Here, we will explore ten strategies and practices for employee management and engagement in small businesses.

1. Clear Communication and Expectations

Clear communication is vital to set expectations and ensure alignment between the business and its employees. Regularly communicate goals, priorities, and performance expectations to your team. Provide feedback and recognition for their achievements and address any concerns or issues promptly. Encourage an open-door policy and create channels for open dialogue and feedback.

2. Training and Development Opportunities

Investing in training and development opportunities for your employees demonstrates your commitment to their growth and success. Identify areas where employees can benefit from additional skills or knowledge and provide relevant training programs. This can include workshops, conferences, online courses, or mentoring programs. Encourage a culture of continuous learning and support employees’ professional development.

3. Employee Recognition and Rewards

Recognizing and rewarding employee contributions is essential for fostering motivation and engagement. Implement a recognition program that acknowledges outstanding performance, teamwork, and achievements. This can include verbal praise, written appreciation, or tangible rewards such as bonuses or incentives. Regularly celebrate milestones and accomplishments to show appreciation for your employees’ hard work.

4. Work-Life Balance and Well-being

Promote a healthy work-life balance and prioritize employee well-being. Offer flexible work arrangements when possible, such as remote work options or flexible scheduling. Encourage breaks and time off to prevent burnout. Provide resources and support for physical and mental well-being, such as access to wellness programs or employee assistance programs. Show genuine care and support for your employees’ overall well-being.

5. Foster a Collaborative and Inclusive Culture

Create a collaborative and inclusive culture that values diversity and fosters teamwork. Encourage open communication, idea sharing, and collaboration among employees. Foster an environment where everyone feels valued, respected, and included. Embrace diverse perspectives and leverage the unique strengths of your team members to drive innovation and growth.

6. Performance Management and Feedback

Establish a robust performance management system to set clear goals, provide regular feedback, and evaluate employee performance. Implement regular performance reviews to discuss progress, identify development areas, and set new objectives. Provide constructive feedback that focuses on both strengths and areas for improvement to support employee growth.

7. Empowerment and Autonomy

Encourage autonomy and empower employees to take ownership of their work. Delegate responsibilities and provide them with the necessary resources and authority to make decisions. Encourage innovation and creativity by allowing employees to explore new ideas and approaches. Trust their expertise and provide guidance when needed.

8. Career Growth and Advancement

Support your employees’ career growth and advancement within the organization. Provide opportunities for skill development, such as stretch assignments or cross-functional projects. Offer mentorship programs or coaching to help employees navigate their career paths. Create a clear path for advancement and communicate the potential growth opportunities available to them.

9. Team Building and Social Activities

Organize team-building activities and social events to foster strong relationships among your employees. This can include off-site retreats, team lunches, or recreational activities. Encourage team bonding and camaraderie to enhance collaboration and create a positive work culture.

10. Continuous Improvement

Establish a culture of continuous feedback and improvement. Encourage regular check-ins between managers and employees to discuss progress, challenges, and goals. Solicit feedback from employees on processes, policies, and workplace initiatives. Actively listen to their suggestions and make necessary improvements to enhance the work environment.

Takeaway

Effective employee management and engagement are critical for small businesses to thrive. By prioritizing clear communication, providing training and development opportunities, recognizing and rewarding employee contributions, promoting work-life balance and well-being, fostering a collaborative and inclusive culture, and implementing additional strategies such as performance management, empowerment, career growth, team building, and continuous feedback, small business owners can create a positive and engaging work environment.

Investing in your employees’ success and happiness not only benefits them individually but also contributes to the overall success and growth of your small business.

Founded by Henry Ford in 1903, the Ford Motor Company rocketed to success by mass-producing reliable, low-priced automobiles. When Henry’s son, Edsel, took the helm in 1918, he championed a different strategy for a new era. He sought to replace the Model T — iconic but outdated — with a more modern design geared to high-end and foreign markets, and later embraced compromise with labor amid the suffering of the Great Depression.

But Henry could not let go of Ford’s origin story, undermining his son at every turn. The result was declining sales and years of labor strife that left the company on the brink of collapse by the 1940s. It was only the efforts of Edsel’s son, the more forceful Henry Ford II, that saved the auto giant from bankruptcy.

In family enterprise, generational transitions often pit one narrative against another: tradition versus innovation, continuity versus change. Indeed, when older generations craft painstaking succession plans or build elaborate constraints into trusts or shareholder agreements, they are really constructing a story: about the values and life lessons that helped them succeed, and that they hope will do the same for their children. Younger generations, however, must often adapt this narrative to their own goals and values, along with the changing world around them.

Failure to reconcile conflicting narratives can spell ruin for a family business or the waste of a financial legacy, as it nearly did for the Fords. To avoid this fate, families need to think differently about the stories they tell.

The value of critical distance

Conventional wisdom holds that family heritage, like wealth and reputation, “belongs” to the older generation. In this telling, succeeding generations are merely stewards or caretakers. They are given an inheritance or entrusted with the family business — and then charged with not frittering it away or screwing it up. Framed this way, a legacy can feel more like a burden than a gift.

Of course, it’s not as simple as that. Research suggests that younger generations do value their family heritage, especially as a source of traditions more motivating than money alone, and are motivated to preserve it. According to a 2021 survey of 300 Canadian business owners by the Family Enterprise Foundation, nearly 90% of next-generation family business leaders believe it is important to preserve a legacy.

But younger generations also want something more from that heritage: a sense of purpose, a collective identity for the family, the seeds of new entrepreneurial gambits, permission to go their own way. And as our own research shows, next-generation leaders are uniquely positioned to find what they are looking for in the family story.

Older generations often identify closely with the family or the family business, which can actually obstruct key learnings from the past. Eager to protect the family’s reputation, they may downplay scandal or setback rather than learn from it. By contrast, our analysis of 94 family businesses shows that younger generations tend to have more critical distance from the family story. This lets them grapple with its difficult chapters and respond appropriately, whether by making amends for past misdeeds or by reforming business practices going forward. It also frees them to draw insights from their story that can fuel innovation and sustainability.

Legacy as a source of purpose

How, then, can the next generation build on their family legacy while recasting it as their own? Our research and experience suggest four strategies for next-generation leaders.

1. Seek out role models in the family story.

Some next-generation leaders hesitate to embark on risky new ventures outside the traditional scope of the family business. Locating exemplars in the family story can legitimize a new way forward.

One third-generation CEO used this approach to advance his vision for a more sustainable enterprise. Fredo Arias-King, head of Mexican pine resin producer Pinosa Group, had lamented the disappearance of Mexico’s ancient pine forests that threatened both the industry and the communities that depend on it. Then he stumbled onto the published speeches of his grandfather, company founder José Antonio Arias Álvarez, who had preached environmental stewardship. “I don’t think he could have known just how devastated the forest would eventually become,” said Arias-King, “but somehow my grandfather knew that planting trees would become extremely important.”

Affirmed by his grandfather’s words, Arias-King helped found Ejido Verde, a nonprofit that would later become an independent, for-profit enterprise. By making no-interest loans to farmers and communities, with pine resin as the means of repayment, the organization promotes reforesting through new pine plantations.

2. Forge an identity beyond the founder-entrepreneur.

It’s easy to revere the family’s wealth creator. For the two adult grandchildren of one founder-entrepreneur — a private equity pioneer who rose from poverty to become one of America’s richest people — that was the problem. They wanted their own children, beneficiaries of a generation-skipping trust, to know the person behind the legacy that would pass to them. So they engaged one of us (John Seaman) to probe beyond the classic rags-to-riches tale they had heard growing up.

The founder, they learned, was a gifted yet deeply troubled man. This more nuanced understanding enabled the two generations to have a frank conversation about the issues raised by their ancestor’s life: the obligations of a business to its workers and communities; the consequences of untreated mental illness; and the unfair burden often shouldered by women in wealthy families.

This conversation, in turn, led members of the fourth generation, all in their twenties, to rethink their roles in the family enterprise. One set aside her qualms about joining the family business and put herself on a path to succeed her father as president, but with a determination to nudge the company’s private equity portfolio toward impact investing. Another resolved to pursue her own entrepreneurial dreams outside of the business, rooted in progressive values that were in stark contrast with her great-grandfather’s. Still another joined the board of the family foundation, where she helped steer its grant-making toward her generation’s individual passions.

By seeing their founder-entrepreneur in human terms, the family’s younger generation was able to move beyond hero worship to forge their own identities — which promised to make them responsible owners and stewards of their ancestor’s wealth and the business that created it.

3. Reckon with past wrongs to find a new path forward.

Many families have skeletons in the closet — scandal or wrongdoing they have long concealed or downplayed. (Henry Ford’s history of antisemitism and violent confrontations with unions are examples of this.) The willingness to confront these darker chapters, it turns out, can be a powerful motivation.

That was the case for the Reimann family, owners of consumer goods conglomerate JAB Holding Company and one of Germany’s richest families. The three adult children of Albert Reimann Jr., who ran the company in the 1930s and 1940s, knew they had been born of their father’s affair with an employee, Emilie Landecker. They also knew that Emilie’s Jewish father, Alfred, had been murdered by the Nazis. But it was not until 2019, when they commissioned research on the company, that a more sinister secret emerged: their father and paternal grandfather were themselves ardent believers in Nazi race theory who abused forced laborers.

It was the younger generation — Albert Jr.’s grandchildren — who were most adamant about reckoning with this secret. “When I read of the atrocities…sanctioned by my grandfather, I felt like throwing up,” recalled Martin Reimann. “I cannot claim that I was very interested in politics before…But after what happened, I changed my mind.”

At the insistence of Martin’s generation, the Reimanns paid compensation to former forced laborers and their families. But they did not stop there. They refocused their family foundation on combating antisemitism and strengthening democratic institutions. They also renamed the foundation in honor of Alfred Landecker, making him the narrative driver behind the more fundamental change they sought. Far from an isolated act of corporate atonement, then, this was an attempt by the next generation to use lessons from their family heritage to build a more just future.

4. Leverage the family story as a source of competitive advantage.

For some family business entrepreneurs, the next venture can begin with a step back. So it was for British restaurateurs (and sisters) Helen and Lisa Tse, whose family heritage empowered their rise.

Their grandmother, Lily Kwok, had emigrated from Hong Kong in 1956 and settled in Manchester, where she and her daughter Mabel built one of Britain’s first Chinese restaurants. But the business eventually went bankrupt, the victim of racism and Chinese gangs.

The story might have ended there. Instead, Helen and Lisa picked up the threads of their family narrative and carried it forward. Abandoning successful professional careers, they established their own Manchester restaurant, Sweet Mandarin, in 2004. But the restaurant only took off when Helen published a best-selling memoir about her grandmother. With this narrative platform, the sisters branched out into other endeavors, like cookbooks and cookery classes, tied to their own life stories.

For the Tse sisters, family heritage proved to be a source of competitive advantage. By recovering an immigrant’s tale with universal appeal, they gained acceptance outside of their own ethnic communities. And by situating themselves in an entrepreneurial tradition spanning three generations, they created a sense of longevity that evoked quality and trustworthiness, even as they also innovated new products alongside recipes inherited from their grandmother.

. . .

Family legacy is not a monologue; it’s a dialogue, a collective story that belongs to the whole family. When families think of legacy in these terms, they empower younger generations to harness that story to their own purposes, drawing strength from their elders. Legacy, in short, becomes not a burden but a blessing — one that can help families sustain wealth and purpose long into the future.

It’s everyone’s dream to have their own business. With entrepreneurship, you become your own boss, you set your goals, and if things go well, you can make more money. However, owning a business also means you need to manage stress..

From wrangling employees, to long hours, to worrying that the business could fail to problems with equipment, not making sales, not having enough capital to having too much debt, the list is endless — in short, it’s hard work

These things can make owning a business more stressful and lead to burnout as a small business owner.

But it seems you can’t escape the stress of owning a business, with a 2021 survey showing that 52 percent of small business owners experienced stress during the year.

The best you can do is to learn how to manage stress and protect your well-being. This is especially important for small business owners because the success or failure of the business solely depends on them.

Even if you have a few employees, they depend on your guidance and the momentum you set for your business growth.

Learning to manage stress as a small business owner is as important as learning how to market a business and make sales. In fact, managing stress should be among your top long-term strategies for business growth.

This post highlights top stress management tips for small business owners:

Ready to do this? Let’s go!

How to manage stress as a small business owner

Owning a business is different from working for an established company. As a business owner, you have more responsibilities, and the success of your business largely depends on you.

Statistics show that about 20 percent of all small businesses fail within the first year. As a small business owner, you need to figure out how to keep your business going to ensure it doesn’t fall into that bracket.

Unlike employees, entrepreneurs don’t work for paychecks. They have the responsibility to ensure the company is on the right track. This can sometimes mean working more than 50 hours a week without an overpay or any income at all.

Undoubtedly, many things can stress small business owners, so the question remains: What are the most effective ways to manage stress? Let’s highlight them below:

Know your stressors

The first step to managing your stress is identifying the cause. Many things can stress small business owners, including lack of enough funds, time management issues, and employee management.

Your workplace stress as an entrepreneur could be due to things you can’t solve or get time to do.

Running and growing a business involves many trials and errors and entering unfamiliar territories. This and many other things can stress you even without knowing. To identify your stressors, you need to look back and analyze your actions and paths carefully.

Once you identify your stressors, you can begin looking for the best solution. Sometimes you will feel relieved just by identifying things causing you stress.

While identifying your stressors is important, you should also aim to be more self-aware. By gaining self-awareness, you can know what things or situations make you stressed and the best way to deal with the situation.

Also, when you become self-aware, you know your strengths and weaknesses, which is key when running a business.

One way to reduce stress is by delegating tasks that cause you stress. For example, you can delegate staff management to a team manager if dealing with them directly causes anxiety.

If that is not possible, knowing that a particular job causes stress will help you know how to prepare beforehand to reduce the impact on your mental state when handling it. For example, you can take a deep breath before the task or practice mindfulness.

Focus on the right things

Unless you retrain your mind, you will likely focus more on what is going wrong when running a small business than going right. While this can help rectify your mistakes to keep things going, focusing more on the negatives can lead to more stress.

You’ll be less likely to manage stress when you think about your capital deficit, things that are behind schedule, or an employee who didn’t respond to you appropriately.

Instead of focusing on things that go wrong, remind yourself of things that are going right. For example, you could remind yourself of positive feedback from a customer, an employee committed to their work, or the fact that you’ve dialed in important parts of your workflow.

List all the right things happening in your company, no matter how small they are. Once you have the list, you will be amazed at how much you have accomplished and the potential growth of your business. Keep the list somewhere you can easily see to act as a motivator whenever you feel stressed.

Create a schedule and stick to it

Without a structure, you’ll have no plan, meaning you won’t have a way to anticipate what can happen. When you don’t have a schedule, you have so much to do in a day that you might not do anything.

But when you plan, you can handle more and have enough time to anticipate what might happen.

You quit your 9-to-5 job because you wanted full control of your day, right? Unfortunately, if you don’t create a reasonable schedule and stick to it, you will not have that all-important work-life balance, meaning no time to fulfill your dreams.

Being a business owner should come with a sense of control and should be a reminder that you are your boss.

Having a routine helps you know what to expect each time of the day and comes with a sense of control and peace of mind. That means you don’t have to follow a schedule you haven’t created yourself. The best part is that you can always adjust your schedule if something stresses you.

Creating a schedule and sticking to it gives your mind and body a sense of protocol. This is good for your body clock, which determines when you feel energized or tired and impacts your focus.

When creating your routine, consider the effort you need to complete each task. Schedule the most challenging tasks before other tasks requiring less energy and concentration for better results.

You’ve probably heard small business owners complain that their day is never enough to complete their tasks. The truth is, the number of hours is never the problem but the lack of schedule.

If you schedule your end of the day, you’ll complete all your tasks on time and still have time to rest.

To better stick to your schedule, consider investing in scheduling software to help manage your time more effectively. If you can plan, anticipate, and organize your day, the stress of running a business will significantly reduce.

Prioritize sleep

Not sleeping the recommended number of hours (7-8) could impair cognitive functioning and deplete energy levels.

But telling people to “get enough sleep” without giving tips on how to achieve that doesn’t help. After all, if they could get sleep that easily, they could sleep. The fact that one is advised to sleep means they’re having trouble sleeping or don’t have time to sleep.

But telling people to prioritize self-care — including sleep — is a practical approach that can give results. Ideally, prioritizing sleep means becoming aware that sleeping enough is crucial to manage stress. But knowing that alone won’t help you sleep. Here are practical tips to help you sleep better:

• Stick to your routine. Sticking to your routine won’t only help you achieve your goals but also help you fall asleep easily.
• Avoid alcohol before sleep. While alcohol can make you sleepy, it only gives you lower-quality sleep. This, alongside other effects of alcoholism, makes alcohol not a better option before sleep.
• Avoid coffee at night. Coffee is a stimulant, meaning it increases activity in your brain and nervous system. Taking coffee at night will impact your ability to fall asleep and affect your daily routine.

These tips will help you have enough sleep at night. Having enough sleep means enough rest and more focus the following day.

Exercise more

While you should dedicate more of your time to your business, it shouldn’t be at the expense of your fitness. Exercising doesn’t only improve your physical health but is known to reduce stress as well.

However, this doesn’t mean spending two or more hours in a gym daily — not at all. A 30-minute walk every day or other physical activity will do.

For example, you can walk to your next meeting or walk around your workplace at lunchtime. Also, instead of sitting down for many hours in the office, consider having a standing desk or taking breaks from work to stretch your body.

Whatever the case, don’t spend countless hours in the office sitting, as this will impact your mental and general health — and could lead to health problems down the road.

Exercising increases endorphin levels (brain transmitters) that help you feel better. The higher the endorphin levels, the more you feel less stressed, and vice versa. Exercising is a great way to feel more satisfied and energized, and manage stress.

It helps improve your mood and gives you a better perspective on how to run your business.

Be mindful of your diet

What you eat impacts your mental health and general health. Regardless of how much you exercise, you will remain demotivated and probably moody if you eat unhealthy foods.

A balanced diet is a great way to improve your immune system and repair damaged body tissues. A healthy diet also provides the energy needed to manage stress and make you feel more relaxed.

The food you eat can help reduce stress or increase your stress levels. For example, you should avoid these foods if you are feeling stressed:

• Caffeine
• Alcohol
• Processed foods, including chips, frozen foods, cookies, etc.
• Sugary drinks and foods
• Foods with high trans fats like frozen pizza, fried foods, microwave popcorn, etc.

Instead, eat foods that can help promote feelings of warmth and calmness, including:

• Whole grains
• High fiber foods
• Foods high in magnesium, such as broccoli, avocados, bananas, pumpkin seeds, spinach, etc.
• Protein-rich foods such as peanuts, almonds, chicken breast, lean beef, eggs, etc.
• Foods high in vitamin B like chicken, beef, organ meats, eggs, etc.
• Foods with higher amounts of omega-3 fatty acids like avocados, olive oil, salmon, tuna, sardines, etc.

Eating healthily will not only provide the nutrients to handle stress but will also provide energy to exercise and handle daily work.

Delegate tasks

One of the reasons small business owners fail to manage stress is because they have more than they can handle. If that’s the case, delegating is a great way to reduce stress.

Some tasks cannot just be put on hold. This is especially so for tasks at the core of running your business.

But that doesn’t mean that you should be the one to handle them. To avoid being overwhelmed with tasks, outsource some of the duties or find team members to help free up your calendar (and mind).

Of course, delegating tasks can be hard, especially if you have been used to handling the tasks yourself. However, having reliable employees to delegate some tasks is a healthy business choice.

If you’re yet to train people to handle tasks that overwhelm you, you should start doing so. This will benefit your mental health and help you achieve more in your business.

Automate

Automation is similar to delegating, only that you’re relying on technology this time. Running a business today is unlike in the 90s when many things were done manually. Today, small business owners can use apps to automate many aspects of their businesses.

For example, my own company AlchemyLeads saw a 250 percent increase in monthly leads after automating their lead outreach process using Zapier. Not just outreach, small businesses can automate many areas of their businesses to boost effectiveness.

Businesses can save time by abandoning spreadsheet scheduling of their staff for online scheduling. Another area you can use automation is in running your payroll and posting on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and other social media platforms.

While automation tools will cost money, they will make it easier to run your business and save a lot of time and money in the long run.

Be ready to say “no”

Sometimes you don’t need to delegate or even automate tasks; you only need to say “no.”

When the business is young, you’re likely to say “yes” to almost everything as long as it appears to be helping your business.

And truth be told, you don’t have many opportunities coming to you when starting, so you may seem like you don’t have much choice but to accept all opportunities that come your way.

However, as early as it is, it is good to create boundaries and focus only on things that will help grow your business. So, before you say “yes,” ask yourself whether the act has any short-term or long-term benefits for your business.

But saying “no” is not easy, especially on matters involving customer, employee, or partner happiness. However, remember that saying “yes” to everything might overwhelm you and affect your ability to deliver in the long run.

So, instead of agreeing to anything to make others happy, focus on doing what really matters and set your terms. If you don’t do that, you’ll be overwhelmed, and your acts won’t meet the standards.

Remember, you have limited time to do things that you value. So, learning to say “no” to unnecessary things will help reduce stress and give you more time to focus on more productive activities.

Take breaks

Even if you take the above steps, you won’t be able to manage stress if you work continuously without breaks. This can be as simple as taking a 10-minute break to stretch, walking around the office, or going on vacation.

Whichever way you decide to go, don’t worry about matters to do with your business when taking a break from work. If possible, turn off your phone and have someone handle the tasks on your behalf to ensure you have enough time to relax.

Stepping away from your business for a while will help decongest stress and give you a new perspective on your business and life.

Manage stress and keep thriving

Implementing even one of the above strategies can go a long way to help you manage stress. And once you experience those benefits, keep building on that success. After all, even the most successful business isn’t worth your well-being.

The best ways to delegate tasks aren’t always straightforward. Your team members are unique. They have different abilities and distinct approaches to work.

We all work with team members who do things differently, but that doesn’t make their approach wrong. We may realize they work better than we do. And while that stings, it’s also thrilling!

We must learn the best ways to delegate tasks to discover what our teams can do. We must also determine when best to do those tasks. While it may be an uncomfortable process, it will be worthwhile when we get excellent results and teams that accomplish things beyond our wildest expectations.

What’s delegation?

First, let’s unpack what we’re discussing to ensure we’re all on the same page. Delegation is the process of assigning tasks to team members. There are many reasons to delegate work, such as to establish equal workloads or a specific task is better suited for a certain team member.

“You can do anything, but you can’t do everything.”
—Stephen Covey

You get more done when you delegate because other people are working alongside you. Your team gets more done in less time.

Knowing when and how to delegate makes us better leaders as our team members learn and grow. Delegation helps build skills and a sense of pride among team members. Happy team members with high levels of job satisfaction tend to stay with you longer and accomplish more at work.

Why is delegation important?

Delegating work serves two critical functions. First, it lets us be more productive as leaders. When we delegate tasks, our time and energy are free for other things.

Second, delegation shows team members that we trust them to do important work. It gives them pride in what they do and makes them feel vital to our overall mission and goals.

Unfortunately, it can be challenging to step back and get a big-picture perspective of the work and who should do what. We have to take the time to think. We need to look at the scope of work and consider which tasks fit which team members best.

That’s how we delegate effectively and ensure the project is completed at the highest level.

What are the benefits of delegation?

There are many benefits of delegation for both leaders and teams. It may seem like the best reason to delegate is for productivity’s sake (and that’s a solid reason), but some wellness and growth opportunities also come with it.

Lighter workload and less burnout potential

Everyone is susceptible to burnout, including the leadership team at any organization. Burnout is emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion from ongoing stress and overwork. It causes people to feel cynical, unmotivated, and detached from their work.

Burnout can make even the best team member have extreme challenges at work. You don’t want it for yourself or your team.

Delegation can help prevent burnout from setting in while also creating a less stressful workload. It helps everyone on a team feel empowered and engaged by connecting them with the work they’re most likely to enjoy and find meaningful.

The saying “Many hands make light work” is true. What might feel like an endless to-do list to one person can be managed easily by many. The great thing about delegating is that you can still get stuff done while getting back some of your time.

You don’t have to work overtime and miss out on things in life. You hired your team for a reason, after all. You also aren’t burning the candle at both ends, always feeling tired and overwhelmed.

You can recharge and reclaim some of your energy. You’ll be more enthusiastic and creative when you have mental and emotional space.

Increases efficiency and productivity

You know what it’s like to be overwhelmed. You have a lot to do, and you know everyone is waiting for you. Pretty soon, you’re holding the team back because you can’t physically do everything that needs to be done in a day.

We’ve all been there at some point in our careers.

A project can suffer when one person has too many tasks to complete. If one person is responsible for too many things, that person will bottleneck the workflow, creating delays and all-around frustration.

Delegating gets the work done faster and more efficiently. Team members down the pipeline aren’t waiting for one stressed-out person to complete tasks so they can do their part. No one feels like anyone else is holding them up.

Empowers your team

You hired each member for a reason. They were the right fit for the role you needed filled. They had the skills to bring something unique to the table and thrive at the organization. You felt like they had something your team needed.

Failing to delegate undoes all of these positives by stifling team members.

Team members can doubt they belong when we don’t delegate and act like we must do everything independently. It makes them think we don’t trust them to do the work or don’t think they can. They may even feel like they’re just filling a slot instead of really contributing something.

Delegating shows our teams that we trust their abilities and judgment. It helps them feel valued and respected. Delegation empowers them to use their skills, creativity, and knowledge to excel at work, which means we all win.

Makes room for skill development

There’s no training quite like on-the-job training, and there’s no substitute for the satisfaction of learning something new or discovering a unique way to solve a problem. When you delegate, you free your team to experience these feelings and develop professionally.

Assigning new, challenging tasks puts your team in a position to think for themselves and build new skills. It also lets you create a team who can handle complex work, which is invaluable when you get big projects or need to promote someone.

Why leaders don’t delegate

Delegation clearly has a lot of benefits, so why don’t we all do it or do it more? Why do some leaders seem overwhelmed while their team waits for more to do or longs for more challenging assignments?

In the book, “How to Be a Great Boss,” Gino Wickman and René Boer write about the importance of letting go of the vine. The metaphor goes something like this: If you are swinging Tarzan-style from vine to vine in the jungle, you can only move forward if you let go of the vine you’re holding to grab the next one.

We have to do the same thing as leaders. We can only move forward if we let go of certain tasks and free up our time and energy to do the things only we can do. We can’t swing the business forward if we’re still hanging onto that last vine.

As the author wrote,

“To go up, you must first let go.”

It seems so obvious, right? So why don’t we let go? Yes, those words sound scary, but the alternative is frightening too.

When leaders don’t delegate, it’s usually for one of these reasons:

• They lack trust. Sometimes we don’t trust our teams to do the work as well as they should or as we would. That second concern may be valid. There’s a reason we’re in leadership, after all. But it’s our job as leaders to develop our teams and elevate their work. If we never trust them to do the work, how will they learn?
• They fear losing control. Some leaders need control or worry others will drop the ball if they’re not involved in every detail of the work. Delegating doesn’t erode authority, and it’s impossible to control everything. If you must, review the final product before it goes public the first few times you delegate a job to the team. Give them feedback and let them grow.
• They don’t know how. A common reason we don’t delegate is that we don’t know how. We keep plugging away at the stack on our desks, thinking we’ll eventually get to the bottom of the pile. Unfortunately, that doesn’t happen. The work never stops, and we’re not using our resources well. If we don’t figure out how to delegate, we burn out and lose good team members.

Solving the delegation problem

So, if you’re a leader who is reluctant to delegate tasks or doesn’t know how, what’s the best way to fix that? You know you can’t do everything, and it isn’t good for you or your team if you try, but how do you embrace delegation when it feels so scary?

To solve the delegation problem, you must

• Start small. If delegation doesn’t come naturally to you, it’s OK to start with delegating small things. It’s probably the best way, actually. Work your delegation muscles until they feel stronger and you’re more confident with the process.
• Build relationships. Know your team and each person’s strengths and weaknesses. Understand what they’re capable of. When you have relationships with your team members, it’s easier to trust them and know they won’t let you down. When you understand each team member’s skills, you feel more confident delegating because you know their capabilities. Heck, you’ll probably even find that some are better at certain tasks than you are.
• Communicate well. A common reason leaders don’t get our desired results is that we don’t communicate effectively. We have to make sure we communicate what the assignment is, what success looks like, and when it’s due. If you think you’re communicating too much about a project, you may be hitting just the right spot. Always try to over-communicate.
• Offer support. Be sure your team knows they can come to you when they get stuck. As leaders, we don’t want to micromanage projects, but at the same time, we don’t want our teams to feel stranded on an island without support. Offer support up front. Inquire about progress and remind your team that you’re here if they need help.
• Provide feedback. Everyone craves feedback. Without it, we’re left wondering if we did a good job. Uncertainty rarely feels good. Once your team delivers a task or project, give them some feedback.
• Focus on success. Focus on things they did well and provide advice for next time. Providing feedback helps you build your team’s abilities while demonstrating your expertise. It also can help those leaders who need control feel like they’re still an active part of the process.

When to delegate tasks

Unfortunately, there’s no cut-and-dried way to know when we should delegate tasks. It would be nice if a chart or program thought of every possible work function and told us who should do it, but that’s not possible. A

general idea is to delegate if another person can complete the task at least 70% as well as you can, but there are many factors to consider when deciding when to delegate, and every organization is unique.

The following types of tasks are generally great for delegating:

• Large or complex tasks. Don’t just throw a huge, complex task at one team member. That’s not what this means. Instead, break big, time-consuming tasks into smaller sub-tasks. Then divide those sub-tasks among your team. This approach encourages teamwork.
• Tasks that require special skills. Everyone has a “very particular set of skills.” (Just ask Liam Neeson.) If a task requires a skill you don’t have that one of your team members does, it makes sense to give it to them. They also enjoy doing certain things more than others. For example, if you have a task that requires technical skills and you aren’t tech-savvy, you can delegate it. In cases like these, you can use a resource like Codeable, which allows you to hire the best WordPress developers for your project when you need those specialized skills.
• Tasks that aren’t a priority. The workday is full of small tasks that have to get done. Delegating those tasks gives you more time to focus on higher-level or more time-bound items on your calendar. We can’t do everything. Leaders need help too.
• Tasks that help others develop. Giving your team members an opportunity to learn new skills will empower them to take more initiative on future projects. When delegating tasks, consider which skills you’d like to nurture in your team members and choose tasks to help them grow.

As we get more comfortable delegating tasks and learn which types of tasks best fit each team member, we’ll be able to assign them more complex tasks moving forward. Pretty soon, delegating tasks will become second nature — at least, we hope it will.

When you need more help

I’ve written a lot to this point about delegating to your team, but what about if you lead a small or medium-sized team? Sure, you can delegate some tasks, but your limited team can only do so much. A sure way to burn out your team is to overfill everyone’s plate. To avoid this, you have to outsource and use apps that make work more efficient.

When you outsource to a human or software, you’re assigning things your team shouldn’t be doing or doesn’t have the expertise to do.

There are tons of ideal outsourcing partners and software. Some do great work or provide tools that can help you get the most out of your work regardless of the size of your team. If you’re looking for some help, check out these resources:

• Imagine what you could get done with an extra hand. That’s what Magic provides. It’s a virtual assistant service that can handle all kinds of tasks, including those related to marketing and customer support.
• Ask Betty. Need some help? Ask Betty. The company provides virtual and personal assistant services. They can also help with all office stuff and provide social media support.
• If you have a WordPress project you’d like to delegate, check out the Codeable difference. Stop wasting time searching for the right person for the job. To find vetted freelancers with fair pricing and no bidding, click here.
• Need project management software? With ClickUp, you can manage the whole team’s work for multiple clients.
• Toggl Track. Need to bill by the hour or gain a better understanding of your team’s productivity? Toggl Track can keep track of time spent on any project and create invoices for you.
• Need a basic plug-and-play design tool? Everyone uses Canva for its templates and simple design capabilities.
• Want to stay in touch with your customers? With MailChimp, you can send them newsletters for free.
• Everyone needs a simple and intuitive way to schedule social media posts across platforms. Buffer is a fan favorite.
• When you have multiple people working in various programs, you could spend a lot of time sharing or trying to remember passwords. LastPass stores and protects them all for you so you can keep all your passwords in one place and share them with your team as needed.
• Have a distributed team, or want to have a single place for all of your communication? Slack is the preferred chat app for teams at this point.
• If you find yourself frequently explaining the same process, make a Loom. You can store the short videos for your team to reference as often as needed.

Top ways to delegate tasks

At its core, delegation is taking a task from your workload and giving ownership of it to someone else. That can be stressful if you’ve never delegated a task before, and it can be challenging for the team member if they don’t feel they have what they need to do the work.

Effective delegation is more than just assigning tasks. You need to trust your team and understand what they can do to enjoy the benefits of delegation. The following tips will help you better understand the best ways to delegate tasks and when to do it.

Identifying the right person for the task

For successful task delegation, choosing the right person for the task is crucial. Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) has a concept called “right person, right seat.” It basically means that any business has to have the right people in the right positions to excel.

The right person, right seat concept has two parts:

1. Find the right people. In this step, you think about your business and what human resources it needs to succeed. What positions do you need? What traits or skills must the person in that post have? What values do they need to fit your culture? Once you identify these things, you find and hire the people who fit those needs.
2. Put people in the right seats. The second step is where you maximize people’s potential by making sure they’re in the right positions and doing the work they’re meant to do. Sometimes we hire people then realize they’re a better fit for another role or that they have unique skills we weren’t expecting. We have to be fluid enough to recognize this and move people around or adapt their roles.

When you identify the right person to delegate to, you’re putting the right person in the right seat to help your organization excel.

“It’s not about having the right person for the job; it’s about putting the right person in the right seat on the bus.”
—Gino Wickman, author of “Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business”

Picking the right team member for the job does more than help your business. It shows your team that you value their particular skills and recognize what they love doing. And, of course, fit matters. Putting a team member in charge of a task they love and excel at will always give you the best results.

Providing clear instructions and setting expectations

Good delegators provide instructions and expectations without micromanaging their team. Explain the expected outcomes and the timeline for hitting specific milestones for your team. Be clear about the resources available and how much you can help.

Avoid telling them exactly how to do every little part of the task. Part of delegating is letting your team members learn new skills. That means they have to figure out solutions to problems and approaches to tasks. Unless there’s a set, specific way the work has to be done, avoid trying to control things.

Remember, the end goal is excellent work. However your team member decides to get there is fine. You don’t always need to know how the hot dogs are made.

Setting realistic deadlines

Here’s the truth — we work faster than many of our team members. We’ve been doing this stuff for years. We’ve developed workflows. There’s little or no uncertainty in our process. But just because something is easy for us doesn’t mean it will be for someone on our teams — at least not the first time.

A teammate doing the work for the first time doesn’t have the luxury of experience. So, just because a task seems easy to you or doesn’t take you long doesn’t mean your team member will have the same experience.

Instead of setting a deadline based on how quickly you can do something with years of experience, think about how long it took you in the beginning. Also, consider how fast this team member usually works. Use those measures to set a realistic deadline.

Oh, and don’t share how long it takes you with the team. That’s a jerk move.

Team members can feel demoralized when they hear how quickly someone can do a task that takes them much longer. Remember, the endgame of delegation is increased productivity and empowered team members. Make sure your deadlines or the information you share don’t have the opposite effect.

Giving up authority

When we delegate and don’t give our team members the authority to make decisions, the delegation will fail. Instead of saving time and energy, the project will stall, and the task will likely end up back with us. Honestly, there’s not much more frustrating than getting a project back and having to do it yourself.

Creating an environment where your team members can make decisions prevents this sort of issue. Part of delegating is empowering your team to do the work you’ve assigned them. Foster a culture where people feel like they can ask questions and take the necessary steps to complete a project without your input.

Guiding through feedback

Delegation is a learning opportunity. To learn new skills, your team needs direct feedback. They need to know what they do well and what they can improve on. Your team members might make mistakes, but feedback can help them learn from their mistakes.

Common mistakes to avoid

Everyone makes mistakes, even leaders. Good leaders can make mistakes while delegating. It takes time to learn how to delegate effectively. Just as team members learn new skills through doing their tasks, we learn how and what to delegate through practice.

There are common mistakes many of us make while delegating. By avoiding these mistakes, we can help our teams complete their work and thus maximize delegation processes.

Micromanaging

No one likes a micromanager because they want to control all aspects of the work they “delegate.” They say they’re just checking in when in actuality they want to nitpick every aspect of a project, to the point they might as well do the project themselves. Even worse, a micromanager doesn’t empower the team to make decisions.

Don’t be a micromanager.

“Micromanagement is the destroyer of momentum.”
—Miles Anthony Smith, author of “Why Leadership Sucks”

Delegation enables you to take a task off your to-do list. If you’re constantly trying to control how a task is done, you’re not delegating — you’re just micromanaging.

Give your team members the time and space to complete their work. They’ll appreciate the freedom and might exceed your expectations.

While no one likes a micromanager, we all love to see our teams succeed and over-deliver, right?

Delegating too much or too little

Good delegation is a balancing act. You need to delegate to get stuff done on time, but you don’t want to give a large project to someone who isn’t ready for it.

You also want to empower your employees with tasks they can do and do on time but don’t want to give them something so small that they feel like you don’t trust them with the big stuff.

It’s tough, right?

Finding the right balance means knowing your team and what they can do. Start by delegating smaller projects to see how your team handles the work, then build up to bigger projects.

Not helping enough

Delegating gives team members opportunities to learn and grow. Providing clear directions and communication is key to ensuring they’re successful. If you don’t, then you’re setting your team members up for failure.

If you don’t provide the necessary support or let your team know you welcome questions, they may not complete the task correctly or on time. You may also find the task back on your to-do list. We never want that to happen. It discourages everyone.

Failing to communicate effectively

Clear instructions and feedback will help your team complete tasks correctly and efficiently. As they learn to do the work, they’ll need your support to make sure they’re on the right track. Giving a team member a task to complete without communication, though, is a recipe for disaster.

Even if the task seems mundane, it may not feel that way for someone who hasn’t done it before. Expecting your team to know how to do something without instruction or resources can leave them feeling demoralized and frustrated. Take the time to communicate with your team about the task so they can complete it.

Delegate and get it done

Have a better idea of the best ways to delegate tasks and when to do so. We discussed the importance of delegation, when you should delegate, and how to pick the right team member for the task. Remember, delegation is a learned skill, so it takes time to do it effectively. Always provide clear instructions, set realistic deadlines, give your team the authority they need to complete the task, and provide the feedback they need to be successful.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed, it may be time to streamline your business for maximum efficiency. Here are five ways to make your business run smoother and more efficiently.

Hire a Management Consultant

A good consultant will take a comprehensive look at your operation and help you identify areas where you can improve. They can advise on process improvement, organizational structure, and resource allocation. In addition, a management consultant can provide an unbiased perspective on your business, which can be invaluable when making tough decisions.

Hiring a management consultant is a smart move if you’re serious about taking your business to the next level. A management consultant can also provide insights into best practices and the latest trends in business management, which can help you increase efficiency.

Implement Lean Management Principles

Lean management is a process that helps to eliminate waste and optimize productivity. By identifying and eliminating non-value-added activities, you can free up resources that you can use more effectively elsewhere. Implementing lean management principles can help you improve quality, reduce costs, and increase customer satisfaction.

To reap the benefits of lean management, it is vital to involve all levels of your organization in the process. Only by working together can you create a leaner, more efficient business.

Define Your Goals and Objectives Clearly

Defining your goals and objectives is one of the most essential steps in streamlining your business for maximum efficiency. Without a clear understanding of what you want to achieve, developing an effective action plan will be challenging. By outlining your goals, you can ensure that everyone in your organization is working towards the same objectives.

Additionally, setting realistic and achievable goals will help to keep your team focused and motivated. If your goal is to increase sales by 10% over the next year, you can develop specific strategies to make this happen.

Automate

The more streamlined your operation is, the less waste you’ll have and the more money you’ll save. One way to streamline your business for maximum efficiency is to automate as much as possible. Automation can help you keep track of inventory, manage customer data, and even place orders with suppliers.

By automating these tasks, you can free up your staff to focus on other business areas. In addition, automation can help to improve accuracy and reduce mistakes. As a result, automating as much of your business as possible is one of the best ways to achieve maximum efficiency.

Review and Refine Regularly

By examining how your business operates, you can identify areas where improvements can be made, saving time and resources in the long run. This may involve streamlining communication between departments, updating your software or hardware, or instituting new policies and procedures. In addition, regular reviews can help you identify new opportunities for growth and improvement.

One way to do this is to set aside some time each week to sit down and identify areas that need improvement. Then, come up with a plan for how to address those issues. It may require some trial and error, but eventually, you’ll find the perfect formula for your business.

Efficiency is key to any successful business. Streamlining your processes and taking a critical look at each component of your operation can make your company run like a well-oiled machine. Sometimes, this might mean being open to new ideas and streamlining your processes wherever possible.  It may take some effort initially, but the payoff will be worth it.

As physicians, it is all too obvious to us that women’s health in the United States is in a state of crisis. Compared to other high-income countries, women of reproductive age in the United States have the highest rates of pregnancy-related death, preventable death, chronic health conditions, and mental health care needs. They are more likely to die during childbirth than their mothers, and the Supreme Court’s anticipated reversal of Roe v Wade will likely further increase pregnancy-related deaths.

Even more staggering are the inequities: Black women are three times more likely to die during pregnancy, regardless of education or income. The costs of health care are also burdensome, with women delaying care due to cost and suffering financial hardship due to medical bills, even if they have private health insurance.

These poor outcomes negatively affect society and the workplace. When faced with the challenges of navigating work and family without adequate support to do so, many women simply opt to leave the workforce. This attrition results in decreased diversity, lost talent, and less productivity. The Covid-19 pandemic only exacerbated these trends. Between 2020 and 2022, 1.1 million women left the workforce, accounting for 63% of jobs lost during the pandemic. While many are gradually rejoining the labor force, many — especially mothers — are choosing not to return.

Employers can take action today to combat these challenges. Investment in women’s health results in a healthier population overall. Companies that offer comprehensive support for women’s health have higher productivity, better retention of female employees, and most importantly, they help improve health outcomes for women.

Women’s Health Is a National Priority

At a national level, recognition of these poor outcomes in the United States has led to new efforts to improve them. In December 2021, the White House made a call to action to reduce maternal mortality and morbidity. This effort included a $3 billion investment in maternal health, encouraged states to increase Medicaid postpartum coverage from 60 days to 12 months, and established a “Birthing Friendly” designation for hospitals that take steps to improve maternity care. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) currently funds perinatal quality collaboratives that convene a variety of stakeholders to improve the safety and patient-centeredness of maternity care. The National Institutes of Health — whose 27 individual institutes strikingly does not include one dedicated to women’s health — recently announced new funding for research into improved maternal health diagnostics.

The private sector has not kept pace with these advances. Women account for more than half of the national workforce, and most obtain health insurance through their employer. These plans, however, often impose serious financial barriers for essential health care services.

While the Affordable Care Act requires private plans to cover many preventive services, such as prenatal visits and mammograms, other essential services are not covered, such as genetic screening and prescription medications during pregnancy, hospitalization for childbirth, and diagnostic testing after an abnormal mammogram or pap smear. This is in stark contrast to Medicaid plans, where the amount that patients have to spend out of pocket for these services is exceedingly low. Unfortunately, these gaps in coverage are often most detrimental to employees living on lower incomes and those in marginalized racial-ethnic groups.

Employers are powerfully positioned to advance women’s health in the United States. There are several ways in which they can support women and in doing so, ultimately create a healthier society.

1. Provide better health insurance.

Currently, even among women with private health insurance, 98% of new moms in the United States are left with thousands of dollars of out-of-pocket costs after childbirth as the result of “low cost,” high-deductible insurance plans. In fact, more than half of women with private insurance change their plan around the time of childbirth to seek savings. When employers try to maximize the aggregate value of insurance plans, critical gaps still exist at the individual level.

Therefore, it is essential for employers to seek comprehensive insurance plans that include coverage for pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum care without high deductibles, co-pays, or out-of-pocket costs. These plans should also cover crucial mental health services, including treatment for substance-use disorders, and evidence-based management of chronic conditions across women’s lifespans. Women must have a seat at any table where insurance plan benefit design tradeoffs are being decided.

Since health care payers are sensitive to market pressures, demands by purchasers for high-quality women’s health insurance coverage will drive market change within the health care delivery system. This should not be seen as a short-term expense, but rather, as a long-term investment.

Employers’ comprehensive insurance plans should include access to safe abortion, which unequivocally saves lives, helps people achieve their life goals, and is an essential part of comprehensive health care. However, if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v Wade, as a leaked draft opinion suggests it may do, abortion will become illegal in at least 13 states with trigger laws, and other states are also likely to restrict abortion access.

Multiple companies have therefore pledged to reimburse travel and lodging expenses for employees seeking abortion services, since many may soon have to travel out of state. Should access to safe abortion become restricted, such corporate provisions, alongside insurance coverage for abortion care itself, will become increasingly important to foster access to the full scope of health care and avoid deleterious effects on employee retention and recruitment. Employers unable to cover costs of travel or treatment can protect safe abortion access by providing paid medical leave as some have done.

2. Provide paid parental leave.

The United States is the only high-income country without national paid parental leave. Lack of paid leave means that pregnant and postpartum people take less time off work, which is associated with increased birth complications and worse maternal and infant health.

Paid leave doesn’t just benefit maternal and infant health; it benefits everyone. A recent study compared companies in states that have enacted paid parental leave with those that haven’t. It found that in the states with paid leave, performance rose by 1%, productivity rose by 5%, and employee turnover decreased. What’s more, longer paid parental leave keeps more women in the workforce. Companies that have begun to invest in paid parental leave are already reaping rewards.

3. Redesign the workplace to support women.

Women face many barriers and stigmas around basic health and wellness in the workplace. A 2020 survey study found that only 10% of new mothers had designated breaks to support breastfeeding, and only 17% had support from supervisors or coworkers. Support for preventative health appointments, childcare, and mental health is often lacking as well.

With input from women employees, employers need to design a workplace that supports positive health behaviors and recognizes that women often shoulder an unequal burden of caregiving at home. Many have begun to reimagine the workplace as one that includes on-site subsidized childcare, spaces for pumping breaks and breastfeeding, and flexible work-hour arrangements to accommodate appointments and caregiving responsibilities.

Resources and guides are available to make these changes. By intentionally integrating support into the workplace itself, companies are more likely to retain talent and improve the employees’ health, wellness, engagement, and productivity.

In a social and political environment that sees growing threats to women’s health and autonomy, the steps outlined above represent ways for corporate leaders to make women’s health a priority. The moral case is obvious, but the business case is just as strong. By investing in comprehensive support for women’s health, companies can improve productivity, realize their employees’ full potential, and reverse the troubling health outcome trends that continue to unfold in the United States.

Ready to reclaim your time? Part of the allure of entrepreneurship is owning your time clock— but as a fast-paced freelancer or an ambitious small business owner, time often isn’t on your side.

Without an extensive network of colleagues to fall back on or the support of an organization helping you to deliver on your promises or meet deadlines, the pressure is always on. Throw a bunch of additional plates into the juggling mix (household chores, food shopping, errands, childcare, maintaining friendships, exercise … the list goes on) and you can find yourself stretched to the very limits.

“I must govern the clock, not be governed by it.” ~ Golda Meir

When you lose your grip on time management, every day starts to blend into one giant blur. Your work-life balance is knocked off its axis and leisurely weekends become a thing of the past. After a while, you might start to neglect yourself, feel guilty for not spending time with people, and experience burnout.

It’s not easy to remain productive while striking a decent work-life balance — especially when you’re out there making it on your own. But, there is a way.

If you’re reading this and you seriously need to reclaim your time, stick around because here are four practical time management methods that will restore harmony to your existence.

4 ways to reclaim your time as a small business owner

One of the biggest benefits of being a freelancer or owning a business is the fact that you can work the hours that suit you while taking charge of your professional destiny.

But, as mentioned, the problem is that without the ability to manage your time, you can feel trapped in a perpetual cycle of sleeping restlessly, clawing through your day, and playing catch-up.

Yes, you’re prepared to work hard and go the extra mile. And, no you didn’t decide to become self-employed to have your quality of life thrown out of the virtual window.

It’s, well, time to reclaim your time with these four essential methods:

1. Discover your ‘pockets of time.’
2. Set aside allocated time for business admin and development.
3. Map out your time with room for flexibility.
4. Work with the right time management tools.

Let’s dive into each strategy.

1. Discover your ‘pockets of time’

To restore a healthy work-life balance, optimize your days with a little something I like to call the “pockets of time” trick.

If you look close enough, you will discover small but consistent pockets of time that offer the potential to take care of your daily duties while increasing your output systematically.

When you start looking for pockets of time, you’ll discover that they’re plentiful.

Start by identifying your time pockets. Some examples include:

• That 20 minutes between the morning routine and the school run
• The 30-minute train ride to the city
• The 10 minutes spent waiting for an online shopping delivery
• The extra 15 minutes for an extended lunch break
• The 60 minutes when you watch repeats of your favorite Netflix series

Then, document daily or weekly milestones you would like to achieve within each gap.

You might find that these pockets of time are best for making personal phone calls, firming up family plans or getting a few extra steps in rather than actual work-based tasks (remember, this is all about striking a balance).

Even if your schedule only amounts to two hours per week, that’s eight hours per month that you’re using your time more productively and more methodically.

Before long, you’ll be on a path to reclaim your time.

While this streamlining system might take some effort to set up and get going, working with your pockets of time will soon become seamless. Before long, you’ll find that you can move fluently from one task or pursuit to the next, creating a sense of harmony in the process.

Related: Mindfulness for entrepreneurs

2. Set aside allocated time for business admin and development

With your pockets of time firmly in place, you can optimize your weekly schedule further by setting aside a specific morning or evening outside your core work hours to tackle business admin or development. These tasks might include:

• Creative planning
• Content production
• Social media management
• Competitive research
• Networking
• Budgeting and other bookkeeping

The reason for allocating time for admin and personal development a little more rigidly is because it will empower you to invest all of your efforts into specific work tasks or personal errands at the moment, rather than flitting from one task to the next in a crazed frenzy. That’s a strategic approach to reclaiming your time.

Focused time is time well spent — and it will boost your productivity while maintaining your physical as well as mental energy.

When you’re setting aside time for admin and development, choose a time and day you can realistically stick to and that aligns with when you feel the most comfortable.

For instance, if you feel super productive in the mornings, get up a little earlier one day to tackle your admin and development. Conversely, if you feel that you will focus better when everything else is tied up for the day, set up your workstation, grab a snack, and get going in the evening.

Related: Tips to grow a global business

3. Map out your time with room for flexibility

At this stage, you will know how to reclaim your time on a fundamental level: you will have discovered pockets of time to leverage; you will have become more fluent in how you tackle tasks, and you will have the framework in place to genuinely focus on whatever you are doing at the moment.

Now, this might seem counterintuitive but it’s critical to create a harmonious schedule: Leave a certain amount of flex to avoid falling behind or spinning back out of control. Here’s how:

• Take a moment to examine the week ahead, looking at each day individually.
• Allocate “slack time” — a measurement in minutes of how long you can potentially stretch out each pocket of time before having to rearrange your schedule — to each task or segment of your day.
• Once you’ve gone through your week with a fine-tooth comb, go back through each day, making sure you’ve arranged your activities so that you have enough time to accomplish them thoroughly. Also, if you find any activity that you feel is redundant, remove it with haste.

Here are some additional tips that will empower you to add a certain amount of flex to your schedule … and take big strides toward fully reclaiming your time as a small business owner:

• Set deadline delivery dates for clients or customers to complete the task one to three days earlier. That way you’ll leave yourself plenty of contingency time if something crops up — and if you deliver on your promises early, you will do wonders for your brand reputation.
• Outsource certain aspects of your admin or work duties to other services or freelancers if possible. If you work with the right partners or people, you will enjoy a healthy return on investment (ROI) over time.
• Have backup options in place (childcare options, trusted friends or family to help you out, and automated emergency email responses, for example) in case you are thrown a curveball, so you can solve any issues without stressing out too much and affecting other days in your working week.

Bonus tip: With your schedule ironed out, revisit all of your activities, commitments, and tasks, color-coding them according to priority. Doing this will empower you to make further tweaks to your schedule and optimize your agenda for optimum productivity.

Plus, this simple yet effective color-coded system will provide a practical key for all future scheduling commitments while guiding you to success when unexpected events, occurrences or setbacks (if something throws your schedule out, you’ll be able to refer to your color key to rearrange or postpone certain commitments to get more pressing matters with a cool, calm approach) unfold.

Note: When prioritizing your schedule, remember to attack it logically. Make sure that you prioritize your commitments according to their importance rather than what you like doing best. For example, while it’s vital to set aside an hour for a leisure activity if a project or proposal deadline is looming, that must come first — meaning you must color code it accordingly.

4. Work with the right time management tools

When considering how to reclaim your time, it’s always worth remembering that we live in a digital age where tools and technologies exist to make freelancers’ and business owners’ lives easier.

To help you roll out your optimized time management methods effectively, there are a wealth of effective tools that can help you get things done more quickly without compromising on professionalism or quality, including:

Take the time to research and compare these various types of time management-based tools and choose which ones you feel will offer the most value based on your specific business goals and needs.

Weave them into your weekly schedule, refining the way you use them until they integrate into your brand new schedule seamlessly. Eventually, you will discover that you’re able to tackle your to-do list more efficiently (and with a newfound sense of gusto) while striking that all-important healthy work-life balance.

Activities to help you understand how to reclaim your time

“Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now.” ~ Alan Lakein

Plan to streamline

Set aside time to set up your streamlining schedules, planning two weeks. Commit to your schedule and color key. At the end of the two weeks, reflect on how your life has changed as a result of your efforts.

Declutter to focus

Go through your home one room at a time and start cleansing. Sell or donate any items you don’t need and de-clutter your drawers, shelves, cupboards, etc. Doing so will reduce everyday distractions and help you focus on your streamlining efforts on a sustainable basis.

Look ahead to an important annual event

Whether it’s a major holiday or a big family birthday, volunteer to take the lead and organize the event, putting your newfound time management skills to the test. Doing so will also give you more control of times, dates and itineraries while incentivizing you to put plans in place so you can enjoy your time off as intended.

Clocking off

”Time is more valuable than money. You can get more money, but you cannot get more time.” ~Jim Rohn

Even with the best mindset and the slickest of tool-backed time management schedules, things happen. Not every week will go your way and your work-life balance may suffer at times.

But, by following the steps above, you will know how to reclaim your time and get back on track swiftly, turning what was once a permanent state of stress into a temporary blip. The power is in your hands: the time to take charge of your schedule is now.

Need some tech to take the next step? Check out these affordable Microsoft 365 packages.

It takes effort, hard work, and dedication to establish a business, but this is something that should go without saying. The issue is that many new companies are under the impression that they must accomplish everything on their own. Let’s use an example to make things clearer:

A new firm with no workers to ensure that product is handled, marketing is taken care of, inventory is maintained, and goals are established and achieved, all while handling continuous phone calls. It’s a lot of work, to say the least, but it’s also not essential.

Constant calls are distracting, and between robocalls and genuine leads, it’s difficult to sort through them while staying on track for your company. Responsive enterprises, on the other hand, create more powerful impressions, resulting in successful business interactions and loyal customers.

You can have the best product or service in the world, but if no one knows about it or can’t get in touch with you, your company won’t succeed.

How do you maintain a balance between your company and your consumers or clients? With a live receptionist service.

The goal should be to find a balance between your business and attending to customers or clients. The sweet spot is where you are free to focus on what you’re good at while not having to worry about the small stuff. This is where a live receptionist service comes in.

Companies like Alliance Virtual Offices understand what it takes to build a business in this day and age. Many companies are looking to cut back on staff and costs by working remotely and finding proper technology to handle many of the administrative tasks needed to run a successful business.

With Alliance Virtual Offices, you can pick between 3 Live Receptionist plans that won’t break the bank and will ensure that your customers or clients are always greeted by a friendly, professional voice. Plus, there is no setup fee and every plan includes a dedicated business number and a market-leading Virtual Phone system.

At a fraction of the cost of a permanent employee, our professional live receptionist service strengthens your customer call experience while also reducing distractions, giving you valuable time back to focus. For up to six days a week, your live receptionist will screen and filter calls, take messages, and schedule appointments on your behalf — all according to your requirements and real-time calendar. 

If you’re looking for a reliable and stable business solution, then Alliance Virtual Offices is the perfect choice for you. With their commercially recognized address and business number, you can easily list your business on the 411 national directory. This way, potential lenders will know that you’re a credible and established company. So don’t wait any longer, head to Alliance Virtual Offices today and see what they can do for you!

According to Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, villagers would come from far and wide to hear Abraham Lincoln, then a prairie lawyer with a gift for storytelling. Lincoln didn’t have the benefit of modern technology. He stood on a tree stump instead of a TED stage, and PowerPoint wouldn’t be invented for another 130 years. And yet Lincoln “could simultaneously educate, entertain, and move his audiences,” writes Goodwin.

While the tools of communication have changed since Lincoln regaled crowds with his storytelling techniques, the human brain has not. Our minds are wired for story. We think in narrative and enjoy consuming content in story form.

Understanding the difference between presenting and storytelling is critical to a leader’s ability to engage an audience and move them to action. Unfortunately, presentation software often gets in the way. Slides should be designed to complement a story, not to replace the storyteller.

Following are five storytelling strategies to help you stand out the next time you give a presentation.

Presenters open PowerPoint. Storytellers craft a narrative.

If you want to engage your audience, you have to tell a story. But for most people who prepare presentations, storytelling is not top of mind.

Most “presenters” do what sounds logical: They begin by opening the slideware. But most presentation programs aren’t storytelling tools. They’re digital delivery mechanisms. PowerPoint’s default template asks for a title and text.

A bulleted list is not a story. A story is a connected series of events told through words and/or pictures. A story has a theme, attention-grabbing moments, heroes and villains, and a satisfying conclusion. Nicely designed slides cannot compensate for a poorly structured story.

Award-winning movie directors read or write the story before picking up a camera. They see the movie play out by sketching or drawing each scene on storyboards. In much the same way, effective presenters think through the elements of their content long before they open PowerPoint.

Before you sit down to create your slides, try this three-step process. First, write down your idea as if you were telling someone a story. Since you don’t naturally write or speak in bullet points, avoid them. Instead, use complete sentences with nouns, verbs, and transitions between paragraphs and ideas. Second, visualize each of your main concepts by “storyboarding”: sketching ideas on a whiteboard or a blank sheet of paper. Finally, gather the assets that will bring your story to life: videos, animations, graphics, or photos.

Presenters use text. Storytellers love pictures.

While serving as commander of the International Space Station, Chris Hadfield became a social media sensation by picking up a guitar and singing David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” while floating weightless. Back on Earth, his celebrated TED Talk has attracted more than 11 million views.

Hadfield’s presentation, “What I learned from going blind in space,” was an astonishing display of visual storytelling. His PowerPoint deck contained 35 slides — with no text. Instead, Hadfield relied on pictures, images, animations, and videos to introduce the audience to a world few will ever experience.

Researchers have found that your audience will recall about 10% of the content if they simply hear information. But the “picture superiority effect” means that if they hear information and see a picture, they’ll retain 65%.

Florence Nightingale understood picture superiority more than a century before the invention of PowerPoint. Nightingale was a statistician and mathematician. She was also an empathetic nurse who was shocked to discover that more British soldiers were dying from unsanitary conditions in hospitals than were dying of battle wounds. When Nightingale sought funding from British authorities to improve conditions, she translated the dry data into a color-coded graphic. Nightingale knew that humans were moved more by stories and pictures than data and text alone.

If you want to engage an audience, build a presentation that favors pictures to complement the story you tell. A combination of images and words improves learning much more than words can do on their own.

Presenters dump data. Storytellers humanize it.

As Nightingale discovered, the human brain was not built to make sense of large numbers. Data is abstract until it’s put into context that people can understand. And people can understand people.

I once met with a group of executives at a large medical equipment company preparing to launch a new brain-scanning machine at a prestigious conference. They sent me hundreds of pages of clinical data to prove the technology could identify a patient’s condition faster and more accurately than any existing device.

“Where are the people?” I asked.

While the data provided evidence for the efficacy of the technology, it didn’t tell a story. Only humans could do that.

After a few hours of brainstorming with the executive team, we decided to put faces to the data. We built a presentation around two typical patients — David and Susan — who would benefit from the technology should they enter a hospital with symptoms of a possible stroke or heart attack.

At the same conference the following year, the executive who had delivered the presentation was walking down a hallway when a physician stopped him and said, “You’re the David and Susan guy. Great presentation.” The attendee hadn’t remembered all the data, but the story left an impression.

The next time you have large datasets to present, add a face to the statistics.

Presenters are predictable. Storytellers surprise audiences.

Most PowerPoints are boring because they’re predictable. We know what comes next — another slide of bullet points, followed by another, and another. A good story, however, has the element of surprise.

When Steve Jobs introduced the first iPod, he told the audience that the music player could store 1,000 songs. While other music players on the market could make the same claim, Jobs explained that none of the competitors could fit in your pocket. And with the flair of a magician pulling a rabbit out of his hat, Jobs reached into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out the smallest MP3 player on the market. “One thousand songs in your pocket” became one of the most iconic taglines in product history.

Although many people considered Steve Jobs one of the most outstanding business presenters of our time, the Apple co-founder knew the real secret to winning over an audience: Create a presentation that complements a well-crafted story.

The human brain pays attention to novelty — twists and turns and unexpected events. Our brain perks up when we detect something that breaks a pattern.

There’s no limit to your creativity. While you don’t need to pull products out of your pocket to grab the audience’s attention, do plan to surprise people with something they don’t expect.

Presenters practice silently. Storytellers rehearse out loud.

Most business presentations are forgettable because speakers forget they’re performing, not presenting. A great presentation informs, inspires, engages, and entertains. In other words, it’s part performance and should be rehearsed like one.

Most business professionals flip through their slides silently to prepare for a presentation. Storytellers rehearse — out loud. They practice their vocal delivery, adding perfectly-timed pauses and varying the pace of their speech. If they plan to stand in front of a group, they’ll stand during rehearsal. If they’re going to be seated in a Zoom call, they’ll take their seat in rehearsal and deliver each slide as though they’re giving the real thing.

. . .

When you see yourself as a storyteller, the presentation your audience sees will change. Don’t let presentation software get in the way of giving your audience information they’ll pay attention to — and retain.