Why doing less makes you a better leader

Introduction

Recently I've been speaking to a lot of new leaders, and a mistake I keep seeing is equating productivity with the number of tasks they complete, meetings they attend, and decisions they make. Many new leaders, particularly those moving from individual contributor roles, fall into the trap of trying to do everything themselves. This comes from good intentions: wanting to show value, support the team, and make sure nothing falls through the cracks. But this "more is better" mindset often leads to weaker leadership, underperforming teams, and personal burnout. Stepping into a leadership role in tech means facing responsibilities that go beyond technical oversight, and it demands a completely different skill set, including knowing when to step back.

This article challenges the common belief that effective leadership means constant action and involvement. I'll argue that doing less on purpose (focusing on fewer, higher-impact activities while stepping back from others) can make you a far more effective leader. By looking at six key areas where less activity leads to better results, I'll share practical insights for both new and experienced leaders who want to maximise their impact without getting caught in what I like to call a "task tornado."

1. The Myth of Constant Busyness

The Misconception

As a leader, particularly one newly promoted from a technical role, you might believe that your value comes from constant activity. You feel compelled to attend every meeting, weigh in on every decision, and remain accessible to your team around the clock. Your calendar becomes a badge of honour: the fuller it is, the more important and productive you feel. You might worry that any unscheduled time signals a lack of commitment or importance to the organisation, falling into the trap of feeling productive while doing easy bits of work that aren't truly important.

The Reality

Constant busyness is often counterproductive to effective leadership. Studies consistently show that leaders who protect their time and maintain open space in their schedules make better decisions, provide more thoughtful guidance to their teams, and deliver better results. When every minute is scheduled, you operate in reactive mode, jumping from task to task without the mental space to process information deeply or think about long-term challenges and opportunities.

By cutting your meeting load by 20-30%, you create the space needed for deep thinking, careful reflection on team dynamics, and planning ahead. This unscheduled time isn't empty. It's filled with the essential thinking work that separates great leaders from merely busy ones. It lets you step back and see patterns, connections, and opportunities that stay invisible when you're constantly in the weeds, helping you channel your time into work that actually moves things forward.

2. Decision Quality Over Quantity

The Misconception

Many new leaders believe they should be involved in every decision, large and small. You might think that being consulted on all matters shows your value and makes sure nothing goes wrong. This seems logical: after all, as a leader, you're accountable for outcomes, so shouldn't you have input on everything that might affect those outcomes? This lines up with the belief that leadership means having all the answers, a common trap among new tech leaders.

The Reality

The quality of your decisions drops sharply as their quantity increases. Decision fatigue is well-documented: each decision you make throughout the day uses up mental energy and decreases the quality of the ones that follow. By inserting yourself into every minor decision, you not only exhaust your decision-making capacity but also water down your focus on the truly consequential calls that only you can make.

Effective leaders carefully guard their decision-making bandwidth by setting clear thresholds for when their input is needed. They create frameworks that let team members resolve routine matters on their own while escalating only decisions that truly need leadership attention. This improves both the quality of the big decisions and the speed of the routine ones, while also building your team's decision-making muscles. And it recognises that leadership decisions are not a solo activity.

3. Delegation as a Strength, Not a Weakness

The Misconception

You might believe that delegation means shirking responsibility or dumping your work on your team. If you've been promoted because of your technical skills, you might feel that nobody can do certain tasks as well as you can. Some leaders fear that delegating challenging work might look like laziness or disengagement, or they worry their team will resent the extra load. This often comes from a false belief that leadership is about control.

The Reality

Thoughtful delegation is one of the most powerful tools for both team development and leadership effectiveness. When you delegate work that challenges your team members and lines up with their development goals, you create growth opportunities that benefit both the people and the organisation. Far from being a burden, meaningful delegation signals trust and confidence in your team's abilities.

By delegating work that others can do (even if they might initially do it less efficiently than you), you free yourself to focus on the work that only you can do as a leader: setting vision, removing obstacles, managing stakeholder relationships, and developing your people. Delegation also creates redundancy in your team, reducing key-person dependencies and letting the organisation scale. A command-and-control leadership style stifles creativity, curtails fresh thinking, and undermines a sense of ownership among team members. Delegation is the antidote.

4. Creating Space for Strategic Thinking

The Misconception

In the daily rush of operational demands, you might believe that big-picture thinking is a luxury you can't afford. You tell yourself that you'll get to those questions once the current project is done or during that mythical "quiet period" that never seems to arrive. Many leaders unconsciously prioritise urgent tasks over important ones, focusing on putting out fires rather than preventing them. This leaves you feeling productive while actually neglecting the work that matters most.

The Reality

Big-picture thinking isn't something that happens outside your regular work. It's an essential part of effective leadership that needs dedicated time and mental space. By pulling back from routine operations and creating protected time for reflection, you develop the foresight to spot emerging opportunities and challenges before they become urgent.

Leaders who carve out regular time for this kind of thinking, whether through weekly reflection blocks, monthly strategy sessions, or quarterly retreats, consistently outperform those who stay trapped in day-to-day execution. This protected time lets you step back from immediate concerns, connect dots that seem unrelated, and imagine futures that would otherwise go unexplored. Prioritising well means recognising that not all work is equally valuable, and having the discipline to focus on the work with the highest payoff.

5. Preventing Leadership Burnout

The Misconception

Many leaders, especially those early in their journey, believe that sacrificing personal wellbeing for work is necessary and even admirable. You might think that working longer hours than your team, skipping breaks, and being available around the clock shows commitment and sets a good example. This mindset often comes from a belief that leadership requires superhuman effort and endurance, much like the misconception that everyone on your team should like you.

The Reality

Leadership that lasts requires practices that last. Research consistently shows that leader burnout doesn't just harm the individual; it ripples through the organisation, affecting team morale, decision quality, and overall performance. By deliberately doing less (setting boundaries around your hours, saying no to low-value commitments, and making time for recovery) you keep the energy and perspective needed for long-term effectiveness.

Leaders who model healthy work practices by taking breaks, using their holiday time, and switching off during off-hours typically lead teams with higher engagement, better retention, and stronger results compared to those led by exhausted leaders running on fumes. By doing less in terms of hours, you actually accomplish more in terms of impact over time. This also means avoiding multitasking and setting clear goals, both essential habits for leaders who want to create environments that work for their teams and for themselves.

6. Setting a Healthy Example

The Misconception

You might believe that leading by example means showing superhuman productivity: being the first to arrive and the last to leave, responding to emails at all hours, and visibly taking on the heaviest workload. This seems like a virtue and may even earn short-term praise from senior leaders who value visible hustle and sacrifice. It connects to the belief that authority automatically earns respect.

The Reality

The behaviours you model as a leader are powerful signals that shape your team's culture and norms. When you consistently overwork, interrupt your personal time for non-emergencies, or pride yourself on multitasking during meetings, you're telling your team that these are expected behaviours. This creates a culture where looking busy matters more than doing good work.

Effective leaders deliberately model the behaviours they want to see in their teams. By visibly prioritising your most important work, saying no to low-value commitments, taking breaks, and respecting the line between work and personal time, you create permission for your team to do the same. This leads to a healthier team culture where people focus on impact rather than activity. These leaders also make space for their teams to give input on workload and priorities, reinforcing a culture where high performance doesn't come at the cost of burning people out.

Conclusion

The counterintuitive truth about leadership is that doing less often lets you accomplish more. By cutting low-value activities, giving your team real ownership through delegation, protecting time for big-picture thinking, and modelling healthy work practices, you create the conditions for both your own effectiveness and your team's success. This runs counter to the "always-on, always-busy" culture in many tech organisations, but the evidence is clear: leaders who have the nerve to do less get more meaningful results, and those results actually stick.

Making this shift isn't easy. It means overcoming deep beliefs about what productivity and value look like, and having the confidence to weather short-term criticism from people who think busyness equals commitment. But for leaders willing to make the change, the rewards are real: better decisions, a team that can operate without you hovering over every detail, clearer thinking about where you're headed, and the staying power to keep leading well for years, not just months.

Effective leadership isn't about flexing your technical muscles anymore. It's about guiding your team towards meaningful goals while keeping everyone motivated and creating a working environment people actually want to be part of, yourself included. When you learn to do less of the wrong things, you make room for the work that actually matters.

As you reflect on your own approach, consider: where might doing less let you and your team achieve more?