Executive Blindspots: Why Leaders Struggle to Focus on Their Highest-Value Activities

Last updated: September 2025

The Leadership Value Principle: What Harvard Research Reveals

As a coach to high-achievers and leaders across different industries, I’ve observed a pattern now backed by compelling research: the most successful executives understand their “Leadership Value Proposition” (LVP) – the specific activities where their unique talents create outsized impact for their organizations.

This concept parallels what we called “highest and best use” in commercial real estate. For executives, that precious resource is your focused attention and decision-making capacity, something Porter and Nohria at Harvard Business School confirmed in their groundbreaking study tracking how CEOs spend their time. After analyzing 60,000 hours of CEO time allocation data, they concluded:

“Time is the scarcest resource leaders have. Where they allocate it matters – a lot.”¹

Your Leadership Zone of Genius

Every executive has a “leadership zone of genius”, that unique intersection of skills, experience, and perspectives that enables you to create extraordinary value with relative ease. When coaching C-suite leaders, I help them identify when they’re operating in this zone, characterized by:

• Strategic decisions that create outsized returns
• Energizing leadership moments that inspire your team
• Creative problem-solving that unlocks new opportunities
• Visionary thinking that shapes your organization’s future
  

In my coaching practice, I consistently find even the most accomplished executives spend less than 40% of their time in this zone, creating a significant ‘leadership opportunity cost’. This aligns with findings from Harvard’s CEO study, which discovered that executives struggle to manage “seemingly contradictory dualities of the job: integrating direct decision making with indirect levers like strategy and culture, balancing internal and external constituencies, proactively pursuing an agenda while reacting to unfolding events.”²

The Executive Attention Dilemma: Science-Backed Insights

Today’s leadership landscape presents unprecedented challenges. The pace of change accelerates. Decision complexity grows exponentially. The boundaries between work and life continue to blur.

Research from The Systems Thinker reveals that:

“…under stress, people act more defensively, make poorer decisions, and literally lose the ‘executive’ function of their minds. This is especially costly for leaders because they set the tone for their organizations.”³

Every time you shift your focus to tasks outside your leadership genius zone, you are unintentionally reducing your impact as a leader.

What my coaching clients discover is transformative: those “necessary” activities consuming their calendars aren’t necessarily ones they should be handling. Studies show that only about 1% of executives formally use complete time management systems like the Eisenhower Matrix, while 92% utilize more basic elements like to-do lists and scheduling, missing opportunities for strategic time allocation.⁴

The ‘Leadership Calendar’ Reality Check

In confidential coaching sessions, executives often reveal calendars betraying their strategic priorities. According to research by Germany’s University of Applied Sciences, many leaders make themselves “the center of the workload ecosystem” through poor productivity practices.⁵

How does this play out? Let’s say your greatest leadership value is in strategic market positioning and relationship development. But, your actual day is consumed by:

• Mediating internal team conflicts
• Reviewing detailed operational reports
• Managing communication breakdowns
• Solving technical problems
• Handling administrative decisions that could be delegated
  

The Harvard CEO study found that the average executive spends 72% of total work time in meetings, averaging 37 meetings per week.⁶ By day’s end, your strategic thinking capacity (your most valuable leadership asset) is likely diminished from the exhaustion of so many meetings and so little ‘strategic thinking time.’

The Executive Coaching Breakthrough: The Dual Transformation with Proven ROI

Through intensive one-on-one coaching, I guide executives through two parallel transformations that consistently unlock their highest leadership potential. While some research on executive coaching demonstrates remarkable effectiveness, with studies showing an ROI of 5.7 times the initial investment corporations made in coaching for their executives I believe the real value lies in the enduring transformations my clients enjoy.⁷

1. Leadership Identity Transformation

The most profound coaching breakthroughs often begin with challenging how you define your value as a leader. Many executives unconsciously equate business with importance. Others believe they must demonstrate mastery across all domains.

Research published in Harvard Business Review (HBR) found that effective CEOs “need to take a hard look at every activity that falls into the routine and have-to-do categories” and question whether these activities actually serve their strategic priorities.⁸

Through our coaching partnership, we explore questions like:

• What about you uniquely positions you to create value that no one else in your organization can?
• Which leadership activities generate the greatest positive ripple effects throughout your organization?
• Where do your natural talents create disproportionate, positive results compared to the effort you put in?
• What leadership work consistently energizes?
• What leadership work depletes you?
  

2. Organizational System Transformation

Once you’ve clarified your highest-value leadership contributions, we focus on redesigning the systems around you to protect and maximize that value.

The Leadership Productivity Model reveals that

“…productivity means that a leader has responsibility for the work productivity of his team and causes changes of this productivity by their performance.”⁹

Studies consistently show that

“…organizations with successful leadership-development programs were eight times more likely than those with unsuccessful ones to have focused on leadership behavior that executives believed were critical drivers of business performance.”¹⁰

One CEO I worked with was spending 70% of his time being the chief problem solver in what I would call a hub and spoke model. Through our coaching, we discovered this wasn’t a personality issue but a symptom of not structuring the company to resolve problems before they reached his desk. By implementing a new strategic alignment framework, he was able to free up his leadership capacity for market-facing activities that doubled the number of active clients within three months.

The Systemic Leadership Approach: Transformative Results

The most effective executives operate with “systemic leadership awareness.” They understand their organization is a system of interconnected systems and their personal effectiveness is linked to organizational design. If you are the bottleneck, you have a problem.

By taking a systems thinking and first principle view, you can:

• Create decision frameworks that reduce dependency on your direct input
• Design communication systems that elevate important information while filtering noise
• Establish leadership development practices that build capacity in others
• Implement strategic rhythms that keep the organization aligned without constant intervention

Research by Metrix Global reveals that companies that implemented executive coaching programs saw a remarkable 788% return on investment based on factors including increases in productivity and employee retention.¹¹ I’d guesstimate that number to be lower, but still worth the effort.

Your Leadership Evolution Path: A Science-Based Approach

Through my executive coaching program, we follow these transformational steps backed by research from McKinsey and Harvard Business School:

1. Leadership Energy Audit: We track where your time and attention flow, identifying energy-giving versus energy-depleting activities. Research shows that “energy not time is an individual’s most precious resource” for sustainable productivity.¹²
   
2. Impact Identification: Together, we pinpoint the specific leadership activities where your contribution creates exponential value, following the Pareto Principle that 80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts.¹³
   
3. Barrier Breakthrough: We identify and remove the organizational and personal barriers preventing you from focusing on high-impact work. Studies reveal that employees whose leaders prioritize connection often feel more valued, with higher morale, increased productivity, and greater loyalty and trust.¹⁴
   
4. System Redesign: We create practical systems that protect your focus and leverage your leadership strengths. According to McKinsey, organizations with successful leadership-development programs were eight times more likely to focus on leadership behaviors that drive business performance.¹⁵
   
5. Embedded Transformation: Through ongoing coaching, we ensure these changes become permanent features of your leadership approach. Research shows that 70% of coaching clients report improved work performance, relationships, and communication.¹⁶
   

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Ready to transform your leadership impact by focusing on your highest-value contributions? Schedule a confidential executive coaching consultation to discuss your specific leadership challenges and opportunities.

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References

1. Porter, M. E., & Nohria, N. (2018). How CEOs Manage Time. Harvard Business Review, 96(4), 42–51. ↩
2. Porter, M. E., & Nohria, N. (2018). How CEOs Manage Time. Harvard Business Review, 96(4), 42–51. ↩
3. Davidson, S., & Davidson, P. (2015). Managing Your Time as a Leader. The Systems Thinker. Retrieved from https://thesystemsthinker.com/managing-your-time-as-a-leader ↩
4. Sunsama. (2023). Time Management for Executives: Boost Productivity, Fast. Sunsama Blog. Retrieved from https://www.sunsama.com/blog/time-management-for-executives ↩
5. Desjardins, C. et al. (2024). The Impact of Leadership Styles on Employees Productivity in Organizations: A Comparative Study Among Leadership Styles. Journal of Applied Leadership and Management. ↩
6. MGMA. (2018). Test of time: Harvard study reveals how CEOs spend their days, on and off work. Retrieved from https://www.mgma.com/articles/test-of-time-harvard-study-reveals-how-ceos-spend-their-days-on-and-off-work ↩
7. McGovern, J., et al. (2001). Maximizing the Impact of Executive Coaching. The Manchester Review, 6(1), 1-9. ↩
8. Chase, D. (2022). How CEOs Manage Time: an Ambitious HBR study. Ampleo. Retrieved from https://ampleo.com/insights/blog/how-ceos-manage-time-an-ambitious-hbr-study ↩
9. Desjardins, C. et al. (2024). The Impact of Leadership Styles on Employees Productivity in Organizations: A Comparative Study Among Leadership Styles. Journal of Applied Leadership and Management. ↩
10. McKinsey & Company. (2023). How L&D Leaders Can Prove the ROI of Leadership Training. Training Industry. Retrieved from https://trainingindustry.com/articles/leadership/how-ld-leaders-can-prove-the-roi-of-leadership-training ↩
11. Anderson, M. C. (2023). Executive Briefing: Case Study on the ROI of Executive Coaching. MetrixGlobal, LLC. ↩
12. Loehr, J., & Schwartz, T. (2003). The Power of Full Engagement. Free Press. ↩
13. Maven. (2024). Effective Time Management for Leaders: Techniques to Maximize Productivity. Retrieved from https://maven.com/articles/time-management-strategies ↩
14. Sounding Board Inc. (2023). How to Spot Time Management Skills in Your Leaders. Retrieved from https://www.soundingboardinc.com/blog/leadership-capability-time-management ↩
15. McKinsey & Company. (2023). How L&D Leaders Can Prove the ROI of Leadership Training. Training Industry. Retrieved from https://trainingindustry.com/articles/leadership/how-ld-leaders-can-prove-the-roi-of-leadership-training ↩
16. International Coaching Federation. (2023). Coaching Statistics: Prove ROI of Coaching to Executives. Retrieved from https://getsession.com/resources/guides/coaching-statistics-prove-roi-to-executives ↩