For the things that you do better than your reports, unless it falls into the “most important priorities” bucket or you don’t believe they are set up to succeed, you should still try to delegate as much as possible and coach them along the way.

Your team’s culture is like its personality. It exists whether or not you think about it. If you’re not satisfied with how your team works together—maybe the vibe feels hostile instead of helpful, maybe it takes a long time to get things done, or maybe there’s constant drama—it’s worth examining why this might be and what you can do about it.

This is a battle for the soul of the brand. Talk about the brand, how to grow its value, how to protect it.” Then he [Scott] added, “You’re going to need some strategic priorities.” I’d given this considerable thought, and I immediately started ticking off a list. I was five or six in when he shook his head and said, “Stop talking. Once you have that many of them, they’re no longer priorities.” Priorities are the few things that you’re going to spend a lot of time and a lot of capital on. Not only do you undermine their significance by having too many, but nobody is going to remember them all.

The decision to disrupt businesses that are fundamentally working but whose future is in question—intentionally taking on short-term losses in the hope of generating long-term growth—requires no small amount of courage. Routines and priorities get disrupted, jobs change, responsibility is reallocated. People can easily become unsettled as their traditional way of doing business begins to erode and a new model emerges. It’s a lot to manage, from a personnel perspective, and the need to be present for your people—which is a vital leadership quality under any circumstances—is heightened even more. It’s easy for leaders to send a signal that their schedules are too full, their time too valuable, to be dealing with individual problems and concerns. But being present for your people—and making sure they know that you’re available to them—is so important for the morale and effectiveness of a company.

As a leader, if you don’t do the work, the people around you are going to know, and you’ll lose their respect fast. You have to be attentive. You often have to sit through meetings that, if given the choice, you might choose not to sit through. You have to listen to other people’s problems and help find solutions. It’s all part of the job.