In a study out of the U.K., it came to light that as many as 59% of people have been micromanaged by a manager at some point in their career. Of those, 68% said micromanagement decreased their morale and 55% reported that it actually made them less productive. The antidote against micromanagement includes self management skills. To attract and retain a self-reliant workforce, we are here to answer: What are self management skills?
We’ll talk about the various benefits of self management and see why they are so important in any type of workplace.
As the term implies, self management refers to the ability to manage one’s own workflow and productivity. Even if you have a supervisor or manager, when you have self management skills, you don’t need them to watch your every move and tell you what to do next because your self management abilities take care of that aspect.
Honing self management skills can play a big role in your own career growth, productivity, and job satisfaction levels.
Self management skills are critical for workplace success. Beyond the walls of the workplace, having self management skills can also positively impact one’s personal life because it contributes to the ability to have a proper work-life balance.
Self management skills allow for:
Self-management means that you are able to plan for tasks and get them done within a reasonable amount of time. You are able to avoid procrastination and work efficiently.
Self-management skills place you in the front-running for promotions and career advancement because managers and higher ups trust that you can get the job done.
With self-management skills, you don’t need a manager or supervisor to watch over your work. Instead, managers and supervisors trust you to get your work completed.
Self-management allows you to handle multiple tasks at once and understand where to focus your efforts first.
Let’s take a look at the 7 key self-management skills so we can then see how to strengthen them.
You have a long list of things to do for the day ahead. It’s up to you and only you to get started and get them done. The foundation of self-management rests on self-motivation, or the ability to be proactive and accomplish tasks.
How you use your time is critical to decipher how you get things done. The ability to prioritise tasks, set reasonable timeframes and deadlines, and avoid procrastination is a gamechanger in a work setting.
Adaptability means that you can face change head on and pivot as needed. This is opposed to becoming overwhelmed and shutting down. Although being adaptable isn’t always easy, it’s a great trait to possess in a work setting where things are constantly evolving and shifting. It makes for a dynamic and desirable employee.
Much like being adaptable, the ability to manage your own stress can quite literally make or break you as an employee. When faced with stressful situations, do you fight, take flight, or freeze? The way your body and brain react to stress will have a major impact on your productivity and happiness levels.
Employee wellbeing tools can be deployed to help reduce and best manage employee stress. With employee wellbeing tools, employees have evidence-based knowledge and techniques to manage stress and overcome challenging situations.
Having an understanding of the bigger picture and how your day-to-day work impacts the overall business plays a role in motivating you to get things done. Being able to align goals relies on setting realistic goals, communicating goals so you can work in a team, and tracking goals to ensure you are on the right path to success.
In an organization, there are hopefully opportunities for training and development. The ongoing desire to learn and become a better leader will impact those around you. By continuously developing and growing your skill base, you become better at self-management because you are able to understand that the control and power is within your own hands and mind to be the best you can be.
Making decisions involves critical thinking, problem-solving, and the ability to understand varying perspectives. It’s a key aspect of self-management because you will be required to make decisions at every turn as to how to proceed.
With self-management, you won’t always need or have another person to bounce your ideas off of so it’s up to you to remain objective and forward-thinking.
When you take a look at all seven of these key traits together, you can see a common connection between them which is that they all rely on having positive mental wellbeing and mental fitness.
With an employee wellbeing platform, your employees gain access to resources, tools, and techniques to strengthen and develop their mental fitness. It can support employees to get to pause and reflect on their emotions and what impacts them, helping them to better support themselves, and employers get a better understanding of how to support their team members to become the best versions of themselves.
Employees and employers can play a role in helping to strengthen self-management skills. Although it may seem like it’s up to the individual to enhance their own self-management skills, there’s a lot of power that stems from the team and the organizational side.
Here’s a look at how everyone can contribute:
From an individual standpoint, break your to-do list up into sections and organize it based on priorities. This will contribute to less overwhelm, and as you cross items off of your to-do list, you will gain momentum and satisfaction from your accomplishments. This will help you to stay motivated and work through the list.
Know your own strengths and play to them. In a work setting, knowing your strengths will mean that you can feel confident picking up more tasks or responsibilities that align with what you’re good at. From an employer standpoint, knowing your employees’ strengths will help you to allocate resources and people on certain projects.
Hold yourself accountable by creating deadlines for projects. Break up big projects into smaller tasks over time, but stay on schedule by having your own checkpoints.
By setting short and long-term goals, you can check-in with yourself over time to see how you are doing. This may be check-ins by yourself or with supervisors to evaluate progress based on set KPIs.
Perhaps the most important aspect of boosting your self-management skills will rely on caring for your mental and physical wellbeing. All of the traits you need for self-management skills come along with prioritizing your own mental wellbeing and fitness.
Your mental wellbeing also strongly correlates with your physical health. This means it’s necessary to take breaks, reward your progress, ask for help, and set boundaries. Employers can support employees’ mental wellbeing with the aid of employee wellbeing platforms.
These tools help develop employees’ ability to perceive situations, control their thoughts, manage challenges, and develop an optimistic outlook, to name a few upsides.
Applying self-management skills in the workplace means that you show up ready to give your full attention and remain engaged with the project and tasks ahead of you.
To showcase self management skills, some best practices include:
Knowing the answer to the question of: “What are self management skills?” may leave you with an epiphany of sorts. Although self-management skills rely on an individual to take control of their own situation and responsibilities, self-management skills don’t develop in isolation.
Employers can play a large role in helping employees develop and hone self-management skills. By providing employees with access to employee wellbeing platforms, employers can support employees in reaching their fullest potential and strengthening their mental fitness enabling them to take control of their actions, behaviors, and perception.
To find out how LUME can help your organisation to better understand and support the mental health of your employees, just fill in the form and we’ll be in touch.
Unlock your employee potential
.png){kind=spacer}
