If we gave you a gold ticket to being more productive in your day, would you take it?

We have one question which will 10X your productivity as a manager.

Having more time is every manager’s dream! (Actually, it could be most people’s dream).

We know, as a manager, you have an endless list of tasks… so we wanted to make dealing with your team easier for you.

As coaches, we really know people (it’s our job too), and we know that dealing with other people can be tricky…

  • They sometimes lie
  • They sometimes forget
  • They sometimes get busy

… to name a few.

BUT we also know that EVERYONE has the ability to respond to any situation.

We wanted to give you this one simple tool, which will help you manage your team in less time, giving you more time for other tasks.

You see the thing is, You have a say on how things go.

No, really you do.

With this one simple question “By when will you have it complete?”

Let us show you.

You’re in a team meeting and Maria says she will complete the PowerPoint for the quarterly meeting with the company.

Great! You can ask, “Maria, by when will you have it complete and sent to me?”

Maria replies “By Tuesday afternoon”

(You put a note in your diary – Maria sends PowerPoint Quarterly Meeting Tuesday 5PM)

It’s Tuesday afternoon and Maria hasn’t sent you the PowerPoint.

You can go to Maria and say “Maria, have you completed the PowerPoint?”.

If it’s not complete, you can ask questions like;

  • What do you need from me to complete it?
  • By when will it be finished?
  • What’s missing to have it complete?

REMEMBER (This is important)

  • Don’t engage with the excuses and justifications
  • When something’s not working, you can share the impact & look together at what can be put in place in the future to make it work. You can say something like “Next time, please let me know you cannot finish on time, in the moment you realize you won’t finish it on time. We can work it out together in that moment.”
  • Always ask yourself, “What can I do about this situation?” “What can others do about this situation?”

(It’s human nature to blame, don’t get caught up in the blame.)

You see, we don’t just use this at work, we use it in every area of our lives.

At first, we find that other people don’t do what they say they’re going to do.

But then the magic happens… (with consistency on your part)

  • We start to uncover the things that really aren’t working in our team(s)
  • Other people know that we will ask, and therefore start doing what they said they would do
  • We have more time; that before was used chasing our team or even doing the work ourselves!

Try it out …