The busy leader’s dilemma. Why your schedule might be sabotaging your team.

I’ve been working with a brilliant chap we’ll call “John”.

John is part of the Senior leadership team in a large public sector organisation. John’s organisation has recently undergone a merger and the number of people who now report to him has doubled. Despite having over twenty years experience in his sector, John has reached a point where he’s struggling.  His stress levels are through the roof, his blood pressure is constantly raised, (he knows this because his Apple watch beeps at him regularly) finds it hard to fall asleep, gets up early and goes to bed late and often has to squeeze in work on evenings and weekends. Everytime he thinks he’s about to reach breaking point he has a few days off, resets and then the whole cycle kicks off again. John has two mantras, “this is the nature of the job” and “it won’t always be like this”. As it stands John’s just hit the three year mark of things being “like this”.

But what’s really going on here? And how can John break this cycle not just for his own wellbeing but to help his team?

John’s breakthrough came during a conversation about his diary. Back to back meetings from 8am until 5pm, day after day. John had fallen into one of the most common traps in modern leadership: confusing being busy with being effective. His packed calendar and constant availability weren’t signs of strong leadership, they were creating a bottleneck in progress and preventing his team taking ownership for their work and thereby developing their own skills and experience. 

The busy calendar trap

Does this sound familiar? You pride yourself on being hands-on. Your diary is packed with back-to-back meetings, your phone buzzes constantly with alerts, you check and reply to emails on evenings and weekends and you're always available for urgent decisions. You wear your busyness like a badge of honour, after all, doesn't this demonstrate your commitment to the job and the organisation? You’re desperate to be seen as a confident and capable leader and you’ve decided that this is the cost.  The reality is you’re showing your team what leadership looks like. It might be uncomfortable but you’re demonstrating that stepping up into a management role means being stressed and overwhelmed. Your team is learning that important work can't happen without you present. Without realising it, you've taught them that sustainable leadership is impossible.

What problem are leaders missing?

1. Your “busyness” has become their bottleneck 

When you're constantly overwhelmed, your organisation starts to revolve around your availability rather than your priorities. Decisions pile up waiting for your approval. Projects stall or make glacial progress because you're too busy to provide direction. Your team learns to work around your schedule rather than focusing on outcomes.  Most damaging of all, they begin to manage you rather than manage their work.

2. Modelling the wrong behaviours

What started as a desire to do a great job has turned into an unwitting promotion of a toxic culture. Your behaviour as leader suggests an unspoken expectation whether you like it or not. Every out-of-hours email signals that working outside normal hours is expected. When you cancel one-on-ones because something "urgent" has come up, you're teaching your team that reactive work trumps important relationship building. Your stress becomes their stress, and suddenly you've created a culture where overwhelm is not just normalised, it's expected.

3. The delegation illusion

Mixed messages create distrust and erodes team members' confidence. You hand over tasks but hang onto decision-making authority. You tell your team to "take ownership" but check in every few hours. This isn't delegation, it's micromanagement with extra steps. Your team learns to present you with solutions that they think you want to hear, rather than solutions that actually work.

4. The busy trap

The busy trap manifests in predictable ways. You believe that being involved in everything keeps quality high but you're actually creating a single point of failure. You might also find this micro-control soothing in-the-moment. In the long term it's harming your health and your team. You might be addicted to being indispensable, finding comfort in the familiar tasks of your previous role while struggling with the ambiguous, strategic work your current position demands.

There's also the fear that delegating means you're not "earning" your position and like John, you’ve come to believe that it goes with the salary. The adrenaline rush of constant firefighting feels productive, but you're mistaking motion for progress. Being busy becomes a badge of honour, but it's one that's destroying your team's capacity to think independently.

The real cost

Teams stop thinking for themselves

When everything requires your input, your team stops taking initiative. They wait for direction instead of solving problems. When your behaviour sends the message to your team that you don’t trust them, they stop trying, why bother? You've unintentionally created a dependency culture where your presence is required for basic decision-making.

The bottlenecks that slow everything down

Every decision that has to come through you creates a delay. While you're in meetings, your team is waiting. While you're responding to emails, opportunities are passing by. Your busyness isn't just affecting you, it's slowing down your entire organisation. This impact is felt far beyond the walls of your building. It drips down to your service users too, and they will notice, sooner or later.

The overwhelm culture you’re creating

You’re not being a hero, you’re normalising burnout. You are sending a sign to the rest of your team Work-life balance is seen as weakness or lack of commitment. The cascade effect of stress flows down through your organisation, affecting performance, retention, and ultimately, results.

Good people burn out or check out. Your best talent either leaves or disengages, and you're left wondering why your dedicated approach isn't working. Your manager is wondering why they keep needing to replace your team.

How to create a sustainable schedule

1. Create space before filling it

The discipline of saying “no” protects important conversations. Build buffer time for unexpected but important issues. Design your calendar around your priorities, not your impulses. This isn't about working less, it's about working on what matters most. What type of leader do you want to be? What types of relationships do you want to have at work?

2. Genuine delegation - give away decisions, not just tasks 

Identify decisions that don't require your input. Master the art of being available without getting involved. Create clear frameworks that allow your team to make decisions independently, then trust them to use those frameworks. Let them make mistakes and come up with their own solutions.  Stepping back encourages innovation and improvement, micro managing does the opposite.

3. Model sustainable leadership

Demonstrate that focused work matters more than busy work. Protect your team's time as fiercely as your own. Lead by example on boundaries and priorities. Show them what sustainable success looks like.

4. Build systems that work without you

Create processes that don't require your presence. Develop team capabilities for independent decision-making. The goal isn't to become irrelevant, it's to become strategically focused rather than operationally overwhelmed.

What happens when leaders create space?

1. You can make better decisions, faster

Issues get resolved at the source rather than escalated. Team expertise is utilised more effectively. Decision-making becomes distributed and responsive rather than centralised and slow.

2. You create a culture of sustainable performance

When you shift your focus from hours worked to results achieved, strategic thinking becomes valued over reactive busyness. Long-term planning replaces constant firefighting.

3. You become a leader who can focus on what matters

You gain energy for developing people and building capabilities. You develop the capacity to see opportunities and threats early. Most importantly, you can focus on the work that only you can do.

 Your calendar, your choice

 Every meeting you accept, every interruption you allow, every urgent request you handle personally is teaching your team what leadership looks like. It’s not a matter of whether you can afford to step back, it’s whether you can afford not to. Your team is watching and learning. They're taking cues from your behaviour about what success looks like, what's valued, and what's sustainable. Show them what effective leadership actually looks like.

 Start Small

Let your team handle one decision without your input this week. Cancel one recurring meeting that doesn't add value. Create one hour of uninterrupted time for strategic thinking. These small changes create ripple effects that transform cultures. As I said earlier, sustainable leadership isn't about working less, it's about working on what matters most.

Some of this work was uncomfortable for John at the beginning, but he sat with the discomfort and when he saw that things didn’t fall apart without him he was able to go a step further. The discomfort is often where the growth happens. Now, John feels like he’s got a better balance, his watch still beeps at him but not so frequently and he’s stopped answering emails on the weekend (we’re still working on evenings, Rome wasn’t built in a day…)

Your team doesn't need you to be busy. They need you to be strategic, focused, and sustainable.

The choice is yours. Your calendar is waiting.

I’m Amanda and I support leaders and teams who all want the same thing - to do great work in great organisations. If your team or a member of your team needs structured support developing their leadership skills or as an organisation you have challenges you’d like to discuss, get in touch and let’s talk.