What is a leader? The term comes with a host of definitions, but the most common are boss, figurehead, commander, overseer, and chief. If you are designated as a leader, you are more than likely well aware that being appointed “the boss” comes with a host of responsibilities.
Responsibilities include everything from managing a remote team to searching for additional marketing opportunities. As a leader, you have mastered the art of designating tasks while researching the precise analytics to make sure that those tasks are performed competently and on schedule.
Can Leaders Really Do It All?
Capable leaders optimize their time management skills to inspire employees, boost productivity, and accomplish company goals. Even so, one of the most pressing challenges leaders frequently encounter, is managing their employees' time and their own for the best results.
It’s a delicate balance that requires merging numerous aspects to keep a successful business operation. If you try to compensate one component by dismissing another, you come up short. Achieving the desired time managing and increased productivity results requires a talent for comprehensively viewing the spectrum of your business in tandem. Which means what worked before, what can be improved, and where it will take you.
Can leaders really do it all? The answer is yes. Time management and boosting productivity are generic to the success of any business. If you are not willing to tackle problems, find new ways of solving them, and raise the bar for yourself and your employees, you’re not a leader.
Put another way, your mindset should be that of a hard-nosed pragmatist tempered with charity and empathy. Being the G.O.A.T is not easy, but it’s a worthwhile calling if you have the skills to deliver the goods.
Leader Management and Productivity Hurdles
Overwork is an issue that requires attention when it comes to leadership capabilities. According to cloud-based project management sites, both employees and leaders are vulnerable to overworking; thereby subjecting themselves to fatigue and incompetency. Additionally, the stress in the workplace decreases productivity affecting the entire team. The issue can be rectified by:
- allowing more flexibility with deadlines and schedules
- providing software applications to circumvent repetitiveness and mundane tasks
- contemplate solutions about employee concerns
- inspire employees by tending to their interests and keeping them focused on their goal
- be what you inspire your employees to be and acknowledge their achievements
Productivity Statistics Concerning Meetings and Productivity Loss:
- Team workers consume up to 17.5 hours weekly due to unproductive communication.
- An Atlassian survey recently discovered that overall, 60 minutes per employee each workday is wasted on meetings. Adding up to over 300 hours annually.
- According to The Muse meetings do very little for management, even though up to 15% of personnel’s time is centered around attending meetings.
- Middle-management suffers the most loss with 35% of their work time engaged in meetings with 4 hours per week solely dedicated to organizing meetings.
- Approximately 67% of meetings are useless, costing time, money, and productivity.
In addition to overwork, sometimes employees lack clarity. They end up wasting time that could be used being productive by engaging in social media, procrastinating, and uncertainty about priorities. As a leader, it is your responsibility to set your personnel in the right direction when a lack of discipline is detected.
Leadership Expansion Statistics
The call for fresh leadership talent is on the horizon as previous leaders head to retirement; therefore, preparedness programs are required for forthcoming replacements. If your current leadership role requires you to train incoming candidates, you will need a sound time management plan and company productivity analysis in order to efficiently communicate your company’s mode of operation.
Leading SAAS software comparison site Comparecamp affirms that “under the right leadership management, corporate programs should be strategically planned, consummate, and include prospects that align with today’s workplace.”
Additional statistical insights from leading global talent assessment platforms like Mercer Metti
indicate that:
- At least 31% of companies disclosed that it took over a year before their leadership program was completed.
- Even though a high majority agree that leadership development is vital for business, a mere 5% have actually incorporated the program at all levels.
- Problems advancing effectual leadership development programs is primarily due to indifference from senior management.
- Incidentally, 42% of businesses are void of the necessary leadership skills to create a foundation for leadership development programs.
The concept of a leadership expansion program is important. Why? Because if your company has developed this progressive type of syllabus, you are better equipped to uphold the time measuring quality and productivity-boosting philosophies that made your company successful in the first place.
It’s similar to an heirloom. The item that’s handed down over time only retains its quality and significance due to those who looked after it before. Company leaders that came before you, should be able to deliver all the know-how mostly due to the good training they received from prior company leaders, and you will be expected tot do the same.
What Makes a Good Leader?
Though many are optimistic concerning future work prognosis, everything is not all cut-and-dry. There are still many challenges for leaders to endure like measuring time and boosting productivity for both remote and in-office workers.
Gallup.com known for global public opinion polls affirms that “excellence can be promoted by those i.e. managers who are liable for 70% of their employee’s engagement, can inspire excellence, and construct a foundation to dependably track employee productivity by achieving two tasks:
- establishing precise expectations
- establishing clear goals
Gallup’s advice is to prioritize current performance discussions. During recurring exchanges, take the time to emphasize what success looks like for your company; thereby, providing employees with a bullseye for excellence.
Furthermore, as a leader, you should systematically measure whether an employee’s short or long-term objectives fit with your company’s goals. Setting goals and leaving them until it’s time for employee reviews is unproductive. Regularly measuring whether a worker’s ambitions are suitable for their job is equally as crucial as the steps designed to meet those goals.
Keep in mind, that as a leader you need to focus on things other than work and productivity. The ability to maintain a certain level of productivity is also important. This includes:
- completing goals in a reasonable time period
- nurturing and sustaining capacity including your own and your relationships with your company, co-workers, and clients along with your personal environment.
Transparency also elicits trust between workers and clients. In fact, according to recent studies from Tinypulse, a leading software company focused on increasing transparency in employee feedback in real-time, nearly 40% of managers fully agree that their company is transparent.
Additional research reveals that nearly 80% of employees trust their leaders and about 70% believe in the organization.
Additional good leadership tips include:
- Emphasize maintaining a work-life balance which will automatically improve employee performance. For example, offer workers enticements for exercising or participating in healthful interest outside the company in order to decrease stress on the job.
- Taking time for your team including occasional one-on-one communication is beneficial. When you don’t engage with your employees, they start to feel like automatons. A true leader makes their employees feel worthy. Just like plants, when overlooked, employees wither up and cease to grow and be productive.
- Being a good source of motivation by showing sentiment and sincerity, goes a long way on an employee’s confidence meter and pays steep dividends for everyone involved. What’s more, as a leader, by fostering the enterprising qualities of each employee through work responsibilities, workers are more loyal and productive.
- Maintain boundaries. It should be just as easy for you to say “yes” as it is to say “no.” With a bit of flexibility of course. But that’s where employee feedback comes in. Having boundaries means you have a strength of character and a precise view of your principles, values, and company goals. This is not about a power-grab, it’s about true leadership where the qualities of compassion and rationale merge into one.
- Measuring time properly also has a lot to do with setting clear goals. Getting from point A to point B requires your leadership skills and loyalty from your employees. If you’re clear about where you’re headed, your employees will follow.
There are numerous additional solid and worthwhile leadership tips like prioritizing, knowing how to delegate tasks, and proper scheduling. As a leader, it’s your job to incorporate the tips that will help you boost productivity and manage your employees most effectively.
Tech Tools For Effective Leaders
Using tools to measure time and perform other actions is a prerequisite for any leader’s employee management strategy. Using the right tools eases employee tasks, reduces mundanity, eliminates distractions, and boosts productivity.
Apart from being essential, tech solutions should be cost-effective, functional, and user-friendly. An article from Forbes titled How Collaboration Apps Kill Productivity is a must-read. The editorial gives a balanced view of the pros and cons of using apps in the workplace.
Here are 6 essential apps leaders can use to measure time and boost productivity:
- A project management tool is a must-have. This type of app helps you remain focused on company goals, organize projects, and meet deadlines.
- Reliable communication apps will provide you with a broad range of communication features such as a message board, file saving capabilities, and overall team communication.
- An organizational app that provides an overview of current tasks, who’s working on which tasks, and when they are completed with the ability to view workers' progress simultaneously. Trello is a popular app that offers all these features and more.
- Telecommunication apps specializing in video chat cover quite a few bases. You can contact, react to, and inspire employees individually or in groups. You can also personally give workers a pat-on-the-back in recognition of a job well done.
- Employees juggle emails on a daily basis; therefore, only the best email management tool to help everything run smoothly and quickly will do. This type of reliability requires an app that goes well beyond basic webmail.
- Last but not the least, a time tracking app works best to keep your team productive and maintain their work-life balance.
Additional apps you might want to consider, depending on your type of business, project calendar apps, note-taking apps like Evernote, and apps that help employees maximize productivity by focusing on one goal each day. As a leader, it’s up to you to signal out what apps will do the most to benefit your employee, your leadership obligations, and reach your company goals.
Conclusion
Studies reveal that shifts such as the huge swing to remote work, increased need for communication via specialized tools, and a freshly blooming millennial workforce enthusiastic about the world around them, make previous conventional leadership outlooks appear, well, a bit outdated.
Even if you’re considered a natural leader, there are still bridges to cross. Dealing with the various aspects of employee personas requires endurance. It’s a one-sided dilemma. Employees are allowed to have shortcomings...you are not! At least not when it comes to your job. Sure it doesn’t seem fair, but you’re a leader and equipped to handle it.
Are you looking to grow your business even further? Contact us for additional information.
Time Management has earned an underrated title over time.
It’s a term that people use but seldom implement in their lives.A recent study revealed that most people are productive only for 3 hours or less in an 8-hour workday.Where do the rest of the 5 hours vanish?Is it “Burnout”?An entrepreneur’s life revolves around managing an unlimited list of tasks along with preventing burnouts.
They don’t enjoy the luxury of sharing the tough tasks with the whole team.
That’s exactly when they function as a ‘One-man’ army.As a result, this takes a toll on juggling between personal and professional lives, resulting in burnout.
Read the full article at Orangescrum blog
Is an Employee Productivity Monitoring Tools a valuable business asset or a complete waste of time?Traditional time clocks are on the way out, and for good reason.
They only measure when an employee begins and ends work, but give no insight into what happens in between.Apps take time keeping a step farther by tracking productivity while on the clock.
They can be used on mobile devices to track time in the field or at the desk.Some apps offer features that combine time tracking, scheduling, and payroll reporting into a single solution to save you time on multiple fronts.These Best Free Time Tracking Software will make you feel like you’re getting more hours in your day while doing less work.TimefibersThis powerful payroll solution offers more than tracking time.Companies use the tool to create and manage schedules, monitor employee time and payroll expenses, and generate payroll reports with ease.This app simplifies the payroll process by organizing expenses reports, PTO reports, absences, and other data with ease.And since it’s an app, employees can use it on the go to track time and view data.
It’s an ideal solution for companies to monitor productivity for remote workers or employees who don’t come into the office each day.Download Link: https://timefibers.com/download
