At a time when stress, burnout, and turnover are high, taking a few steps to create an engaged, energized, and upbeat team can have a priceless return on investment:
- Respond promptly as a matter of productivity and respect. When people don’t get a response within a few hours, it sends the message that they’re not important. This can be a morale killer. Make a commitment to promptly responding to emails, texts, or phone messages, even it’s just a few sentences promising to catch up later (then follow through as promised).
- Be bold enough to be brief. Everyone is short on time, so respect that by keeping messages short, getting to the point, and not wasting people’s time.
- Realize you could be wrong. Have the courage to admit when you make a mistake. Seek regular feedback from people on what you or your team could do different or better.
- Let your writing reflect your clear thinking. Whatever you write, make it clear, organized, and supported (as needed) by appropriate data and sources. Proof everything you write before you send it out.
- Meet like you mean business. Take charge of meetings in a constructive way. Have an agenda and stick to it, let your team know in advance what materials or information they should bring to the meeting, seek and respect input from others, and show up and end the meeting on time.
