Time Management For Managers
As a key manager and leader in your company, what is
your primary management responsibility? If you said anything else
besides “time,” then no wonder you are stressing under a load of
deadlines, reports, and meetings that leave you constantly falling
behind. In order to be an effective manager of business processes and
the people who function under them, you must first become an effective
manager of those few precious hours you are granted every day in which
you must squeeze all those other jobs.
Time Management For Managers
will help you save time, make time and use time in ways that will enable
you do your job – and live your life – better.
Are You a Leader or a Manager?
Take the leadership challenge. Explore these leadership competencies
and discover the difference between leading and managing.
When you become a leader, you take on a great responsibility...you
promise to change the world for the better.
If your reaction to this statement is ‘I’m only managing an
organization, or department, or project, I’m not out to change the
world’, then I respectfully suggest that you learn to be a good manager,
but not a leader.
Leaders cause positive change to happen, through people.
Managers control things. That’s it. The world needs great leaders. It
has its fill of managers.
What is a leader?
If you feel that you are not sure whether you are truly committed to
becoming a great leader, if you have not yet made that decision, I would
like you to take a look at two scenarios:
SCENARIO 1:
What if you were to make a total commitment to becoming a great leader?
Project yourself ahead 3 to 5 years from now. You have become a great
leader. Visualize what positive impact you are having on the world
around you…
How has the world benefited from your actions?
What does that feel like?
What type of people are you associating with?
Who are you collaborating with?
Who else is totally committed to the same cause as you?
What positive actions are you and these people taking?
How are other people responding to your successes?
How worthwhile and meaningful has your life become?
What does that feel like?
How are you growing and developing?
How does all this differ from today?
SCENARIO 2
What if you were to be less than fully committed to becoming a great
leader? Project yourself ahead 3 to 5 years from now. You are in a
leadership position. Visualize how things will be…
Have things changed much, or not at all?
Who are you associating with…perhaps others who are also less than fully
committed?
What positive impact have you had on the world around you? Less than you
desired?
How do you feel about that?
How worthwhile and meaningful has your life become?
How does all this differ from today?
I have no doubt that the first scenario is one that you probably desire,
as we all do. The second scenario is one that you probably want to have
no part of.
Many leaders however get caught somewhere between the two scenarios, and
feel at a loss about what to do. So they reach out to ‘techniques’ to
solve their dilemma. I have seen many leaders get caught up in fads, and
I also have had the pleasure of being associated with leaders who knew
the distinction between WHAT they were attempting to achieve and HOW
they achieved it, and so avoided the fads.
That led me to crystallize my thoughts and experiences into five key
facets of high performance leadership. Keep these facets foremost in
your mind, and you won’t go astray. By exploring these areas you will be
led to discover insights and above all take action concerning five key
facets of your leadership…
FOCUS: Developing your leadership focus, understanding its true
significance to the world around you and how truly committed you are to
achieving it
AUTHENTICITY: Discovering how much you know about yourself as an
authentic leader, your beliefs and values, your strengths and weaknesses
and how others perceive your authenticity
COURAGE: your level of courage and persistence, your ability and
willingness to identify and stop doing those things that don’t support
your focus, to start doing some new things that will support it, and to
improve dramatically in other areas that will benefit your focus, both
personally and organizationally
EMPATHY: your ability to listen to and work through other people, to
garner support for your focus, to develop an atmosphere of collegiality
and inclusiveness, and to empower others who share your focus
TIMING: your sense of timing in getting things done when they need to be
done. Your ability to get off the treadmill and concentrate on what
matters most to your focus, and to enable others to do the same
Brian Ward
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