Using the emotional bank account to move beyond traditional project time management to time leadership.  

Effective time leadership in working with groups requires a blend of Soft skills and practical project time management techniques. Most time management training will focus on these practical techniques.

Now while there is a wealth of these techniques, and they are invaluable in helping us work out where, when and how best to spend our (and other’s) time, there’s a problem. Unfortunately don’t guarantee acceptable task execution timing, completeness and quality when assigning tasks to groups.

This is where time leadership differs from time management. Because time leadership uses a range of soft skills, including the emotional bank account, to build and wrap high levels of trust, goodwill and strong emotional connections around time management techniques. This in turn ensures project time management outcomes are favourable.

Traditional project time management

Successful traditional project time management involves mastering six main elements: planning; prioritising; scheduling; organising; delegating and discipline. 

With practice, a project manager becomes efficient in the management of their own time and that of others. As a result they can boost productivity, by skilfully sequencing and coordinating tasks. moreover, by blending the urgent with the important, they can deliver a steady flow of tasks for completion in a timely manner. 

Time management techniques are tried and tested. Consequently they generally deliver reasonably to good results for individuals. So if you’ve already achieved a level of mastery in them, you know that time management skills are a good investment of your time.  

Experienced time managers also know however that where people are involved things are rarely simple. So sometimes you can do everything ‘right’, in terms of using your time management skills, and things will still go wrong. Especially when you are applying time management techniques to the time of others.

Problems with information sharing

Effective time management, involving others, relies on quality information and engagement with those involved. So wrong, incomplete or out of date information or poor engagement produces poor results.

In situations, for example, where those involved… 

1. Fail or forget to volunteer vital information for the planning process or omit key elements. 
2. Assume you know and understand all the constraints and dependencies inherent in the work breakdown structure (WBS). 
3. Assume you are aware of the full context and background of the various tasks to be completed. 
4. Assume you have all of relevant information and understand the context, in prioritising and scheduling their work
5. Expect you to have organised and agreed all the pre-requisites to allow them to undertake the work.  

… time management outcomes may be poor, as unforeseen issues and obstacle gobble up time. 

It’s therefore vital to avoid poor quality, incorrect or incomplete information. What’s more, such information degrades the planning, organizing, prioritizing, scheduling, and delegating phases of time management exercises. And where information is poor or patchy, even excellent time management skills cannot avoid poor time management outcomes. 

Problems with motivation, engagement, and commitment 

Similarly, where commitment from those to whom the tasks are delegated is poor, so will the time management outcomes be. Even where there is good discipline in undertaking the delegated tasks, where there is little buy-in, or commitment or a ‘can do/will do’ attitude is lacking, tasks often stall in the face of relatively minor obstacles and challenges. 

Motivation, engagement and commitment challenges that degrade time management outcomes

Motivation, engagement and commitment can be lower in situations where those involved… 

1. Work in a matrix management environment and are tasked by several different project managers and a line manager at the same time. 
2. Are overloaded by a lack of joined-up resource capacity management, across the group tasking them. 
3. Aren’t bought-in to either the task or the project it contributes to. 
4. Have a poor relationship with the PM or other members they are must collaborate with. 
5. Are unclear on the detail of what it is they must do. 
6. Think another task is more important. 
7. Don’t understand the significance or relevance of the task they must complete. 
8. Anticipate negative consequences for completing the task. 
9. Have personal problems the PM is unaware of, leading to poorer task execution timing, completion and quality than might otherwise be expected. 

Traditional time management techniques don’t scale well when on behalf of others

Whilst traditional time management techniques alone can help with efficiency, however, they do not guarantee effective use of time. Because whilst we are getting a lot done, we may not be doing the most important things at the right time . Indeed , in some instances we could be doing things which are not necessary, if the tasks and their timing were organised differently. 

Project Softskills can help with both time management effectiveness and efficiency. Specifically, by combining traditional project time management with the proactive use of the emotional bank account, and using the elevated trust, goodwill, and emotional connection it offers, the project manager can enhance their performance in all six aspects of traditional time management. 

Time leadership 

Time Leadership is about using emotional intelligence and soft skills in general alongside traditional time management techniques.

When Project managers practice project people skills and systematically apply concepts just as the emotional bank account alongside their time management skills, they improve the outcomes of the project time management activities they engage in. Moving into the realm of time leadership.

Time leadership involves much richer collaboration with team members and stakeholders. Consequently it not only provides better information and understanding of context, implication, and consequence, it also gives greater, and more timely access, to the resources necessary to get the right things done in the right way, in the right order, at the right time and in the right place. Time Leadership, in project management is about using project soft skills, and specifically project people skills to influence, to motivate, enthuse, engage and enable others to bring their ‘A’ game to a particular task or objective. This is in addition to the steps used to in traditional time management,  

Time management techniques: why more is sometimes unfortunately less.  

There are lots of useful time management techniques out there. Examples include: Time blocking; the Eisenhower matrix; multi-tasking; single tasking; time audit etc. The pareto rule suggests however that 80% of the benefit comes from 20% or the activities, so the chances are, acquiring another time traditional management technique will add very little. 

The temptation is then to look at project management software tools to help you manage and automate the time management process. Once again, there are many excellent project management software tools out there.  

These software tools promise to dramatically improve project time and resource management. They approach this by automating the process of capacity management, task prioritisation, task allocation and the communications around allocation, execution, and completion. 

For Project managers managing more projects, these tools can seem like ‘silver bullets’. However in many cases project outcomes may become worse not better and that’s down to a common misconception about time management for groups and individuals.  

Why individual time management skills fail to scale. 

When project managers attempt to extend and scale their project time management skills and tools beyond management of their own time, to that of project teams, they often focus on using software tools. Seeking to automate communications and help bring their time management skills to bear on a larger group of people.  

Effective and efficient time management for groups, within projects, however relies heavily on the one aspect frequently ignored, for which project managers undertake little or no training and which software tools if employed on their own degrade even further: project people skills. 

You can effectively ignore people skills when managing your own time and focus on traditional time management skills and software to make a positive impact. Unfortunately there is therefore a temptation to see the challenge of managing the time of groups of individuals as one of: how can I most easily do what I know works for me personally on a larger scale – without it gobbling up huge amounts of time?  

This is where software often comes in, in the automation of much of the communication around Project time management and tasking. 

People, process technology – in that order. 

And herein lies the problem: positive outcomes from the project time management process rely primarily on people skills employed by the project manager. Skills such as active listening skills, management of the emotional bank account, use of reciprocation etc. These skills build emotional connection and engender increasing degrees of trust and goodwill. This in turn encourages greater collaboration, productivity, engagement, commitment, and satisfaction. 

There is huge diversity in circumstance, perspective, temperament, and personality amongst a project team. So using project people skills and taking the time to build and maintain good working relationships is critical. Moreover, employing well-developed people skills alongside solid time management training and the measured use of project time management software, can produce excellent outcomes from the project time management process.  

Failure to recognise the importance and prioritise the use of Project people skills is a fundamental mistake. Particularly when attempting to scale time management techniques from a personal time management context to that of groups and third party individuals. Unfortunately an over-reliance on traditional time management skills and software to automate communications alone, won’t deliver for groups what it does so effectively for individuals.

Why project management and resource management software alone is not the answer. 

Using software, without an emphasis on complimentary people skills is not advisable. for without active listening, relationship building, reciprocation, empathy etc, the relationship will turn rapidly into a transactional one. This in turn erodes trust, goodwill and degrades the emotional connection between the project manager and individuals being tasked.  

The case for time leadership 

So, if you wish to improve the outcomes of your project time management activities with teams take a look at your people skills. Because if you want to improve the productivity of your teams and the quality and timeliness of their work, you will need to blend soft skills, time management techniques and software.

High levels of trust, goodwill and strong emotional connections are hallmarks of efficient, effective and productive teams. Project time leadership seeks to develop, enhance and leverage these qualities with individuals and groups whilst using an array of traditional time management techniques. In particular, Project managers should look closely at the quality of the emotional bank accounts they are building and maintaining with their project teams and the soft skills needed to do this.  

The aim is to blend those project soft skills, necessary to influence, motivate, and enable others to contribute to the project’s success, with your traditional time management skills and software tools.

At this point the switch from time management to Time leadership is evident, with enhanced performance from your project team as a consequence of more effective and efficient access to and use of their time. 

Click Here to subscribe to our mailing list and stay updated on the latest Articles, or browse some other great reviews below…