Welcome back practicing leaders today. We'll be talking about a bunch of questions I've received from people either I've met or questions that you've sent in to me to be able to be answered from you. The audience, this is the Practicing Leader podcast. I'm your host Parul Bhargava and let's discuss.
Let's go ahead and jump into the first question. This came up in a conversation where a colleague of mine asked me a question. Like you mentioned in a previous podcast, that being kind. When working with others is very, very crucial. The question she asked was, how do you tell if you're being too kind at work, it's generally beneficial to maintain a professional and friendly domain.
You know, we can't really argue that being polite, being respectful, being helpful can create a positive work environment and can foster strong relationships with your colleagues and, or your clients. Now, I don't think any of us will doubt that. I think that's a relatively easy statement to make. That doesn't take a lot.
But the important piece in all of that is making sure that you strike a balance between being mindful in these situations where you're trying to be kind, where you're not becoming overly nice or too nice, where that actually might trigger a set of negative consequences. Those negative consequences of being excessively agreeable or excessively accommodating.
Without considering the impacts on yourself, your needs and your own boundaries can lead to a place where you're taken advantage of, or you might end up feeling overwhelmed. And that doesn't feel good for anyone. It's important to assert yourself where necessary and communicate where constraints exist.
You're not an endless supply of being able to do everything for everyone. It's just not possible. So don't try. If you're being asked to stay late all the time, as an example, make sure it's clear that that's not something you'll be able to do all the time. You might be able to do it here or there, but doing it all the time?
Please no, let's not do that. All of us have a life to go back to. Ultimately though, being kind and considerate to others is encouraged. Take the time to be kind, be understanding, and give people grace where appropriate. But also make sure you're maintaining a healthy balance and keep in mind, balance is the key word.
The next question was as a result of the prioritization podcast, where we talked about how do you prioritize? How do you manage the work? How do you figure out what you're going to work on next? And I'll paraphrase the question. There's so much work coming in. How do you handle all of it coming in? What do you do?
First one, you need to prioritize and plan. Start off by creating a to do list and use task management in order to be able to organize your workload. Thank you. When you look at it and you break it down, it's all just lists. All you need to figure out what is the next thing you're going to do, what's the next bite sized chunk you can go tackle, and get to a point where you can begin crossing things off the list.
The thing, at least for me, that helps is it gets it out of my head and gets it onto a piece of paper where I can actually prioritize the work and figure out what my next action is going to be. The next option if available to you might be, is there a way to be able to delegate or to be able to share this work, share this load with somebody else?
Is there something we can work with or team up with to be able to figure out how do we get all of this work done? This is where you should be able to ask your co workers or ask folks that you work with. Is there a way for us to be able to share this in order to be able to make it move forward more effectively?
It's not to say that you need to be able to pass off all of your work to others. That's not what I'm suggesting. What I am suggesting is don't be afraid to ask for help. Don't think of it as if you're there on your own. You're not stuck doing this by yourself. The next option might be is seek support and communicate.
Have a conversation with your colleague and say, Hey, I'm running into this problem. I'm doing this thing. Is there an idea or a way for me to be able to tackle this problem as a way for me to be able to handle all of this stuff? Do you have any suggestions I could use? Or is there a thing you could guide me as a way to do this more effectively?
Asking for help can come in many different forms. Take the moment to be able to do that. And the next one I think is most important. Take care of yourself. It's important to prioritize self care even when you're extremely busy. There'll be things that'll come due, there are things that'll continue to come up, and New things that get assigned, but make sure in all of this that you've taken the time to get rest, get proper nutrition, exercise, maintain your energy levels, do all the things that are important to you to take care of yourself and your family.
And the next piece here is an option to say, is there a way to be able to adjust expectations? To say, I know you'd like to get this done by X. Can we move this other item to another date to be due in order to be able to fit everything in? It's not necessarily saying no, it's saying yes, but can I get a little more time to fit all the things in?
Being able to set these clear boundaries and set expectations with, with your client or your supervisor in order to be able to make sure that you're still committed to doing the work. It's just like, hey, there's a lot of stuff going on here. Moving on to the next question. I just sent an email to a senior leader in my, in my organization.
I didn't mean to send it. How do I approach that? And what do I do in order to redeem myself? You know what? I've done this too many times. I'm starting to write an email. I have to look up, look up how somebody's name is spelt. I put it in and have exchange and Outlook resolve it for me. It comes up with the name.
Then I forget to remove it from the email and it may be a draft and I've sent it. And I've had that happen to me where I was writing up a status report for my boss. You know what? It happens to all of us. It just does. So here's what I would suggest. Step 1. Stay calm. Don't panic. Stop, drop, and roll. It happens to all of us.
It's natural to feel anxious or embarrassed. It's really important to remain composed and approach the situation with a clear mind. Look at the email that you sent. Was there anything bad in the email? Or did you simply add somebody that you weren't, that you didn't intend to add? It's not a big deal.
Look at it and say, did any, did I include any sensitive information? Was anything confidential? Was anything speaking poorly of somebody else? If you're not doing any of those things, don't worry about it. If you simply added someone by accident, it's not a big deal. While you're reviewing the email, it'll help you also gauge what is the level of urgency to be able to resolve or address the situation.
Next, just reach out to the individual you added on accidentally and just make sure that you're following up with a sincere apology and just briefly explain it. As an example, you could say something like that was totally my bad. I didn't intend to add you into this mail thread and I do apologize and then keep on going.
Now, if, for example, you did say something that was speaking poorly of somebody else, what you may want to do is go in and list your manager to be able to figure out, hey, how do we limit the impact lastly,
Yeah. You're human. Just understand that and understand that mistakes happen. We all do it. It's all happened to us in our career. It's not going to, it's not going to do anything horrible to us and just understand that that occurs and everyone at one point or another in their career has done this. It just happens.
Give yourself grace to be able to make an error and then learn from it and then be better next time. Thanks again for sharing your questions, either via email or during our conversations that we've had. I really, really do appreciate it.
