Teach people how to deal with you

I was speaking to a business associate last week. She and I exchange a great deal of work regularly.

We have quite a few ongoing projects at the moment. Amid the conversation, she said, “Is it better if I send you an email containing a link to each project or one large email containing all the projects?”

I thought this was such a smart question.

People like to work in different ways. In a case like this, some folks, and perhaps most, would prefer everything in one place, whereas others would like each project separate from the other.

I told her that I respond to emails based on my available time. This pushes larger, complex emails down on the list because they require me to carve out time to address them, whereas I will make good use of the five or ten minutes I have available to me many times throughout the day to take care of smaller tasks.

“Great,” she said. “I’ll send each project in a separate email and send those emails in order of importance.”

Since then, our system has worked brilliantly.

It was a good lesson for me:

Teach people how you work best. Explain your systems, your thought processes, and how you use your time so that they can work in conjunction with you in the best possible way.

Equally important, ask your patterns and colleagues how they prefer to work like my business associate did so you can adjust, whenever possible, to their preferences.

Teach people how to best deal with you, and learn about how to best deal with people, and work will get done better, faster, and more efficiently.