Busy Leaders, Broken Teams: Why Busyness Destroys Development

If you think being busy is a sign of success, think again. Busyness kills the very thing that drives performance: developing your people.

What Gets Sacrificed for Your Busyness?

When your calendar is packed and your inbox is overflowing, people development is usually the first thing dropped. Not deliberately. Other priorities just fill every available space until there’s nothing left. That’s a problem, because developing talent isn’t optional. It’s what actually drives performance.

The Good Samaritan Experiment: A Warning for Leaders

In the early 1970s, psychologists John Darley and Daniel Batson asked seminary students to prepare a talk on the parable of the Good Samaritan, then sent them across campus to deliver it. Along the way, each student passed a person slumped in distress. Some had been told they were running late. Others had plenty of time.

Those in a hurry walked past. Most of them. Even though they were moments away from speaking on compassion.

Time pressure changes behaviour in ways we don’t notice, and probably wouldn’t endorse if we did. When we feel rushed, we prioritise speed over values, efficiency over empathy. And it doesn’t stay on the footpath. It follows leaders into organisations every day.

Why Busyness Blocks Growth

Developing people is one of the most critical responsibilities of a manager, and one of the easiest to drop when pressure mounts.

Growth doesn’t happen by accident. You have to actually watch how someone’s performing, work out what would stretch them, sit down and have a real conversation about where they’re trying to get to, then follow up on it.

Under pressure, managers skip straight to shortcuts instead: generic training, vague encouragement, or just silence. Engagement drops. People who could be great stay average. Eventually they leave.

The Paradox of Time

Ironically, the very moments when we feel too busy to invest in people are the moments when that investment matters most.

Development isn’t an “extra” task; it’s a strategic imperative. Skipping development to save time is like refusing to refuel because you’re already late.

Four Ways to Break the Cycle

1. Schedule development like a priority. Block time for observation and feedback the way you would for client work, rather than hoping it happens around the edges.
2. Slow down to speed up. A 30-minute coaching conversation today can prevent months of underperformance tomorrow, so it’s worth treating as urgent rather than optional.
3. Create micro-moments. Development doesn’t always need a formal session; a specific comment after a meeting can do more than a scheduled review.
4. Measure what matters. If you’re tracking KPIs rigorously, track growth goals with the same discipline.

The Leadership Choice

The Good Samaritan experiment is a reminder that being “too busy” is often a choice, not a condition. In leadership, that choice signals what you actually value.

• Bio
• LinkedIn

Justin Miles

Manager Partner, Melbourne at Generator Talent

Justin is the Managing Partner of our Melbourne office, an outcome focused leader with a track record of driving business performance through proven talent and organisation development practices. Justin’s methods and skills have been shaped by working with performance oriented leaders in great companies including PepsiCo, The Campbell Soup Company, Diageo, Rip Curl, Fonterra and Wesfarmers, in Australia, the USA and Latin America.