132: How to Improve the Quality of Your Connectedness, with Jennifer Deal

Being connected is great, right until it’s not. How to improve the quality of your connectedness with an expert from the Center for Creative Leadership. Guest: Jennifer Deal, Ph.D Center for Creative Leadership Author, Always On, Never Done: Don't Blame The Smartphone Center for Creative Leadership works to help improve leadership. Many people said that staying so connected really started when they received their smartphone. On average, people in the survey were connected to the workplace 72 hours a week, or 13.5 hours a day. Personal tasks done during the workday were accounted for in the research (even people that don’t work these kind of hours still do personal tasks at work) One of the biggest complaints was the number of meetings required in organizations. A major issue is being invited to meetings and then people realizing that they weren’t really needed. Setting clear agendas is key. Be explicit why each person is needed. Another major complaint was too many people making decisions. Be explicit about who has decision-making authority and who needs to be checked with. The intentional use of ambiguity as a management tool is also a challenge. Sometimes people don’t make a decision so they don’t have responsibility for it, so they leave it in ambiguity. Clear agendas and outcomes help prevent this. This leads to crisis mode later on. What Jennifer does differently because of this research She still answers emails early in the morning and late at night. Setting better boundaries about having done enough work today. Being very specific on agendas for meetings. She turns down a lot of meetings that aren’t as high value as the other things she needs to be doing. Check out the Center for Creative Leadership for more resources Also see episode #128, Four Practices For Leading An Effective Meeting What have you seen a leader do to encourage quality connections to the workplace? Discover More Activate your free membership for full access to the entire library of interviews since 2011, searchable by topic.