90 percent of your time on 10 percent of your people
"90 percent of my time is spent on 10 percent of the world." Colin Powell
Is this happening to you? Do you have a bad apple in the bunch demanding most of your attention? This can be a curse of leadership - trying to right a wrong in a person, spending time thinking about how to deal with an underperforming or misbehaving employee. It is not a good balance as a leader because those who are performing suffer. The greater team is ignored as you deal with the other one or few.
We used this phrase in the subject line often in the military to highlight this imbalance. It gave us pause. Were we missing an opportunity to care for and grow the next set of leaders for the Army - the good ones? Were we wasting time on a person or people who would never perform to the level needed by the organization? It was a proper question to ask.
I've always looked at poor performers as a leadership challenge - do the hard work to pull them up, make them productive members of the team instead of just casting them aside. But there is a limit. When they got 90% of me, I would think hard about how I was spreading my leadership across the greater team. I might choose to stop my investment in a person or people not deserving of it. I'd ask these questions.
Are they meeting me halfway? Have they done the work to improve their performance or repent from their misbehavior?
Is there potential for success? Can I realistically achieve what I want with an individual?
What is the cost to the greater team? How does my lack of attention impact them and our mission?
The answer to these questions would guide my action. Of course, I would seek the counsel of other leaders around me, especially the more seasoned ones and the ones who knew our bad apples better than I.
Take the hard steps to build people up. Put in the effort. It is your duty as a leader. But be cautious of spending 90% of your precious time on them. Consider 50%, at least for a while, then ask the questions I've asked above. Consider what is best for the team and the mission then lead!
Make it Personal!
Rob
Rob Campbell