Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning,
Speaker 1: This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
Speaker 1: tip is to ask about your colleague's vacation schedules. There
Speaker 1: is no reason to be surprised by planed time off.
Speaker 1: Smart teams build it into their timelines so they can
Speaker 1: stay on track. It is basically summer as this is airing,
Speaker 1: which means that lots of people will plan to take
Speaker 1: some vacation days over the next few months. And that
Speaker 1: is great. But while we think a lot about our
Speaker 1: own vacation schedules, we might not be quite so well
Speaker 1: rehearsed with everyone else's plan time off colleagues, clients, and
Speaker 1: so forth. That can lead to delays or sometimes to
Speaker 1: work being done on timelines that don't make sense. For instance,
Speaker 1: you might agree to a tight deadline not realizing that
Speaker 1: a key team member will be gone for half of
Speaker 1: the intervening days. Or you might plan to get something
Speaker 1: to a client's on the friday before it turns out
Speaker 1: he's going on vacation, not realizing that there is no
Speaker 1: way he'll be looking at it for another week, so
Speaker 1: you didn't have to rush quite so much better to
Speaker 1: be proactive, there are a couple of approaches you could take.
Speaker 1: The first is that as you are planning out any
Speaker 1: long term project, you bring up time off as you
Speaker 1: are creating the timeline. As in Nelly, it looks like
Speaker 1: I'll be giving you the draft slides by June fourteenth,
Speaker 1: given your planned time off, does that timing still work
Speaker 1: for you to get the slides to the graphic designer
Speaker 1: before everyone is out of the office for the holiday
Speaker 1: starting July third. Now you might think that people would
Speaker 1: naturally think about what other commitments they have during a
Speaker 1: project timeline, but my own experience and what listeners tell
Speaker 1: me suggests they may not. People sometimes think, oh, that
Speaker 1: deadline is four weeks away, this project is definitely doable
Speaker 1: in four weeks, without taking into account that they will
Speaker 1: be out of town one of those weeks and working
Speaker 1: remotely another week while their kids are in between school
Speaker 1: and camp. By explicitly connecting timelines or deadlines to plan
Speaker 1: time off, you can avoid surprises. Another approach to communicating
Speaker 1: about time off is to routinely check with colleagues and
Speaker 1: clients about their vacation days, not just in relation to
Speaker 1: specific deadlines. At meetings, ask about plan time off and
Speaker 1: put that information into your meeting notes. This is a
Speaker 1: good routine all year long, and even more important around
Speaker 1: the summer and winter holidays. You can simply ask ask
Speaker 1: any upcoming time off we need to be aware of
Speaker 1: at the end of each meeting, then include a list
Speaker 1: of plan time off in the meeting notes and the
Speaker 1: agenda for the next meeting. This doesn't need to be elaborate,
Speaker 1: just the heading plan time off and the name of
Speaker 1: each team member with the dates they'll be out of
Speaker 1: the office. By documenting the time off, you create an
Speaker 1: easy reference for everybody. You also gently reinforce the norm
Speaker 1: that you have a responsibility to communicate with colleagues about
Speaker 1: plan time off well in advance. Time off is a
Speaker 1: good thing. We just need to communicate it and plan
Speaker 1: for it so we can meet deadlines and avoid delays
Speaker 1: in frustration. By asking about colleagues vacation schedules, you can
Speaker 1: increase the chances that everyone stays on track in the meantime.
Speaker 1: This is Laura, Thanks for listening. Here's to making the
Speaker 1: most of our time. Thanks for listening to before breakfast.
Speaker 1: If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach
Speaker 1: me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast
Speaker 1: is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts from iHeartMedia,
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