How I know if you are a great leader

You answer your emails, within a few hours.

Seriously. And *if * you don’t, that’s because you are away or whatever and have an auto responded in place.

Apart from doing some mad name dropping as evidence to my claims, I would love to find someone who disagrees.

I once had a “Director” hold their phone out to me with over 15,000 emails in their inbox as some kind of badge of honour, I was quietly mortified.

You see its not that they respond to yours/their email in a timely matter, it’s ACTION — they are taking action, not letting 15,000 emails pile up.

If you are a “leader” or a very important person, you are going to get zillions of emails, but most leaders are smart and tech savvy and don’t become slaves to their inbox.

I myself try to have less than 100 unread emails and clear and action my inbox a few times a day, I am using the Pomodoro technique for this task.

Tips to get in control of your inbox

If you have thousands of emails in your inbox, call an amnesty and select all and delete, you will never get through them all, unless you clear 3 days to do so and if it is that important someone will call you (if they have your number — theres a blog post in that too)

Set up some folders, and make a rule for yourself, 10–100 500 ok not 500 10–100 unread emails only.

As emails come in action them, the reason you have a zillion unread emails is coz you are always looking at your inbox and reading them over and over and not actioning them. Make time once, twice or three times a day to do your emails, if you are just checking you’re email ad-hoc or every time you hear a ding (turn that ding off) and not actioning them, well thats why your inbox is out of control.

If you need 15,000 emails for governance reasons, use some cool tech to sort that for you like intelligence bank and sort your inbox out, looking at an inbox everyday of 15,000 emails would be soooo overwhelming.

Set up some folders and file them away, that is action in itself and if you have to take action, just do it or put it in your diary, whatever, keep those emails clear!

Give it a whirl, you will be surprised how much time you will get back in your day.

Would love to know what you think, email me ;)

Simone