Better People Leader Time Management

Does Your Organization Need Better People Leader Time Management?
Have you ever gone through the popular new manager training exercise of logging how you actually spend your time day each day as a people leader? This is often the first step in learning how to better manage your time and be a more effective leader. Often, the self-audit reveals a significant gap between where you need to spend your time and how you actually spend your time.

Not surprisingly, administrative tasks, ineffective meetings, and procrastination typically suck up more time than they should. The good news is that there is often a wonderful opportunity to adjust and create more time to lead, manage, and coach your team to higher performance.

With people leaders typically being “the busiest” of us all and needing to be a player-coach at work, the general rule of thumb is pretty simple — only do what no one else can do. Everything else should be delegated.

4 Tips for Better People Leader Time Management

We believe that the fundamental purpose of a people leader is to create the work environment for their people to perform at their peak.  Based upon data from our leadership simulation assessments, ask yourself how much time do you make during the week to dedicate to these areas?

1. Building and Nurturing a Strong Team
   Teams outperform individuals when performance requires multiple skills, judgments, and experiences.  Your success as a people leader is dependent upon the success of your team.  The success of your team is dependent upon their ability trust each other and act collectively to achieve more than they could on their own.
   
   Ensure that you create enough psychological team safety for the team to have enough frank conversations and constructive debate to commit to team deliverables in a way that creates shared accountability.  Reward top performers and move on from underperformers to keep the high performance momentum going.
   
   How much time do you dedicate to forming, building, and supporting your team?
2. Creating a Clear Line of Sight
   Our organizational alignment research found that strategic team clarity accounts for 31% of the difference between high and low performing teams.  People leaders must establish an organizational North Star around which the team orients. Everyone on your team should understand the company’s vision, mission, values, and strategic priorities and be able to articulate a clear line of sight about how they are directly contributing to success at work.
   
   How much time do you spend on strategic clarity and alignment?
3. Modeling the Way
   Employees look to their leader for inspiration and as the personification of how to think, behave, and get work done. This is a role no one else can play. The best people leaders are visible to their team and consistent in the messages they convey of aligned purpose and direction.
   
   How much time do you spend modeling the values, beliefs, and decisions that you expect for your team?
4. Making Work Easier
   Of course, people leaders cannot set up all the systems that relate to recruiting, hiring, managing performance, recognition, and compensation. But leaders should be the driving force behind making work easier and in sync with company values.
   
   How much time do you spend making work easier for your team?

The Bottom Line
We know from people manager assessment data that people leaders have both enormous responsibility and enormous influence. They have the greatest impact on the overall health of the organization. Their time should be spent primarily in the above four areas.

To learn more about building high performing teams, download 3 Must-Have Ingredients of High Performing Teams for People Leaders

by Tristam Brown: CEO

Tristam Brown is an executive business consultant and organizational development expert with more than three decades of experience helping organizations accelerate performance, build high-impact teams, and turn strategy into execution. As CEO of LSA Global, he works with leaders to get and stay aligned™ through research-backed strategy, culture, and talent solutions that produce measurable, business-critical results. See full bio.