Laurie Weiss, Ph.D.

Many managers believe that treating their team members as responsible adults will assure excellent results. The truth is that while this usually is effective, some people need much firmer limits than others to perform their jobs.

When I give her a direction, she says she understands, but then she acts as if she can do just as she pleases. Ellen, manager of a rehabilitation hospital unit was discussing her frustration in supervising one of her social workers. Ellen would much rather help Angelique be successful at her job than to fire her, but things have not been going well.

Angelique has been on unit for a year and a half, but Ellen has only been supervising her directly for a few months. Ellen’s frustration began when she noticed social worker’s frequent absences.

She is on a salary, and has some flexibility, but she is expected to be here forty hours a week. She has been coming and going whenever she pleases. Despite my warnings she still refuses to consistently even tell me when she will be gone. When I placed a written reprimand in her file, she cried, and promised to do better, but she hasn’t.

I have even told her that she is inviting me to micro-manage her, but I am reluctant to cause her embarrassment of having to punch time clock, when none of other workers at her level do that.

As Ellen and I discussed situation, I learned that Ellen was already micro-managing Angelique. Whenever they had a supervision session, Ellen was taking extra pains to make certain that Angelique understood exactly what hours she was expected to be on unit. We both laughed at absurdity of helping someone with a Master’s degree to read a basic time schedule.

When we looked at how Angelique had invited Ellen’s micro-management, it was obvious that Angelique was acting like a child who had not learned to respect limits and boundaries. Ellen was being invited to act as her parent. Ellen kept reminding Angelique about work requirements, and when Angelique did not use this information Ellen was first surprised and then increasingly frustrated.

When Angelique’s response to discipline (being written up) was tears, Ellen felt an impulse to protect her and not cause her further embarrassment. Instead she tried to be understanding rather than critical. When that didn’t work either, Ellen asked for coaching.

It’s a Power Struggle

“Kill time and you will kill your career” B.C. Forbes

“But, I just don’t have enough time” – how often have you said this phrase? As long as you are really willing to do something about, your problem has a solution. All you need is will power and certain techniques. With these, you will have enough time to do all important activities in your work will still have time to relax. The secret of having enough time is not killing yourself working 18 hours daily. The objective should be to work more intelligently, not harder. You can’t save time, only use it well. Here are some techniques to give you some extra time:

TO DO LIST The main secret of time control is a technique widely known but used by very few persons: to-do list. The procedure is very simple. Every day, first thing you should do at office is to write down all activities you have to do. Take your time to think them out carefully. List all activities, both short and long-range. It may seem strange to see “start MBA” along with “send meeting memo”. However, if you think about it, you don’t want to control only day’s activities, but your life as well. If you don’t set yourself goals to where you are going, you’ll end up somewhere else.

Once you have your activities written down, review and classify them:

“A” for those with highest priority. “B” for those of medium priority. “C” for those nice-to-have but not important.

Once this has been done, review your list again and assign a number to each activity by importance until you have A-1, A-2, … The following step is critical in this procedure. Most persons, after looking at their A-1 activity, decide to get a cup of coffee or chat with somebody, or do one of “C” activities because it looks more appealing at that moment. The natural reaction at seeing a task to perform is very human reaction of “I’ll do it later” The will power to “do it now” or “do it later” is what distinguishes those persons who lack time and those who have enough time to reach their goals and enjoy life.

WILL POWER

The problem at this stage is lack of will power. The first step to solve this problem is to recognize it and ask, “What am I trying to avoid?” The answers could be:

1.Fear to make a mistake – If this is problem, you should ask “by how much would I reduce probability of making a mistake if I wait?” – usually not very much. Your attitude should be positive and you should regard your mistakes as an opportunity to learn.

2.Postpone less agreeable tasks – but really, isn’t it better to do it now and get rid of it, like taking a bad-tasting medicine.

3.Set priorities every day – if problem is trying to do too much, learn to say “no”. Learn to set date for every goal, tell everybody about these dates, and then meet them.

The decision is yours. Having will power or not, leads you to one of these routes:

1.Do that interesting project you have wanted to do (work-related or personal). Also you will be able to enjoy things since you have satisfaction of knowing you have finished day’s “To-do´s” and are really controlling your time. Or else,