https://www.psychologytoday.com/sg/blog/blindspotting/202602/why-leaders-struggle-with-prioritization-not-time-management#:~:text=Leadership%20effectiveness%20isn%27t%20about%20doing%20more%2C%20it%27s%20about%20doing%20what%20matters

Why Leaders Struggle With Prioritization, Not Time Management

Leadership effectiveness isn't about doing more, it's about doing what matters.

Posted February 23, 2026 |  Reviewed by Monica Vilhauer Ph.D.

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Key points

• 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 person in that role can do. The CEO, for instance, is the person who must set corporate strategy. If you are a CEO and you are not spending significant time on strategy, you are failing in your role. Yet many leaders spend their time doing what they like to do, what they think they are good at, or what the previous person in their role did. Over time, these default behaviors can become a costly prioritization blindspot.

When helping CEOs prioritize, I start by asking for their top five priorities. Then we look at their calendar from the past three months to see where their time actually went. More often than not, fewer than 50 percent of their hours reflect what they say matters most.

Intuitively, we all know why this happens. We are distracted from what we should be doing because, in the moment, something seems urgent, and if we don’t attend to it, a crisis will emerge. Or, we are enticed into doing things we enjoy and are good at; or we are convinced that a particular problem requires our special expertise. I worked with one CEO who loved to sweep in and solve difficult problems so much so that he proudly displayed a fireman’s helmet in his office. Although this was his superpower, it also became a blind spot when it pulled him away from the work only he could do.

Leadership Roles and Responsibilities: What Only You Can Do

Roles on a company’s organizational chart exist because only the person in that role is authorized to make certain decisions or do certain activities. If there aren’t special duties assigned to a role, then that role doesn’t need to exist and can be removed from the organizational chart.

Thinking about what only the person in the role can do is a riveting exercise in focus. It eliminates our likes and dislikes, our unique expertise, and our concerns about societal or career expectations. It focuses our attention on what is truly critical to success in our job.

What Only the CEO Can Do

I have found that there are 5 things that only the CEO can do. CEOs who filter the demands on their time through these 5 tasks are efficient and effective. And if the CEO isn’t doing these 5 duties, then either they aren’t getting done, or the wrong person is working on them.

1. Hiring and Firing Senior Team Members. This seems obvious, but I have worked with many organizations where the CEO, upon arrival, accepted the team that was in place, or senior team selection and recruitment was delegated to HR. Senior team members must not only be subject matter experts, but they must also complement the CEO. A self-aware CEO knows their own gifts and their gaps and selects team members accordingly.
2. Owning the Strategy. CEOs are accountable for the decisions that are made about how, when, and where corporate resources are allocated and which opportunities to pursue and threats to mitigate.
3. Ensuring Fidelity to Priorities. Employees need to know what they should be working on, and the CEO is the ultimate authority to rein in the profusion of priorities.
4. Championing the Culture. CEOs know that culture makes or breaks corporate success, and they need to be continually alert to how they use the power of their position in support of cultural initiatives.
5. Owning Key Relationships. Board members, significant customers, investors, and suppliers only want to talk to the CEO. These relationships can’t be delegated and must be attended to with care and sophistication.

Once the CEO is clear on these 5 duties, they can use the following framework to prioritize their time.

• What do they own?
• What do they own in partnership with another?
• What should they delegate?
• What should they monitor?
• What should they actively ignore?

What Can Only You Do?

Whatever your role, there are things that only your role can do. Do you know what they are? What is your role in supporting the company’s strategy and priorities? What is your role in representing and championing corporate culture? What key relationships do you own, and which ones could be delegated to others? Are you clear on what decisions only you in your role are authorized to make? Are you making decisions that should be made by those you manage?

Leadership effectiveness is less about doing more and more about doing what truly matters. When you align your time with the things only you can do, you avoid blind spots and lead with intention instead of impulse.

For a deeper look at how prioritization blindspots impact executive leadership, read this case study.