You're juggling multiple team members seeking your support. How do you decide who to prioritize?
When multiple team members need your assistance, deciding who to prioritize can be challenging. Here’s how to effectively manage this:
How do you determine priorities within your team?
You're juggling multiple team members seeking your support. How do you decide who to prioritize?
When multiple team members need your assistance, deciding who to prioritize can be challenging. Here’s how to effectively manage this:
How do you determine priorities within your team?
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When juggling multiple team members seeking my support, I prioritize based on urgency, impact, and deadlines. If possible, I try to address smaller or quicker tasks first to free up time for more complex issues.
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1. Assess the Urgency of the Request 2. Evaluate the Impact on Team Goals 3. Consider the Scope of the Request 4. Assess the Growth Opportunity for the Team Member 5. Take the Team Member’s Current Workload into Account
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Prioritizing between multiple team members seeking support can be challenging, but a structured approach can help ensure fairness and efficiency. Here’s how you might decide: 1. Urgency of the Issue • Assess which task or problem has the most immediate deadline or potential for negative impact if left unresolved. 2. Impact on Goals • Consider which request aligns most closely with the team’s overall objectives and contributes the most to shared outcomes. 3. Dependency Chains • Prioritize tasks that unblock others or enable the team to continue progress. If someone is stuck and their work is a bottleneck, addressing their needs can have a broader impact.
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In the event that you need to support your team members while having your workload, it is essential to have resolution, flexibility, strength of will and character, good communication and strong relationships. Having these behaviour makes the team asses the high, medium and low priority. It needs teamwork with unity, care and understanding with each other so everyone can deal with their prioritization.
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I first and foremost identify the number of questions which have semblance or are almost the same and attend to them first so that I will have the luxury of attending to the rest of them, whose issues may require a little bit of in-depth thinking since the number might have been reduced.
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This is a typical situation in a project-based organization such as a Strategy team, a Lean Six Sigma team or a PMO. Project intake requests typically exceed capacity, and you need to say "no" and manage senior and sensitive stakeholders. A few approaches have proved successful to me: ' (i) have some clear multi-factor criteria to base the decision, so you don't give in to rank pressure or urgency claims; (ii) engage with empathy and be a good listener even if there's little scope for collaboration; (iii) use a template to document the request, so it can be referred to going forward, and the right questions are covered to understand context; (iv) offer options, such as a light touch support, late start, referral to other partners.
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After assessing the urgency be sure to eye them by priority e.g 1. The ones you must be involved in 2. The ones you can delegate responsibility.
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As a Microsoft 365 Engineer, I prioritize multiple team requests by balancing urgency, impact, and delegation. I first assess the urgency of each task, addressing issues that directly impact critical operations, such as Azure AD authentication failures or Exchange Online outages. Next, I evaluate the impact, focusing on tasks that affect multiple users or the overall system reliability. For less critical issues, I leverage delegation by empowering team members to handle them independently with clear guidance. Communication is key! I ensure all team members are informed of priorities, expected timelines, and progress. This approach ensures efficiency and maintains trust across the team.
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When different people need my support at the same time, I use a simple way to organize priorities: Understand urgency: I focus first on tasks with short deadlines or those that can cause problems if delayed. Check the impact: I look at which activities can bring the best results or help the team move forward. Share responsibilities: When possible, I ask other team members to handle less critical tasks, keeping the workflow smooth. I also make sure to communicate clearly with everyone involved, explaining the order of tasks so they understand the plan. This method helps organize demands efficiently and keeps a good teamwork environment.
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When several team members need your help, prioritization is key. Sometimes I am using the following approach: Tackle urgency first: Focus on tasks with tight deadlines or risks of delays. Think impact: Work on what adds the most value to team goals. Unblock others: Help with tasks holding others up. Be clear: Explain my priorities so everyone’s on the same page. Delegate smartly: Hand off smaller tasks to capable teammates.
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