What happens when you hear these words? Does anxiety set in? Perhaps you are relieved that you have a moment to unplug?
I had the great opportunity to attend a meeting last week to see a fantastic speaker, Dan Barnett, talk about Make or Break Cultures, and how you can get extraordinary results from your team.
Norma was our group leader for this event. She shared this picture from her recent trip to Iceland where she saw this sign at a café. Norma reminded us that we were there for a couple of hours, and that we should shut off our cell phones, so that we could all take advantage of working together, and learning valuable new strategies that Dan would help us bring back to our businesses.
The result: people left the room energized; armed with new ideas to work on their business to achieve new levels! If we as business leaders and managers were this disciplined more often, what could be achieved? Well, 3 very important things would happen:
- Employees get better at making decisions
- You get better at solving problems
- You find more opportunities
Sounds good doesn’t it? Let’s take a closer look:
Employees get better at making decisions
Think about when you experience reading the umpteenth e-mail that you have been cc’d on volleying a decision back and forth. As the boss, you decide to end this, by replying the solution, and move on. While you may feel a temporary sense of achievement, like the gun slinger that shoots the bad guy, you have set yourself up for a bigger problem.
When you jump in to solve these problems, your employees are learning that the best ways to solve their problems are: “Just ask the boss.” The employee gets their problem solved, and if the decision ends up being a bad one, who takes responsibility? It’s not the employee, it’s YOU! The employee misses out on a valuable learning experience. You are welcome to argue that you don’t want them to make a mistake. I would suggest that you let them learn and grow by making mistakes; just like you did.
Your job as a leader is not to solve everyone’s problems. Your job is to hire results-oriented problem solvers.
You get better at solving problems
As a leader, you are responsible for solving the big problems, the Godzilla problems!
Have you ever noticed that you come up with some of your best ideas when you are away from your office? Maybe when you are out for a walk, or even in the shower? It’s not by accident.
When you unplug your phone, and get away from the office, you now have the opportunity to focus on solving problems unlike you could before. Can you re-call a time when you solved one of your most important problems, when you were being constantly interrupted? I doubt it.
You find more opportunities
What kind of opportunities will you find? How in the world should I know? Here is what I do know: that you never know where the next idea or valuable client may be.
That next valuable client could be standing right next to you when you are in line at Starbucks. You could strike up a conversation with them, or you could be scrolling through Linkedin on your smart phone searching for someone to send an “I'd like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.” e-mail. It’s your choice. I will choose striking up a conversation every time.
If you are interested in other ways to unplug, read my other post on Digital Hygiene.