Copyright 2011 TIGERS Success Series
By Dianne Crampton
Effective team leadership requires a wide range of skills, but perhaps one of the most important is time management. As a team leader it is your role to ensure that time is managed efficiently.
As a team leader, it’s your role to make sure time is well managed and there are numerous ways to accomplish this. The following strategies ensure that time management is consistent and repeatable. In turn, the success that occurs from efficient time management reduces training costs, promotes better team training and effective working procedures.
The first strategy is a critical path analysis. Critical path analysis is a diagram that outlines different procedures within a plan, and dedicates a certain amount of time for each planning stage. A well constructed path helps leaders complete projects on time with a team that has sufficient resources to complete their tasks. Teams that are driven by well conceived deadlines often discover that both quality and punctuality soar.
Integral to good planning is effective team communication. It is important for team members to co-construct a critical path analysis by estimating and negotiating the time they need to complete their individual and collective tasks. This also includes discussions on how to resolve conflict and identifying procedures and group norms that facilitate the free flow of timely, respectful and candid communication.
If your team is given the time to thoroughly analyze the project and the deliverables, charts can be constructed with simple tick boxes that can be checked when important tasks have been completed. This not only helps you keep track of time, but also allows team members to track each other’s performance especially if one task must be completed before another is started. And for some team members checking off a completed task drives them on to the next.
When teams are not given the time to analyze whether their task assignments are realistic, teams invariably wander off target and lose interest when the goal line moves. Morale suffers and with it accountability and commitment.
Other time management tools that serve team planning and communications include scheduling software and project management programs that track project milestones and team communications. One of the most wasteful communication activities, however, is to resort to e-mail for asking questions and receiving guidance. Progress is bogged down by lack of immediate and timely direction.
One way to avoid this is ensure team members have immediate access to one another. One of the best ways is to provide space for team members to work together where members have a clear line of vision to one another. Therefore, if a question comes up, it can be asked and immediately responded to.
Another effective strategy for managing time is to delegate some activities to a smaller group of team members who possess the skills to accomplish steps within a task. This creates a project sub-team for problem solving or developing innovations that would take a larger group more time to do. Therefore, staffing a task with the right number of team members significantly increases work efficiency.
Finally, to manage time effectively, a decision-making process needs to be in place that works for you as a team leader and for the team. This way from the start, the team understands how different decisions will be made. Some will be unilateral decisions you will make. Others will be non important decisions anyone can make and others will require consensus. Getting team member agreement and commitment to a contentious course of action takes more time than you think. Therefore, recognizing the time requirements of different decisions is important to keeping a project on schedule.
As a team leader good time management means that you are informed, team tasks are well designed and staffed, and you use your leadership expertise to ensure that the project moves forward. This requires good planning, attention to detail, timely and helpful communications and assertiveness when your project is veering off schedule.
I’ve been put in charge of system testing. Each team in operations needs to test the system for bug and provide me a report. This report is outside of their routine duties but it is important for their department since they are the ones who will be using the system. Nobody is submitting reports because they are too busy. How do I ensure compliance of these team leaders when they do not directly report to me. They were given verbal instructions by their manager to submit their report to me. Should I ask the manager to give them a written memo?
Gina,
I have more questions than answers at this point.
I do not understand how you are using the term report. Report could be a multi page written analysis or a simple check mark beside a favorably demonstrated procedure. Therefore, do you have a system in place that is extremely easy for reporting? This could be a simple matrix with check marks and a comment field for bugs. It also gives team members the accountability for signing off when they complete the assignment.
Therefore, has the term, report, been clearly defined for them and have they had the opportunity to comment to make it an easier process for themselves?
How was your relationship to the group defined? Are you the leader of this project? If so, how was authority and the consequences communicated to you? Who is ultimately holding the leads accountable?
If you have project due dates that the leads are blowing off because you lack the authority to hold them to deadlines, then yes, you will need additional support from the person who is ultimately responsible for their performance.
Ultimately the team leads do not feel accountable and
Since my company is cost-cutting most of the assigned projects to us have expanded in scope. And the definition of ‘what is realistic for one person to accomplish has been stretched’. Are there any advice about maintaining the morale of overworked employees?
You’re absolutely right about “staffing a task with the right number of team members” to increase work efficiency. But with cost-cutting right now, our company is truly not staffed for efficiency. Our people are committed however, and many have been doing overtime work. Are there any low-cost but effective suggestions for me to acknowledge these workers and to boost their flagging morale?
And when our company turns-around, what are the benefits that I should negotiate for to compensate for this commitment and loyalty. I need ideas that are practical and still cost-effective for the company so management won’t turn them down.
Yes, Amy, there are.
Here is one example and I share others in our monthly newsletter that is free to subscribe to at http://www.corevalues.com.
This takes under 4 minutes to view. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Rpumm1X7PY&feature=related
The first thing is to have a conversation with your team members to learn what motivates them. Then give them what they like when they earn it.
I do not believe that there is a cookie cutter motivation technique. What matters is what matters to people.
Here is another resource. It takes 30 minutes to watch and discusses the psychology behind building a strong team regardless of the enconomy. http://InstantTeleseminar.com/?eventid=22184850
IMPORTANT: You will need this password: TIGERS
Part of being realistic, is also factoring in ‘off-days’ of team members. It is expected that there would be days wherein some tasks will take longer because people are not as focused or working at their best.