As a leader, you are going to be spending a lot of your time asking people to do things and then checking that they are done correctly.

How effectively you give instructions is going to be one of your important and defining features as a leader. Whether you like it or not, giving instructions will make up much of your job!

But in order to do this well, you need to know how to give instructions and how to ensure the best outcome.

There are two particularly important things you need to do…

1. Be Clear and Precise

The first and most important thing you need to do, is to be clear and precise. The reason for this is that you need to be able to prevent mistakes and misunderstandings. If you give unclear instructions, then that will either lead to your team needing to ask for more information and clarification from you (wasting your time and theirs) or to them making mistakes that can lead to big problems and possibly cost you money.

This means that a good leader is also a good communicator by default. If you’re not a good communicator… train yourself to be!

2. Explain Why

What’s even more important though, is that you explain the why of what you are asking people to do. This puts what you are asking someone to do in context and helps them to deliver the best. outcome for you.

In fact, even better is to ask people to achieve a certain result, tell them why and give no or few instructions on how. If your people have the skills required to do the task, this is a very effective way to give instructions. This makes you a more hands-off leader and less of a micromanager. Your people will like this because it gives them more work satisfaction and makes them feel trusted.

Explaining the what and why more than the how, can allow your team to be flexible where necessary.

An example might be that you tell your staff they need to print 500 fliers and deliver them around the neighbourhood. What happens if the printers break? Or if the roads are blocked? Now your team will either be stuck, or they’ll come to you to ask for direction.

If instead, you had told your team they need to get 500 adverts out in your local area. This now opens up many contingency plans and other options. Perhaps they could outsource the flier creation to a printing company for instance, or they might use email instead or advertise somewhere prominent.

Either way, they have now understood and achieved the required outcome quicker and more effectively because they haven’t had to ask your permission for every slight deviation in the plan!

Check out the Leadership With Authority MasterClass for more helpful ideas to develop your Leadership Skills.