So far everything I’ve written about the Getting Things Done methods for managing time, projects, and action has been focused on the individual – how it reduces anxiety and helps you personally to be more productive. If you serve in any leadership role – at work, as a volunteer, in your family, or in any other capacity – implementing Getting Things Done will have a profound impact on your team.
Here are 5 ways Getting Things Done (GTD) improves leadership and teams:
1) Increased capacity. GTD helps you improve your productivity. As your productivity increases, you’ll be able to better lead and serve your team.
2) Better teamwork. As you become less stressed and more relaxed because you know you’re not forgetting to do things and you know the next physical action step for each of your projects, your team will also become more relaxed. A more relaxed team is more positive. People on the team bicker less and give each other the benefit of the doubt more. There’s territorialism and more sharing and collaboration.
3) More respect. As you gain a reputation for getting more done and almost never dropping the ball, everyone on your team will gain confidence in you. Your boss, peers, and the people you lead will appreciate the fact that they only have to ask for something once.
4) More agility. GTD puts you in a position to quickly adjust to change. When you can adjust to change, the people on your team will gain confidence in their ability to deal with the unexpected.
5) A GTD team. As people on your team see the impact Getting Things Done has on your productivity, demeanor, and leadership, they will become more open to implementing Getting Things Done themselves and you’ll end up with more productive, relaxed and responsible people on your team.
Which of these benefits resonates with you most? What other ways does a team benefit when its leader is Getting Things Done?
I think you and I have been reading some of the same books. I’m in a study right now of John Maxwell’s “The 17 Indisputable Laws of Teamwork”, and what you wrote mirrors a lot of what Maxwell teaches.
I’m finding in my own life that one of the hardest obstacles to overcome in implementing these principles is the inertia of my own habits. Once you can establish the principles you’re talking about as the “new normal”, then everything starts working much more fluidly. But breaking away from old patterns takes a lot of mental discipline and resolve, and that’s where I think a lot of people fall short.
I’ve been able to implement some of these principles in various projects in my life, and I can personally attest that when applied in a focused and deliberate manner, they do indeed work!
Shawn, thanks for your comment. I agree. There’s no leadership more difficult than self-leadership, and it also bears the most fruit.
For implementing GTD you can use this web-based application:
http://www.Gtdagenda.com
You can use it to manage your goals, projects and tasks, set next actions and contexts, use checklists, schedules and a calendar.
Syncs with Evernote, and also comes with mobile-web version, and Android and iPhone apps.