Being effective as a leader or manager is one of the top challenges faced by leaders. It means managing time and priorities, thinking strategically and taking the right decisions, solving multitude of small and big problems.

In order to be able to drive results with your team you have to be catching up, executing and getting up to speed with the projects on hand.

leaders are often burdened with managing and juggling an ever increasing number of projects and priorities with decreasing resources. They are often pulled in all directions and all times leading to high stress, lack of focus and fragmented attention span resulting in less than optimum effectiveness.

Set clear goals

Setting clear goals for yourself, for each team member and for the team as a whole begins to bring clarity to what is important. That further brings clarity to the process of setting priorities not only for you but for everyone on the team. This will set the foundation for some rigorous scheduling.

Schedule a time for everything

All the open projects and tasks should have designated review times. The frequency of the review can be as per criticality. Schedule time for "Do you have a minute" meeting. Set them up for twice a day or whatever frequency works. let your team know that any unscheduled discussion will happen during that time. So when people walk up for unscheduled discussions, ask them can it wait for the designated review time, if not, can it wait till the next "Do you have a minute" hour. Only if it can't, then spend time talking to them. In a short time, your team will understand what's critical and what's not. They'll disturb you less.

Delegate

learn the art of delegating. Delegating increases your productivity. Delegation requires you to trust and it also requires you to overcome your fears of what will happen if. It is a vicious circle — no trust leads to no delegation and no delegation maintains the low trust. Break the circle. Start by delegating the easiest tasks and slowly build up.

Most critical tasks

At any point in time, you should be working on tasks that are most critical and cannot be done by anyone else. Tasks where you bring the maximum value.

Define boundaries

Be clear on what falls under the purview of your job and what doesn'tij Being able to define boundaries and then saying no to anything that is beyond will also allow you to focus on what's important rather than getting sidetracked.

Develop solution mindset of the team

Whenever team members come to you with a problem, ask them to also recommend workable solutions. Don't accept only problem statements. This will get the team to think of solutions before approaching you. You can then counsel them with what would work best. This will reduce your time commitment and develop the team's confidence and capability.

Action Speak

Make sure your team walks out of every discussion with clear actions and deadlines. Many leaders spend a lot of time discussing results that they expect and forget to spend critical minutes in reiterating deadlines. Clarity about the next action increases productivity.

Remember

As you climb higher and take on more responsibilities your time and focus will be more and more precious. Developing the right habits will help you be on top of things.

The writer is Ajay Sharma, founder,Future of Work Strategist