Mining Man - Mining Leadership, Safety and Technical Advice

How to Assign Tasks Using a Simple Tool - CPQQRT

Assigning tasks and projects to your team members is a critical component of your work as a leader, and one of the biggest drivers for how successful your team's overall performance will be.  When your direct report is clear about what they are being asked to do and why, they are much more likely to deliver what you want, when you want it, and with minimal requirements for your time along the way.

So how do we make sure that our task assignment is thorough, so that our team member has the same clear picture of the task requirements as we do?  A great tool exists to help us, a group of six letters - CPQQRT.

How to Prepare to Deliver Performance Reviews to your Team

Performance review time of year can be an anxious period for your team members as they prepare for their review meetings.  But what about the requirements and extra work on the team leader who needs to thoroughly prepare performance reviews for each member of his team?

What few things can he do to prepare both the review of the previous period, and the goals for the next period?

How to Prepare for Your Performance Review

For many of us at this time of year, performance reviews are just around the corner.  Depending on how well prepared you are, this could be a time to get final preparations done for the review, or a time of anxiety and trying to remember what you’ve achieved in the previous twelve months. 

You need to come to your review well armed with a range of examples of your achievements, and the best way to do this is to keep a record all the way through the year.

The Secret to Delegation in 14 Words

Pin it above your desk:

Tell someone either what to do, or how to do it, but never both.

This sentence goes straight to the heart of delegation and management of your team.  It is also the reason why efforts to delegate can lead to frustration by both parties, and why leaders sometimes come to be known as "micro-managers".

An Example of the Most Effective Way:

How to get Your Team to Complete their Assigned Actions

What, by who, by when - the catch-cry for pages full of actions that are generated in meetings, and then reviewed at the start of every meeting and the due dates simply pushed out with an annotation - "no progress" or "not yet complete". 

Allocating actions to people is a great way for manager's to feel that decisions are being made and work is getting done.  But if those actions are not getting completed, then nothing is being achieved at all.  We suggest three easy ways to dramatically improve completion of assigned actions.

Why SMART Goals are not that Smart

When setting goals for a team or individual, it is common to check them to make sure they are SMART:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Realistic
• Time limited

Or even SMARTER with:

• Excitable
• Rewarded
  

But several groups we’ve worked with have found that manager’s sometimes struggle to tick all five SMART boxes, even though they know what they want someone in their team to achieve.  Using the SMART model is sometimes not so smart, as it adds extra work and time to what is often a simple process, especially if the manager is quite clear on what they want achieved.