Keeping on top of your time and daily communications are one of the most underrated techniques you can use to increase your chances of success as a business leader. While it is easy to write it off as self-development nonsense that is not implementable, this couldn’t be further from the truth.

In fact, effective communication and time management is the difference between building a successful business and a failing one, maintaining strong personal relationships and neglecting them, and living a content day-to-day life rather than a stressful maelstrom of missed calls, late appointments, and unhappy clients.

Here is why time management is one of the most powerful actions you can take to ensure your success as a business leader, and how the quality of your communication affects it:

Keep your communication clear and precise:

Before you can get on top of your time, you have to get on top of your behavior. Specifically, how you communicate with your colleagues, clients, friends, and family.

This is because effective time management is challenging and does not always make you the most popular person in the office. In fact, it is time to grow a thick skin and make those around you explicitly aware of how precious your time is.

It also shortens your overall communication length, saving you precious time.

You do not have to be unkind, but you do have to be clear. It is worth implementing unofficial rules – like ensuring employees book dedicated appointment slots with you, rather than bursting into your office or only answering personal calls at a certain time.

Again, this will not make you popular, but it will make you productive, which is why you are a business leader in the first place. To find out more about effective communication in the workplace, check out Simpplr’s blog.

Open door policies can easily be your downfall:

As referenced in the previous point, well-meaning management strategies such as the infamous ‘open door policy’, can actually work against you. While it sounds like effective leadership in principle, reality can often paint a different picture.

If you encourage colleagues to interrupt you every two seconds with a concern or question, you will simply never get any work done. Instead, make it clear that staff members are always allowed to talk to you, but only at allocated times agreed upon beforehand. This both increases you and your staff’s efficiency, as well as filtering out unimportant queries that are not important enough for a dedicated appointment.

Exercise control over email and apps, or they will control you:

Sadly, while the plethora of apps, websites, and smartphones available promise to increase your daily productivity levels, in practice they can actually make time far harder to manage.

While the technology itself is a powerful time management tool, it can also be highly addictive and a black hole of lost time.

Instead, implement discipline over your emails, texts, tweets, video calls, and Facebook messages by agreeing to answer them all at a specific juncture, and not every ten minutes when you are lost for ideas or motivation. After all, a five-minute catch up can quickly turn into a half-hour browse.

By implementing these techniques, you can take your first step towards effective workplace communication and time management.

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