Time Management or Self Management?

"I don't have enough time." "I'm too busy to get anything done." "I have no control over the work that comes in." These are some of the cries of exasperation by people that take "Time Management" workshops and seminars. They hope desperately to learn some tricks that will create time for them and have them feel in control of their day. There are many time management workshops that do give you tools, tricks, schedules, labeling systems, and filing systems that will hopefully create some sense of control. As Business Coaches, Will Corley and Wendy Hanson of Corley Hanson Associates, Inc., want you to think of another approach, self-management.

Self-management is the art of time management made personal. When we learn what is important to us and how to organize the culture and the values of our workplace to support us, we feel much more in control. Recently working with a group of staff from a financial company in Boston, we discovered the value of really looking at the four cornerstones of leadership and Coaching as a way for people to approach their work life. These cornerstones are based on the co-active Coaching model developed by Henry Kimsey-House, Karen Kimsey-House and Laura Whitworth and can be explored more fully through their book Co Active Coaching.

One of the cornerstones is designing alliances or relationships. Many times people feel like they have no control of their boss, supervisor or organization. They need to do the work that is given to them. They have a hard time to respond to the daily things that need to happen on top of the projects which are being thrown at them randomnly. As Coaches, we encourage people to sit down with their partners and "design" relationships, design how to give feedback and get feedback, design how to talk to people around taking risks and making mistakes, all the things that are so important in the growth of a business and of a relationship. We spend as much time with the people we work with and sometimes more than we spend with family members, spouses or significant others. Lets design what that relationship looks like so that we are all on the same page.

The second cornerstone is that we take the stand that people are "creative, resourceful and whole." What this means to us, is we come from a place of looking at people, as they are really capable, they know the answers, and they will come up with them. We don't need to fix them, we don't need to protect them, we don't need to think that they can't take feedback, We truly believe that they are creative, resourceful and whole. Many times we make judgments to keep information to ourselves, or not share all the information because we don't want to hurt someone's feelings. We don't want them to know that they really screwed up a project because we don't consider them creative, resourceful and whole. What kind of impact does this have? When have you been part of a discussion or a team or a group when you have been held back by a lack of information because people really didn't feel that you needed to know or that you should know. Look at that as an important piece of the second cornerstone.

The third cornerstone that we've reorganized for a work setting is called "we bring all of us to work." In a Coaching relationship, we talk about holding the clients agenda, which means what is really important about you and your life is what is held sacred by the Coach. In this case, we are talking about what's held sacred in a workplace is that you bring all of you to work because if you only bring part of you to your workplace and you leave the rest of you at home, work will be missing something very big. That also means that you bring sometimes the issues or the frustration at home as well as your joy and excitement. Sometimes it might be necessary to have a partner at work, somebody that you really can use as a sounding board. One Coaching skill that we have taught our self-management group is called "clearing." Clearing is not just whining, it's asking permission from somebody to give you 2-3 minutes to clear, to clear out the stuff that is getting in your way from going on with your day. It may be something that happened at home, it might be that you sat in traffic, it might be the fender bender that happened on the expressway but "clear" it and let it go. When you announce and ask permission to do this, it's much than having a slow leak all day and whining about it.

The fourth cornerstone is what we call "dancing in the moment." Dancing in the moment is to be able to really be flexible with what is coming at you and being able to take a few steps back every once in a while and look at the bigger picture. Many people who are great at dealing with details get caught in their details so that they can't always step back and look at what the priorities really are for that moment. Often times we don't like to be disrupted from working on a project. What we need to look like is how do we ask for help, how do we ask for 10 more minutes or one more hour before we change subjects, how do we design the alliance with whoever we are working with so they know that about us, so that we are able to "dance in that moment," we're able to step back or we are able to let go. This is a real cornerstone of leadership and Coaching that needs to happen in the workplace for us to be really having some self-management and control of our environment.

So we believe that if could dance in the moment, design your relationship, bring all of you to work and consider that you and all of your colleagues are creative, resourceful and whole, that time management will become more personal and become a self-management issue for you.