tensions will rise.

To avoid such needless human and financial costs, learn to deliver meaningful feedback informally and continuously. Think beyond annual performance appraisals. Meaningful on-going informal feedback enhances the formal process because staff members will have received messages throughout the year offering immediate corrective action for very specific behaviors in a timely manner. The formal review can than be used to reinforce those message and focus on systematic goal setting to ensure the professional development of each staff member for the benefit of the organization. Effective feedback:

• Creates trust and cooperation; it focuses on improvements, both possible and those actually achieved.
• Increases skills.
• Improves confidence in ability and potential.
• Clarifies exactly where people stand and what to do next.
• Leaves people feeling helped & empowered.

When delivered properly, not only will effective feedback eliminate undesirable behaviors, it will also increase skills and performance and create an atmosphere of trust and cooperation.

Use the CORRECT format to deliver informal feedback effectively.

Caption/Headline

“Let’s talk about the XYZ project you worked on last week”

Observed behaviors

“I noticed you did…” Explain what specific actions lead to the error. “You screwed up,” is not useful. Try instead, “You researched issue X when I asked you to focus on issue Y.”

Rx

Explain the proper “prescription” or process that should have been used. “You should have done…”

Request explanation

It is important to calmly ask questions to uncover why the person did what she did. Maybe she was just careless, but maybe she uncovered other information that could be vital. Ask, “Is there a reason you did it the way you did?” (The reason might be valid!)

Explain preferred behavior

Give the person the opportunity to figure out alternative ways to correct the problem. Ask, “how might you have handled that differently?” See if they can identify the option. If not, say, “In the future you should do..."(Repeat the Rx)

Confirm understanding

“Do you understand?” Or “Do you have any questions”?

Take action

Monitor to ensure behavior changes.

Your communication style will play a critical role in your ability to resolve the issue. Typically, reaction to criticism has less to do with what you say than the manner & attitude in which you say it.

Finally, remember, people can’t read your mind. Talk to members of the project to ensure everyone is clear about roles and responsibilities, tasks and deadlines. Provide meaningful, timely feedback to ensure tasks are done correctly to avoid wasting time redoing tasks or putting out fires. Communicate directly: provide detailed instructions and ask questions for clarification when needed. This will reduce the stress levels of everyone involved and produce an end result of higher quality.

Also, remember to praise and thank people for a job well done.

These principles are applicable in the home as well as the workplace. Many hands make light work. People want to help. (In the workplace, they are paid to help.) Let them. Whether you enlist spouses, children or retired parents to assist with household chores or hire housekeepers, handymen, etc. to lighten your load, delegate effectively and provide meaningful feedback to reduce stress and create harmony.

Summary

There is no magic pill to achieve life/work balance. There will always be factors beyond your control that demand your time and attention. Yet with a keen understanding of your own strengths and weaknesses, wants and needs, as well as careful planning, you can minimize the amount of time spent in “reactive” mode and reduce the amount of stress in your personal and professional life.

Organize and develop systems to create a semblance of order. Learn to delegate, provide on-going meaningful feedback and communicate directly at work and at home to reduce the hours of wasted time. And remember, anything and everything is possible if you have the mind set and attitudes that support your success.