Of Course You’re Busy, But It’s Not an Option!

With a clear picture in your mind of someone you know who always says “I’ll get back to you on that” but rarely does, and a firm understanding for the importance of being responsive as a leader, let’s consider one of the biggest challenges I hear from folks with leadership responsibility when pressed to get back with the people who count on them in a timely manner: they’re stinking busy!!!

I don’t think I’ve ever known a single person with any real level of responsibility for leading even the smallest team who wasn’t working to keep plates spinning all around them! The fact of the matter is no one stumbles into leadership, we earn it through the influence we develop in our organizations and the people we serve. And that isn’t done without being willing to carry a heavy workload. On a number of occasions, I’ve heard John Maxwell joke about a book he has set to be published immediately after he dies called Leadership Sucks. Even though he’s clowning around when he says this, his point has always been that genuine leadership has nothing to do with being fanned and fed grapes. There’s a ton of responsibility that comes with it! And the more folks we have counting on us, the more demand we have on our time. But regardless of all the demands we have on our time and attention as leaders, choosing not to respond when our team reaches out to us is not an option!

Over the last few months, Cindy and I have been fighting some kind of stupid technology issue with our business email server causing many of the messages we send to not be delivered. I’ve been told about a few things that could be causing it but we haven’t been able to get it resolved - yet - but you can bet we will one way or another! Interestingly enough, the software we use to send this series (A Daily Dose Of Leadership) and our monthly newsletter gets through to a number of folks where our direct emails land in spam folders or are blocked entirely, which makes no sense because it should be the exact opposite. To make this even more frustrating, we almost never receive any kind of notification that the email hasn’t been delivered. Remember how my dad told me that I’d get more patient as I got older? Reframing from blowing a gasket about this takes every ounce of patience I have on a daily basis!

Here’s why I share all that mess: that’s still no excuse for me to not respond! Since Cindy and I have always worked to be extremely responsive with everyone we interact with, folks tend to understand if something we’ve attempted to send hasn’t made it through to them - but we never take that for granted! When we don’t hear back from someone we’ve sent something to, we typically reach out by phone or through social media to let them know we’ve sent the email. In the cases where they hadn’t received it at all, we’re usually able to dig into other options for communicating with them as we work through this crap. And that adds even more time to the process, but being responsive is an absolute priority if we want to maintain relationships and continue earning the trust necessary for leadership! Dropping the ball on any of that even once because I’m busy just isn’t an option!

As we wrap this look at responsiveness up, we’ll work through one of the most effective things I’ve ever learned for prioritizing what I need to do as a leader and we’ll close with the impact this can have on every single customer we serve. Stay tuned!