MODULE 2 > Forming Teams

2.5a Time Management

Organizing time as an individual is difficult and requires planning. In teams, changes have to be made in how individuals collectively perceive time management because teams utilize collaboration to become effective. Teams experience special time concerns and team members bring their own unique perspective of time management to the team. Some team member may find that a substantial chunk of their time is flexible, while another team member may be over committed. How do you handle over commitment? Do you do extra work, taking away some of your personal time, or do you discuss with the team member expectations that each member should do their equal share of the work? Everyone allocates time for the different activities in their lives. Many of us find ourselves disappointed with our ability to plan, keep to deadlines, and produce what we consider quality work. Creating a Team Monthly Calendar helps the team to organize an equitable distribution of the assigned tasks. If a task is not on the team schedule, it may not get done efficiently. To help with time management, consider the following paradigm.

Time Perception

How do you perceive time? Do you procrastinate and/or do you get things done? Do you leave papers to the night before the deadline? Your decisions and actions form your perceptions of reality. Your time perspective is part of that reality. When teams clearly define goals, execution is carefully planned, and efficiency increases. Time is a commodity and resource to be carefully considered when doing a collaborative project. Good time management is synonymous with well-defined, clearly stated goals.

Goals

A goal is a desired and valued circumstance toward which people are working (Katzenbach and Smith, 1994). In a team there are two strata of goal setting, personal goals and the team goals. Understanding the difference will help build the efficiency of the team. Setting realistic goals both personally and as a team is the hardest part of being effective as a time manager. Clearly defined team goals are the first step to developing a team vision, motivating the team to effectively perform with a common purpose. The most important step in team building is establishing clearly defined goals with specific planned steps to create successful accomplishment of these goals. Activity Lists support time management. When teams commit to goals, many outside and inside pressures need to be taken into consideration.

Building a team culture is personal and collaborative. The future success of your team depends on your decisions and actions. How you plan and organize your team culture will significantly impact upon how you will think, feel, and behave while on the team. Planning your collaborative effort carefully is of paramount importance. Creating a shared vision motivates individuals to high performance.

First Create Your Mission Statement. Then practicing Skillful Conversation, make sure that you understand each other's personal goals and expectations for the project your team is going to accomplish. In order to develop a high performing team it is important to clearly determine what you are trying to accomplish. Clear, congruent, and specific personal goals leads to more clear and specific team goals. Goal Setting is an exercise for your team to perform.

Team Planning and Scheduling

Many people assume that they know how to use their time effectively. The major complaint about collaborating with others is that the workload is not shared equitably. Usually everyone begins with what they consider an effective time management plan. You ask each other your phone numbers, schedules and availability and then plunge right into the task. What more could you need? This is not sufficient for effective and efficient planning. What about the outside obstacles to getting the task done? When viewing other team member's schedule or your own are you observing whether the team member or yourself left enough time to efficiently perform the goals that are being set by the team? Team members have to be able to skillfully handle discussion periods and utilize brainstorming to create productive dialogue. Each team member needs to pay careful attention to the other person's mindset, time management skills, their communication style, their working style, thinking style, where their competencies lay, and their technical capabilities.

To use time effectively, what is being stressed is that individually many of these time management tasks are done mentally. But effective team management is only accomplished by recording the thinking process involved in planning and communicating the agreed upon milestones and commitments in writing to clarify the team's goals and how and when they are going to be accomplished. Imagine your life without a Weekly Planner, or a To Do List or if you completely stopped communicating your plans to others. How effective would you be?

Planning has played a major role in your success to date. Most of the planning you have done has been on an individual basis. Planning team and collaborative activities takes more flexibility and patience. In the initial stages of team development planning can be frustrating and slow, but once the team is formed properly collaborating can save you time. Learning how to plan in advance with other people will become as effortless as your individual planning. The key to effective team planning is good communication. Doing Team Monthly Calendars, Milestones, Activity Lists, and Individual and Team Weekly Objective Lists is effective communication. The results can make you and the team more efficient and effective.

Tracking Time

To check whether your time management is effective, use time tracking as the device. Time is not infinite, therefore how you use it is valuable. The overall goal of the class is to become high performing at the project. Setting goals, breaking them down into manageable chunks, allocating those chunks to specific time slots in the team's schedule, ensuring that the action plans are effective on important tasks and keeping each individual team member on track may seem like more work than it is worth. To keep the amount of work involved in perspective, remember that goal setting will take considerable time. But once your goals are set, your planning for the rest of the term should take you no more than an hour or so each week as a team. Without a systematic plan you would spend more time setting sub goals and planning tasks.