Latest / Leadership Sandbox: Strategies to Uplevel Workplace Communication, Team Collaboration, and Your Corporate Culture / If Everything Is a Priority, You're Not Leading. You're Reacting | Episode 147

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If Everything Is a Priority, You're Not Leading. You're Reacting | Episode 147 · Leadership Sandbox: Strategies to Uplevel Workplace Communication, Team Collaboration, and Your Corporate Culture

• 0:00
  Hey, welcome into the Leadership Sandbox. I'm Tammy J. Bond and excited to talk to you today about your priorities.
• 0:06
  You know, if everything leader is a priority, you're not leading. You are just reacting. And I want to start today with a sentence I hear from leaders all the time.
• 0:17
  Well, Tam, everything's a priority. No, actually, it isn't. Everything might feel
• 0:24
  You may have 17 people asking for your time, asking you for something before you've even finished that first cup of coffee in the morning. They're knocking at your door.
• 0:34
  But everything cannot be a priority. You've heard me say it before: an emergency for you does not a fire for me make. I'm going to challenge you with that today.
• 0:45
  You may not have a workload problem. You may have a leadership judgment problem.
• 0:49
  Because one of the responsibilities of leadership is deciding what gets your time and attention and what doesn't.
• 0:55
  And somewhere along the way, we've started confusing responsiveness with leadership. I blame it on the BlackBerry from the 90s, to be honest with you.
• 1:04
  But listen, I want you to understand this. Confusing responsiveness with leadership is not the same thing. Responsiveness versus leadership.
• 1:10
  We want to get underneath what's actually happening and causing you to feel like you've got to be on 24-7 and have answers all the time at any given moment.
• 1:21
  Because it's not just something that I'm seeing with the leaders that I work with. There are reports and studies out there.
• 1:28
  Gallup in 2026, their state of the global workplace found that managers, let me make sure I get this right, found that manager engagement has dropped nine percentage points since 2022.
• 1:38
  And now we're at a low of 22% of managers globally are actually engaged at work.
• 1:44
  Now
• 1:49
  Larger spans of control and spheres of complexity and changing expectations.
• 1:53
  Gallup also found that 50% of CHROs aren't confident that managers have an ability or of their ability to guide employees' use of AI.
• 2:01
  Even while organizations increasingly expect managers to make
• 2:07
  We're adding another major responsibility to managers who are already struggling under the pressures and the responsibilities that they have presently.
• 2:14
  And the response becomes just do more. Answer faster. Attend more meetings. Yet another meeting. Handle the fire right now. Don't wait. Implement the new initiative quickly.
• 2:23
  Come on. We're behind schedule. Coach your people up or out. Hit your numbers. Be strategic. and of course, then there's this one. Don't forget.
• 2:31
  Just take care of yourself too. Make sure, you know, family comes first, as long as it doesn't get in my way. That's not prioritization. That's accumulation.
• 2:41
  And here's where I want to make it a little uncomfortable for you. Because it's easy to say, blame the organization. And sometimes the organization absolutely is at fault.
• 2:50
  They can, they deserve the blame. We'll say it that way. But leaders, there's another piece. There's another piece of it that belongs to us.
• 2:59
  We have become addicted to responsiveness in our devices and our access to everything. The email arrives, we answer it, whether it's on our watch or whether it's on our phone.
• 3:09
  You get a Teams notification, a Slack channel, you're checking it. Someone says, Got a minute? Sure, I have one. That's usually the answer.
• 3:17
  Calendar invitation, except
• 3:26
  Did you lead anything? There's a reason responsiveness feels good. It gives you completion. Somebody needed something and you could provide it. Problem solved, check the box.
• 3:35
  Strategic leadership, though, isn't nearly as satisfying in that moment of checking the box. Thinking doesn't ding. Did you hear that? Thinking doesn't ding.
• 3:43
  Prioritization doesn't give you a notification. And saying not now can make you feel like you're failing or failing someone. So we keep reacting.
• 3:51
  Doing more, doing it faster, picking up the rate of speed. Here's what I want you to start separating out.
• 3:58
  Urgent is about time, important is about consequence, priority is about choice. And do you know how to just discern the difference? They're not synonyms. Say that right, Tim.
• 4:08
  Something can be urgent, yes, and not particularly important.
• 4:11
  Something can be incredibly important and not urgent, which is exactly why it keeps getting pushed to next Tuesday, next week. And a priority?
• 4:19
  Well, priorities require a decision. And when you call something a priority, you're not merely saying that it matters. You're saying this matters more than something else.
• 4:28
  If you haven't decided what loses, you haven't prioritized anything. You just made a to do list. And here is the tool that I want to give you.
• 4:37
  And everything's moving at the speed of whoosh this week. I want you to stop before you automatically react and ask these three questions. Ready? One, two, three?
• 4:46
  We're gonna go there. What happens if this waits? Not does somebody want it? What actually happens if this waits? Does the customer relationship suffer? Does the revenue move?
• 4:56
  Does the goalpost? Change? Does somebody become unsafe? Does another person become blocked? Does a commitment get broken? Does someone get overlooked?
• 5:03
  Or does someone simply have to wait? Because those aren't all the same thing. The second question I want you to ask yourself is does this require me at my level?
• 5:14
  leaders, please start asking this question and quickly. Does this require me? Not, can I do it? Of course you can do it.
• 5:22
  That's what got you there in the position that you're in. And that's half the problem. Does this actually require you? Why o you?
• 5:30
  Your authority, your judgment, your relationship, right? Your level of expertise. Does it actually require you or have you become the organizational easy button?
• 5:38
  Because everyone knows that you'll handle it. Just give it to you. That's not leadership leverage, that's dependency. And that's where it gets sticky.
• 5:46
  And number three, the number third, the third question I want you to ask is what am I willing to move for this? This may be actually perhaps my favorite one.
• 5:56
  Because every yes consumes something. It consumes your time, your attention, your energy, another commitment.
• 6:01
  So if this becomes the priority, then you ask, what am I intentionally deprioritizing? to make room for this new priority.
• 6:08
  If the answer is nothing, you haven't changed priorities. You've just added more work. You've added more work to your day. So here's the move I want you to make.
• 6:18
  Because here's what this looks like in practice. Your boss sends a request at 10 a.m. Tuesday morning. Instead of immediately rearranging your entire day, get curious.
• 6:27
  Happy to take this on. I'm currently committed to X project and it's due by Wednesday. And Y is due by Thursday. So where does this sit relative to those?
• 6:37
  Here's another way I like to say it. I'm happy to help.
• 6:41
  But I'm just curious, of these five priorities, which one are you okay with me moving off to next week so I can accomplish this this week? That's leadership.
• 6:51
  Your employee comes to you with a problem, let's say, and instead of immediately solving it for them, what have you considered? That would be my question. I would ask them.
• 7:01
  What decision do you think needs to be made? What is it that you need for resources to accomplish this? That's leadership.
• 7:09
  And I don't say what do you need from me because that makes it too easy on the other person to give it to you versus and you get to take it on. No, no.
• 7:20
  I want to know what resources they need. Someone wants another meeting, let's say. Before accepting the invite, what decisions are we trying to make in the meeting?
• 7:30
  Every meeting ought to start with that. You might be amazed at how many meetings suddenly become emails.
• 7:36
  Because another meeting when an email could have been sent is just a lot of waste of time and resources. And here's the part that organizations I think need to hear the most.
• 7:47
  You can't tell leaders, focus on our strategic priorities, and then reward them for responding instantly to every interruption.
• 7:53
  Culture isn't what appears on the strategic plan. Culture is what gets rewarded when priorities collide. And if the person who answers
• 8:02
  at night email, and they're celebrated for their willingness to work at all hours.
• 8:07
  If every executive request automatically becomes urgent, and if nobody is allowed to challenge a deadline or question the why, if the organizational can organization continually adds initiatives without stopping anything.
• 8:17
  You don't have a prioritization problem. You've built a reaction culture. And your managers are exactly behaving as the system trained them to behave.
• 8:25
  So, this is where you get to step in with claiming the reality. We talked about it last week as well, because claiming reality becomes incredibly practical.
• 8:34
  And here's what's important: it's not about what's loudest, not who's most senior, not what's sitting at the top of the pile of the inbox. It's what moves the work.
• 8:44
  Then own your impact. Where have I trained people to believe everything comes through me? And map it out, map the system.
• 8:51
  What are we rewarding that keeps creating behavior we're complaining about? Because overwhelmed leadership isn't always solved with another productivity tool.
• 8:59
  Sometimes we have to challenge the behavior that keeps creating the
• 9:06
  When the next urgent thing lands in your lap, don't automatically react to it. Ask, what happens if this waits? Does this actually require me?
• 9:14
  What am I willing to move for this? And if you're leading other leaders, give them permission to ask those very same questions of you too.
• 9:23
  Because your job as a leader isn't to prove how much you can carry. Your job is to know what is worth carrying in the first place.
• 9:32
  And that, my friends, is true leadership in the sandbox. Hey, thanks for joining me today. I want to encourage you to like, share, follow our podcast, The Leadership Sandbox.
• 9:42
  Send it to a friend that you think could really truly
• 9:50
  It's something that you grow into. And you took time to grow into leadership and to leading others well by leading yourself well first in the sandbox today.
• 9:59
  I want to acknowledge and celebrate you for that. Thanks for joining me. Make it a great day. We'll see you next week in the Leadership Sandbox. God bless you.