Page 226 - HBR Leader's Handbook: Make an Impact, Inspire Your Organization, and Get to the Next Level

Leading Yourself 215

either a gray or blue suit so he could “pare down his decision making” to
focus his thinking on the truly substantive choices he would face during his
day. Listen to other effective executives confronted with this or that issue,
and you’ll frequently hear them say, “That’s not a decision I need to make,”
because either someone closer to the problem can handle it or the stakes
of the outcome don’t merit the trouble required to make a good judgment.
Try bringing the same discipline of appropriate prioritization to other de-
cisions and demands. Just because you’re a leader doesn’t mean you need
to decide everything yourself.

Seek energy-renewing work and activity
In recent years, researchers have increasingly focused on the importance
of personal energy in leadership and also the collective energy of organiza-
tions more broadly. Though such things may seem intangible, the vim and
vigor—both physical and psychological—that you bring to a task, and that
you create among others, can dramatically affect the results you achieve, as
Tony Schwartz and Catherine McCarthy describe in the classic HBR arti-
cle “Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time.” Not surprisingly, most effective
leaders work to build rituals or activities into their schedules that renew
their energy and set a tempo for others to follow.
For many leaders, that might begin, for example, by pursuing a disci-
pline of daily exercise, regardless of one’s agenda or travel (that’s the case
for John Martin, Stan McChrystal, Anne Mulcahy, and many others we’ve
worked with), or something more simple, such as meditating in the first
hour before your office officially opens, practicing regimes of mindfulness,
or a regularly taking a walk in the sunshine at lunchtime.
Some strategies that build and renew energy for leaders stem from
choosing—or designing—your work. If certain tasks or kinds of meetings
especially drag you down, consider if you can delegate them or move them
out of your schedule (admittedly, the answer is sometime no, but at least
ask yourself). Roger Ferguson of TIAA gave up some senior administrative
tasks, not only because he knew he wasn’t as good at those as he was at
more strategic work, but also because it directed too much of his energy
away from the areas where he felt he could have the biggest impact. Con-
sider also building a schedule that always allows you to do at least some