By Mark McCatty, SAMC, SCT

I was humbled by a compliment I received when I was visiting a client’s office. When I walked in I was greeted by several of the team members. As I was leaving one of them said that they were glad I stopped by. They continued to explain that they feel a welcome calmness come over the office whenever I am there. It stopped me cold. Wow! That’s one of the best complements I have ever received.

It reminded me of the book by Liz Wiseman and Greg McKeown, Multipliers; How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter. [http://www.getabstract.com/ShowAbstract.do?dataId=13031.]  In the book they describe the two dominate types of leaders in organizations today; Diminishers & Multipliers. Diminishers sap people’s energy while leaders who act as Multipliers magnify and extend the results of those around them.

Time management or lack thereof, is a frequent complaint that many managers have of their team members. These managers frequently say things like “they don’t complete their work on time”, or “they always wait until it nearly becomes a crisis to get things finished”. The manager often throws around words like lazy and procrastinator when describing their people.

What I find, in many cases, is not a situation where time is not well managed. Occasionally, I do see a case of deliberate procrastination or lazy work ethic. But this is the general exception and not the rule. Rather, most times I find that priorities are not clearly understood. In fact, many managers create ADT [Attention Deficient Trait] characteristics in the team members.