The ROI of People: Your Highest-Return Leadership Investment
- 1 day ago
- 2 min read
If you really want to understand a leader, don’t start with their strategy.
Start with their calendar.
Because calendars don’t lie.
They reveal what leaders value, what they avoid, and how much leadership energy is actually spent on people—versus everything else.
Most leaders say, “People are our greatest asset.”
But many calendars quietly say, “Not really.”
And that disconnect isn’t usually because leaders don’t care.
It’s because leaders fall into a common trap: believing busyness is the same as leadership.
Activity adds. People multiply.
Here’s the leadership math we forget:
Tasks add results.
People multiply results.
You can automate workflows. Delegate projects. Outsource tasks.
But you cannot outsource attention.
And attention—real, intentional attention—is one of the rarest forms of leadership capital in any organization.
The upside-down investment strategy
I’ve watched incredibly capable leaders invest most of their week in reports, dashboards, meetings, updates, and status cycles.
Meanwhile, actual people-development gets the leftovers.
And then leaders wonder why initiative is low, morale drifts, problems surface late, turnover surprises them, and ownership disappears under pressure.
Often, what looks like a performance problem is actually an investment problem.
The People ROI Reallocation (60 minutes)
Here’s a practical exercise you can run this week.
Step 1: Track your week (honestly). Look at last week’s calendar and total these: “People investment” time (development, coaching, 1:1s, mentoring, listening) and “Operations” time (reports, meetings, emails, dashboards).
Step 2: Reallocate just 2 hours. Not 10. Not a big overhaul. Just 2 hours. Move them from “adds” to “multiplies.”
Step 3: Spend those 2 hours like an investor. Use one of these:
2 × 60-minute development conversations
4 × 30-minute coaching sessions
8 × 15-minute touchpoints with no agenda
The 15-minute morning investment (simple, powerful)
Try this for two weeks:
15 minutes each morning, before email: connect with three people.
One quick check-in
One sincere question
One acknowledgment of effort or progress
No fixing. No agenda. Just presence.
Small moment. Outsized return.
Because people remember being noticed longer than they remember being managed.
How you’ll know it’s working (before metrics catch up)
Look for these leading indicators:
People bring options, not just problems
Issues surface earlier
Energy improves in meetings
Initiative rises in ambiguity
Follow-through increases without chasing
That’s the ROI starting to compound.
This Week's Action
Do this today:
1. Block 2 hours next week labeled “People ROI”
2. Assign it to specific humans (names, not intentions)
3. Protect it like a mission-critical meeting
Because it is.
Leadership returns aren’t generated by activity alone. They’re generated by allocation.
And the highest return you can earn is in the people who carry the mission forward long after you leave the room.
If this is your reality, start with a Bottleneck Reset Session.
Want the full framework + real stories behind this shift? This post is a slice of the larger roadmap in the book Leadership Reframed: How Great Leaders Invest in People to Build Autonomous Excellence.