The fourth behavior of Google's best managers sounds simple until you sit with it: be productive and results-oriented. The catch is that most of us confuse the two words in that phrase. We measure our productivity by how busy we feel — and busyness is a terrible proxy for results.
As a leader, you're responsible for delivering results through your people. So the question isn't just how productive you are; it's what kind of productivity you model and cultivate for your team.
What Productivity Is Not
Let's clear the deck. True productivity is not:
- Racing from one meeting to the next
- Working late as a badge of honor
- Competing over who logged the most hours
- Letting your phone rule your attention
- Checking email every few minutes
- Trying to do everything with as few resources as possible
If any of those feel a little too familiar, you're in good company. Productivity is genuinely hard to protect in leadership — there's always a fire, a request, an interruption. Here's where to start.
Four Habits to Cultivate Real Productivity
1. Share the burden. Look at your plate. What can you delegate or hand off to your direct reports? Many hands make light work, and the trust you build by delegating pays dividends far beyond the task itself.
2. Delay resurfacing. We live in a culture of constant interruption. Whenever you can, step away from email and notifications and give your brain an uninterrupted stretch — aim for around fifty minutes of focused work. That's when you reach a "flow" state and access your most creative thinking. Even a few sessions a week will transform your output.
3. Avoid reactive initiatives. Beware the shiny new project. It's tempting to name it, rally the team, and chase it — but new initiatives often distract from core priorities and pile stress on everyone. Before launching, get honest feedback from the team who'll actually carry it: does this genuinely serve our core work?
4. Stay in your lane. One of the hardest disciplines under pressure is resisting the urge to constantly reassess how the team is working. Good leaders know when to pivot — but they also know that results take time to appear. Give your approach enough runway (often a month or more) before you change course. Premature pivots destroy productivity.
The Real Question
Don't ask your team, "Are you busy?" — everyone's busy. Ask, "Are we spending our best energy on the things that actually move us forward?"
Protecting focus, for yourself and your team, may be the most underrated leadership skill there is.