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Bring lift to your team
I think we’ve all experienced working with colleagues who are smart and capable and talented and hardworking, but who come with a tax. Working with them is just a little bit harder than it has to be. Meetings go longer, there’s just this extra phantom workload. Long meetings, long-winded email, notes, drama, politics, posturing. We find that impact players just make work light.
They’re easy to work with, they’re low maintenance, and they bring a sense of lightness that allows them to take a situation seriously, and they bring this kind of lift to everyone on the team while others are adding to the burden, they make work light.
The impact players are people who don’t come with a tax, they’re like a tax rebate, they’re a gift back to you, they’re like a time rebate. We all know that feeling of scheduling a two hour meeting and then finding, you know what, you only need 20 minutes. They’re the kind of colleagues that are a pleasure to work with, they’re a joy to work with because the work is about the work rather than about them. And they eschew the phantom workload, which frees them and their colleagues up to work on their real work.
So making work light is not about doing other people’s work for them. It’s not about increasing your workload so that others have a light workload. What it’s also not, is it’s not about being eternally optimistic, like, “Oh, hey, yeah, things suck, but don’t worry, they’re going to get better.” They might not get better. It’s not about seeing the positive, it’s not about toxic positivity, it’s about being easy to work with. Impact players create an environment that feels frictionless and more around, how do we move things forward? It is both a skillset and it is an attitude. I would call it an orientation, it’s an orientation that work shouldn’t be harder than it has to be.
Don’t be a drag
There are two things that you can do if you want to put this idea of making work light into practice. The first is get to the point. When we ask managers what is it that people do that reduces their credibility and creates a drag on the team? One of the things that comes up really, really high is, like, send long emails. You know, go into big diatribes. You can make work light by helping people get to the point. Essentially, be a highlighter to a sea of text and chaos. You can also help people get to the point by when you’re coming to talk to someone … here’s the situation and you’re describing the problem, the situation, all the issues. Say, “Here’s the decision we need to make. We’ve got to decide, do we do A or B?” You’re helping people know what’s the point of the conversation.
Number two, close the loop. One of the things we found that managers say they most appreciate is when they don’t have to follow up with people. It’s one of the things that creates this drag for them, which is like when you ask someone to do something and then you have to follow up and see if it’s done. Be somebody that requires no follow up. So that, someone knows that when they send something to you, it is as good as done. That makes life easier. That makes work light for your colleagues and leaders. Being someone who gets it all the way done but then someone who closes the loop. “Oh, this thing that you asked me to do, I just wanted to let you know that’s done and dusted.” That is as good as done. Help people to A, see the point and B, to know where things stand. And when we remove that burden of sorting through the chaos and having to follow up and to keep looping back, we have made work light.