How Leaders Can Focus and Prioritize In The Midst Of Uncertainty

The most important decision a leader makes is how to invest their most valuable resources: Time and Energy. A common challenge I see with leaders during these uncertain times is a lack of clarity on how to best focus and prioritize their time. Too often a leader’s natural inclination is to “take the bull by the horns and get things done” when they feel a loss of control, uncertainty, or threat. This directive leadership approach works well for resolving immediate and urgent situations but, if this style becomes the norm, leaders will burnout and their teams will become demotivated.

Leaders who bring a mindset that they “need to do it all” will not be able to focus and prioritize on their most strategic leadership responsibilities. The 4 Actions below will enable leaders to address their daily workload demands, while also building in sufficient time and energy to accomplish their most important goals.

1. Define the “In vs. On the Business”

A useful way for a leader to look at their leadership role is through the lens of In and On the Business. The “In the Business” activities are the day to day operational aspects of their leadership role. These are the urgent activities that come to the leader’s door and, if they let them, it will devour all available energy and time. The “On the Business” activities are the more strategic leadership responsibilities of their role and are focused on making sure their teams innovate and evolve to meet future challenges, build strategic relationships, create clarity of direction, development of new capacities, and establish a culture of trust and accountability. These are responsibilities that if the leader doesn’t fill then no one else on the team is capable of filling the void.

Each leadership role has its own continuum of On vs In the Business responsibilities that need to be performed. Effective leaders continually inventory how they are investing their time to make sure that their “On the Business” responsibilities ARE NOT stopping them from performing their “In the Business” responsibilities.

2. Delegate To Elevate

To create an environment where leaders can focus appropriate time On the Business, they must develop a lens that is always looking for opportunities to delegate the “In the Business” activities that others can and should be doing.

The first step is for the leader to assess how they are currently spending their time. Step two is identifying the activities that are unnecessarily taking their time from focusing on the more strategic aspects of their role. The Delegation Funnel below is a simple tool for leaders to assess what activities they should consider delegating and the type of support that is needed from them to ensure success.

3. Don’t Take The Monkey

Too often when employees come to leaders with routine challenges or problems the leader will immediately jump into owning and solving the employee’s problem for them. The classic Harvard Business Review article, Management Time, Whose Got the Monkey, illustrates this ongoing leadership challenge by defining the problem that an employee takes to their leader as "the monkey".

When a leader takes the lead in solving their employee’s challenges or issues, they have taken the responsibility away from the employee and now they own the responsibility (the monkey moved off the employee’s back and is now on the leader’s back).   Effective leaders have learned to let their employees take responsibility for resolving their ongoing issues through effective coaching. Leaders that coach their employees continually develop their abilities to problem solve, take appropriate actions, and accept accountability for resolving issues.  

A practical framework for coaching is the GROW model.  GROW is an acronym that helps guide leaders when needing to coach others towards resolving challenges or issues (See below). The primary skills for coaching are asking quality questions and listening.

Goals: Questions to uncover the issue and desired outcome (What do you want to accomplish? What is the primary issue or challenge?).

Reality: Questions to uncover their perspectives (Tell me more about the situation? What is getting in the way of success?).

Options: Questions to generate possibilities and solutions (What are your ideas for next steps? How do you think you should move forward?).

Way Forward: Questions to define actions and accountability (What are your next steps? How will you keep me informed of progress?).

COACHING TIP: Leading with questions does not stop a leader from sharing their experience, insight or direction. It just allows a leader to understand their employee’s perspectives first before making an informed choice about what input is needed to support the employee’s success.

4. Use Your No’s To Protect Yes’s

Too often in today’s urgent and complex world, leaders fall into the trap of having a mindset that everything is of critical importance and merits the highest priority. The unfortunate truth with this mindset is that if everything is a priority then nothing is a priority. A leader must learn to say NO and/or push back against the inevitable onslaught of urgent activities that will constantly derail them from focusing on the most important leadership activities.

This doesn’t mean that the leader isn’t responsive to urgent requests, it just is not at the expense of focusing on accomplishing their most important goals

What is getting in the way for you as a leader in elevating your focus and impact?

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Tony Gambill is the founder and principal for ClearView Leadership, an innovative leadership and talent development consulting firm based in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Tony brings more than 20 years of executive experience in leadership development, coaching, and team effectiveness within global for-profit, non-profit, technical, research, healthcare, government and higher educational industries.