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Jamie Costello

Stop Wasting Time as a Leader

Jamie Costello · 2019-06-11 · 2 Comments

As a leader, you may find yourself strapped for time, especially when you are juggling clients, team members and the constant flow of work that comes in any leadership position. Learning to manage your time more efficiently, then, is a very valuable lesson for you to learn as a leader. With that in mind, here are some ways to stop wasting time at work. Take note and speed things up!

1. Have Fewer Meetings

Never schedule a meeting when an email or phone call could accomplish the same goal.

When you do have meetings, make sure they are as efficient as possible. Have a structure, know what is going on, and work to ensure your mutual goal is met. That way you will start to dread meetings less and less!

Meetings are the bane of most workers’ lives, so reducing them as much as possible is the only way forward. Reduce the meetings, and make the ones you keep more productive.  You may be surprised by how much more both you and your staff get done!

You may aspire to be an inclusive leader. But if you’re not there for your employees, they won’t feel supported. Learn to strike that delicate balance.

2. Streamline Tasks, But Not at the Expense of Quality (Usually)

Have you ever spent a long time doing something which you know isn’t worth that much effort? You may have a process with unnecessary steps, create reports no one reads, or over-engineer a simple task. Have you considered how you can work to reduce that effort?

Seriously consider whether you can sacrifice quality for efficiency. For example, if the work is not customer-facing, you may be able to skip the third round of edits. In some cases, quality cannot be compromised. Know when your shortcuts could put your credibility at risk, and act accordingly.

3. Get a Plan in Place 

Failing to plan is planning to fail. The better the plan, the more likely your team will succeed. “Better” doesn’t always mean “more detailed.” Strike a balance between structure and improvisation that works for your team. Remember, plans change. Review your plan frequently, and communicate changes to everyone who needs to know, You will build trust by showing that you are competent and reliable.

Make sure that you have a day, week and even monthly plan which you base your working life around. Good planning can save you a lot of time as a leader and help to give you more room to deal with the little emergencies that appear every day.

4. Keep Your Priorities Balanced

Prioritising is one of the hardest parts of any job. Especially as everyone thinks the tasks you’re doing related to them is the most important thing for you to be doing. Learning to balance and manage these tasks, then to prioritise them, then, can be quite difficult.

If you want to be a good leader, this is a balancing act. Make sure you address all of the important issues, but don’t overlook what your subordinates are asking of you. It may seem relatively small in the grand scheme of things, less important than x, y or z on your list. Yet, sometimes prioritising the little things can make you a better leader.

At the very least, communicate to those you lead that you care. Let’s face it, every molehill can feel like a mountain during a bad day at work – whether you’re a PT, officer of the law or corporate solicitor. Mountain or molehill, you need to help your team to the top of either one.

5. Stop Being ‘Busy’

Busy work is a real issue when it comes to leadership and wasting time. You may find yourself doing way too much of it. Much like anything else, being busy is great until it becomes detrimental to your working life.

Busyness preoccupies a lot of managers. When employees notice this, it is all too easy for them to become resentful. They see themselves as doing the real work.

Stop being ‘busy’ and start being productive. You will be surprised by how much more you accomplish!

Final Thoughts

Leadership doesn’t have a secret formula. You can’t become an amazing leader by reading a self-help book, though that would be nice. It’s trial and error, learning to communicate, and being open to change. When you quit wasting time, you’ll create space for that growth!

Veterans: A High-Potential Talent Pool

Jamie Costello · 2019-04-16 · 1 Comment

In response to my article Job Descriptions: 4 Tips for Attracting Diverse Candidates, reader Jamie Costello asked to write about the importance of hiring veterans in the private sector. His article appears in its entirety, below.

Any manager or business owner will tell you that trying to get the right talent for their business is difficult. Hours of flicking through CVs and conducting interviews before you’re able to find the right one. It’s a challenge that all businesses have. One solution: hire more veterans.

According to the British Legion, around 120,000 veterans in the UK (Editor’s note: 326,000 in the United States) are currently unemployed after serving the army, with many desperate to find work. If we consider the qualities that veterans gain from the army, they could be the ideal employees to add to your workforce. Especially when you consider that government schemes have also been introduced to encourage taking on veterans at their work.

Business owners still have doubts about whether they should hire veterans. Here are five solid reasons why military veterans could benefit your business:

Veterans Are Goal-Oriented

It’s most likely that your job advertisement will involve achieving some sort of objectives or goals whilst working at your business. It can be difficult to find individuals that are driven by goals and objectives but you can assure Military veterans are encouraged when goals are in place. Their training is constructed around meeting objectives and achievements through cooperation and collaboration and personal development to achieve will occur as a result.

Veterans Are Responsible

Being serious about their role in the military is something that will be drilled into the heads of military personnel. They’re unlikely to make silly mistakes or bad decisions because they know that the consequences can be very serious. Due to how much it’s drilled into them, they’re likely to be rather particular and precise with their work.

Veterans Exhibit Leadership

A great asset for businesses is being able to hire employees that will stay for the long-term. Hiring internally means your company can grow but be cost-effective at the same time. This makes veterans prime candidates to work their way up the ladder through promotions to more serious leadership roles because of the leadership qualities they would have gained through their training.

Veterans Have a Strong Work Ethic

During their military service, veterans would have gained a go hard or go home mentality. Taking work seriously will be a prime goal of veterans so their work ethic to meeting the demands of the business will be apparent. A business owner will always appreciate a hard worker so if it’s what you’re looking for, it may be worth considering hiring a veteran.

Veterans Can Work Independently

The qualities of a good candidate for a job role will include being able to work independently as well as working in a team. Training in the army, there will be several missions that involve cooperating with your teammates to ensure that the goals are achieved, but certain situations will also involve using initiative and making decisive decisions individually. This is where you’ll be able to benefit from hiring military veterans knowing that trusting your employees to get on with work won’t be an issue.

Here are just a few important examples of how hiring a military veteran can be a great asset to your business. They possess many transferable skills that can be beneficial to your workforce and you’ll be sure they’ll make the effort to achieve goals that are in place for the business, especially when you consider they’d prefer to spend less time sorting out their military personal injury claims and more time being productive as an employee.

About the Author

Jamie CostelloJamie Costello is an experienced business writer based in the UK. He uses his experience from education and work experience within several industries to help create his articles. His topics range from career advice to resolving disputes in the workplace.

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