If you’re a manager or aspiring leader, waiting for someone else to "discover" you is a slow and frustrating strategy. The leaders who move up are usually the ones who quietly decide, "My development is my job", then act on it day by day.
Your goal is simple: use your time, your team, and your learning so intentionally that people can’t help but notice the difference.
Make your time work for you
Productivity isn’t about cramming more into your calendar; it’s about making room for what actually matters. A few small shifts can give you back hours of meaningful work time each week.
- Treat meetings like investments: Only attend or schedule them when there’s a clear purpose, an agenda, and decisions or actions you’re driving toward.
- Protect your focus time: Block out concentrated work sessions and silence email, chat, and notifications so you can finish real work instead of juggling half‑done tasks.
- Move the long game forward: Think of your big goals like a creative project. Add a little progress every day, and you’ll be amazed at how much you’ve built over a few months.
Free your team to do their best work
One of the fastest ways to get noticed as a leader is to make your team more effective. When your people have more time and fewer obstacles, your results start to stand out.
- Go after blockers: Ask what’s slowing people down, then fix what you can, including any delays that might be coming from you.
- Give time back: Cut low-value meetings, trim invite lists, and stop producing reports or data no one uses so your team can focus on real priorities.
- Upgrade the "boring stuff": Look for tools, processes, and smart use of AI that reduce repetitive work, and drop anything that doesn’t actually help.
- Tap the brain trust: Treat your team as your idea lab and invite them to suggest improvements, experiments, and better ways of working.
- Address toxic behaviour early: Even high performers can damage the culture if they drain trust and morale, so deal with issues instead of working around them.
Grow into your best leadership self
With your time and your team working smarter, you can focus on your own growth as a leader. This is where you shift from "good manager" to "intentional, memorable leader".
- Own your learning: Seek out courses, books, and stretch assignments, including volunteer roles that let you practise new skills in a lower‑risk environment.
- Study other leaders: Notice what different leaders do well (and not so well) and build your own list of "steal this" and "never do that" behaviours.
- Debrief your wins and misses: After big moments, reflect on what worked, what didn’t, and what you’ll do differently next time so every experience moves you forward.
- Design your leadership model: Define the kind of leader you want to be, then experiment with different approaches and keep the ones that fit your strengths and values.
Your next small step
You don’t need a new title or a big budget to take control of your leadership development.
You just need to start making deliberate choices about your time, your team, and your growth.
Pick one idea from above, try it this week, and let the results nudge you toward your next leap in leadership.
