Time… Time is one of the most important resources that we as leadership have. There is a huge challenge in determining what we should be investing our time in and what we should be putting to the sidelines or delegating to someone else.
What is your time worth?
This can be a very difficult question to answer especially if you are new into a leadership role. Your organization has given your time a dollar worth but is that really what you think your time is valued at? It is a lot more difficult to put a value on your time when you are in leadership than when you are able to tie a productivity number to it like revenue or contacts. You have to sit down and weigh the time that you have to spend with your people, your family and doing anything else that you may enjoy doing (like me and my video games).
When I first moved into leadership I felt that I needed to invest the same amount of time into each of my employees to make things fair across the board. I quickly learned that this was not the best way to do things. Some of my agents took longer to learn things while others would pick it up extremely fast, some agents wanted to spend large amounts of time in one on one settings and others just wanted to be left to do their daily tasks. After a few months I began to learn who I needed to spend time with and who was self sufficient and I only needed to maintain their skills. I began investing different amounts of time into different agents based on my observations and something amazing happened, they all started performing better!
After another month I found that my agents that only needed to be “maintained” only needed subtle encouragement as well as our standard bi-weekly sit down which was at about 30 minutes. This allowed me to change my investment strategy and begin investing time in the agents that either needed more assistance to get better or to the agents that have shown me leadership qualities and the desire to develop as a leader themselves.
One of the biggest suggestions that I can give you on this subject is to try investing your time in different areas. If you have a project that can be delegated to one of your agents or your peers then do it. Find the time to invest in some of your agents that show potential in leadership. The more time you invest in these people the more they will be able to take of your plate and the more time you will have to develop others. It is a great circle just like a clock, the more you do the more you gain.
I have a challenge for everyone reading this. Take a step back and look at the time that you are investing in each of the people that work for you. Is this time being used properly? Are you gaining something from your interactions? Are they? If you are not, those interactions are not worth having and there is no since to continue investing that time. Kick me an email or a comment and let me know what you have discovered about the time you invest, maybe you can free up a few hours to play a game with me 😉
Jared