How to Assess Your Team (Part 2)

Continuing the assessment and development of critical skills within your team is essential for sustaining high performance and growth. In Part 2, we'll focuses on two additional fundamental skills: time management and leadership.

Effective time management is crucial for any high-performing team. Team members should be able to properly prioritize tasks by urgency and importance, thus ensuring that critical tasks are completed on time. Utilizing tools to manage time and stay organized is also key to maintaining productivity and meeting deadlines consistently without sacrificing quality. If these behaviors are not being displayed, team leaders can foster improvements by implementing new time management techniques like the Pomodoro Technique, using digital tools for tracking deadlines and tasks, and regularly adjusting priorities to respond to changing demands. Failing to foster good team management can lead to missed deadlines, poor productivity, and dependency on others due to poor workload management. Any leader can tell you that this can quickly alter team dynamics and cause a lot of unnecessary friction.

Leadership is another essential skill for high-performing teams. Effective leaders help inspire and motivate team members, fostering a positive and productive work environment. They also delegate tasks wisely, ensuring optimal workload distribution, and make decisions confidently. If these leadership behaviors are not being displayed, improvements can be made through mentorship from more experienced leaders, participating in leadership training programs, and seeking regular feedback from the team to refine leadership methods. Without good leadership, teams may suffer from a generalized lack of direction, leading to confusion, inefficiency, and poor decision-making, which can compromise project outcomes.

Whether you're the leader, a manager, or just team member, it's essential that you try to train and mentor one another in time management and leadership skills. You should also seek to provide new opportunities and challenges to help your teammates apply and further develop these skills.