Time-Management

This is the process of planning and exercising a conscious control over the use of time spent on specific tasks and activities. As per accepted belief, using time effectively allows a person the choice of spending and managing their activities at their own pace and expediency (Cottrell 2013)

The importance of this core skill lies in its final goal of setting activity completion within the boundary of a limited amount of time. As stated previously, time-management allows for an individual to maximize the amount of work done within this limited amount of time to achieve positive results. I realized the validity of this method when I came upon the POSEC method of time Management (Simpao 2014), which stood for “Prioritize by Organizing, Streamlining, Economizing & Contributing”. This method dictated a template which emphasized a regular individual’s immediate sense of monetary and emotional security. This particular reading is what drew my interesting to this particular topic, particularly in the way that some of the methods for improving this skill were structured.

Because of the implications of this particular skill, I feel it would be vital to pick up the necessary facets pertaining to this activity, as I feel that it can help bolster my work output. Additionally, as I have always had some problems with time management, I feel it is a skill I wish to refine.

I have always had a slight problem with time management. In previous corporate exercises or even with casual ventures, I have noticed (and been informed duly by my peers) that my use of time for activities is poorly managed. This has come up in various situations wherein I have spent a lot of time working on certain projects, without being able to complete them in the stipulated time period. I tend to overshoot deadlines by a few hours, which affects my work. The quality of my work is also something that is sorely affected by my poor use of time, as I find myself rushing to complete these tasks and not producing my optimal best.

To gain a better understanding of my mistakes, I decided to conduct some tests to check the capabilities of my time management skills. I took an online test as prescribed by the Medicine Hat College Journal (Boughen, no date), to better understand my shortcomings.

Based on the results of this test it came to my attention the areas in which my time management was lacking. Particularly of note was my inability to focus for given lengths of time to complete the assignment.

I personally felt that my lack of focus is what stands at the core of inability to manage time properly, as a result, affecting my professional and personal activities. The results of the test that I took also seem to corroborate this fact, as does the views of my friends and families. As a result, I see no doubt that I will need to improve on this particular area if I am to overcome these shortcomings.

I was particularly invested in the idea of the “80-20 rule” that was recommended in my reading to increase productivity. The idea being that 80% of productivity can be achieved by doing 20% of the required tasks, and similarly, 80% of results being attributed to 20% of activity is a novel outlook (Kruse 2016)

Importance of this Core Skill

By improving my time management capabilities, I wish to further improve my personal and professional activities. By investing time and energy into channeling a strong focus towards ongoing activities, I feel confident that I can improve these skills as required. By putting on my “game face” (Walsh 2008), I see the constructive use of time management practices will only further refine my shortcomings, as per the task at hand. 

This refers to the collaborative effort of team or group of individuals to achieve a common goal. It is popularly characterized by a group activity, wherein individuals in a group have clearly defined roles and a clear purpose to maximize efficiency (Chang, Bordia & Duck 2003)

In any environment, working together is a vital skill to cultivate. I have always worked well within the formation of a team, but rarely as a figure of authority. Still, in my readings of what constitutes proper “team work” (Woods & West 2014), a group of adequate size with defined roles is essential in creating a necessary framework for the task at hand.

I chose this skill in particular because I wished to reflect on how I could improve my contribution to a team based work environment, seeing as it is a fundamental part of my professional life and career. As a result, a proper analysis of this field seemed to be the best idea when it came to the idea of understanding and improving this particular core skill.

My personal experience in a team-work environment has always been particularly pleasant. I have not faced any dramatic issues, per say and have worked within the parameters set upon any group project that I have been assigned to. As a result, with a defined role in mind, I have competently completed my duties to their fullest and in conjunction with the duties of my peers. This has been a recurring process since my school days right up until my current corporate work life.

To better measure my competency in this field in an empirical manner, I took a recent survey in the form of the Association of American Colleges and Universities Teamwork Value Rubric (Briggs, Reinig & De Vreede 2006). I was confident that this particular test would help me to better understand my current standing when it came to these core skills and the regions in which it might be improved.

Based on the results of this simple test, I was confident that my personal held views on my team work capabilities were sound, as were the shortcomings I feared that I had on the subject.

As per the results of the test, I was confident that I held a decent enough standard when it came to working with my peers on any assigned task. One shortcoming that had been pointed out, however, was the fact that I was unable to personally delegate activity to others. Basically, a leadership position was not something I felt qualified for or particularly valued personally. My exposure and readings has enhanced the idea that teamwork performance improves when a team passes through issues stemming from conflict, motivation and confidence and affection management (Cattani, Gerriani 2013).

Competence in this Skill

Several of my peers however, point out that I was fairly competent when directing other activities in a group assignment, but I am not particularly confident in my own abilities to do so.

I believe that, based on my studies on factors in corporate settings (Salas, Cooke & Rosen 2008) that teamwork and performance can be effectively enhanced through specific training that targets the strengths and weaknesses of each individual. With each project at hand, I can better refine my personal capabilities within a group so that they can be used to the maximum potential of any team-based project/activity. Hopefully, in the future, this focus and dedication towards making myself an indispensible and well functioning cog in a team machine can actively pay dividends.

This can be properly conceptualized as the use of methods and processes to effectively facilitate a peaceful end to conflict issues. Being committed to conflict resolution requires assertiveness and a commitment to communicating information in an amicable manner (Forsyth 2009).

I believe that being assertive and maintaining a conflict free environment go together. To properly create a well functioning work environment, conflict must be minimized and dealt with as quickly as possible. My personal encounters with conflict in my work areas have been numerous and haven’t often ended well. This troubles me as it hampers my mental well being, and prevents me from working at my optimum level. I realize that to create a proper sense of conflict management, I need to work on my own personal failings in this regard and work towards finding methods to better build a viable work environment for myself.

As per my studies on the subject, a wide range of tools and practices can be used to facilitate “dispute resolution”, including negotiation, mediation and being mindful of how people act during disputes in accordance with their general behavior (Mayer, 2012). These are all practices I wish to implement into my developing this core skill effectively.

To best test my competency in this particular skillset, I employed the use of the Thomas-Kilmann Instrument (Thomas & Kilmann 2015). It has been noted as the best resource to measure an individual attempt to deal with conflict.

After using this particular tool, the results intrigued me in that it showed my personal ability to deal with conflict was much lower than I expected. It surely explained my poor handling of situations in the past, but I had honestly not expected the findings to be this unfavorable. As a result of this, I felt compelled to reflect on these ideas and develop myself to overcome these shortcomings

Based on the analysis as it was conducted, I felt there was an overwhelming requirement to improve on my conflict management skills. Stemming from the use of poor management in the past and my own personal inability to understand the poor handling of these situations, the TKI helped to garner a better understanding of what my family and peers had mentioned in the past on several occasions regarding my inability to properly deal with conflict in the work space.

Contradictions in Analysis

Based on a vital study I read (Pines et al. 2014), in addition to the tests taken, I focused on understanding how interpersonal conflict could be better handled, and how resiliency played a strong factor in dealing with those issues as a whole. Based on the study, I decided to do further self reflection on the matter.

Developing different approaches to conflict management based around building a sense of assertiveness has been my main learning result from this test and reading of relevant materials (Swed 2017). I feel that developing a policy of “I win – You win” will lead to less flashpoints of conflict in the work space, and having the assertiveness to facilitate mutually beneficial solutions to conflict between parties is vital. I personally hope to further develop my ability to have a conducive dialogue and negotiations when the need to mitigate conflict between myself and other individuals comes to the fore. 

From an organizational standpoint, resilience is defined as the ability of a system to withstand changes in the environment and still function effectively (Mccarthy, Collard & Johnson 2017). This involves a capacity to adapt and endure changing situations.

Adaptability is a vital and practical response, especially with regards to how several organizations have been in decline in recent years due to an inability to maintain their resilience in a changing environment (Sull 2009). Therefore, personally speaking, developing a strong base that can adapt to ongoing changes in the current environment will help keep myself and my abilities relevant and continually valuable.

Of particular note is how this need for personal resilience ties into other core skills such as assertiveness and conflict management makes this an incredibly valuable resource to cultivate. I see it as making a strong foundation for developing all other core skills from here.

Since the idea of resilience is so vital to achieving all my other goals, a great deal of self-reflection is very important. Not only do I have to review all my other core skills through this lens but I had to look at different tests with regards to self-awareness that would give me an idea of my resilience in an office environment.

The CCRAM or “Conjoint Community Resiliency Assessment Measure” (Leykin et al. 2013) was a test I was introduced to by some of my peers who felt that it could help me achieve the results I desired.

Based on the findings of this study, I was able to address the various factors within my own professional and personal communities to calculate my resilience with regards to completing tasks and activities. The results were average, with fluctuations based on situational cues and segments.

The contradictions in the analysis started to come up when I believed that I had handled previous situations in a manner I viewed as adequate in the past. Yes, I did previously have issues with regards to time management and conflict resolution, but these had never manifested quite as severely (in my mind) with regards to a resiliency problem.

Future Use of this Core Skill

Based on this, the conclusion that resiliency was an acquired skill (Sutcliffe & Vogus 2013) was a sound one that I felt needed to be take into account for any future attempts to develop this core skill.

I believe that to better develop this skill, one important learned outcome that I came across was on the importance of analyzing how disruptions can adversely affect the operations of corporations and how investments in resilience can give a business a competitive advantage over entities not prepared for various contingencies (Sheffi 2005). Developing this core skill parallel to other core skills will complement each other, thus creating a strong symbiotic personal growth wherein my productivity can be used in any changing environmental circumstance. All future growth I feel is personally dependent on maintaining a strong adaptability to deal with any hurdles that come my way; both personally and professionally.

References

Boughen, Justine. Successful Time Management (Online). Available at: https://www.mhc.ab.ca/services/academicsupport/~/media/2676667cdb4943efbbd037ab733d6214.ashx. (Accessed: 9th December, 2018).

Briggs, R. O., Reinig, B. A., & De Vreede, G.J. (2006). Meeting satisfaction for technology-supported groups: An empirical validation of a goal-attainment model. Small Group Research, Vol. 37, pp. 585-611

Cattani, G. & Ferriani, S., Mariani(2013) “Tackling the ‘Galácticos’ Effect: Team Familiarity and the Performance of Star-Studded Projects”, Industrial and Corporate Change, Vol. 22(6): pp. 1629-1662.

Chang, Artemis; Bordia, Prashant; Duck, Julie (2003). “Punctuated Equilibrium and Linear Progression: Toward a New Understanding of Group

Cottrell, Stella (2013). The Study Skills Handbook. Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 123+. 

Forsyth, Donelson R. (2009). Group Dynamics (5th ed.). Boston, MA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.

Kruse, Kevin (2016). The 80/20 Rule and How It Can Change Your Life. (Online) Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kevinkruse/2016/03/07/80-20-rule/#2ab9de7b3814. (Accessed: 9th December, 2018).

Leykin, Dmitry. Lahad, Mooli. Cohen, Odeya. Goldberg, Avishay. Aharonson-Daniel, Limor (2013). Conjoint Community Resiliency Assessment Measure-28/10 Items (CCRAM28 and CCRAM10): A Self-report Tool for Assessing Community Resilience. American Journal of Community Psychology. Vol. 52 (3-4). pp. 313-323.

Mayer, Bernard (2012). The Dynamics of Conflict: A Guide to Engagement and Intervention (2nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. 

McCarthy, Ian P; Collard, Mark; Johnson, Michael (2017) “Adaptive organizational resilience: an evolutionary perspective”. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability. Vol. 28: pp. 33–40. 

Pines, Eula W.; Rauschhuber, Maureen L.; Cook, Jennifer D.; Norgan, Gary H.; Canchola, Leticia; Richardson, Cynthia & Jones, Mary Elaine (2014), Enhancing Resilience, Empowerment and Conflict Management Among Baccalaureate Students: Outcomes of a Pilot Study. Nurse Educator: Vol.39 (2). pp. 85-90.

Salas, Eduardo. Cooke, Nancy J. & Rosen, Michale A. (2008). “On Teams, Teamwork, as well as Team Performance: Discoveries and Developments”. Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. Vol. 50(3), pp. 540–547. 

Sheffi, Yossi (2005), The Resilient Enterprise: Overcoming Vulnerability for Competitive Enterprise, MIT Press.

Simpao, Mervin (2014). The POSEC Method of Time Management (Online). Available at: https://www.time-management-abilities.com/posec-method.html. (Accessed: 9th December, 2018)

Sull, Donald (2009). “The Upside of Turbulence: Seizing Opportunity in an Uncertain World”. HarperBusiness.

Sutcliffe, K. M., & Vogus, T. J. (2013) Organizing for Resilience. Positive Organizational Scholarship: Foundations of a New Discipline. San Francisco: Berett-Koehler Publishers. pp. 94-110.

Swed, Tammy (2017). Taking an Assertive Approach to Conflict Resolution. American Management Association. (Online) Available at: https://playbook.amanet.org/training-articles-assertive-approach-conflict-resolution/. (Accessed: 9th December, 2018)

Thomas, Kenneth W. & Kilmann, Ralph H. (2015). An Overview of the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI) (Online). Available at: https://www.kilmanndiagnostics.com/overview-thomas-kilmann-conflict-mode-instrument-tki. (Accessed: 9th December, 2018).

Walsh, Richard (2008). Time Management: Proven Techniques for Making Every Minute Count. Adams Media pp. 232-238.

Woods, Stephen; West, Michael (2014). The Psychology of Work and Organizations. Andover Cengage Learning EMEA.