Do you ever feel your work gets pushed to the bottom of your junior’s list? Do you worry about being seen as ‘demanding’?
The problem often isn’t your team, it’s that in your desire to seem nice, your polite language is being translated as “non-urgent”.
This episode tackles the common frustration of having your work deprioritised.
I share a simple but powerful communication tactic that turns a vague request into a clear expectation.
It’s about getting your work done on time without having to become a demanding diva.
Listen to this episode to discover:
– Why vague phrases like “when you have a chance” are killing your deadlines
– The exact words to use to reframe a polite request into a clear expectation.
– How to check for understanding without being patronising.
– A tactic to ensure your work gets the priority it deserves.
If you find this episode useful, don’t forget to like it and then subscribe so you don’t miss another episode.
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Hello and welcome.
Have you asked a junior in your firm to do something saying, you’ve got a couple of days to do this or try and get this to me on by Friday, only to find that your work is pushed to the bottom of their to-do list?
Problem isn’t your team. It’s not who you’re delegating to. It’s you.
It’s that your polite, slightly passive language is being interpreted as non-urgent.
On a recent group coaching call, this exact issue came up. It was with lawyers. You know, they were high-performing lawyers on the path to partnership. And one of them, let’s call her Sarah, was frustrated that her work was always deprioritized compared to partners who were more demanding. And here’s the thing. You don’t have to become a diva to get your work done on time.
You just need to be clearer.
This is the How to Make Partner podcast with me, Heather Townsend, the author of Poised for Partnership and co-author of How to Make Partner and Still Have a Life.
In this podcast episode, I’ll be highlighting some of the great stuff in our Progress to Partner Academy.
New podcast episodes are released weekly, so press subscribe so you never miss a new episode. Right, let’s get into it.
Let’s talk about the power of assertive language.
When a junior, particularly one that’s a good one, has four different people all wanting something urgent ASAP, they have to make a choice. And they will almost always choose the task with the clearest and firmest deadlines.
Your soft deadline, can you get it to me by Friday, should get it done within, you know, two to three days, is a signal that your work can wait. So the first point I want to discuss on the episode is to diagnose the problem, which is vague deadlines.
Phrases like a couple of days or when you get the chance are reducing your chances of getting your work done on time. They might sound polite and flexible. After all, you don’t want to be that hard, demanding senior, do you? You want to be someone that people want to work for.
But in a busy juniors world, particularly the good ones, they translate this vague deadlines as do this after you finish the other work that has a hard deadline that you know needs to get done by a certain time.
It’s not that your juniors don’t want to do your work. It’s that you haven’t given them a compelling reason to do it now.
Now, this leads to the second point, the refrain from a polite request to a clear expectation. So instead of saying you’ve got a couple of days to do this or this should only take two to three hours, what I want you to do is really start to use similar words and phrases to this to keep the project on track to keep the matter on time to keep the client happy to meet our deadlines. I need this finished by, name a time and a date.
And then it’s, can you confirm you have the time and the capacity to do that? Can you confirm that you can do all of that in that time?
Now let’s break this down why it works.
First, it’s assertive and clear. Second, it gives context to your junior to keep the project on track. For example, Third, and this is crucial, it ends with a question that opens a direct negotiation about their workload.
It gives them permission to say, actually, I’m swamped. Can we discuss the timing? Which is a much better conversation to have up front than after the deadline has been missed. Now, I’ve seen this.
We often sit there and worry that we’re coming across as too demanding if we use this kind of assertive language.
Whereas actually, when you think back to your days as a junior, the senior people you liked working for tended to use very clear communication and very clear expectations about when things needed to be done plus the budget for the job. And that didn’t make them hard. That didn’t make them demanding.
It just made it easier to work for them because they said exactly what they wanted and needed.
The third and final point is about checking for understanding without being patronising or feeling like you’re being patronising. Never ask, is everything clear, that ambitious junior will almost always say yes.
You know, think about what you were like when you were that ambitious junior. You probably didn’t want to kind of go, I don’t really understand this. You might be worried. I think they think I should know how to do this at my stage of the career.
Because reality is ambitious juniors often want to show they’re capable and they don’t want to look like they don’t understand. Now, it may not be an ambitious junior. Some cultures are very good at saying yes in order to save face when they don’t know the right answer of what to do.
Instead, you need to put your onus on yourself as a communicator. Perhaps you could say something like this. Humor me. Sometimes I know what I want in my head, but I know I don’t explain it well. Can you just let me know what you think I’ve asked you to do so I can check I’ve been clear?
Or can you just let me know the first few steps you’re going to take so I know that I’ve been clear? This simple, just slight tweak in your language makes it safe for them to clarify instructions without feeling incompetent. So to recap, your polite, vague language is likely the reason your work is being deprioritized.
To fix this, you need to stop making soft requests and start setting clear professional expectations.
Reframe your deadlines to be specific and context driven and change how you check for understanding to make it safe for your team to ask questions. Now, if you’re listening and thinking, I need more of these practical communication skills. My firm hasn’t taught me this.
I need to know this stuff, especially when it comes to giving feedback, managing performance. That’s why we created How to Excel as a Line Manager course in our Progress to Partner Academy. I
t’s packed with scripts, checklists, and strategies for having these crucial conversations effectively, helping you build a high-performing team that delivers.
I’d popped a link to Progress to Partner Academy directly in the show notes. Of course, that’s just one of the many courses in the Progress to Partner Academy. And in the link I’ve dropped in the show notes, I put a little code, podcast10, that will get you 10% off 12 months of premium manual membership.
And also in the show notes, you’ll find links to my book so you can easily find them on Amazon. Now that’s all for this episode of How to Make Partner Podcast.
If you’ve enjoyed the episode, please leave us a review on Spotify, Apple Podcasts. This new episodes drop every single week.
This helps us get the word out to others who may need this advice too. You know, who within your team can you share this to?
And remember to hit subscribe so you don’t miss next week’s episode. Now, your action point for this week.
Next time you delegate a task, no matter how small, use this exact phrase.
I need this by, and put your date and time, do you have the capacity for that?
Just start there and see what happens.
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