"Sorry, I Was Busy” - Being Everywhere and Available No-where : A leadership anti-pattern.

“Anti-patterns are solutions that look right, feel productive, and repeatedly fail in practice.” - Software Engineering (and Leadership) quotation"

A respectful note for leaders who are permanently busy but mysteriously unreachable

Let’s begin with something we all agree on.

Delivery leaders are busy. Very busy. So busy that emails remain unread, meeting invites live in limbo, and decisions float in the universe, waiting for alignment.

Somehow, in delivery leadership, busy-ness has become a badge of honour. This blog is not questioning your workload. It is questioning what “busy” has quietly become.

The New Leadership Illusion: Being Everywhere

Some leaders don’t just want visibility. They want omnipresence.

• Every call
• Every escalation
• Every thread
• Every decision, however small

Calendars overflow. Teams chat lights up. Status decks multiply. From the outside, it looks impressive. From the inside, nothing moves faster.

Being everywhere feels like leadership. In reality, it is often avoidance—of delegation, trust, and prioritization.

Micromanagement: The Most Time-Consuming Hobby

Micromanagement has a clever side effect. It creates the feeling of control.

• Reviewing things already reviewed
• Asking for updates already shared
• Re-opening decisions already made

The leader feels indispensable. The team feels stuck. Ironically, micromanaging leaders are often the ones who:

• Miss critical emails
• Respond late to escalations
• Skip or ignore the one meeting that actually mattered

Because they were busy controlling the wrong things.

Self-Created Busyness (Also Known as Leadership Theater)

There is a special kind of leader who:

• Inserts themselves into everything
• Makes every decision dependent on them
• Attends meetings where they don’t add value to

Then proudly declares: “I’m stretched. Too many things depend on me.” Yes. Because you designed it that way.

Strong suggestion: If everything depends on you, you are not leading—you are bottlenecking.

The Email You Did not Read (But Everyone Else Did)

There is a special category of email, which is Short, Important, Time-sensitive, Clearly addressed... It waits.

Days later, the response arrives: “Just seeing this now.” 

Translation: “I optimized my time for activity, not impact.”

Critical emails are rarely long. They are missed because leaders are busy being visible—not effective.

The Meeting Invite Limbo Strategy

Some leaders practice a curious scheduling approach:

• Don’t accept
• Don’t decline
• Let it age

This creates hope. Hope is not a strategy. Teams plan around uncertainty. Decisions stall. Accountability blurs.

Strong suggestion: Accept = commitment, Decline = clarity, Silence = confusion

Leadership requires choosing, even when the answer is “no.”

Back-to-Back Meetings: A Symptom, Not a Medal

“I was in meetings all day” has become the modern leadership alibi. But meetings are not leadership. Decisions are. If your calendar has no space to:

• Read
• Think
• Respond
• Decide

You are not overloaded. You are overbooked by choice.

The Hidden Cost of Always Being Busy

When leaders don’t respond:

• Teams wait
• Risks grow quietly
• Escalations turn into crises

And the irony? The leader gets busier—cleaning up problems that could have been avoided with a timely response. Busy-ness becomes self-sustaining.

A Strong (But Achievable) Reset

Try this experiment for 30 days:

1. Delegate decisions to right people in your team
2. Read and respond to critical emails within 24 hours 
3. Accept or decline every meeting invite
4. Block time for thinking and decision-making
5. Measure yourself by outcomes, not calendar density

You will still be busy. But your teams will finally move.

Final Thought (Please Read Slowly)

Great leaders are not everywhere. They are present where it matters. They don’t create busy-ness to feel important. They create clarity so others can move.

Unread emails, ignored invites, and delayed responses are not signs of leadership pressure. They are signs of misplaced attention. Be aware of everything. Be present only where you add value.

Busy-ness does not signal importance. Silence does not signal leadership. Unread emails are not a strategy. The best delivery leaders are not the busiest people in the room. They are the ones who: Decide, Respond, Remove blockers, Create momentum

And yes, they are busy too. They just don’t make it everyone else’s problem. Just remember, If you have to be everywhere, you are trusted no-where.