“I know I should, but I just don’t have time to develop leaders.” I hear this statement all the time.
Why do “you know you should”?
First, you have a quantity problem. You don’t have enough leaders, so you need to invest time to identify, equip, and empower more.
Second, you have a quality problem. You already have some good leaders, but you know you need to invest time in their ongoing development to make them better.
You know that both investments help you accomplish your mission over the long haul, yet you still find yourself saying, “I don’t have time for leadership development.”
Since the first part of winning the battle is identifying the enemy, I want to show you four things that are robbing you of time for developing leaders.
I’m also going to share four solutions to take your time back. If you put ONE into practice this week, you will gain a wealth of time over the long haul for developing leaders.
Time-Robber #1: Busy Work
We are all prone to get sucked into the vortex of busy work. It’s responding to emails, reading a blog post, or doing impromptu “research” that we indulge because our minds are longing to be distracted. Or it’s getting pulled into conversations about decisions that don’t really require our opinion because our ego likes to be involved and to know as much about what’s going on as we can.
Pretty soon, an hour or two has gone by, and what do we have to show for it
Busy work is low-value activity that generates insignificant results. The tricky thing is that busy work makes you feel productive while at the same time killing your productivity. You get home at the end of your day and think, “Wow, I was busy all day, but I don’t feel like I moved the ball down the field at all.” Low-value activity is the greatest killer of high-value activity.
The solution: Retrain yourself to prioritize high-value activity in your workday schedule.
I put a 3-x-5 card on my bathroom cabinet so I would see it every single day. It reads: Will I be proactive or reactive with the first two hours of my day? This retrained my brain to focus on high-value activity rather than low-value activity.
We all have to do those “busy” things. But when you get in the habit of starting your day in a proactive mindset, you will be less tolerant of low-value activity and more creative about dealing with it.
Time-Robber #2: Things Others Can Do
The second thing that can rob you of leadership development time is doing things that someone else could do. Andy Stanley says, “Only do what only you can do.” So many leaders get involved in details, in day-to-day issues, in firefighting, and in micro-managing their staff, and as a result, they end up doing things that, realistically, other people could do.
If you’re a leader, you have to make sure things get done, but you don’t have to do them yourself. The more you do tactical activities, the less time you have for strategic ones, including development.
I was once in a season where I was feeling the pressure of doing too much as a senior pastor. One morning I was hit between the eyes by what Paul wrote in 2 Timothy 1:11 (NASB): “I was appointed [to be] a preacher and an apostle and a teacher.” Paul named the three things that he was called to do, and those were the things he focused on. Whenever Paul took a missionary journey, he had at least one person with him as his assistant to do the other things.
That day, after I read that, I sat down and I defined the top three things that I needed to be focused on as a senior pastor.
The solution: Write down a long list of things that you do; then identify the top three things that only you can do. Look at all the others on the list, and make yourself give it away to others on your team.
This will not only give you time for leadership development; it will also drive you to do leadership development.
Time-Robber #3: An Unplanned Week
At the beginning of every week, you and I get a new set of 168 hours. Most people don’t plan how they will block out that time, so it gets used randomly rather than strategically.
I’ve not met a leader yet who didn’t agree that leadership development is an important part of their role. But I’ve also not met many leaders who actually planned for leadership development in their week.
The solution: Get in the habit of planning your week on Saturday morning, Sunday evening, or early Monday. And make sure you include developing leaders as part of your plan.
Every single week, plan at least one of these four leadership development activities:
- A development session with your whole team
- A one-on-one meeting with someone who reports to you
- A time for you to watch one of your leaders in action so you can give them feedback
- A time for one or more of your leaders to watch you in action so you can discuss what they can learn from watching you
Time-Robber #4: Underused Passion
If you’re not looking at the potential of your people on a regular basis, then you’re missing opportunities to develop them.
Larry Bossidy, former CEO of Honeywell, took an hour every Sunday just to look at the people who reported to him. He would look at how they were doing, what they might need, and how they needed to be developed.
You might feel defeated already because even though you know you ought to look for people’s potential, you can’t find the motivation to do it consistently week in and week out.
The solution: Don’t try to manufacture a passion for leadership development. Tie leadership development to what you ARE passionate about.
If your passion is people, then look at the people on your team, and look at their potential, and begin to ask yourself, “What can I do to help them grow? What can I do to help make them better?”
On the other hand, if your passion is your area of ministry, let it fuel your energy for developing people to be more effective at accomplishing the mission of your department or your organization.
Make a list of everyone on your team. Every week, ask, “What can I do this week with these individuals to help maximize their strengths?” Or ask, “How can I develop these people so that we maximize our mission?”
So, of these four time-robbers, which one will you “bring to justice”? What ONE action step will you take to increase your time that you’re going to spend in leadership development in the coming week? Write it down and post it where you see it every day. Then put it into practice and invest your time in leaders for a big payoff down the line.
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