Any manager dreams of such employees who perfectly understand their tasks, immediately go to fulfill them and do not run five times a day to clarify what and how to do. However, such situations are in the form of rare exceptions. As a rule, a leader must take care of the accuracy and clarity of each assignment if he wants the business to flourish.
With a different approach to business, everything will fall apart before our eyes, because the subordinates will not understand what exactly to do and when to do it, the manager will think that it is time to change the team. And the blame for everything is a trivial reason - the wrong setting of tasks.
What is the ideal challenge
If you tell the manager on the go, “Call the customer,” and you don't explain anything, you can be 99% sure that he will get you wrong. Either he will call the wrong person, or he will say the wrong thing. Because your subordinates are not telepathic, and they do not know what is in your head. The manager's mouth is full of his worries, and he is sure to confuse something. Therefore, give a detailed task, with all the subtleties and nuances - then there will be a guarantee of its implementation.
An interesting example is an exercise that will surely convince a manager how important it is to set goals clearly. It will also come in handy as a small training session with middle managers.
The exercise consists of the facilitator describing in his own words an object that the interviewee has never seen before.
And then the interlocutor draws what he presented according to the description. The drawing will be so far from the real thing that it is impossible to imagine. This is normal, because everyone has their own ideas about different things and concepts. Even the words "quickly" or "urgently" are perceived by everyone in their own way.
Each employee has their own views on priorities. And if you do not indicate the time, the task will be pushed into the background. And then he will say that he was "not told that it was urgent."
At the same time, you should not set deadlines - as a rule, they are not met. Take yourself a supply of several days, so that later there will be no emergency. No one will give guarantees that everything will "go smoothly": either the employee will not be in time on time, or someone will let him down. Therefore, you definitely need time to maneuver, so that you can finish or fix everything.
For example, if you tell employees that they “need to increase sales,” is this a measurable goal? Everyone should understand how much their performance indicators must increase in order to increase overall sales. And what is the quantitative indicator of sales for a year, for a month, for a week, for a day.
If this is not done, the employees will make some efforts, the level of sales will increase to some extent, they will report, but the numbers will not be as you planned. Therefore, it is important to voice them when setting the task, so that everyone clearly understands the level of personal invested effort.
Mutual understanding between the manager and the subordinate is based on these three pillars, and if they are strictly observed, the business develops without jerks and inhibitions.
