Ultimate Day Step 8: Set Your Team
“Mark out time for team huddles, ideally at the beginning and end of each day. Scheduling team communication this way keeps your day open to accomplish everything on your priority list.”
It’s rare not to be working with or on a team. Some of us lead a handful of teams, some of us participate in a handful, some of us do both. You can even think of a colleague or partner as your team, if you’re sharing a project.
In this step for crafting your ultimate day, I’m suggesting that you be deliberate about scheduling team time. When we’re busy, we can lose track of the fact that good communication is the foundation of good teamwork. And then too much time passes, we lose track of each other, and our projects suffer.
Mark out time for what I call daily huddles – a term I picked up from Alex Charfen, a business consultant who shows entrepreneurs how to grow their businesses. If you are deliberate about your daily huddles, you can then reduce the number of interruptions you have throughout the day. Everyone knows that there are specific communication times. Everyone has it in their ultimate day schedule.
I do two per day, unless unusual circumstances arise. One occurs before my first power work zone, which is pretty much before anyone launches into their work day. The second happens after my final power work zone, usually sometime between 5 pm and 6 pm.
Your huddles can be as short as three or five minutes – a hello, a check in, a here we all are. They can just be making sure you’re all on the same page and everyone has what they need to perform at their best. Or they can be a bit longer if you’ve got a few items to go through.
One company called Zappo, an online shoe and clothing retailer, has an interesting approach. Their conference rooms have no chairs. If you want to book a meeting, the maximum time is seven minutes. You walk in, don’t sit down, talk about essentials, then move on to work. I like my morning huddles to be like that. Get on the same page and then off you go.
The second time when I absolutely communicate with people is at the end of the day. That’s a daily deconstruction and connection with the team. That’s when you check in about how things went, what went well, and where anyone needs support. It’s a great transition into the evening for everyone, and it helps set up the next day.
My daily bookends are team communication. Scheduling them into your ultimate day’s timeline opens up everything else during the day so you can accomplish your priority list while keeping communication going.
Today’s Exercise: Set your Team
Fill in Step 8: Set Your Team on page 22 in the Ultimate Day Workbook to help you build in daily communication with your team into your Ultimate Day.
Today’s Bonus Podcast
Check out this podcast Here with globally recognized thought leader, author, and consultant Eric Termuende on the topic of building deep connections.
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