From my experience, one leadership challenge many face is learning and understanding their own limitations. As a first-time leader, you may have the desire to make big changes and do everything you feel a leader should do. Shortly after you start trying to make every change you envision, you will realize that you can’t do everything all at once. It is because you don’t know how to use your leadership resources effectively.
Leadership Resources
There are many leadership resources available to each leader. Their leadership resources, however, are in the form of human, natural, or capital resources. To use those resources effectively, you must do the following two things.
Prioritization
Because you can’t do everything right now, you must understand what needs to be done now and what can be done later. You must prioritize effectively. One thing that really helps me to prioritize is writing a to-do list. The list shows “what” I need to. From there I use the quadrant system taught by Stephen R. Covey in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People to create my priority list. I separate out what is important and what is not, versus what is urgent and what is not.
I really like lists, so once I have everything in its own quadrant, I adjust my to-do list to be in line with my quadrants. This really helps me to work effectively.
Delegation
Because you can’t personally do everything, you must determine what needs to be done by you and what can be done by some of your leadership resources. When something needs to be done, but it does not need to be done by you, you can delegate it to your leadership resources.
When you delegate, look at the strengths, weaknesses, and abilities of your leadership resources. Create a delegation strategy that leverages the strengths. By doing that, you will get the most important things done.
As a leader, prioritization and delegation are keys to the successful use of your leadership resources. By learning to use them effectively, your leadership will improve and you will be more likely to reach your goals.
How do you use prioritization and delegation effectively? How has it helped you to be an effective leader? Please share your thoughts and experiences in the comments section below!
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