Helping your team focus on the right work is a core leadership skill. In this unit, you’ll learn how to guide your team in distinguishing between urgent and important tasks, reassessing low-value work, and ensuring their efforts align with broader team and company goals. These conversations in your 1:1s will help your team work smarter and make a bigger impact.

Many team members struggle to separate what feels urgent from what is truly important. In your 1:1s, encourage them to pause and ask themselves: "Is this task urgent because of a deadline, or important because it supports our goals?" For example, replying instantly to every message might seem urgent, but preparing a key financial analysis is likely more important for the business. You can model this thinking by reviewing their task list together and asking: "Which of these will matter most a week from now?" This approach helps your team prioritize work that drives real results, not just what’s loudest.

It’s common for teams to spend time on tasks that no longer add much value. Use your 1:1s to review their workload and ask: "If you stopped doing this for a week, who would notice?" This question often reveals activities that can be paused, delegated, or dropped. Once you’ve cleared out low-value work, help your team connect their remaining tasks to broader objectives. Ask questions like: "How does this project support our quarterly targets?" or "Which of these initiatives will move the needle most for our team’s success?" If a team member is torn between projects, guide them to weigh which aligns best with current priorities. For example: "Given our focus on cost savings this quarter, which task will contribute more to that outcome?"

Here’s a realistic example of how you might guide a team member through prioritization in a 1:1:

• Jessica: I’m feeling overwhelmed by my to-do list. Everything seems urgent, and I’m not sure where to start.
• Jake: Let’s take a look together. Which of these tasks do you think will have the biggest impact on our quarterly goals?
• Jessica: Probably the budget variance analysis, but I keep getting pulled into quick requests and emails.
• Jake: It’s easy to get caught up in what feels urgent. If you paused some of those quick requests for a day, would anything critical fall through?
• Jessica: Honestly, probably not. Most of them could wait.
• Jake: Great insight. Let’s focus on the analysis first, since it’s important for our team’s success. We can set aside time for the other tasks once the high-impact work is done.

In this exchange, Jake helps Jessica distinguish between urgent and important work, challenges her to reassess low-value activities, and connects her efforts to team goals. Notice how the conversation stays supportive and practical, empowering Jessica to make better prioritization decisions.

By practicing these skills, you’ll help your team focus on what matters most and reduce wasted effort. In the upcoming role-play, you’ll get to apply these techniques in a realistic scenario and see how they can transform your 1:1s into powerful coaching moments.