SmartPulse — our weekly nonscientific reader poll in SmartBrief on Leadership — tracks feedback from more than 190,000 business leaders. We run the poll question each week in our e-newsletter.
Last week, we asked: What’s the most exciting aspect of leading your organization?
- Watching my people grow: 46.85%
- Executing the day-to-day operations: 6.45%
- Setting and achieving the long-term vision: 38.25%
- Seeing myself grow every day: 3.23%
- Cash — gobs and gobs of cash: 5.22%
It’s the people, stupid. It’s encouraging to see we, as leaders, have our priorities in order. The only thing more satisfying than seeing your people grow (which was clearly the dominant answer) is setting that long-term vision and achieving it. Leave the operators and your team members to “run the engine” — that’s the reason you hire them, and that’s what they’re great at. The real test is to see whether where you spend your time lines up with the aspects of your job that are satisfying. If you’re spending 85% of your time on your people and your vision, you’re in a good place. If the balance of your time is on day-to-day operations, you might consider shifting where you direct your energy.
Mike Figliuolo is managing director of thoughtLEADERS and author of “One Piece of Paper: The Simple Approach to Powerful, Personal Leadership.”