And now…. something for the boss: staying focused

At PA Life we’re devoted to bringing you the very latest news, advice and recommendations on a whole smorgasbord of topics that we hope are of interest to you in your professional lives. Since our most popular stories seem to be those that provide suggestions on how to engender a better working relationship with your manager, we thought we’d ensure you get even more brownie points by offering a selection of news items of interest to the boss. In this edition, we bring you some no-nonsense tips on how to keep an absent-minded exec in check.

With all the plethora of distractions that constantly surround us nowadays, from selfies on Instagram to playing yet another round of Candy Crush, it’s little wonder that even the most efficient executive can find himself a tad distracted on occasion. To help keep him focused, you should aim to be ready to handle any last-minute requests that may come your way and always make as many notes as possible, so you can keep an accurate record of what has been discussed in case your boss’s mind wanders off topic.

Try not to bombard them with too much information and focus on one subject at a time; feed them bite-size pieces of data, rather than overwhelming them with a TMI overload. Find out how your boss prefers to communicate – if he’s a visual person, then he might like to receive any important correspondence printed out in hard copy; if he’s more of the listening type, then it might be a better idea to read the salient points of any emails out loud.

On the other hand, if your boss prefers written communication then help concentrate his mind by making the subject line of your mails really count – it should perfectly encapsulate the matter under discussion. Keep your missives short and to the point; using bullet points can be more effective than long, rambling sentences.

Lastly, if your exec suffers from a short attention span, then he may find it helpful to be reminded ahead of time of any particular deadlines that are looming on the horizon.

Read the original article at tinyurl.com/p7avymz