As Chairman of the Surrey group of the Academy for Chief Executives (ACE), I meet with and have the opportunity to learn from, many Managing Directors and company owners.

In the last month alone, partly through attending a number of Surrey Chambers events to talk about ACE’s new Entrepreneurs Board, I have spoken at length with over twenty five people currently running SME sized businesses in Surrey. The personal challenges these leaders are facing today are many and varied but, almost without exception, and seemingly irrespective of the size, growth profile or profitability of the business concerned, lack of time is quoted as the single biggest personal challenge they, as leaders, wrestle with on a day to day basis.

Leadership is all about people, indeed without people there can be no leadership – and as a Managing Director you are only exercising leadership when you’re interacting with your staff and colleagues.

Most leaders recognise that allocating one to one time with their people is a critically important part of their leadership function. Not only does this enable you to communicate what’s important about the business and your priorities but it enhances the employee’s sense of being valued by the company and by you. Ask anyone about the “best boss” they ever worked for and they will always include “he/she always had time for me” as one of that person’s key qualities.

The MDs I meet in particular know this should be one of their key priorities yet freely admit that when the pressure is on, when management and board meetings are added to emails and phone calls and the plethora of unplanned demands on their time from colleagues, customers, suppliers, the bank, financial and legal advisors, it is the “people development” time that so often gets cancelled out of the diary or at best postponed or severely curtailed.

There is no magic cure for the time pressures facing leaders today but one of the best strategies for ensuring you spend quality leadership time with your people is to “steal time” from your own everyday activities. By modifying your approach to how you involve your people in what you’re personally doing it’s amazing how much true leadership time you can find to spend with and actively lead your key people. Here are four tactics I believe will help you do that without adding any time in your diary:

1. Never go alone or with only your sales, buying or finance director to meet key customers, suppliers or even the bank – identify those people further down the organisation who would learn from accompanying and observing you in action. A few minutes spent in the car on briefing your objectives in advance and later reviewing the results of the meeting will be hugely impactful on that individual.
2. Invite a colleague to join you in your office as you make an important phone call – explain the purpose of the call, put the phone on speaker and afterwards review the outcomes vs the objectives.
3. Review your agenda for Board or senior management meetings in advance – identify those elements which aren’t totally confidential and invite a couple of high potential employees to sit in and see for themselves how things are done in the boardroom!
4. “Coffee point leadership” time – consciously prepare a couple of “one minute” topics you can talk about to any member of staff (no matter how junior) spontaneously and seek out everyday opportunities to engage them. It’s amazing what can be achieved in the time it takes to walk from your car to the office door!