How getting busy leading, gets you busy dying (in your leadership)
Does this sound familiar…?
Bob: ‘How are you’?
Sarah: ‘I’m slammed. I have board meetings coming up at the end of the week, the diversity and inclusion committee is presenting at the town hall in two days, and I’m interviewing six candidates for the business development role we have posted. How are you doing?’.
Bob: ‘I’m ok, I’ll circle back with you in a couple weeks for a chat’.
In the world we live in, busyness is often viewed as currency, and it’s wrong. Most of us know full well that multi-tasking and juggling too many things inevitably leads to an erosion of quality productivity and overall effectiveness, yet we all lunge at every available opportunity to brag about how much we’ve got going on. Why is that?
My hypothesis is that we’ve been conditioned and rewarded our entire lives to have answers to questions, and like a junky, we still get that little glorious hit of dopamine when we find an opportunity to boast (or vent, complain, or generally give airtime to) how busy we are. When we’re surrounded by people who also seem to constantly speak about being busy, we match that narrative so we we fit in. Subconsciously we think if we’re busy, we must be important, valuable, productive, and essentially irreplaceable right? Ummm, no. The harsh truth is that when we talk about how busy we are, we give our egos the keys to the candy store after hours to let them play hungry hippo.
There is a boat load of costs related to talking about being busy, particularly in leadership. When we wear ‘busy’ as a badge of honour we send covert signals to others that we don’t have time, availability, the ability to prioritize, or generally have our shit together enough to properly support and lead others. Leaders are constantly putting out one of two signals. Approach me, or DO NOT approach me. If you have a significant title after your name, there is already a barrier for others to approach you. We automatically minimize whatever it is that is going on for us because it can’t possibly be important enough for a busy VP of xyz to give us their time. The outcome to all of this for a leader is that they begin to recoil into their own world cutting themselves off from the very groups that they need to be intimately connected with.
True productivity is built upon a foundation of choice and time management. Actively choosing what’s most important and doing those things right, rather than doing more and more until something drops. The time management aspect is rooted in protecting the essential areas that you’ve decided to hold your focus on. Restraint is key
3 Key Principals
Decide what’s truly important:
For individuals caught in the spin cycle of busyness, this simple first step can be shockingly challenging. What are the most important areas of your role (and life) that have the biggest impact towards your results? If you find yourself stuck at this point, consider this thought experiment: Imagine you had a heart condition that only permitted you to work half of your normal capacity. Where would you spend your time?
Be better than the gap:
Now that you’ve intentionally decided what’s most important, you have liberated yourself. A benefit to this liberation is the opportunity to dedicate more time towards increasing the quality of what you do.
Follow through rather than follow-do:
Root your mindset in achievement rather than simply ‘doing’. This important difference is the key to ensure you’re moving forward and progressing towards achievement rather than staying on motion without true movement.
Busy-ness Buster Exercise
Brain dump all of your priorities, responsibilities and projects on to a page and rank them from 1 – 5 (1 being not important at all and 5 being absolutely critical)
Immediately drop every item on the list that ranks at a 1, or 2 (yes you may need to communicate/negotiate with someone before doing that)
For all of your priorities and projects that you ranked a 3, identify who you can delegate to (yes you may need to take some time educating, exposing and giving proper experience to those you are delegating to in order to ensure success)
For every priority and project that you ranked a 4, focus on simplifying your approach. Be bold and be simple.
Spend the majority of your time focusing diligently on the priorities and projects that you ranked a 5
Do a priority practice (or what I like to call a ‘PP’) - Review your list of priorities frequently to tweak and adjust in alignment with new developments throughout the year
Busyness Buster Key Competencies:
Saying “no”: It’s simple in nature, but there is a lot of psychological baggage around saying no. If you believe saying no makes you look weak rather than someone who is taking deep ownership over their work, you will be challenged here. Have an open conversation with your leader or the individuals you may need to say no to in order to share your why. This competency also includes being mindful of what you say yes to. If you’re a recovering busy body, a quick yes will likely be a very conditioned behaviour.
Value space: Strategic and intentional leaders actively honour space. Creating space between meetings and tasks to test whether you’re in alignment with your key priorities as well as reflecting around what went well and what you need to prepare to bring your best self to whatever is next.
Protect your time/book time for what matters: Book daily focus sessions to create space for you to work on what will truly move the measuring stick.
Always signal “approach me” to others: If someone under your care and leadership needs to talk, bring a problem or seek guidance, always ensure you’re sending them a clear message to approach. This means turning to face others when they speak to you (point your heart and feet at them), don’t multi-task in meetings, it sends a covert ‘I’m really busy’ message. Believe in the value of impromptu chats and encourage others to do so as well. You’ll often get the real story if it’s an informal interaction rather than having someone prepare for a formal discussion where they start to pack their messages in political pillows.
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