How To Make Time Management Training Work
/Time management training in Canada and around the world continues to be an important professional development opportunity. Are people who achieve more smarter than other people? Do they have a superpower? Perhaps people who achieve more have found a way to do more of what is most important?
I hope you chose ‘they found a way to do more of what is most important.’
Successful people have two attributes at the heart of their success besides their personal and professional ability. One is luck and the other is good time management skills. When have you ever seen a successful person who is always late, stressed and making last minute (and often more expensive) decisions. These situations are rare for people who are good time managers. So, for the purposes of this article, lets explore good time management as being the most reliable / dependable of these two attributes.
After years of study and teaching I can say with certainty that every leaders ability to practice effective time management begins with them knowing three things about themselves:
Their goals and objectives
How they expect to achieve those goals and resources they require (tactics)
A timeline (setting their priorities)
When a leader knows those three things about themselves they are equipped to define and agree upon three more things which will allow them to support good time management across their team / organization. They are:
Their teams mutual goals and objectives
Agreeing upon how to achieve those goals and required resources (tactics)
Agreeing to a timeline (setting priorities)
This is what I believe Time Management author, speaker and educator Stephen R Covey was getting at when he said, “The key is not to prioritize what's on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.”
Knowing these three things about themselves and about their team and their priorities gives leaders the ability to commit to using time management techniques. If these three things are not known, time management efforts are likely going to always fall short of expectations.
Time Management’s Greatest Enemies
Time Management has two great enemies that end up either wasting time and resources or that stop valuable people and good ideas from taking action. I will discuss these time management enemies in another post, but for now I’ll share that two time management enemies are:
Shortcuts: Like when people start ‘doing the doing’ before setting priorities. Often the reason is that they are too busy to plan, but in the end they waste time and resources and negatively impact morale.
Fear: Often of failure or of getting a reputation as being difficult or not a team player if they say ‘No’ or ‘Not now’ to an associate.
Conclusion
Everyone has 24 hours. Like with all things, we are only as good as the choices we make to learn new things, use the things we’ve learned and our accumulated experiences. Being in control of our time and achieving more means that we have to shift our focus from being busy to being effective.
By learning and using the time-management techniques, we can all align our highest priorities with our actions and thereby improve our ability to be more effective. When you and I learn new habits, we will always impact our lives in a meaningful way; time management gives us control.
About Bruce and Bruce Mayhew Consulting.
Toronto corporate trainer Bruce Mayhew Consulting (BMC) delivers customized professional development courses like our Time Management training in Canada and around the world. We specialize in Leadership, Communication and other soft skills training solutions.
BMC helps your greatest assets think productive and be productive.
Bruce is an experienced motivational speaker in Toronto and has inspired audiences across Canada and within the USA and the UK. Bruce works hard to always make sure your training event, conference, retreat, or annual general meeting is a success.
If you would like to learn more about how you and your organization can benefit from our communication skills courses email us by clicking here or one call does it all at 416.617.0462.
Bruce Mayhew Consulting's most popular programs are Email Writing Training, Leadership & New Leadership Development, Difficult Conversations, Generational Differences / Millennials At Work, Time Management Training and more.
