The Big 3: How Strategic Leaders Protect Their Focus

Focusing on the right work has always been one of the most essential skills for leaders. In the environment we’re operating in right now, it matters more than ever.

Demands keep rising. Decisions have to be made faster. Teams are leaner. AI has increased capability and noise. And the leaders I’m working with continue to be asked to deliver bigger results with fewer people, budget and time to think.

Photo by Vlada Karpovich

The question I ask my clients more than any other these days is a simple one: Are you focusing on the most critical work? When the answer is yes, leaders accelerate their results and impact, even under pressure. When the answer is no (and it often is) they run hard, often with no end in sight.

The pattern shows up in different forms. Some leaders are overloaded with work that’s urgent but not important. Others are working hard on something without clearly defining it first. In other words, they’re deep into the how before fully agreeing on the what. Either way, the capacity gets eaten up on activity that isn’t moving anything forward, and the work that would move things forward gets pushed farther and farther out.

Being an effective leader does not mean working more hours than everyone else. It’s about getting clear on what really matters in your role, and building the discipline to protect time for it. Focusing on the right work is also one of the Core Strategies on our New Lens® leadership development platform, because I’ve seen, again and again, that it shifts how leaders show up under pressure. If you only have time to focus on one area of leadership development right now, this is the one that drives everything else.

Stressed Leaders vs. Strategic Leaders

In my coaching work, I’ve found that many leaders fall into a couple of broad categories:

Stressed leaders get pulled into urgency. Their calendars fill with meetings that could have been emails, decisions that could have been delegated and reactions to things that would probably have resolved themselves. Over time, they fall into destructive patterns like micromanaging, avoidance and overwork.

Strategic leaders are busy, but they deliberately protect what gets their deep attention. They focus long-term. They delegate with intention. They stay curious under pressure. And they guard their time and energy for the important work that uses their unique capabilities.

The shift from stressed to strategic doesn’t require more hours in the day. It simply comes down to a few specific moves.

Identify Your Big 3

Your Big 3 are the three areas where you can have the biggest impact on your organization, given your role and strengths.

If you’re like many high performers, you often overlook your strengths. You might set the bar so high for yourself that you stop noticing what you actually bring to the table and why it matters. But as you focus on the next challenge or opportunity, don’t lose sight of how you are already making a difference. Start by identifying your top three strengths and then go a step further: Define the “so what” of each strength: What does it enable you to do that others can’t easily do? How does it create tangible value?

Let’s say approachability is one of your strengths. The “so what” might be that people openly tell you what’s really going on—which means you surface issues earlier, solve problems before they become crises and build the kind of trust that makes teams perform at a higher level.

Put Your Big 3 Into Action

Once you identify your Big 3, determine what percentage of time should be spent on each and start making shifts. Then look at your calendar for insights. What does it tell you about how you currently spend your time? I am always amazed at how much you can notice just by pausing for a moment. 

Next, look for opportunities to drive more alignment with your Big 3. What’s getting in the way of your Big 3?  Create capacity as needed. Maybe there’s a project you could delegate to a team member that could also be a development opportunity for them. Or perhaps you bow out of a low-value meeting or try to reduce the frequency of the meeting. (The other attendees will probably be 100% behind you!)

As you free up time, start adding dedicated blocks for focused work in your Big 3 and schedule it for when your energy is naturally highest. For most of us, that’s in the morning. Shut out email, calls, Slack and other distractions as much as possible. Each interruption costs you from eight to 25 minutes of productivity.

Aligning your calendar with your Big 3 isn’t a one-time exercise. The leaders I’ve worked with have found that taking even 15 minutes of reflection per week helps them stay strategic instead of slipping into reactive mode.

Align Others Around Your Big 3

Don’t keep your Big 3 to yourself. Share them with others.

Start with your manager. The two of you should agree on your Big 3, what they are and how much time to allocate to them. Once you’re aligned, make a habit of regularly sharing how you’re driving results in these areas. Take at least five minutes at the end of each week to notice what you accomplished and the impact. Remember, part of your manager’s job is to maximize your potential, and they can more easily do that when they can see how you’re creating value.

Your team members also need to know your Big 3, to help them understand what’s important and why. If you don’t explain the why, they’ll fill in the blanks themselves.  To take it a step further, help each of your direct reports identify their own Big 3 and guide them in making the necessary shifts in how they spend their time.

Just Get Started

This week, I want to challenge you to identify your Big 3. You can’t afford not to. It’s a critical first step in turning stressed leaders into strategic leaders (whether we’re talking about you or your team members). We’ve been down this path with so many leaders over the past 18 years, and can give you perspective, guidance and support along the way. Just get in touch to learn more.

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Don’t wait for performance to drop before taking action. Discover how the New Lens® platform helps organizations support managers with bite-sized, actionable learning—built for today’s fast-paced, high-stress environments.

What Leadership Skills Should Training Address?

As you continue to navigate a lean work environment full of change, are you looking ahead to next year to see how to develop your team’s leadership skills? Choosing a leadership training solution can feel like “one more thing” to tackle, so I’m sharing a series of articles to help make the process a little easier.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

In the first article, I shared some questions you can use to uncover what your team needs from leadership development training. This week, I’ll focus on helping you clarify the outcomes for your training solution. Remember, the program you choose doesn’t have to solve everything that’s going on with your team, but it should address your top two or three concerns. Below are common leadership challenges we hear about. Which ones affect your team?

Reducing Stress

I don’t have to tell you that everyone is busier than ever these days. Perhaps your team, like many others, is stretched thin because of staffing cuts or hiring freezes. According to findings of the Future Forum Pulse survey released in October, burnout is still on the rise, and 43% of professionals feel burned out. As a coach and facilitator who specializes in working with high-performing women, I was especially struck that the survey found 32% more burnout among women compared with men.

To be effective, leadership development solutions must address stress and burnout. Reducing your team’s stress burden will make it easier for all of you to deal with any other ongoing issues.

Prioritizing the Right Work

In a survey by Paychex Inc., 43% of respondents said a lack of time management skills is holding back their career advancement. As we navigate through uncertainty and change with lean teams, it’s no wonder that time management is difficult for many professionals.

To quickly gauge whether your team uses time effectively, ask yourself whether each member spends most of their time on their “Big 3”: the top three areas where they can have the biggest impact on the business. If not, aligning their capacity with what drives results should be a focal point in your leadership training program.

Improving Communication

Surveys consistently reinforce the importance of their employees’ communication skills, and leaders themselves say it is one of the most important leadership competencies. 

But, for many teams, the rise of remote work has introduced new communication challenges. Issues range from miscommunication over email and chat to overcommunication by managers who keep tight reins on remote workers to not knowing how to manage the volume of communication. The leadership training solution you select should reflect the new realities of workplace communication.

Developing Stronger Relationships

Closely related to communication is the ability to nurture productive relationships at work. Even before the pandemic, many high performers fell into the trap of keeping their heads down to focus on results at the expense of relationships.

Today, we have to be even more deliberate about relationship building. Research shows that employees find it harder to form a sense of connection with their colleagues in a hybrid workplace. And that impacts everything from collaboration to employee well-being. An effective leadership training solution should guide employees in how to build relationships with remote employees. If a training program involves peer learning or affinity groups, that in itself can strengthen relationships.

Engaging and Retaining Employees

One of the most important outcomes of a leadership development program isn’t necessarily part of the curriculum. Simply offering training and development is a big step toward keeping your employees engaged and retaining them at your company. In a 2019 survey, 94% of employees said they would stay at their company longer if it invested in helping them learn. A study that year by Sitel Group found that 92% of U.S. employees said that learning increases their engagement and motivation at work. 

What’s Ahead in This Series

As you consider the outcomes I’ve mentioned today, what is most important for your organization? With this in hand, you’ll be one step closer to selecting the leadership development solution that’s right for your team. In the final article of this series, I’ll talk about what effective leadership training looks like. In the meantime, I invite you to explore one of our newest leadership development solutions, the award-winning app New Lens. New Lens is designed to teach your team members how to manage their capacity, focus on the right work, communicate with impact - in a way that fosters connection and fits into their busy schedules. We would love to see if it can help you. Schedule your demo now.

Look for the Opportunities Right in Front of You

I can’t tell you how often I hear people complain that they don’t have time to focus on something important to them. There can be several reasons they don’t dedicate the time or make the effort. For some, fear holds them back. For others, the sense of urgency isn’t there. But in many cases, people simply do not see the opportunities in front of them to make progress on what they want.

So, I work with my clients to develop ways to achieve their goals without adding layers of work—which is key to getting the ball rolling. Below are three simple steps you can take. Think about each of these in the context of what you really want to accomplish.

1. Review what is already on your calendar.

To get started, look 1-2 weeks out on your schedule to see who you have meetings or calls with. You may find that you will be in front of important people with whom you want to cultivate stronger relationships or get visibility. By looking at your schedule ahead of time and in the context of your goals, you can begin to set the stage for making progress on what you’d like to accomplish.

2. Think about how you can make the most of that time.

Next, think about how you can make the most of the opportunity whether it’s a meeting, phone call, or something else. For example, I have a client who has a strong internal network but wants to expand her external network. With her work and travel schedule, she doesn’t have much time to participate in networking events. She’d been struggling to make time for quite a while.

When we looked at her calendar, she noticed that she had a two-day meeting coming up. It was part of a prominent leadership program for which she had been selected and it included leaders from other organizations. So, we worked together to establish 1-2 goals for this meeting. She identified two individuals she wanted to cultivate relationships with and developed concrete actions steps to do just that. Ultimately, she got more out of the program and made progress on her networking goal without adding any time to her schedule.

3. Set up a structure to help you.

Finally, make this process a habit for yourself. If the thought of looking out a week or two in advance sounds overwhelming, you can still make the most of any single opportunity sitting in front of you.

Before each meeting or call you attend, take a couple of minutes to ask yourself:

• How do I want to show up (i.e., what impression do I want to leave? How can I reinforce my brand?)?

• In this forum, how can I also make progress on one of my goals or priorities?

• What one action will I take in this meeting or call?

My clients can attest that this really works! So, set aside time to strategically look at your calendar and set goals for your upcoming meetings and calls. As a first step, pick just one meeting in the next week to try this approach. If you’re really adventurous, block 15-20 minutes on your calendar each week to strategize about the following week’s meetings. You will show up with much more intention and may be surprised at the results you get.