Prioritizing your work around what only you can do in your role is the hidden key to effectiveness.

Roles in organizations exist because certain duties and decisions belong to only that role.

There are five duties that only the CEO can do.

Doing too much multi-tasking at work?

Questioning your productivity?

Feeling like you don’t have enough time to do what’s really important?

The problem may not be with your time-management skills, but with knowing what only you can do.

As an executive coach working with Fortune 500 CEOs, there is one question I ask that stumps them. What can only the CEO do?

When you are the CEO, you have infinite degrees of freedom in how you spend your time. No one tells you what meetings you must attend (except Board Meetings), what projects you must work on, or when your day starts or ends. There are more people and projects demanding your time than hours in the week. So how do you decide what to prioritize, what requires your presence, and where your influence will make the biggest impact?

It starts by shifting the question from “How do I fit it all in?” to “What can only I do?”—and then aligning your behavior with the true demands of your role.

Leadership Prioritization: How Leaders Decide What Deserves Their Time

Leaders are quite often—and certainly at the C-level— the only ones in their respective positions, but all too often they haven’t thought through the activities that only the........

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