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September 06, 2013 at 12:25 AM
Your interactions with others consume a huge portion of your day and, if done wrong, can be a huge time waster. Even technical workers who work on machines all day can spend up to 75 percent of their time communicating with co-workers. By improving the quality of your communications, you can greatly increase the efficiency of your interactions.
1. Common misunderstandings: A major time waster. A major waste of time is caused by misunderstandings about roles, goals and responsibilities. People may not know what they are expected to do, how they are expected to do it and by what time. Misunderstandings lead to inefficiencies, anger, frustration and unhappiness and can require an enormous amount of time to clear up and get matters back to normal.
2. Listen carefully and set clear priorities. Misunderstandings about priorities often lead to your working at the wrong job, at the wrong time, for the wrong reason and at the wrong level of quality. On the other hand, knowing exactly what is expected leads to positive feelings and high levels of motivation at work. The #1 complaint (or de-motivator) of employees is that they lack this important knowledge. In order to perform at your best, you need absolute clarity about your job and what you are expected to do.
3. Poor delegation. Poor delegation to others or from others leads to mistakes and frustration for both the boss and the employee. It is a major time waster. Poor delegation causes even the most sincere, talented people to do poor work because they have been assigned to the wrong jobs. This causes them to feel frustrated and unhappy.
4. Save time through lines of authority. Unclear lines of authority and responsibility also lead to wasted time. People do not know who is supposed to do what job, when is it be done and to what standard of quality. People are left to wonder who is supposed to report to whom? Who’s in charge? Who’s the boss?
5. Incomplete information. Another major time waster in business is poor or incomplete information, which leads to erroneous assumptions and conclusions. It is amazing how often people jump to conclusions or make false assumptions on the basis of wrong information.
