How To Eliminate Your Struggles with Time Management with THE EISENHOWER BOX
The Business Mechanic Podcast with Vaughn Sigmon
Release Date: 12/18/2022
The Business Mechanic Podcast with Vaughn Sigmon
7 Ways Managers Can Create Improved Focus for Their Team It’s no surprise that people struggle to focus. We’re bombarded with distractions, burdened by unrealistic expectations, and drowning under too many incoming requests. In a world of constant distractions, many employees can't find the focus to get quality work done. A recent survey showed that almost two-thirds admit they don't put in an hour or two each day without being derailed. As leaders, how do you help your team stay productive and focused? Results Driven Leadership has identified seven best practices for helping...
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Managers must focus on improved leadership to avoid employees quitting because employee turnover can be costly and disruptive to an organization. When employees quit, managers have to spend time and resources recruiting and training new employees, which can slow down productivity and negatively impact the bottom line. Additionally, high turnover can lead to a loss of expertise and experience, which can be difficult and costly to replace. A good leader creates a positive work environment and fosters a sense of belonging among employees, leading to increased job satisfaction and loyalty and...
info_outlineThe Business Mechanic Podcast with Vaughn Sigmon
Results Driven Managers who want results meet with their employees to talk about long-term goals. They do this at least once a year. They also have quarterly meetings to discuss progress toward the goals. I think it would be better if we had this meeting at a different location. If that's not possible, we need to make sure that there are no interruptions for the 4 hours of the meeting. During the meeting, managers and their team members should talk about what is happening with the business and what could be improved. They should also set new business goals, with their team’s help. You do...
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In this second in a series of three podcasts, I will share how to have a discussion with your leadership team to determine your main areas of improvement is the first step toward creating your annual goals and planning activities. This information will inform your technology decisions throughout the year, helping you stay ahead of the curve on trends affecting your industry. It is important to determine the key targets for your annual planning cycle. From your SWOT exercise (previous podcast), identify the factors that will directly impact your business performance-- earnings, sales,...
info_outlineThe Business Mechanic Podcast with Vaughn Sigmon
The first step for annual goal setting is to reflect on your current situation and assess your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This process, known as a SWOT analysis, will help you identify areas of your business, department, division, or team that you may want to focus on and goals that will help you move forward. After you have completed your SWOT analysis, the next step is to set specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals. SMART goals are specific, meaning they are clear and defined. We will cover that in next week's podcast. Today's...
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Now we're going to start sharing how to prioritize like Eisenhower. Now, this isn't going to be much of a history lesson on Eisenhower, but I think you need to know a little about the man. He was president of the United States in the fifties, uh, early sixties. He also was an American general during World War ii, and apparently, this guy knew a ton about managing time because of his approach. The Eisenhower Box, or the Eisenhower Quadrant, is taught in business schools all over the country. And today, in this video, I will share his approach that's taught the world over with you. Eisenhower...
info_outlineThe Business Mechanic Podcast with Vaughn Sigmon
Management styles vary between individuals. And though most tend to gravitate towards a particular style type, a manager could choose to use different management styles depending on what fits best for a particular situation. Your management style will depend on various factors, including your personality, the organization you work for, the person you work for, your team, and your goals. So know that rarely is there a one-size-fits-all style; you likely put on multiple style hats throughout the course of a day or week. A look in the mirror, having an honest understanding and being clear on...
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Today's show got prompted by one of my attendees this week at a training session; she was in her second month or so of training with me and her team, and thank you, Navina, for prompting me to do this show today. She and I were talking about DISC, her DISC profile, and she asked, have you ever done a podcast on DISC? I wanna go back and listen to it. And I had to stop for a minute. In all these years, no, I haven't, I haven't done a show talking about DISC explaining DISC, the value of DISC, how DISC works, what it tells you, what it doesn't tell you. And so today, this is gonna be a little...
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During this podcast, I want to share with you an important truth about leadership: As I was thinking about the topic for today, I reminisced back to all the great managers who were really impactful leaders. Both ones I worked for and have worked for me over my decades of experience. I started thinking about a few things they all had in common and came up with some strong commonalities. Special Offer For First 50 Managers and First 25 Companies It came down to their approach and attitude as bosses and how they truly valued their employees. All of these managers were top performers year...
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Communication is essential to the human experience and being a great leader. This short podcast wants to carve out the topic of taking things too personally and tie it to the topic of difficult conversations. In my podcast on difficult conversations, you may remember that you want to avoid any pre-determined perceptions at all costs. Go into any tough conversation with an open mind. If not, you will wind up feeling stressed out, unhappy, and anxious over conversations; AND you may be taking things a little too personally all the time. Visit Our Website and Get a Limited Offer of a Full...
info_outlineNow we're going to start sharing how to prioritize like Eisenhower. Now, this isn't going to be much of a history lesson on Eisenhower, but I think you need to know a little about the man. He was president of the United States in the fifties, uh, early sixties. He also was an American general during World War ii, and apparently, this guy knew a ton about managing time because of his approach.
The Eisenhower Box, or the Eisenhower Quadrant, is taught in business schools all over the country. And today, in this video, I will share his approach that's taught the world over with you. Eisenhower essentially broke all the things he had to do into four separate quadrants that were laid out in important and.
Not important, not urgent. So we're going to go into some detail on that. Important and urgent. Not important, not urgent. Those are the areas. So the four blocks are important and urgent things you must do now. Important but not urgent. Things that we have to get done and maybe big projects, assignments, that sort of thing.
Plans and strategies but don't have to be done. Now, so we have to plan or schedule time for those. Then the bottom side of the quadrant are things that aren't important but are urgent. . These are our interruptions during the course of the day. Those are emails and phone calls; hey, I got a quick question for you.
Got a minute. Those sorts of things. Those are the fires, and that's where many, many people get frustrated with managing their time. That's where they spend a lot of their time dealing with day-to-day matters versus managing their time. So that's urgent, but not that important.
And then the last quadrant is the I, not important, but not urgent. So we've got important and urgent. Gotta do it. Right now, we've got important but not that urgent, which is, wait, schedule it, do it later. We've got the, not I. but urgent. Those are our interruptions during the course of the day or things we need to delegate; we need to delay delegate.
Or don't do it all together. And we're gonna talk a little bit about the to-don't list in a future podcast. And then there's the not important, not urgent. Those are the time wasters that we tend to encounter during the course, naturally during our work week and work days. And we've gotta be able to identify those and minimize those in order for us to rest the control of our time away from others.
And be able to control and manage it ourselves. So let's talk about how to use the Eisenhower quadrant. Well, first of all, once you start assembling your thoughts, organizing your thoughts, this is all about prioritization and being able to get the mindset, the mental thoughts around what's important, what's not important, what's urgent, what's not urgent, and being able to rewire ourselves a little bit as to, does this really have to be done right now?
Or can this wait? Does this really need to be done by me, or can I give it to somebody else? When am I gonna get this done? When do I need to schedule it? It's moving beyond putting out fires during the course of our days and our weeks. So at the end of the day, we go home feeling really productive, and we've gotten things done.
We're gonna box things off. We're going to put 'em in their proper quadrants to manage our time better. Because when we go home at the end of the day, and we've been really busy but haven't gotten much done, that's emotional. That is not fair to the people who look forward to you coming home.
It's not fair to you because you're mentally tired. It is extremely exhausting to go through your career and your workday life and feel like you're always behind the eight ball, that you never get stuff done. That is where this tool comes into play to help you. It won't cure everything, but it's certainly going to help you be able to create mental prioritization.
Putting things in boxes to whether I need to do it now, do it later, do it at all. Skip it, eliminate it from my life. Many, many, many managers treat everything that's right in front of them as the priority. And those are the ones that just as the day comes, the day comes; things come, things come, uh, questions, ask, meetings, et cetera.
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