Your Urgency Is Made Up—2 Steps to Being a Better Leader

Most of what you think is urgent isn’t urgent.

You don’t need to reply to that email.
You don’t need an update on that in the next 10 mins.
You don’t need to solve that problem on this call.

After working with hundreds of leaders I’ve noticed a pattern.

The most important and hardest problems never get dealt with.
Instead, what’s urgent gets dealt with instead of what is important.

And often why something is urgent is because the leaders think it’s urgent.

Partly this is due to how much founders and entrepreneurs have to get done.
Hell, it seems like we’ve ALL got a lot of things to get done.

The impact of this is that everything seems urgent.
Because you’re behind.
On everything.

So what’s the antidote?

It has two parts:

1) Space

Almost every leader that I’ve coached does better when they have space to step back and reflect. They begin to see the big problems and start dealing with them.

But creating space requires courage, it requires boundaries, it requires commitment.

If you want to be a better leader get ruthless with creating space.

2) Start Distinguishing Fear From Urgency

The other thing that makes leaders get urgent is if they’re anxious. They are worried that something is going to go wrong so they go looking for it. And like a dog hunting for a bone, they won’t give up until they’ve found something.

If you can simply notice when you’re afraid, you can work with your fear. It requires emotional intelligence and honesty, but it’s life-changing.

That’s it. If you just do these two things your leadership will get better and your urgency will go away. Ok maybe not completely but it will get less.

And the result will be a more grounded trustable version of you.