Checklist For High Performing Teams

Why do some teams perform well while others struggle? How can you assess how effectively your team is working now, and identify methods for improvement?

Research shows that 85% of the reasons that teams of people succeed or struggle has more to do with interpersonal issues, than technical competence. But both are needed for effective teamwork.

Below please find a checklist you can use to identify the strengths and development needs of your own team:

1. Clear Goals

It’s very hard to get there if you don’t know where you’re going! And it’s very hard to accomplish your goals if you haven’t made them clear. Make sure there’s no question about your team’s purpose, function and objective.

2. Clear Roles and Responsibilities.

It’s important that roles and responsibilities are clearly specified in order for people to be accountable for accomplishing their part of the team’s tasks. Misunderstandings and conflicts frequently occur when roles and expectations are not clearly defined.

3. Information Sharing.

In order for the team to make the best decisions, each team member needs to be provided with relevant information. High performing teams don’t guard information… they share it freely.

4. Competent Team Members

Competent team members need to be placed in the right position. At times, a highly talented person can be ill placed which can throw off the team functioning. Consider both the competency and placement of each individual team member.

5. Values Diversity

We don’t all work the same way, or have the same styles. This can be a key source for interpersonal conflict. However, when teams learn to value each other’s differences they can leverage each other’s strengths. Team building exercises can help individuals to appreciate diversity and work together more effectively.

6. Creative Problem Solving

When you value diversity of opinion, your team can be more adept at solving problems. How effectively a team can generate new solutions, and focus on the end objective, will largely determine their success.

7. Flexibility

High performing teams check their progress periodically and adjust their course when needed. This is an important element for allowing them to become adept at meeting the goals of their team.

8. Effective Conflict Resolution

How teams resolve their conflicts can make or break them. Effective conflict resolution skills that focus on the task at hand, not the individuals, helps teams move forward and redirect their focus toward positive outcomes.

9. Effective Time Management

How teams structure their meetings, and meet their deadlines, reflects on their effectiveness. Teams that manage their meetings well encourage higher performance and the increased likelihood of accomplishing their objectives.

10. Good morale.

Low turnover and longevity is a benchmark of good morale. A team that successfully values the individual as well as the team has the best likelihood of success.

Focus on Your Most Important Activities for Better Time Management

It seems the world is moving faster and faster these days.  You constantly have information streaming to you from people in the office, meetings, email, voice messages, texts.  You're trying to keep on top of it all and it can sometimes feel practically impossible.

So what do you do?  Begin by determining what's really important to get done.  Separate what's important from what's just urgent.

Don't Get Caught in the "Urgency Trap"

The problem with all the technological resources we have for communication is that they are making everything seem urgent.  It can be very tempting to get caught up in it and spend most of your day responding to email instead of focusing on what's really important.

Every activity has some degree of both importance and urgency.  Generally items will fall into four categories:

1. Crisis:  Important and Urgent
2. Planning, Preparation and Prevention:  Important but Not Urgent
3. Trivial Work:  Urgent but Not Important
4. Time Wasters:  Not Urgent and Not Important

Plan to Prevent Crisis from Occurring

It's easy to believe everything is important.  But, in reality, some things just are more important than others.  If you tend to think everything is important, it will be very difficult to prioritize.  If you find yourself living in the Crisis category most of the time, your productivity will weaken and you will quite simply just burn out.  It's unsustainable. The only way out is to focus on what you can do to plan for, prepare and prevent the kinds of things that force you to operate in a crisis.  When the crisis does occur, you'll be equipped to handle it and move on much more easily.

The next time you find yourself working late to meet a deadline, responding to an angry customer or co-worker, or rushing to solve a problem, really push yourself to come up with answers to some of these questions:

• "What could be done to prevent this from happening in the future?"
• "What can I learn to make this easier next time?"
• "Whose support or assistance needs to be involved?"
• "What could occur in the future, and how can I anticipate it and plan to respond?"

When you answer those questions and take the necessary actions, you will be taking the actions that will help keep you out of the Crisis category for very long.

Focus on What's Important

It's important that you get in the habit of consistently identifying your most important activities and then implementing them as a priority.  Other examples of things that are important but not Urgent include:

• Preparing for a meeting
• Planning a presentation
• Coaching and mentoring your staff
• Anticipating customer needs or requests
• Brainstorming ways to streamline internal processes
• Identifying your most important activities to accomplish each year, month
• Create a plan to identify your most important activities each week
• Discussing your team's most important priorities to focus on
• Prioritizing your daily to do list to focus on what's most important
• Enhancing your own professional development

10 Time Management Quotes

Sometimes a great quote can say it all in a few direct yet simple words.  Below please find 10 quotes about time management that do just that:

1. Whether it's the best of times or the worst of times, it's the only time we've got.  - Art Buchwald
   
2. It's not enough to be busy, so are the ants.  The question is, what are we busy about? - Henry David Thoreau
   
3. Ordinary people think merely of spending time.  Great people think of using it.  - Author Unknown
   
4. If you want to make good use of your time, you've got to know what's most important and then give it all you've got. - Lee Iacocca
   
5. Money, I can only gain or lose.  But time I can only lose.  So I must spend it carefully.  - Author Unknown
   
6.  Until you value ourself, you will not value your time.  Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it. - M. Scott Peck
   
7. A wise person does at once, what a fool does at last.  Both do the same thing; only at different times. - Baltasar Gracian
   
8.  You will never "find" time for anything.  If you want time, you must make it. - Charles Buxton
   
   
9. You may delay, but time will not. - Benjamin Franklin
   
10. I am definitely going to take a course on time management... just as soon as I can work it into my schedule. -Louis E. Boone

How Poor Time Management Impacts Your Self-Esteem

We all want to keep up.  With today's current unemployment rate, you especially want to hold onto your job.  However, when so many companies are downsizing, those employees who remain are left to pick up the slack of the ones that are gone.  This adds additional stress because the workload consistently gets heavier.  All of this can take a very real toll on your self-esteem.  You may not have recognized it.  You may not have spoken about it.  But it can be very real nonetheless.  See if you identify with any of the symptoms below:

1. Feeling overwhelmed.
   Your workload is getting heavier and heavier, but you feel real pressure not to complain.  You just grin and bear it and try to get it all done.  It's hard to stay on top of everything, but you think you should and then get frustrated when it's just too hard to keep up.
   
2. You really don't know how you will ever get it all done.
   You try as hard as you can.  You may create beautifully-planned to-do lists, only to find they just get longer each and every day.  By the end of each week, and especially by the end of the month, you may look at those lists in dismay and realize it really isn't humanly possible to get everything done.  But you keep trying anyway, feeling like you should be finished, and then feel really bad about yourself because you aren't done.
   
3. Frequent mistakes.
   It's common to make more mistakes when you are rushed and feeling overwhelmed.  Then you feel bad because you made those mistakes.  You ask yourself "How could I be so stupid?"  Every time it happens again you're afraid others will notice and it is a poor reflection of your ability to do your job.
   
4. Irritable.
   When you are already trying as hard as you can and even MORE gets dropped in your lap, you feel ready to bite someone's head off.  When people are late to meetings or wasting your time, you feel mounting pressure because you've got deadlines to meet.  You're exhausted and stressed out.  It's easy to be irritable with someone when you feel that way.  However, while it may have felt justified in the moment, you'll very likely beat yourself up afterwards because you snapped.
   
5. Harder to relax and get a good night's sleep.
   You're tired, your exhausted.  As you drag yourself in the door at the end of the day, you're just hoping you can get some sleep.  But the rising stress levels in your body make it harder to relax.  Instead of getting a good night's sleep, you end up tossing and turning and then feel even more tired the next day.
   
6. Not feeling in control.
   At the root of it all is the sense that you can't change anything.  You don't see alternatives or know how to make it better.  This feeling of lack of control fuels an even higher stress level.  You don't like this feeling.
   
7. Not happy or satisfied.The overall impact of these symptoms causes you to not feel happy at work.  You're not happy with how this is impacting your health.  You're not pleased with how it's impacting your relationships.  You're tired, burned out and exhausted.  You don't like how you're feeling about yourself.  This isn't how you want your life to be! 

These are just some of the ways poor time management causes us to not feel as good about ourselves and our lives as we want.  What do you think?  What other ways could poor time management impact you?  Please post your thoughts below.

5 Symptoms of Poor Time Management at Work

In today's fast-paced world, time management has never been more challenging.  Technology, for all its glory, has made it easy to constantly stay connected.  The downside is that this same technology has made everything urgent in the form of phone calls, text messages and emails.  And because everything is urgent, it has pushed the really important things to the back burner.  We have more and more information constantly streaming to us.  What kind of impact do you think this is having on you and the people around you?  Below are several symptoms you may recognize:

1. Lack of focus
   When everything is an urgent fire to put out, it's very easy to lose sight of your really important priorities.  You may not have thought about your most important priorities for this month, this week and today.  When this occurs, you will focus on the urgent, not important, activities.  No time is spent planning how to prevent crises in the future.  As a result, the crises just continue and may get even bigger.
   
2. Missing deadlines
   It can be hard to keep up with important deadlines when you're constantly putting out fires.  But when you notice you're missing deadlines consistently, you may want to ask yourself if you planned well enough to accomplish this task by the deadline?  Are you procrastinating until the last minute?  Do you feel everything is equally important and so have not really prioritized the ability to get this done?
   
3. More disorganized
   When you don't feel in control of your time, your desk can pile up with paperwork.  Your to-do list expands.  It's harder to find things when you need them.  Not finding time to get organized is kind of like not finding time to fill the gas tank in your car.  If you just think you're too busy to do it, you will definitely pay the price.
   
4. Overlooking details
   When you're moving too fast, and feeling stressed to get it all done, it's easy to overlook the details that are important.  In some instances, this can lead to significant errors.  It's a bad reflection on your professional ability.  It's definitely not the impression you want to make with the co-workers who depend on you.
   
5. Strained relationships
   Other people can feel frustrated with you if you are missing deadlines, disorganized or overlooking important details.  But as your work load is piling up, you can also become more frustrated with them.  You may find yourself being more irritable than you normally would or more likely to express your frustration.  This can place a strain on relationships if it's not addressed.

These are just some of the symptoms of poor time management at work.  What other symptoms do you think could occur?  How is it impacting you or other people around you?