Task management is an integral part of our lives. It allows us to complete our daily objectives and keeps us productive during the day.
If you think about it, even a simple task like making yourself a cup of coffee can be described as a project or process divided into several tasks. That said, the simple answer to whether task management is a skill would be yes.
However, once you look at task management from a business perspective, you’ll notice that it’s much more complex than some of our everyday personal activities. As an individual contributor, solid task management skills enable better execution and orchestration of assigned activities.
Managers and/or business leaders go beyond individually-assigned workflow components to overseeing and orchestrating those of a team, where they need to distribute, prioritize, control, and optimize organizational tasks. Doing that requires a specific skill set. Without it, managing a business workflow or its task components can quickly become chaos, leading to costly disruptions and unresolved problems.
What are essential task management skills, then? And, more importantly, how can they be improved?
These are the questions we’re going to tackle in the following article.
What Are Task Management Skills?
Task management skills are capabilities that allow individuals to effectively organize his/her work, complete tasks on time, and execute them to pre-established standards. Simply put, these skills allow team members to be better at what they do. .
As a manager or team leader, task management skills allow you to deliver better overall business performance for your organization. . With a proper skillset, management can appropriately delegate, prioritize, and control multiple tasks across different teams.
Here are the five core task management skills any business manager should have.
Task Scheduling, Delegation, and Prioritization
The first skill refers to the tasks themselves. To be a competent business project manager, you need to know how to schedule, delegate, and prioritize tasks.
That’s a useful skill to have in general, as it allows you to plan your day better, making it more effective. In business management terms, knowing how to do these three things is a must.
For that, however, you need to know and study your various teams’ workloads and capacities. Based on that information, you can delegate and prioritize multiple tasks, as well as schedule them accordingly. Capacity planning and resource utilization are central to being successful in task management.
Workload Management and Accountability
With the tasks scheduled and delegated, they now require control and management. It is in your hands to measure the progress and performance of your teams.
Maybe it would be better to divide more complex tasks into sub-tasks. Sometimes, your team might require an extended deadline or a longer timeline to complete their work.
As a manager, you need to keep these things in mind, monitoring how your teams and employees perform. Based on measurement reports and dashboards, you can then manage their workloads better and decide what types of tasks they can and/or should perform.
Effective Communication
Open communication within the organization and your teams is necessary to perform task management at a high level. It is your responsibility to provide your employees with the resources and information they need to perform their work.
However, you also need to ensure they can communicate with each other freely, exchange ideas, and help each other. After all, many tasks are codependent, requiring multiple teams to work together to accomplish them on time.
Critical Thinking
When managing tasks across multiple teams and individuals, you will be presented with a lot of information. One thing is ensuring you understand it. Another is knowing how to draw the right conclusions.
For that, you need critical thinking. It’s a skill not all people have, but it can be an invaluable ally when managing tasks and projects.
It will help you manage your teams better and adjust their schedules, workloads, etc. It will also allow you to see which tasks and clients require more attention, as well as know how to delegate resources and responsibilities.
Patience
Managing multiple tasks and teams simultaneously can make you feel anxious. It feels like you’re constantly running out of time, which can result in sacrificing the quality of your work just to meet deadlines.
Our advice here is to be patient. Don’t rush things. Work methodically, and apply the same rules to how you manage your teams. If necessary, divide more complex tasks into smaller ones.
And remember, if you stay relaxed and organized, so will your team.
How to Improve Task Management?
Improving your task management skills takes time and effort. But it doesn’t have to be the case. Practice can “make perfect.” However, today’s technology also offers an opportunity to turn the mundane and routine efforts of your team into an “execution machine.”
Automation is key, and it will allow you and your team members to step away from low-value tasks so you can focus on things that matter a great deal more. Strategy and innovation, for example, don’t have to take a back seat to day-to-day operational demands and the manual execution of work . .
If you want to see how this is possible, take a look at HighGear’s Enterprise Task Management Solution.
The platform allows you to schedule, prioritize, delegate, monitor, and optimize multiple tasks across your organization, ensuring they are all completed on time and according to the quality and execution standards of your company and industry expectations.
Streamline your operations and unlock the full potential of your business. Using task management software, you will be able to take on and complete more tasks and workflows, boosting your brand reputation and revenue in the process.
Schedule a consultation with us to learn more about how we can help you achieve your business goals!
Key Takeaways
Yes, task management is a skill. Truth be told, it’s a skill any manager needs to have to run their business efficiently and effectively.
Skills like task scheduling and delegation, managing workload, effective communication, critical thinking, and patience all contribute to effective task management. However, they are not a success guarantee.
If you want your business to grow and take on more challenges, you will need to invest in reliable task management software, such as HighGear. With it, you will be able to streamline your workflows, allowing your organization to work more efficiently and complete more comprehensive work and tasks.