How a leader can improve his or her prioritization skills

An underrated trait of a leader is the ability to prioritize.

This means that a leader should be able to prioritize tasks, activities, and operations, otherwise his or her organization won’t flourish.

Although prioritization is perhaps a boring process that sometimes requires a lot of repetition of the same dull tasks, which can make a leader feel like a robot, its value cannot be overemphasized.

Can a leader learn to prioritize?

According to Teamwork.com, if someone wants to prioritize tasks, he or she should first write them down.

This is interesting, because I have never seen a leader writing his or her tasks down, in order to prioritize them.

In my own experience, and I think, in line with popular belief, a leader usually prefers to do the talking, and lets or asks others to do the writing (or typing, to be more precise).

As a result, he or she fails to take the first step towards task prioritization, which is as simple as writing down a list of tasks to be completed.

In order for a leader to learn to prioritize, he or she should change his or her attitude and adopt a more practical, hands-on, approach rather than theoretically speaking about goal setting and achievement, which are closely associated with task completion.

Learning how to prioritize does not require a magic formula to be implemented in practice; it only requires to have the tasks to be prioritized on paper or on screen. In this way, the tasks are acknowledged and identified, becoming somehow “tangible”, rather than purely theoretical, and perhaps, vague.

Why a leader needs to have strong prioritization skills

By definition, a leader paves and shows the way, also setting an example.

If a leader lacks prioritization skills, the only example he or she can set is that of a messy person, and his or her disorganization can permeate the entire organization.

Therefore, instead of being an asset for his or her organization, a leader who cannot prioritize effectively is a liability, and instead of helping his or her subordinates to improve their performance, he or she encourages them to become less organized, thus working less efficiently and productively, although he or she may not actually realize it or do it deliberately.

Can prioritization be taught as a skill?

I’ve never heard of a person with the ability to prioritize at birth, except for his or her natural instincts as a child, which are prioritized by nature itself.

Thus, prioritization is a skill that is acquired later in life.

It is really important for a leader to learn to prioritize before taking up a leadership role.

Otherwise, he or she will really struggle, since there will be nobody there to teach him or her how to prioritize; in fact, his or her subordinates will expect from him or her to teach them, rather than the other way round.

However, since effective leadership is the result of practicing a set of skills that are developed through lifelong learning and training, even a leader who feels that he or she lacks the necessary prioritization skills can build those skills with effort and time.

Self-development is a continuous process.

The difference between a successful leader and a failed leader lies with the fact that the former has continued learning and developing throughout his life, whereas the latter has stopped developing as a professional at some point.

The same applies to learning new prioritization skills in an ever-changing working environment, which should be an ongoing process.

In this way, prioritization skills can be taught, thus ensuring that a leader stays up-to-date with industry trends and technological advancements.

Sources and further reading:

3 Leadership Struggles To Recognize And Fix

How to prioritize tasks (and stop getting crushed by your workload)

Teach Someone to Prioritize Using Psychological Distance

7 leadership habits to improve prioritization