Leadership Skill Training Should Include How to Deal with Competing Commitments
Time-management training, bah, humbug! I don’t believe you can manage time, and frankly, at times I think it’s difficult to even manage ourselves. All the time and dollars people spend on learning how to manage their time better, while not a waste, don’t solve the problem because we are treating only the symptom. Leadership skills training should be more than just better time-management techniques; it should teach us how to deal with competing commitments, as THAT is the problem. We are all very busy people and most of us want to be able to have a professional career we enjoy and a personal life filled with fun and surrounded by people we love. The challenge is all of those things compete for our time. And even if we take out the personal aspect at work, things are always competing for our time and often we aren’t the ones determining the deadlines. I’m writing an article this month on this topic, so if you want more of the ‘how to,’ read my article. But here’s a snapshot: Dealing with competing commitments can be a values issue or it can be an issue of communication, staffing, learning to manage up, learning to say no, perfectionism, too many projects in the development stage, not delegating properly…well, you get the idea. OK, I’ll admit you can learn useful techniques in time-management training, but if you really want to be successful, leadership skill training should include learning how to deal with competing commitments.
