What You'll Discover In This Episode:
Clear communication is so important.
I was reminded of that a few months ago when we didn’t have any help inside our home due to Covid and my husband and I had divided all of the house chores between the two of us.
One particularly busy weekend in my business came up and here’s what went down…
Me: Hey babe. Can you please help me with the laundry this weekend?
Joe: Sure, no problem.
Me: Great, thanks!
Well, Sunday night came around and when I went upstairs to retire, I found the bed covered in laundry waiting to be folded. Hmm…
I went to the laundry room to check the status in there. To my further dismay, there were clothes in the dryer and worse yet, wet clothes in the washer. Ugh!
I walked (stomped) to where my husband was relaxing and this conversation transpired:
Me: I asked you to help me with the laundry this weekend and you said yes. What is this (holding up two handfuls of clothes)?!?!
Joe: I did HELP you with the laundry.
It was right then I realized he had done what I had asked him to. He had HELPED with the laundry. There’s no arguing if he had made progress on it. He just hadn’t done ALL the laundry. I hadn’t asked him to, even though that’s exactly what I had wanted done. Then, there wouldn’t have been miscommunication and another two hours of laundry ahead of us late that Sunday evening.
I was mad I couldn’t just hop in bed and fall asleep after my long and productive weekend but I couldn’t reasonably be mad at Joe. It wasn’t his fault. It was my fault because I hadn’t clearly communicated my expectations.
Similar conversations happen in business all the time, causing a breakdown in communication and undesirable results.
Your employees and contractors cannot read your mind and you can’t expect them to. When you fail to communicate exactly what you want done, you can expect to receive back only a variation of what you want done. In order to get the results you want out of your team, you must clearly communicate your expectations. Plain and simple.
In this episode of Productivity Straight Talk, I dive into four more things you should be doing to delegate effectively and get the results you actually want from your team.
