Expanding your sense of time
???How is your week going so far? Got enough time for all you want to get done, and still find moments to enjoy and explore? If the answer is a resounding yes, you can stop reading now (and please tell us your secret).
If, on the other hand, you are checking if you have enough time to continue reading, this article is for you. (Disclaimer: It will not be about time management as you know it.)
??One thing most team leads have in common is the feeling that they are always running low on time. Checking in with everyone, finding time to strengthen team ties, bureaucracy, and all those meetings...
How do you catch your breath and make this work, with the clock relentlessly ticking?
You start with building the right structures for your team
Hacks and promises of ideal ways to “get it all done” fail us, over and over again. The big lie is that there are ways to do everything. Thanks to a stubbornly persistent misunderstanding of carpe diem as some kind of glorified hustle, we have ended up with the cult of busy and burnout as a paradoxical badge of honour.
Trying to bend time to obey our will only highlights the temporal distortion we experience:
In a tedious, unnecessary meeting, time stands still. When we work with our team on something interesting and challenging, time flies.
Time distortions are indicators of empathy
??The phenomenon we call time and treat as if it were a currency, is actually a social phenomenon: Having all the time in the world might also make you the loneliest person in the world. Yet sometimes it feels like all that stands between you and undisturbed time to work are other people.
In an optimal experience, time disappears from your mind all together. You don’t worry about not having enough of it, nor are you secretly counting down the minutes until something ends. Because you’ve entered a flow state, your experience is what counts, not the minutes that pass.
How, then, can we set our teams up to increase the likelihood of finding flow?
The story of the blind men and the elephant
You may have heard this tale before:
A group of blind men heard that a strange animal, called an elephant, had been brought to the town, but none of them were aware of its shape and form. Out of curiosity, they said: "We must inspect and know it by touch, of which we are capable". So, they sought it out, and when they found it they groped about it. The first person, whose hand landed on the trunk, said, "This being is like a thick snake". For another one whose hand reached its ear, it seemed like a kind of fan. As for another person, whose hand was upon its leg, said, the elephant is a pillar like a tree-trunk. The blind man who placed his hand upon its side said the elephant, "is a wall". Another who felt its tail, described it as a rope. The last felt its tusk, stating the elephant is that which is hard, smooth and like a spear.
领英推荐
???Sounds like the worst meeting ever - everyone discussing something from their perspective only, losing sight of the bigger picture and not progressing in any way.
Putting the elephant together
In order to get anywhere, the blind men in the story have to include everyone’s perspective. The same goes for a great team meeting: Gather all facts and perspectives involved, listen to learn and value people’s contributions equally.
The ideal meeting, then, is
We’ve put together a template for a simple tool to plan and run meetings like that: A collaborative agenda.
???In a nutshell, it does what this article promised: It helps you set up an inclusive structure to ensure you find your flow as a team.
And if you still feel you don't have enough time to do something like this, reach out to Imran, founder of Kokoro, to find out how the right kind of team data can make setting up inclusive meetings even more efficient.
Stay tuned for our next newsletter, which will be all about addressing elephants that have gone rogue: How to address tensions to clear the air and help a team get unstuck.
Thanks for reading! ??