10 Leadership Tips for Successfully Accommodating a Stressful Workload
Contrary to the old adage that says, “having too much business is never a bad problem to have,” it is indeed possible for a company to lose clients and customers or fail altogether in the event that it cannot accommodate the demand satisfactorily. When the pace and volume of work becomes overwhelming, it can be easy to buckle under the pressure, which is why strong leadership is absolutely paramount in a competitive corporate environment. With that said, here are 10 actionable leadership tips you can use to push your company to its greatest potential on a regular basis.
Utilize Leadership Training
An untrained or inexperienced leader is in no position to take control of a struggling company, let alone maintain and manage it for the long haul. Fortunately, if you don’t currently have a superstar CEO with an impressive 10-year portfolio, you don’t necessarily have to let go of existing employees or hire new leadership, as there is the option of training your existing managerial staff. Leadership training can significantly improve a company’s productivity and long-term redundancy by equipping your team with the skills needed to make the right decisions. You can use a course directory like findcourses to discover and compare a variety of leadership training courses.
Allocate Tasks Appropriately
If you’re asking the wrong people to do the wrong jobs, chances are you’re going to run into some workflow deficiencies and less-than-ideal results. Use employee monitoring software, surveys, and general supervision to learn more about the individual capabilities and tendencies of your staff members. By knowing the specific strengths and weaknesses of your workforce, you will be in a better position to delegate duties in the most efficient manner possible.
Balance Workload Among Staff
In addition to choosing the right people for each task, it’s also important to ensure that the total workload of each individual employee is within a reasonably achievable range. Overloading your leaders with too much responsibility might seem like a good idea when you want management to step in and step up, but in actuality the main contributions you need from managerial staff should be related to observation and innovation rather than menial tasks. Thus, workload balancing is an important area for leaders to understand and implement within their management strategies.
Set Highly Specific Goals
Simply telling your employees to do their best isn’t the best way to push them to their limits. Instead, leaders need to be precise and persistent when detailing and reviewing objectives in order to keep everyone motivated and on track. The primary benefit of telling an employee “I need you to accomplish this, this, and that” is that they typically won’t want to find out what happens if they fail to meet their assigned goals on a regular basis. After establishing realistic yet ambitious expectations, leaders then need to follow up by responding appropriately to poor performance.
Enforce Strict Deadlines
Simply describing a goal without setting a time limit won’t help you maximize productivity and efficiency. A good leader should strive to associate a fixed deadline with every goal. Even if there is some wiggle room and there is no real rush on the client end, pushing employees to aim for an early finish will allow the company to scale up exponentially and satisfy customers at a faster rate.
Reward Exceptional Performance
Just as a potent leader should swiftly react to poor performance, you should also be ready to acknowledge, commend, and reward strong individual and group efforts. There are plenty of ways to incentivize and provide employee bonuses. Here are some examples of how company leaders can use rewards to promote better performance:
- awarding a bonus payment to the employee of the month every month
- paid vacation days
- performance-based wage raises
- positional promotions
Understandably, the most impactful and appreciated perks are those that provide the opportunity for additional monetary compensation or a raise. Such incentivization can effectively motivate employees to step their game up in response to a challenging workload.
Schedule Sustainable Shifts
Depending on the kind of work involved, it may be difficult for employees to sustain herculean efforts throughout the duration of a full 8+ hour shift. Leaders need to look for ways to utilize the full depth of their staff without overburdening the company’s human resources. You don’t want your employees dreading the idea of showing up to work, which is why it’s important to leave adequate room for breaks and relaxation during the course of each work day.
Refine Processes
When it comes to boosting productivity, you need to be looking for workflow deficiencies and stumbling blocks within each individual process along the line. Start by analyzing your most time-consuming business phases and procedures to see if there are any possible solutions that may be able to automate or streamline those steps. After you’ve minimized most of the big puzzle pieces, you can then turn your focus towards micro-management to revise underlying operational aspects such as organization, communication, and workplace policies. Testing out new software, accepting employee suggestions, and utilizing third-party consulting services are a few options that can help you identify and correct shortcomings expeditiously.
Practice Precise Time Management
Sometimes scheduling shifts and setting daily deadlines isn’t enough to complete a particularly strenuous project in time. To really push the boundaries of what your team is capable of within a fixed time period, you’ll want to use time-tracking and task timing software to break down shifts and projects into precisely timed slots for each allocated task. Generally, this level of accountability and schedule organization is done at the employee level, but when an overwhelming workload needs to be accommodated it may be necessary for management to assist in time prioritization.
Hold Team Meetings
Holding daily, bi-weekly, or weekly meetings with key staff members can ensure that everyone is on the same page and informed about the progress being made. These meetings can be extremely helpful for aiding in the refining of processes mentioned in tip #8. You may need to utilize virtual video conferencing to bring everyone together if you’re using a combination of in-house and outsourced help. Try to organize brainstorming sessions that allow everyone the chance to provide their input on each topic. Likewise, it’s good to have a list of planned talking points and encourage certain employees to develop and share informative slideshows and presentations during the meeting.
Effective Leadership Facilitates a Higher Bottom Line
In closing, all of the above leadership suggestions are specifically designed to help your company deliver on its promises and do more with its payroll and time. By instilling these principles into your corporate leaders you’ll be putting your organization in a position to accommodate a continually growing demand in any industry, which is central to facilitating expansion and attracting investors.
Ultimately, taking a more well-rounded and hands-on approach to management will allow you to consistently increase your bottom line and become as profitable as possible. Hopefully these tips have given you a solid starting point from which to embark upon your journey into becoming a more proficient and influential leader through the exploration of similar topics.
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