Are you too busy to lead your team effectively?
The simple truth is that leaders have never felt so distracted, so overwhelmed and so unable to find the time they need to make a real impact. In Lead Smart, productivity expert Dermot Crowley delivers proven strategies for cutting through the busyness and working and leading more effectively, maximising productivity for you and your team. You’ll discover specific actions and solutions for shifting your focus from activity to impact - so you can direct your energy to the opportunities and challenges that matter the most.
With Lead Smart, you’ll learn how to make productivity your central priority, so you can maximise your own time as well as that of your people. To be an effective leader, you need to protect your time to think, to plan, to make good decisions and to provide clear direction. You need to be responsive and available, so you can empower your team to act in line with your organisation’s goals. And you need time to coach and mentor your people, leveraging their skills, capacity and productivity.
Lead Smart shows you how to:
- Level up your time management and personal productivity, so you can minimise distractions and noise
- Streamline how you interact with your team and delegate more effectively
- Lead the team culture from the top down when it comes to aligning priorities, managing urgency and fostering accountability
- Boost your team’s productivity by building conviction, effectively negotiating workloads and deadlines and protecting the team from outside distraction
- Inspire a wider cultural change around workload productivity in your organisation through your commitment to an elite productivity philosophy
This moment in time, when we are defining a new way of working, is an opportunity for managers, leaders and executives to reflect on old mindsets, habits and behaviours. Lead Smart is the book you need to upgrade how you use your time, energy and focus to better thrive and inspire as a leader.
This book is part of the Smart Productivity series, helping readers find practical solutions for better managing their time, energy and focus.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements xi
Introduction xiii
Part I: Yourself 1
1 Know your productivity style 9
2 Find your balance 35
3 Develop deep and wide focus 57
4 Have more impact 77
Part II: Team interface 95
5 Leverage your support 99
6 Delegate early and well 121
7 Be responsive, not reactive 137
Part III: Your team 163
8 Lead productive cultures 169
9 Create a contract of trust 185
Part IV: External interface 197
10 Practice respectful negotiation 199
11 Inspire your peers 209
Conclusion 215
