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How Many Times?

How often do you delegate something and then wonder why it's not done?

Crazy, isn't it? Your team members want you to trust them, and for the most part they enjoy the challenges of new assignments, but sometimes they get done and sometimes they don't.

How do you balance total trust and micromanaging the joy right out of the task? You've got to know your people. We're all on different learning curves. We each have personality types that might differ. We live on different levels of maturity. We're not all the same.

The best way I've found to know whether I need to remind someone once or seven times is to know what they need by testing it, over and over. And, it had better be improving or we're having a tougher conversation. Not mean, not the kind where you write them up and start their path out the door, but straight forward, honest and to the point.

How many times do you have to remind someone? Until they start doing exactly what you want without any reminders at all...

-- Douglas Brent Smith

Explore this more in the workshop: Communicating for Results

 


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