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Make Time for Work That Matters
Joel was an instructor at UCLA Technical Management Program in which he taught “Getting Ahead: 3 Steps to Take Your Career to the Next Level.” He is a phenomenal speaker and instructor who is able to capture the audience’s attention.
—Jeanna Trammell, Technical Management Program Manager, UCLA’s Technical Management Program
Time Management Seminars
Make Time for Work That Matters: Learn How to Prioritize Your Work for Maximum Impact
Forget About Time Management
Success doesn’t happen because one person has more time than another.
Every one of us has 24 hours a day to use as we choose. The question is whether or not we use that time effectively. Successful leaders prioritize and complete what’s most important. They are laser-focused on executing work that has the most impact. They know how to take back time by utilizing time blocking, delegation, and saying no to anything that gets in the way of high priority tasks. Your executive leadership recognize the importance of prioritization as the number one source for productivity.
In this leadership training seminar, Joel will show your company’s leaders how to use prioritization skills to manage their time instead of letting time manage their lives.
What Is Prioritization?
Prioritization is a process that successful leaders use to assure that they are focused on the right things.
Are your people allowing their focus to be controlled by the incoming email, text, phone call, constant interruptions, and way too many meetings? In the face of these daily demands on time, employees want to scream, “Let me work, please.” The solution is to Make Time for Work That Matters.
You want your leaders to be focused on their work. But in order to be truly effective, they must be focused on the right work. A recent survey of 11,000 senior executives, leaders, and managers from more than 400 companies revealed that two thirds of senior managers can’t name their firms’ top priorities.
When you manage your time with prioritization, you begin by knowing your company’s strategies. You understand its business objectives. You’re clear on exactly what your boss’s boss and your boss determine as most important.
Then you look at the projects in front of you and ask these important questions:
- Which of these projects is the highest priority?
- Which of these projects will have the most impact on our strategic initiatives?
- How many projects can I realistically fit into my available time and resources?
At the beginning of every day, week, and month, the question becomes: “What is the most important thing I can accomplish now?” That becomes your priority, and once you get your priorities straight through solid time management, you’ll derive the most impact from the work in front of you.
That’s prioritization, and that is the foundation of what your executives want you to learn in Joel’s leadership training seminar on prioritization.
How the Company’s Leaders Will Benefit
During this leadership training course, participants will learn how to:
- Prioritize work according to what is most important. Make time for the most important tasks and focus on work that matters. Don’t let short-term and urgent daily tasks get in the way of top priorities.
- Improve productivity through delegation. Productivity improves when people learn to delegate tasks effectively. Delegation multiplies by dividing and frees up more time.
- Learn the value of “no.” “No” is a complete sentence. Eliminate, delegate, and have fewer meetings. Saying “yes” to everything becomes unnecessary when leaders learn how to say “no” effectively.
- Create effective work/life integration. Long hours, stress, increased responsibility and information overload can wreak havoc with other parts of life. Maintaining a healthy work-life integration is one of the biggest challenges facing people as they confront the demands of a 24/7 work world.
- Plan the day for efficiency. Organize, prioritize, and execute against a task list for optimal time management. Time blocking to protects everyone’s calendar. Learn to manage the two most notorious time wasters: interruptions and email.
- Stop working on low priority activities. Your people have meetings and activities that do not support your most critical priorities. Perhaps these meetings or tasks keep recreating themselves simply because they have always been there. This executive management course will teach people how to review and evaluate meetings and projects and decide what they and their teams will STOP doing.
- Model good behavior. When your executives learn how to stop unimportant and low value activities, the trickle-down theory goes into effect. Subordinates will begin to see that how they can create better time utilization and focus on the work that matters.
Protect and Defend Your Time
Learning How to Do It
Knowing what to do is the place to start. This leadership training course for management takes participants from the “what” directly into the “how-to.”
1. Prioritizing
- Learn to organize, prioritize and execute a task list
- Learn how to move from unimportant/low value tasks to tasks that have critical impact. Complete an exercise that helps identify and define the most important tasks.
2. Delegating
- Understand why people don’t delegate.
- Learn the benefits of delegation.
- Implement the principles of successful delegation.
3. Saying No
- Find out why we say “yes” too much.
- Learn why “no” is the most important word.
- Learn five steps to take before saying “no.”
- Practice eight specific statements and phrases to use when saying “no.”
4. Eliminating Meetings
- Review scheduled meetings, rank them in order of importance, and identify which ones can be eliminated.
- Implement eight rules for attending a meeting.
5. Removing Time Wasters
- Learn why email is “The Great Time Waster.”
- Practice eleven email habits of the most effective leaders.
- Find out how to avoid unnecessary interruptions.
6. Blocking Time
- Learn why time blocking is effective.
- Complete an exercise that illustrates how to time block.
How the Company Will Benefit
Prioritization is a skill that differentiates true leaders from the rank and file. It is a skill that can be learned, and the company that implements this leadership training course for its management team will benefit in several important ways:
1. Decision making will become easier.
Your company needs leaders who can take initiative without becoming autocratic and dictatorial. Learning to set priorities enables better decisions because it allows managers to evaluate a variety of options, predict outcomes, and make choices that will succeed. Good decision-making is time-specific and deadline-driven. Managers who understand this avoid analysis paralysis and show their teams how to move forward with clarity and confidence.
2. Managers will perform effectively under pressure.
Setting priorities is the key to success in high pressure situations. When managers can stay cool under stress-filled circumstances, their teams imitate the same behavior. They grow into well-organized work groups that maintain consistent focus on team and company goals. Your leaders will begin to enjoy challenging situations, and others will want to join their teams.
3. Leaders will understand how to simplify complex issues.
Prioritization provides an easy, consistent method for evaluating multiple options or tasks. It provides a platform for conversations about what is really important and creates an environment for building consensus. It helps people take emotion out of the process and facilitates reaching agreements on important issues and tasks.
