| How to prioritise when you work for more than one manager
Unless you belong to that rare breed called Personal Assistant, chances are you find yourself working for two or more managers. DeskDemon comes to the rescue with some level-headed tips on how to prioritise when working with more than one manager. They say the old ways are often the best. That may certainly be true when it comes to handling multiple managers. Use traditional planning and prioritising methods whenever possible. You will find that the more you are able to incorporate your tasks for all your managers into your regular planning routine, the more efficiently you will able to do your job.However, don't panic if the proverbial dirt hits the fans. Stick to the following steps and things should work out nicely. - Are you a manager or a support professional? Let your managers work out and decide which work should come first. Don't be afraid to put the ball firmly back in their court, unless you think you'd really be better off prioritising the work yourself. If the latter is the case, make sure to ask for enough authority to make your own judgements. Ensure all managers involved are in agreement - or at least accept - your new-found responsibility.
Most conflicts arise from multiple managers giving support staff increased responsibility without proper authority. I've seen colleagues reduced to nervous wrecks because multiple managers expected them to take decisions which they subsequently didn't respect. In one particular situation two managers had not been on speaking terms for months and neither of them respected the priorities set by the other. Don't become a victim! Involving all your managers or team members in routine decisions can take up a lot of time and energy. Can you convince them that you could be much more efficient if you could take certain decisions yourself? - A surprising number of secretaries, PAs and office managers do not have an adequate job description. Has yours been updated recently? It's important, for research by The Industrial Society and other organisations shows a majority of managers does not have an accurate picture of your responsibilities. Sounds familiar? At a quiet moment (yes, I know...), try to get your managers to agree to a general job description and let them prioritise it. Should a conflict arise in the future, a list of your prioritise drawn up and agreed to by your managers should go some way to justifying your decisions and actions.
- Keep your managers posted on your proposed priorities for the week ahead. Ask them whether they have objections or any plans that may interfere with your schedule. This ensure you some bargaining power should a manager who didn't initially object to your list come back later in the week with a massive task.
- Remember flexibility is everything in your job and sudden jobs do occur. Again, ask your managers to decide which task should have priority. Present your weekly plan when one of your managers comes to you with a last-minute request. Point out the other important tasks you had planned to do; this way the manager with the last-minute job has to work things out with the manager for whom you had planned to work. Don't get caught in the middle. Most certainly don't get completely stressed out over it; instead of taking things personally, recognise you can only do so much. Let it be their problem (it's not as if they're not paid to take difficult decisions).
- Having a clearly thought-out, written list of priorities will help you a lot during those days when the pressure is on. List you most important tasks, prioritise them and circulate them to all the relevant people for review. The simple fact that you have a list shows that you have given your priorities some thought and will make it more likely others will go along with your plan. At the very least, it focuses the mind and makes it easier to discuss what your colleagues think your priorities should be.
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