For many of you who work outside of the land of retail and hospitality, the days between the Christmas Holiday and New Year's Day are either days off from work, or days where the pace of things was a bit more relaxed. While you may have spent little to no time thinking about work, on January 1st, many may have had this thought, "I cannot believe I go back to work tomorrow." Yup, you do - but that doesn't mean that your return to the office has to be muddied in the challenges that you may have been facing when you locked you turned off your computer and set your outgoing message in December.
Take these four action steps and make your first day back one that sets the stage for a better year:
1. Block off your first three days with time to plan: 3 days ... 3 hours. I recommend you set aside not only an hour each day, but make it a consistent time each day. The first hour you are at your desk is my favorite hour of the day - don't turn on the computer, rather sit down with your planner, or a pad of blank paper, and some calendars/deadlines and set the stage for effective planning.
2. Day 1: Plan your learning. Plan monthly opportunities that allow for you to learn about your craft, your profession, the future. Look at conferences, workshops and webinars, and plan on what you would like to attend either out of the office or at your desk. Consider new journals and publications to read, and when you will read them, and schedule when you are going to read, and how you will catalogue your learning. To jump start your learning, Fortify Associates is offering a $25 discount for the start of 2019 for those who buy the SUPERvisor Bundle (enter 2019 in the coupon code at checkout to apply the discount).
3. Day 2: Plan your meetings. Meetings may be sucking the life out of you and your team. Consider what meetings you are having, who is running them and when they are happening. Do they need to be daily, weekly, monthly? What is the outcome of each meeting, and is there an opportunity to build a standing agenda? Shake it up - get some feedback from your team and determine what is repetitive, ineffectual, and what can be maximized to provide optimize your workplace. To help you get laser focused on this, enroll in the new and updated "Making Meetings Meaningful Volume II" course. Pre-enroll today!
4. Day 4: Plan your people. Teams are made up of people ... and you need to take time to consider the potential that each of these individuals has to the organization as well as to their own development. Take a moment to review your organizational chart and begin to set forth supervisory goals that you have for each of the members of your team. Do your people need training, mentoring or more challenge? Make note of when the performance review period for your organization is going to be held, and set yourself benchmarks that you can use as guideposts along the way for each of these individuals, and share with your team what your plans are for them in the coming year. This transparency of supervisory accountability will show your people that you value them in the New Year.
Think of the first few days of the New Year as time well spent for the upcoming months, and a time to reframe how you are going to lead.