Maximizing Your Most Valuable Leadership Asset
August 10, 2023 | By David M. Wagner
What would you describe as your most valuable asset as a leader?
Is it your experience? Technical expertise? Organizational skills? Emotional intelligence?
No matter your particular skills, your most valuable asset is that of any leader: your time.
You can develop skills and attributes. But your time is a fixed quantity.
Magnified Effort
Where you invest your time as a leader has a magnifying effect.
Your team feeds off your attention, support, advice, and direction. Time you spend with them breeds motivation and greater alignment between their efforts and your strategic goals.
It’s like dropping a pebble in a pond – the ripples of your invested time will carry on long after you’ve left the room.
The same is true for the time you spend building your organization’s capacity and resources. The bigger your pond, the further the ripples will carry.
And don’t forget yourself. Developing your own capacity increases the size of every pebble. Rejuvenating your energy restores your pebble supply.
Set Intentions
There’s only so much of you to go around. Do you pay attention to where you spend your time?
There is no one “right” mix of priorities – that depends on your position, your organization, and even the needs of the current moment.
Maximize the value of your time by spending at least one pebble contemplating where to invest the others. What is it your organization needs most right now? More motivation or strategic direction? More resources? Better infrastructure? Clearer roles and responsibilities?
All these topics are important, but you can set priorities by staying abreast of what your organization needs from you.
Match Time with Priorities
Intending to allocate your time to those priorities is one thing. Practicing time management is another.
After setting your intentions and monitoring how you’re really spending your time, the hardest step is adjusting how you spend your time.
My coaching clients often find that a particular type of task or activity dominates each week. Here are three techniques to reset the balance:
1. Delegate. First, get things off your plate that don’t need to be there. Can you train other firefighters, instead of fighting every fire yourself? Who else can do the work? What could you outsource – trading resources for even more precious time?
2. Do less. Say “no” to asks that fall outside your priorities, or add conditions to your “yeses” – offer to do a part, do it later, or to be an advisor rather than a doer. Timebox tasks and decide up front to accept whatever you accomplish as “good enough.”
3. Go faster. Identify and correct underlying inefficiencies. These can be psychological (e.g., anxiety, perfectionism), technical (using the wrong tool), or structural (suboptimal processes or distractions).
Your time is your most valuable asset. Spend it wisely. If you’re ready to invest a pebble in improving your own efficiency, schedule a free consultation to talk about how coaching can help you maximize your time – and your value to your organization.