How Leaders Can Make the Most of Their Time

Halloween means a lot of things: costumes, candy (I’ll save a few of those bite-size Whoppers for myself, thanks), scary movies. For leaders, it also means entering the home stretch of the calendar year. How do you make sure you finish strong before holidays and office closures disperse your staff before the new year?

For one thing, it might be a good time to explore how you’re using, well, time. Fast Company recently interviewed nine CEOs about how they spend their office time  (opens in a new tab). Unsurprisingly, the biggest proportion of an executive’s hours are dedicated to staff meetings and engaging with customers. As one CEO put it, being out in the field “keeps me honest about the business. It’s also where I test our ideas before we make big decisions on products or acquisitions.”   

The leaders are also clearing their schedules for unstructured time to read and reflect. Sometimes that’s done alone, and sometimes that’s with others: One CEO said she calls in her executive team to “challenge our thinking, explore new ideas, and consider what’s next.” And sometimes it’s with an AI agent: Another exec describes the ideation process as “me and Claude making stuff.”

Regardless of how you handle that particular slice of the schedule, one helpful question to address is: Is this the right way to be using my time? One executive notes that those moments include exploring “whether the calendar reflects the work only the CEO can do, the conversations that require their judgment, and the time needed to think about what comes next.”

I like the focus on “work only the CEO can do” not just because it’s a prompt to think about how a leader can often be overextended. It’s also a lesson in the benefits of delegating. A new report from We. Communications, The C-Suite Ensemble Effect  (opens in a new tab), argues that giving CEOs too much ownership over an organization’s narrative can weaken its credibility.

Instead, it suggests that organizations do better when other leaders in the organization are free to take ownership of the areas where they have expertise. A successful ensemble, according to the report, features “multiple executives actively representing their organization across earned, owned, and social channels, with distinct areas of expertise and a coordinated leadership narrative.”

Letting the CFO, CTO, and CMO take the lead on messaging that relates to their domains helps keep the organization in the news cycle longer, and helps build trust, according to the report: “Eighty-six percent of business decisionmakers say messages are more credible when they come from an executive with subject-matter expertise.”

Moreover, that approach helps build resilience in the organization. A strong majority (81 percent) of those surveyed said that a more distributed communications plan builds confidence “the company can outlast the departure of any one leader.”

Part of solid leadership is knowing that not only are you not in charge of every last thing, but that you shouldn’t be—a substantial part of the job is giving others room to grow and leaving the executive more free to take on the knottier, more holistic challenges. As the 2026 clock winds down, it’s worth taking the time to consider where your energies can best be dedicated, and where others can shine instead.