As you climb higher and higher on that precarious corporate ladder, you’ll eventually get to the point where you are depending on other people to get work done for a deadline you are responsible for. An example of this would be if you are leading a team doing software design, and you are responsible of having all of the designs done by a certain date. You are responsible for the end result (all of the designs done), but you need your team to actually write the designs for this to happen. What happens if your team doesn’t make the deadline? Who gets the blame? This is a simple answer: You.

With this idea firmly in mind, how do you prevent missing a deadline? This is another simple answer, and yet many people don’t follow it: Be proactive. What does this mean? Well, I find that a good amount of the time a deadline is missed because the team lead does not check to see if their team is on track until the last minute. Finding out that three designs aren’t going to be done the day before the deadline is due is not going to do you any good, as it is too late to do anything about it. However, if in this same situation you were to check a week or two before the deadline was due, the outcome might be different. This is being proactive. For our purposes, we can define it as taking action with enough time before your deadline is due to correct any problems.

The following are three things that you can do to be proactive on your projects as a team lead:

• Have regular meetings - Not just every once and awhile on the fly, but scheduled meetings. This means that your team knows that you have a meeting at a certain time on a certain day every week. For instance, you could have a 10:00 AM meeting every Monday to kick off the week and make sure everybody knows what they should be working on. Also, you could have a meeting at 3:00 PM on Friday to wrap up the week. You don’t have to go overboard and have a meeting everyday (unless you’re in really deep trouble), but I’ve found once or twice a week to be effective. Make sure that you have a structure to the meeting as well, and it’s not just everybody standing around randomly talking. You need to conduct it and have a clear agenda when you go in for what you want to get out of it.

• Keep a tracking spreadsheet - This is another important organization tool: The tracking spreadsheet. Yes, it is a pain to maintain. However, it will save you from a lot of problems in the future. With this spreadsheet, you can see your team’s progress at a glance. This makes it easy to go into a meeting with them and ask questions about who is slipping or who is going to be ahead of schedule and why. This can save your deadlines by allowing people who are ahead of schedule to help pick up the slack of those who are falling behind. Also, this is good for meetings with your boss so that you can give them an easy to understand overview of how your team is progressing. The key point to remember here is to make sure your tracking spreadsheet is up to date. It does you no good if you have one, and yet nobody has updated it for a week. If your team is responsible for updating, remind them to update at the end of everyday (or whatever works for you, I just find the end of the day to be effective). If you are responsible for updating it, make sure you set aside a certain amount of time to do it everyday.

• Check in individually - Even if you have regular meetings, you should have informal progress checks with each of your team members. This doesn’t mean that you have a schedule a specific time for this, this can be as simple as stopping by their cube and asking them how they are doing. This way you don’t have to find out about a problem that happened on Tuesday at your regular Friday meeting. By performing these progress checks, you relay a message to your team that you are right there with them in the trenches, and that you are there to help if they have any questions. Also, as stated above, this allows you to take action immediately on a problem instead of having someone waste their time working on it for days at a time. Linking to the point above, if you find a change in someone’s progress as you talk to them, update the tracking spreadsheet immediately after you get back to your desk. This way you can see how that change is going to impact the rest of the team and your final deadline.

These are just three ways I’ve found that help me to be Proactive. There are probably lots of other ways specific to your work situation that can also help you out. A good way to think about your deadline situation is this: Whoever is holding you responsible for your deadline probably looks at your project as something of a black box. They don’t want to know the fine details, they just know what they want to see come out of it. With this in mind, you want to deal with any problems that arise inside that box, rather than outside of it, so that when your finished product comes out the end result is what this person is looking for.

That’s right, you too can join the Green Tea bandwagon without having to suffer the awful, natural taste! See the updates below.

• Today’s Tip of the Day provides a great alternative to regular Green Tea via instant Green Tea.
• Dreading reviewing your co-workers work? See this article on How to Effectively Review Other People’s Work for some tips on how to make this as painless as possible.

Being able to review another persons work is one of those extremely valuable skills that someone shooting for any kind of leadership position needs to master. It can be a very challenging and intimidating task, but it doesn’t have to be this way. Below I’ve outlined some basic tips that will help you to not only be up to the task, but excel at it as well.

To note: The kind of review that I will be referencing for this article is what I call an In-Depth Review. That means that it is for both content as well as your basic grammar and spelling.

• Be familiar with the subject matter - This may seem like a no-brainer if you’re doing a content review, however you might be surprised how often this is not the case. If you’re not familiar enough with the subject to make a good review, let them know. The last thing you want to do is make their work worse after they incorporate your comments. One of the worst outcomes of this is that one of your comments could make their work actually incorrect, which can cascade into a bunch of different issues.

• Have a template for your comments - Many a time I’ve had someone return my work to me with their comments scattered all over the document, making me search through the document to find out what they said. This is a very time consuming process, and it also leaves room to miss a comment, especially if it’s a large document. Don’t get me wrong, it’s ok to make inline comments, however you should also mark where these comments are in a predefined template. This template is usually pretty basic, a simple example would contain the name of the reviewer, date of the review, work being reviewed, and then for each comment there would be a reference number, location, and description.

• Be descriptive - If you’re going to make a comment, make sure you explain exactly what you are trying to get at. It doesn’t have to be a thesis, but writing down “Wrong” won’t cut it and only leads to you having to explain each comment. A few short sentences should usually be sufficient to explain yourself. They should contain what you are referencing, and how you think it needs to be changed. If you need more than that, it’s probably just better to note your comment and talk to them about it.

• Be constructive with your criticism - This goes hand-in-hand with the point above. If you think something needs rework, don’t put “This sucks, get rid of all of it then play in traffic”. While it may be true that they need to do a lot of work, instead of pure negative criticism suggest a way in which it can be improved.

• Be objective - This might be the most important piece of advice I can give you. Lot’s of times at work we are asked to review the work of someone who we might not necessarily like or respect. This should NOT be brought into play when you actually do their review. Remember, you are reviewing their work, not them personally. Even though you may not like them, their work could be important to your project. Making it worse or not helping to improve that product will do you no good in the long run.

• Make sure you have the latest version - This is a two way street. While it is the other persons responsibility to make sure you have the latest and greatest copy of their work to review, it will be your time that is wasted if you review the wrong copy. Before you start reviewing, do a final check with them to make sure you have the correct copy.

• Set aside conference time - Make sure that you are prepared to take some time out and answer questions about your review. I’ve never had a review where either I wasn’t asked questions or asked questions myself. Know this is going to happen, and try to plan accordingly. A good idea if you are pressed for time during the day is to schedule a time to go over the review, and make sure that they have all their questions ready for you when you meet.

I can’t stress this enough: Being able to effectively and thoroughly review someone else’s work is one of the most important skills you can develop in today’s workplace. Leading others is one of the major milestones in most people’s careers, and in order to do that you need to be able to review what they produce.