[INTERNAL MEMO]
What Balance Requires
“Balance” comes up in almost every 1:1 I have.
How to get more of it. How to stop feeling stretched. How to juggle 39,480,248 things at once.
I struggled with this myself for a LONG time, because I thought being a good leader meant saying yes to everyone and working harder than absolutely anybody else to get it all done.
It wasn't until later that I realized balance has much less to do with effort and much more to do with deciding your priorities and being absolutely freaking ruthless about them, including telling people when their initiative doesn't fall within those priorities.
Think about it: your time as a leader is some of the most important time in this company. It would be STRANGE to let anyone but you decide where it goes, right? Or to not consciously decide?
Here's what I've come to believe: most of the discontent we see and experience in our jobs isn't from choosing wrong priorities. It’s from people never actually choosing at all.
Time is finite. Every day, something gets your best hours and something else gets whatever's left. That's just math. The only question is whether you decided which is which, on purpose, or the decision got made for you (by whatever was loudest in your inbox or calendar).
Most people drift instead of choosing. The urgent thing wins by default. Everyone else's priorities become your agenda, and then you feel like you failed at balance when the real problem is you never said, “Of everything on my plate, this matters MOST, RIGHT NOW.”
Not deciding is still a decision. It just has the luxury of needing no owner, LOL.
Your team is watching how you handle priorities, not what you tell them. If you drift and say yes to everything, that's what they'll copy. If you're clear about what matters most and decisive about what's intentionally not getting done, they'll copy that instead.
Balance isn't holding everything at equal weight. Something is ALWAYS heavier. Good leadership means being honest about what's heaviest right now, and making sure your team knows it's a decision, not an accident or afterthought.
What to do:
Claim Your Priority Out Loud. Tell your team what matters most this week, not just in your head. If everything's a priority, nothing is.
Let The Rest Visibly Fall. Once you've chosen the priority, let lower items slip on purpose, and say so, so it reads as a call you made, not something that got lost.
Ask Your Team The Right Question. When someone looks stretched, don't ask how to get them more balanced. Ask if they've actually decided what matters most this week, or if everything is just fighting for their attention equally.
Revisit Weekly, If You Need To. Priorities shift fast right now. Reclaim what matters most at the start of each week rather than assuming last week's still holds.
The goal isn't balance. It's a clear choice about what matters most, right now, and then putting the rest on the back burner.
— Leila
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