This past Sunday our priest, Father Mike Renninger, told the story of a friend of his who went to the mall to buy a specific Christmas gift. Somewhere between her home and the mall she forgot what she had gone to buy. Rather than turn around and go home, she decided to walk around the mall until she recalled what she needed to buy. Two hours and several hundred dollars later, she left the mall without the intended purchase.

Father Renninger’s point hit close to home for me. When I don’t know what I want, I often end up with things I don’t need and often don’t even want. I’ve accumulated most of the clutter in my life wandering around trying to figure out what I want. This clutter can be tangible, like all of the junk jammed in my attic, garage, etc. It can be spiritual like all of the distractions that keep me from living my faith. And it can be emotional or intellectual – all of those activities I get involved with simply because someone asked. Sure, they may be worthwhile endeavors, but are they the best use of my most limited resource – my time?

As leaders, one of the best things we can do to assist those we lead is to help them de-clutter their lives. There are several ways we can do this. First is to lead by example. We can inventory all of our activities and assess their value in relation to two simple questions: “Who am I?” and “What do I want?” I am often amazed at the number of things that consume my time that have nothing to do with who I am or what I want. If an activity is out of alignment with our values and beliefs(that is, it is not helping achieve something that is important to us) we need to determine why we are doing it. We may find that there is a very good reason for doing it. Our involvement may matter to others who matter to us. It may be important to our employer or a key client. But when we can’t find a compelling reason for doing that activity, it probably means we should stop doing it. Doing this in a public and explicit way will help others see that they can do the same.

Next, we can start asking the people we lead to look at how they are spending their time. What are the top 3 to 5 activities that consume their work day? Ask them to consider these questions for each of these projects, processes, or tasks:

• How does this investment of time and energy serve our organization?
• How does their success in doing this contribute to the organization’s achievement of one or more of its goals or objectives?
• How are they growing personally or professionally by investing their time doing this?
• Does this activity reflect the organization’s core values?
• Is it consistent with their personal values?

This process will help employees gain a new perspective on things. By helping them see how well (or poorly) their work is serving their organization and/or their values, we can assist them in letting go of things that are unwanted or unneeded. It can have the opposite effect as well. Things that may have seemed unimportant or mundane can become critical, because we realize that they contribute something of great value.

Even with this increased perspective, sometimes we will need to convince people to change their behaviors. It is difficult to overcome inertia, or they may worry about others judging them for failing to complete a task or abandoning an initiative. As leaders, it’s our job to enable, or even force, the difficult decisions. When we de-clutter the workloads of those we lead, we make room for work that is more valuable and with greater meaning.