15 Strategies To Build And Manage Team Time Management

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Time management is equally important to the team as much as it’s to the individual. Where you get a lot of articles and tips on how you can improve time management,  but while you do that, you also need to establish time management for the team. 

It requires a slightly different approach and mindset, well to help in knowing how you can track and manage time within your team, here are some of the tips and strategies for help. 

Why Does Your Team Need Time Management? 

Well before you start to learn the tips and strategies for your team, first you need to learn about why your team needs time management. and how it helps. 

Well, it includes : 

It Helps In Reducing Stress 

Experts have warned that when you have poor time management, it leads to stress and this can affect you badly when you are in a team. In such situations, it can also cause missing deadlines and staying overtime to get work done. 

  • So when people are not good with time management, they find it hard to prioritize what’s important, this also leads to feeling overwhelmed. 
  • When you feel overwhelmed, it can cause the fear of missing information, tasks, nervousness, misreading situations and overheating, etc. 
  • All of these can make you turn into panic mode and with so much pressure, a person is bound to make a mistake or collapse. 

So when it’s about a team, the reaction to stress can depend on individuals and how their time management skills are. 

This can cause a situation of creating conflict with the team like person A accused Person B that they are being too related whereas person B can cause Person A to Person being neurotic too much.

To improve such a situation, it’s important that the team has time management and it will significantly improve the dynamics as well as alleviating some of the stress related to the work on a daily basis. 

It Helps In Keeping Everyone On Same Page 

Conflicts can happen due to a lot of reasons but one of the biggest reasons is lack of transparency. 

Even when there are a lot of apps and services which are designed to help in keeping track of everyone and what they are doing. Still, a lot of the time, coworkers and teammates feel like they are in the dark. 

Communication is important and it’s a must for creating a healthy team and project.

  • One of the benefits that you get from time management is, it will help in increasing transparency within the team. 
  • So everyone will know what they are doing along with having a complete idea of what’s on their coworkers’ plate. 
  • Along with this, they can do better prioritizing, reducing the prodding and poking on group chat. 
  • Not just that, it will need fewer meetings and time used on solving issues that hold no value. 

It Helps In Improving Collaboration 

People tend to get inclined in order to help when they are in the same boat, So when the team tracks the time and knows how to manage it much more effectively. 

This helps in getting much more open up, boosting each other, and helping when things go wrong. 

With this, you also create a  healthy learning environment and it can help in getting the best of the time and help the team to improve collaboration. 

It Boost Confidence Within Team 

Team management is an important skill that affects positively in both personal and professional life if you are doing it correctly. 

With this, it helps in boosting the confidence within individuals as they have better control of their time, this reflects in the team too and helps in creating a confident, enthusiastic, and much more motivating environment to work in.

It Helps In Knowing How Project Is Proceeding 

Once your team starts to track the time and do it collectively, this can help in starting to consider the bigger picture much more clearly, also it gets better as time goes.

Not just that, it becomes easier to follow the progress of the project along with that, you can eliminate the time that wastes on asking how everything is proceeding. 

With this, you can better hold meetings and create reports. 

Time management helps the team members to get an idea of how it’s reflecting on their project, also it gives them time to see and address if there is an issue on time.

Tips To Improve Time Management In Your Team 

It’s important that a team has effective time management, not only will it help individuals to grow but also the team to improve and get better in doing their work and handling the projects. 

Well to get better in time management for the team, you can consider all these points : 

Track The Time To Know Where You Are At 

You can start improving your time management by starting to track your time individually, also you can start individually too. 

Everyone needs to be accountable for how they are spending their time and where they are contributing, also you need to know what task you have in hand that needs the attention. 

There are different apps that can help you in doing time management for a team. As a team manager, you can set up the projects along with important milestones for better progress. 

You can track the time and see how far you have come to achieve the milestone. 

It’s Not About The Work Time Management Only 

Another useful way that you can consider is personal time management since time management is not just limited to work. 

It’s important that you let the team know about what habits can improve at work and also be useful for their personal life.

According to Matt East, a productivity coach, the best way to convince people of the benefits of time management and set them on a way of doing improvement. 

It includes important questions which can help in telling about how they prioritize the time as well as tasks. 

It starts with : 

  • If you could achieve one thing today, what would that be? 
  • What would be your second important thing? 
  • What would be the third important thing? 
  • What remains to be done once you are done with all three things?
  • Which tasks can you delegate? 
  • What are some important tasks on which people are working and need your attention too?
  • What would be one thing that you could complete that can help you in feeling productive and happy? 
  • How would you reduce the stress level?
  • What relationship do you have in life which needs most of your time? 
  • Where some of the answers are going 

Make A Overview Of Complete Workload 

The next tip that you can consider is getting familiar with each team member and what they need to do along with what their roles are in the job description. 

It includes menial tasks, including tasks that take the time or take the least time along with additional tasks. It’s important that you are not letting anything be overlooked. 

It includes : 

  • Giving  the feedbacks
  • Training new employees
  • Making  the presentations
  • Organizing the meeting 
  • Emailing 
  • Client communication etc

To start, it’s better to trim the fat in those important parts and think which is not needed but still takes a lot of time than is necessary.  

So you can consider with the team and get those tasks out of the schedule. If it’s still needed, then you can manage the time around it.

For example, it can be meetings. A Lot of time, you have to attend meetings in which you have no idea of what the topic is. It can be something related to the third party, but it will waste the time and energy on listening to things that aren’t related to you. 

Be Innovative With Time 

According to an article from Harvard Business Review, author Leslie Perlow offered insightful ideas on innovating with time management techniques.

There are a lot of tried and tested practices that are done with a lot of time, not just that you can ask people in a team to share their suggestions and be innovative with how they can manage the time. 

Offer Help To Teammates 

There are a lot of times when offering help can save time and get work done in an easier way. 

So you need to offer the help and encourage the team to do that, this is also great as time management can get better by getting support on how it can be scheduled and allocated. 

You can meet up with the team and see where their time is invested. As time goes, the priorities also changed, and with the help of new tools and website, you can help in improving how they are managing their time as well as tasks,

Talk To The Members Of Your Team 

The best way to know what matters and what does not is to talk with teammates. 

The more communication is open, it will get easier to identify what aspect of time management needs to look into. 

Well, for starter, you can consider these areas: 

  • Check what usual tasks include, what parts of the top are taxing and tedious.
  • Come up with the strategies which suit the taste and type of workflow, as well as the approach, would suit.
  • You can also consider the distraction and identify what are the common ones which are causing issues for the team. 
  • Meet with the teammates so you know how their life has changed after time management and do monthly surveys.
  • Let the team members approach time management in their way, don’t micromanage, and let them control the learning progress which helps in better results. 

Well, it’s important that you are aware of the point, every teammate is different and it goes different from department to department. It affects the way of doing time management as well. 

Try To Eliminate The Tedious Tasks 

One of the ways that you can help in better time management for yourself and the team is by estimating the tedious tasks. 

There might be a lot of tasks on the shoulders of your team, it can be individual or as a whole team,  ask your teammates to write down the tasks they do and which one is tedious. 

Not just such works take a lot of time and double up the whole thing, putting extra pressure on everyone. 

Since not all tedious tasks can be eliminated, you need to consider which one can be eliminated and the rest is managed without disturbing the work. 

Add The Proven Techniques And Methods 

There are a lot of different strategies that can help in getting better at time management. And the majority of it targets the diesel, but two of the famous tenacious you get which is also good for the larger groups. 

It includes Eisenhower Matrix and Time blocking, these ones can help you in improving the team’s time management and development. 

How To Use the Eisenhower Matrix? 

The Eisenhower matrix is known as one of the hailed methods for time management which can help in making it more efficient and productive through the proper prioritization. 

While this matrix is for individual time management and is easy to adapt if you are considering teams. 

It includes four categorizations: 

  • The first one is that the tasks are important and urgent, it should be by tomorrow’s deadline.
  • Tasks that are important however it’s not urgent, it can be to write up a progress report but it should be done next week.
  • Tasks which are unimportant but urgent, such as setting up for next week which asked for the next five minutes. 
  • Tasks that are uncomfortable and not even urgent, like cleaning out the dropbox of old files in a team. 

How To Use Time Blocking? 

It’s a second highly effective technique that you can use for time management. 

With this, you can keep the work throughout the day as you schedule the day and week in advance, 

When you set the tasks, write it down how much it will take and schedule it while blocking the time, it helps in knowing how much time each task will take and keeps the flow steady. 

Once you start time blocking, now it’s important that you stick to the time you have allotted, you can use the app which can keep track of it. 

Raise The Awareness Of The Deadlines

Well, there is no doubt that deadlines are not my favorite thing. In fact, no one likes it in the first place. 

However, when you think about it, it’s fine with deadlines the moment you set them. 

With this, you get much more control and what you can do within the given time period. The moment you start hating it, it makes it difficult to plan and with such an approach, it can get hard to deal with it. 

So it’s important that you are more aware of deadlines Since the relationship with deadlines still depends on how aware you are. 

What you can do to help the team to manage what its priorities are and keep a constant visible reminder of deadlines. 

Obviously, it’s important that the deadline should not be too frightening and imposing instead of this, it should be informative and helpful in tracking the progress, 

Establish Some Of  The Common Rules 

Well, no matter how great the team is cooperating, there will be some situations where they end up clashing. 

They will irritate, find faults, and do grievances in each other’s practices at work. 

Frustration from such situations can also harm the way of managing time and how they are prioritizing. 

There are different things that can cause distractions such as poor communication, feedback, in person, lack of transparency, etc. 

This also causes the team to start breaking and leads to pressure on everyone. 

Well, it might take time to improve their habits, but it is important that they are some of the agreed rules which everyone is clear on.  So it will help in ensuring everyone is in their peace of mind. 

Reduce Meetings That Have No Value 

Meetings are one of the biggest time wasters, so it’s very important that you are being smart with when and for what you are holding meetings or participating in it. 

Not all of the decisions and issues require to be in a meeting room doing the hours of discussion.  When you are having too many meetings, it can throw off the time management balance for you as well as for the team. 

It causes more disturbance when managers ask for meetings when important things need attention. 

Well to know when you need to hold a meeting,  here is what to know: 

When You Hit Specific Deadline Or Milestone 

You can hold meetings when you and the team hit the specific deadline as well as milestones that you have set. 

This can help in ensuring that everyone is on the right course or if there is anything that needs changes. 

But keep it brief if you are giving feedback on the progress of your team . or you can do 1: 1 email with each member. Apart from this, you can simply email. 

Streamline Your Conversations 

It’s important that you are not letting people derail over the topics with disagreements, arguments, and lighthearted chatter. 

Even though brainstorming is important, if people get a cat away, it will take a lot of time than it’s needed and that’s why it’s important to keep everyone on track and focus on the meeting.

Make A Schedule And Keep It That Way 

With every meeting, there should be an agenda that comes with the main point to address as well as follow-up discussions or questions. 

For this, you need to take some time before you start with any meeting,  create a bulleted list of topics, and make sure that you email it to the team. 

With this, you can inform them about the subject that they need to prepare 

Announce The Meeting On Time 

Unplanned meetings are the worst enemy of time management since it breaks the focus and also disturb the schedule they have already been working on. 

It also leads to problems in concentration and productivity, this is why you need to announce the meeting on time so they can manage their schedule according to that. 

Introduce The Tools  For Time Management To the Team 

Time management needs help from the outside, so it’s important that you introduce the tools which can help your time management better and much more efficiently. 

They are also used for analyzing, improving, and shortcuts that can help in eliminating the tasks which are menial. 

Limit The Watercooler Talk 

The watercooler talk can be interesting, fun and you can get to know about the team, as well as build relationships. 

However, you need to limit the watercooler talk in order to save everyone’s time. 

The same goes for small talk. The best way is to be clear on what and how much time you are fine investing in, so everyone is okay on how much they are investing as well as managing the schedule. 

Block Out Time To Avoid Interruption 

These are proof that it can kill motivation, focus, and productivity. According to the Reduce Time survey, 98% percent of respondents said they get at least intercepted a few times on a daily basis. This can be email,  instant message, phone calls, colleagues popping into the office, etc. 

A Lot of time you can avoid getting interrupted by using headphones. However office interruptions are hard to avoid, but noise-blocking headphones can help in blocking the background noise. 

You can also turn off notifications of instant messaging, text, and email since you work on important projects or tasks. 

You can ask the team to do it. Well, you can’t avoid it and the team has to interrupt, so instead of ignoring it, make sure you manage it. 

Ask before you cause interruption,  use time blocking, and have time fixed for checking their emails, messages, and calls as well as responding to them. 

Stop scheduling things that are not important such as unnecessary meetings. 

Build Manage Team Time Management

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