As a leader, you’re already well-acquainted with the pressure of having to do more with less time — managing growing responsibilities, leading cross-functional teams and keeping the big picture in sight, all on top of your daily tasks. The reality is, as your leadership role expands, so does the need to shift your focus from doing the work yourself to leading others in doing it.
Bright Arrow CEO Tegan Trovato and COO Maggie Gough shared how leaders can increase their impact by focusing on what only they can do, empowering their teams through strategic delegation and optimizing workflows for greater efficiency. Their insights provide a clear roadmap for scaling your leadership in a way that drives personal, team and organizational success.
Check out the highlights of the webinar and watch the full session on demand.
Focus on What Only You Can Do
As you rise in your leadership role, you’ll find more and more demands on your time. That’s why it’s critical to intentionally set time aside to do the work that only you can do. Earlier in your career, you likely created value by being hands-on — completing projects, delivering results and overseeing execution. But as a more senior leader, your value now comes from driving strategic initiatives that push the entire organization forward. “The higher up we go in our career, the more it is our job to think,” Tegan said, “and to use our brains to identify the patterns, and be looking out for the business and to be looking out for our team.”
If you want to scale your impact, your time is best spent thinking about big-picture priorities — developing strategies, identifying patterns across the organization, and anticipating challenges before they arise. You have to designate time for this type of deep thinking, Tegan said — at least two hours every week.
This can be challenging because we’re hard-wired to do things, and thinking can feel like we’re not getting anything done, Maggie acknowledged. “I have to remind myself routinely that the output is not the same anymore, that the highest quality that I can bring to Bright Arrow is the theme spotting, is cross-functional efficiencies,” she said. “And if I don’t give myself time to think about that, then no one’s paying attention to it.”
Start by defining what specific issue or area you need to focus on in those two hours, rather than just thinking broadly about the business. Come prepared with key documents like stakeholder maps, goals sheets, and org charts to guide your focus.
Delegate Strategically to Empower Your Team
By the time you reach senior leadership, you generally know how to delegate. But at this level, delegation isn’t just about lightening your workload — it’s about empowering your team to grow. By strategically delegating key responsibilities, you give your team the opportunity to step up and take ownership, while creating space for yourself to focus on higher-level decisions.
To delegate effectively, focus on handing over responsibilities, not just tasks. Maggie shared a relatable moment where she initially planned to do the bulk of a project herself and then delegate the final steps. But as she reflected more on where she can create the most value, and the abilities of her team, she opted to hand off the entire project along with some examples to follow. “I was going to delegate all the way down to just literally handing off the task, versus handing off the strategic deliverable,” Maggie said.
This allows your team members to take the lead on important projects, which helps them build skills, confidence, and autonomy. When you’re strategic about what you hand off and who you hand it off to, you give team members a chance to grow into leaders themselves.
Be sure to let team members know why you’re delegating work to them, Tegan said. “Here is a sentence I would give you to use: ‘I am giving you this task or this deliverable because you’re so brilliant at X, or you’re showing promise in X.’” Giving your team time and space to take on work they’re interested in can be energizing for them, and lead to higher engagement.
When delegating work, make sure your team has the resources, context, and clarity they need to succeed. Set clear expectations and provide support when necessary, but let them own the outcome. Offering periodic check-ins can help guide them, but avoid the temptation to micromanage. Trust your team, and they’ll rise to the challenge.
Optimize Workflows to Increase Your Impact
A key part of scaling your impact is empowering your teams to work more efficiently, especially cross-functionally. “There’s nothing that aggravates people more than inefficient work, or work that never crossed the finish line, that we all gave our best to because we just didn’t think it all the way through,” Maggie said.
Optimizing workflows is crucial for driving productivity and eliminating bottlenecks. By streamlining processes, you guarantee that your team is working at its full potential without unnecessary delays.
Start by examining how work moves through your team and across the organization. Consider mapping out processes with pen and paper to really visualize what’s happening in the business. Where are tasks getting stuck? Are there steps that could be eliminated or streamlined? Are there bottlenecks or areas where tasks slow down? Inefficiencies often appear when work needs to move between departments, so pay special attention to these cross-functional handoffs.
“When we work with senior teams and C-suite executive teams, we look at those workflows across the organization to help them think about where things get stuck, or what’s slowing them down from having real agility in their organization at the executive level,” Tegan said. “And I will tell you what we find every time is that it is where interdependencies happen.” You can promote cross-functional collaboration by fostering alignment on goals and communicating clearly between teams.
The key to scaling your impact lies in letting go of the day-to-day tasks and focusing on the big picture. Empower your team to step up, streamline your processes, and make room for the strategic thinking that will drive growth. As you apply these strategies, you’ll not only become a more effective leader, but you’ll also build a stronger, more capable team ready to tackle whatever comes next.
To learn more about creating impact as a leader, watch the full webinar on demand.
