Leadership Lessons on Missing Deadlines
Managers often face the problem of dealing with hard-working employees who have a tendency to miss deadlines. When some deadlines are too difficult to meet or projects are more time-consuming than others, this can be as a difficult situation for both the person in charge and his subordinates.
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Delegating
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Managers often take on a project's entire workload because they are worried their employees will not succeed in meeting certain deadlines. Dealing with all tasks yourself is stressful and ineffective, and it can leave your staff disheartened with feelings of inadequacy. Delegating is an important skill that can help you with this problem. Choose the employee or team of workers best suited for each particular project. Determine how long the project should take. Grant your team sufficient authority and trust them to take on full responsibility for the task. Allow them to decide how they are going to approach the particular project to achieve the goals set. In the meantime, remain available for whatever help they might need. Assess the quality of their methods and results after the project is finished. Even though the responsibility for the success of the task is ultimately yours and deadlines might not be met in the end, your staff will be highly motivated and ready to take on whatever they are asked to do.
Accountability
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Accountability keeps your staff responsible for successes and failures. Intimidation and condescendence do not have a place in this leadership method. The manager is expected to hold everyone accountable for the results of their work without demoralizing them. As a process, accountability involves defining expectations and deadlines, informing the staff of them, involving the employees in projects, and recognizing success or performance problems when they arise. As a manager, you need to clearly communicate with your employees and, in the end, hold yourself as responsible as everyone else working on the project. Accountability can help enhance leadership effectiveness and boost employee performance.
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Project Division
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Sometimes managers have to deal with procrastinators or projects that are too broad, complicated or time consuming. To make sure goals are achieved and deadlines met, even in difficult situations like these, you need to break the project into smaller pieces. These subtasks can have their own completion deadlines, possibly connected to small rewards. As a manager, you should set all deadlines yourself, rather than allow your team to do so. While timely completion can be attached to rewards, missed deadlines should be accompanied by meaningful penalties, like missing a bonus or promotion.
Flexibility
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Being able to adapt to new expectations, specific circumstances and unexpected obstacles will demonstrate you are motivated and flexible. When this is the case, your staff will have no difficulty following your example. As a manager, you should aim for constant adjustments to handle any unforeseen situations or problems that arise. If deadlines are missed by one of your workers, your ability to show quick adaptability and flexibility will ensure the same crisis can be avoided in the future. Stay confident and enthusiastic, be willing to deal with numerous demands, prioritize and keep the vision clear.
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