Do you sometimes feel that you aren't as productive as you could or should be? Is your life filled with the personal and professional achievement that you ardently desire? Are you living your values and achieving your goals, or does this sometimes seem like an unattainable dream?

There can be a multitude of reasons why we are unable to fully achieve all that we strive for in work and in life. These may include ineffective goal setting, a poorly-defined action plan, a low level of self-awareness or a lack of personal motivation. But one cause that seems to stand out consistently in people who are less than fully satisfied with their daily results is ineffective time management.

A Practical Definition of Time Management

Time management can be reduced to the simple definition of controlling the amount of time we spend on specific activities in order to maximize our effectiveness, productivity and personal satisfaction.

An effective approach to time management is to look at it from the perspective of a return on investment (ROI), a term we often hear in regard to business and finance where the implied objective is to maximize the return on money that is spent. This concept also makes a great deal of sense when applied to the results we get from the expenditure of time. Everything we do is an investment of our time. Whether applying our skills at our jobs, participating in recreation, attending social functions or interacting with family members, we are investing a portion of our time. If we make a bad investment in such activities and don't derive much value from them, then we are getting a poor return on our time investment.

This becomes especially important when we consider that and we can never recover any time that is wasted. Unlike most of the resources we have available to us, our time is limited. In many ways time is more valuable than money. You can always make more money, but once time has been spent, it's gone forever. Spending a portion of our limited time resources on something that provides little or no value when we could have spent it on some activity that could have contributed significantly to our deeply-held and deeply-valued  goals and desires only compounds the tragedy. Furthermore, when you think of time as a commodity to be invested, it can dramatically change the way you approach everyday decisions.

Why Effective Time Management Is Such a Challenge

While time management skills are continually emphasized in countless articles, books and seminars, few people seem to succeed in truly mastering it. A main reason why developing effective time management strategies can be so difficult may be because there is simply so much stuff out there on the subject that it it's hard for many of us to get our arms around it all.

There is a wide array of structured programs available for improving time management skills, most of which tend to focus in varying degree on elements such as goal-setting, prioritizing, action planning, organizing, learning to say "no" and avoiding procrastination. In addition, there is a vast assortment of paper-based and electronic calendars to choose from. The problem is that sometimes we can get so wrapped up in the technique or method of a time management system that we lose sight of our underlying purpose.

Four Critical Elements of Any Effective Time Management Program 

Regardless of the specific system or program one selects, there are four key activities that need to be included for any time management initiative be effective:

1. Organize. There are two perspectives from which to view the importance of organization in time management. The first is at the macro level of organization where we need to identify the critical areas of our lives and their relative importance to our success and happiness. see life wheel concept Second, on a micro level, we need to strive to organize our living and working environments so that our surroundings are neat and orderly and devoid of unnecessary and distracting clutter.


2. Prioritize. Once we have clearly identified those critical life areas where we need to direct our attention and, therefore, out time, we should rank the relative importance of each of the activities pertaining to those life areas so that we can focus on the most significant activities first.


3. Schedule. Using whatever calendar/planner system you prefer, schedule your time on a daily, weekly, monthly and even yearly basis to devote appropriate attention to each of the activities you have prioritized see time management grid for additional information on scheduling activities.


4. Monitor. Continually review your activities to see that you are devoting the appropriate amount of time to the right activities. If you are not, determine why your priority activities are not being accomplished as planned. It will likely be because in spite of your best intentions, you are being routinely distracted by non-priority activities or you have not scheduled the necessary amount of time for them. We often have a tendency to underestimate the amount of time it takes to get things done.

To help keep on track, consistently ask yourself this question: Is this the best use of my time right now?

Learn more about our Time Strategies development program.

Hiring decisions are among the most important decisions made by managers. While selecting the right person to fill a new or established job opening is certainly not a guarantee that an organization will achieve the success its leaders envision, having the right person in a critical position can surely facilitate organizational success, sometimes dramatically increasing an organization's productivity. Also, great thinkers are not always good leaders or managers, and the potential success for an enterprise based on a great idea can, therefore, be severely limited. What is needed in such a situation is the selection of someone with the right administrative skills to bring the great idea to fruition. This is the point of the title of this article.

Three Critically Important Elements to Successful Hiring

There are mountains of literature available on how to hire successfully, which cover virtually every aspect of recruiting, interviewing and selecting job candidates. However, there are three key overriding factors having to do with effective hiring that can make all the difference in the world between success and failure, which cannot come from any book or HR department; they must come from the person who is ultimately responsible for the results the candidate is expected to produce. This is generally the supervising line manager. These three factors are:

• Identify what you expect from the person you will hire.
• Identify how you will determine if the candidate can provide what you expect.
• Determine the price you are willing to pay the person for what you expect.

Identify What You Expect

Clearly, job descriptions are important for describing the duties an employee will be expected to perform. A job description defines the "what" of the job. But there is another aspect in describing an employee's duties that a job description does not do well, if at all, and that is "how the duties will be performed." In the case of a customer service representative for example, a job description might define the required duties as "interacting with customers to resolve product-related questions and issues." That addresses what the customer service representative is expected to do, but not how he or she should go about doing it, such as with a cordial attitude, enthusiasm and a customer focus.

In other words, what are the interpersonal behaviors that the person who will be supervising the worker would want the hiree to exhibit during the execution of his or her job responsibilities? This is something that is often overlooked in a typical hiring process. The how behaviors are something an interviewer needs to uncover during the job interview, but in order to do this effectively, the interviewer must first possess a crystal clear mental picture of what the desired how behaviors should look, sound and feel. This often requires some careful thought and reflection before the selection process is even begun. If this isn't done, there is no way an interviewer can consciously select for these important behavioral attributes.

Identify How You Will Determine If the Candidate Can Provide What You Expect.

An interviewing technique that can be very helpful in identifying a candidate's suitability for a position is to ask questions about real or hypothetical situations that would elicit insights as to whether a candidate possesses the capacity to exhibit the behaviors you have identified in step 1 above. This method is frequently referred to as the behavioral style of interviewing and is especially useful for learning about a candidate's attitudes, personal attributes and interaction style.

For example, if you were interviewing for a customer service representative, you might ask the candidate how he or she would react to an abusive customer who calls repeatedly and is seemingly never satisfied (hypothetical situation). This kind of question can provide insights on how a candidate thinks in challenging and/or ambiguous situations. Later on in the interview you might ask about a time when the candidate actually had to deal with an angry client whose problem was clearly the client's own fault, and how the candidate resolved the issue (real situation). Such a question can provide valuable information because of the fact that past actions are usually good predictors of future performance.

The key point here is that the actual questions need to be crafted by the person (usually the candidate's potential supervisor) who actually knows (or should know) what behaviors, attitudes and attributes are needed in a candidate. If an outsider who lacks such insights creates the questions or worse, conducts the interview, this vital information may not be effectively drawn out of the candidate, possibly resulting in a bad hiring decision.

Determine the Price You Are Willing to Pay the Person for What You Expect.

Employee compensation can be a difficult issue. There are two basic approaches to dealing with it: pay the average or standard for a particular position (i.e., pay what everybody else pays) or pay based on the unique value of the workers performance to you and your organization. If you view a position as a cost and nothing more than that (a cleaning service, for example), then using the first approach would appear to make the most sense.

However, if you are hiring a salesperson or sales manager whose performance could have a significant impact on your bottom line, then viewing this person's compensation as an investment might be far more productive. This is why most compensation plans in sales consist of a base salary plus bonus or commission geared to sales volume. Such plans should really be considered for any positions within an organization where incentivizing workers to increased performance can add directly to productivity and profitability.

Sometimes a shift in thinking is necessary. A company that views a customer service function simply as a cost to the organization may pay the minimum rate necessary to obtain such workers, not realizing that by paying the minimum they are attracting workers who may exhibit negative attitudes about their work and their employers, resulting in poor customer satisfaction leading to a total lack of customer loyalty.

On the other hand, customer service workers who are viewed as investments and compensated accordingly usually serve as company ambassadors, and their committed efforts actually develop customer loyalty and the increased organizational yield that comes with it.

Learn more about the value of customer loyalty.

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People often associate the topic of persuasion primarily with the concept of selling, but the importance of effective persuasion skills really pertains to every one of us regardless of our individual vocation. Every day each of us is involved to some degree in influencing the thoughts and actions of others. In fact, the path to success in life lies to a very large extent in gaining the cooperation of others. In this edition of Insights, we continue with our ongoing segment dedicated to the topic of persuasion.

What Is Your Non-Verbal Communication Saying?

In addition to the words we use in trying to persuade others to our way of thinking, there are other key factors that can play as important a role or even a more important role in determining the overall effectiveness of our persuasion efforts. We refer to these as non-verbal factors and classify them into the two general categories of vocal qualities and body language.

The words we use are indeed important for it is primarily through what we say that we consciously exchange information through a message. However, most of the time we concentrate so much on our words that we pay little if any attention to the way we use our voice (inflection, pitch, pace and tone) and body language (gestures, facial expressions and posture) in conveying our message. Research has demonstrated that voice and body language (i.e., how we say what we say) can have significant impacts on others' overall perception of the meaning of a face-to-face spoken message.

How You Say It Is Just As Important As What You Say

Vocal qualities can lead listeners to form a variety of impressions about a speaker based on their interpretations of what certain vocal characteristics mean. Vocal quality can have an especially powerful influence on a listener's perception of a speaker's feelings, emotions or even state of mind. How often have we heard others comment to the fact that someone sounds happy, angry or confused?  The sound of what a person says can even indicate the exact opposite of what his or her words are intending to convey. Bob may be saying "I'm O.K," but the tone of his voice and the hesitancy with which he expresses his words may clearly indicate that he is definitely not O.K.

What Your Body Is Saying?

Regardless of the situation or circumstances, every time we interact with others whether individually or in a group, we also communicate a great deal about who we are and what we are nonverbally by how we use our body during the communication process. While we are usually not consciously aware of it, we are almost always involving our bodies in our conversations, and while our bodies speak silently, they communicate profoundly nonetheless. Our facial expressions, hand gestures, posture and behavior in general send signals that can contribute significant meaning to a listener about the nature of a message and the mind-set and feelings of the speaker.  Body language can either add (such as by a warm handshake) or detract (by displaying a total lack of eye contact) from the positive impact of a particular message. 

Believability - the Key to Persuasion

Research conducted by Albert Mehrabian, Professor Emeritus of Psychology, UCLA), has focused on the relative importance of verbal and nonverbal messages. His findings regarding the role of non-verbal behavior on a speaker's believability have been widely quoted in publications and seminars worldwide, and have become known as the 7%-38%-55% rule of interpersonal communication. His findings with regard to the believability of a speaker's expressed feelings or attitudes are represented by the following graph:

To "persuade" essentially means to strive to get others to believe as you do. Dr. Mehrabian's work suggests that when it comes to persuasiveness, 38% of a speaker's overall persuasive impact actually comes from his or her vocal quality, 55% from body language and only 7% from the actual words the speaker uses. This is not to say that taken together voice and body language account for 93% of the message content, which is a common misrepresentation of these findings, but rather that voice and body language influence 93% of the overall believability of the speaker's words.

The key revelation of Dr. Mehrabian's research is that to be persuasive, a speaker's vocal qualities and body language must be consistent with his or her words. For there to be effective and meaningful communication about attitudes and feelings, these three parts of the message need to support each other. If they are not congruent, the listener can become irritated by different messages coming from different directions with conflicting meanings. If voice and body language behaviors disagree with the  words, people will be much more likely to believe messages projected by the speaker's non-vernal communication patterns.

Consider a situation in which a speaker says, "I am really happy and excited to be here to answer your questions about this matter," while the speaker, slouches, avoids eye-contact, lacks a warm smile and speaks in an unenthusiastic, monotone manner. How believable would this speaker be to you? In such a situation, not only would the speaker's non-verbals not support his or her words, they would probably have the effect of totally refuting them.

Ask us a question about Persuasiveness. 

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