From Bottleneck to Hourglass: The Role of a Leader

Too often, leaders become the funnel.

Everything runs through them: approvals, decisions, meetings, updates.

Eventually, that flow clogs. Bottlenecks form. The leader becomes the catch-all for every task and every problem.

Instead, leaders should become the hourglass.

Everything still flows through you, but your role shifts. You narrow the focus, clarify direction, and then push responsibility back out to the team.

You create motion instead of clogging it.

What keeps leaders stuck in funnel mode?

• They struggle to say no. They have trained their teams, board, or stakeholders to come to them for everything.

• They enjoy doing other people’s work. It feels good to jump in and get things done, even when the task no longer belongs to them.

• They haven’t trained or developed their team. They hold onto responsibilities out of fear it will not be done “the right way.”

Sound familiar?

If so, you are not alone, and you’re not stuck. Let’s walk through a 4 Step System that frees up your time, develops your team, and scales your success.

Step 1: Time Audits - Reclaiming Hours on Your Calendar

Start by identifying which tasks consume your time but are not aligned with your core role. Studies show that over 70 percent of employees spend more than ten hours a week on tasks that could be delegated.

One leader who went through this exercise realized she was spending over nine hours each week on tasks her team should have been handling.

She had taken them on “Just to help,” but never handed them back.

Her audit revealed a hard truth: she was owning work that no longer belonged to her.

Within three weeks, she trained her team to own those tasks again.

She told me,

“Michael, I just freed up 9 hours per week! I was working 50 to 55 hours consistently and feeling stressed out. Now I’m coaching my team and finally focusing on the parts of leadership I love!”

The power of a time audit: Evaluate your daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly activities. Ask: Does this still belong to me? Could this be delegated with training and clear direction?

Your goal is to hold onto the strategic functions: one-on-ones, planning, team development, coaching, and high-level execution.

Step 2: Delegation - Managing Your Team Effectively

Delegation empowers people. Organizations that delegate effectively see a 25 percent increase in engagement.

One key barrier: leaders often don’t realize how much stress they pass on.

If you constantly talk about how busy or overloaded you feel, your team will mirror it.

They will avoid asking for help. Worse, they will carry your stress without clarity or structure.

One of the best questions you can ask:

“On a scale of one to ten, how full is your plate right now?”

Use the answer to dig deeper: What are they working on? Do they have the systems to support it? Is the workload temporary or ongoing?

Most teams are more capable than leaders assume. They just need coaching, clarity, and trust. When that happens, the leader stops being the bottleneck and becomes the multiplier.

Step 3: Boundaries - Don’t Treat Everything as Urgent

Everything cannot be urgent.

When everything feels urgent, your focus disappears. Without a priority system, leaders either panic and treat everything as high stakes or burn out and stop responding altogether.

Here’s a simple system I teach to filter priorities:

• Critical: Must be done this week. No negotiation.

• Urgent: Due in one to two weeks. Schedule and plan.

• Important: Future-focused ideas or initiatives. Great, but not immediate.

One leader I worked with applied this and immediately felt relief. He dumped his long task list into these three buckets, and within a week, he was making faster, better decisions.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed, try the Prioritization Drill:

Take five minutes, list everything you’re carrying, and sort it into the three buckets. You will be surprised by the clarity it brings.

Step 4: Time Blocking - Create a Power Hour

Research shows that time-blocking can increase productivity by up to 40 percent.

Start simple:

• Block 25 minutes of focused time.

• Silence your phone.

• Turn off email.

• Work on one task only.

• Keep a notepad nearby for intrusive thoughts, but stay focused.

Over time, build up to a full Power Hour: a 50–60 minute block of uninterrupted deep work followed by a short break.

Use your most energized time of day, which for most people is the morning.

Let your team know you’re in “focus mode” and define what qualifies as urgent.

When leaders do this, productivity rises, stress drops, and the team begins to mirror the behavior.

If you commit to this 4 Step System, I can promise you, the results will be immediate. Your stress levels will go down, team productivity will go up, and your results as a leader will speak for themselves.

Lead Boldly,

~MW

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