Time Tetrad Management

Perceptions of Public Servant Leaders and Employee Leaders

Abstract

With the events of the COVID-19 pandemic, the role of leadership was re-signified, forcing leaders to face enormous adversities in order to adapt to this new climate of fears, concerns, emotions and the need of adaptation. Thus, in a world in constant evolution, the topic “Time Management” has gained more visibility in organizations and public bodies, since it is increasingly common to talk about not having enough time to do everything you need to. In this sense, for success and better results, leaders need to prioritize the most important activities, as well as delegate tasks within the available time, ensuring more productivity. The challenge is even greater when the concern to promote balance between professional and personal life, with quality of life, increases. Therefore, this article intends to answer the following guiding research question: are there differences in the perception of time management between civil servant leaders and employee leaders? The objective of this work is to analyze the perception of 40 leaders (20 civil servants and 20 employees) regarding Time Management, through a tool developed by the Behavioral Analysis Company ILG Performance, made available through software. Based on the leaders' individual responses, this mapping established percentages for the four classifications of their activities: (1) important, (2) urgent, (3) circumstantial and (4) interruptive, according to the Time Tetrad Matrix. After analyzing the data, the results pointed to convergence (and not differentiation) in the observation of the two evaluated groups, with very close percentage means for each of the four variables in both groups. And more: the results indicated that important activities are commonly neglected by the leaders participating in the study, since they are dedicated, in a high rate, to circumstantial and interruptive activities, considered "time hijackers", impacting their results.