Optimizing Your Own Results

SUMMARY

Are you one of these leaders who, once you become someone who’s involved in a team where you need to take people with you on the journey, your results have sort of backed off a little bit, and you find you're not able to get everything done that you need to get done because everyone else wants a piece of you?

Well, I totally understand that. It was something that was a big challenge for me, and it's definitely something that I work with people all around the world.

So, stick with me because I will show you how you can shift away from that problem and get more done for yourself.

Today, we’re going to talk about Professional Leadership, which is the area where you get results from your efforts.

This is not about leveraging or getting others to do what you need them to do.

This is about being able to focus and maintain your performance level in a way that stops you from burning out.

I will also talk about the 3 shifts that every leader needs to make in this professional leadership area.

The first area is in your PERFORMANCE.

The second area is your POSITIONING.

The third area is your PRODUCTIVITY.

As we go into the new year, I'm going to break each of these down as I will with the ones from last week and the ones we're doing next week. And we're going to learn how to do each of these things. So, make sure that you strap in and you come on the journey.

TRANSCRIPT

Are you one of these leaders who, once you become someone who’s involved in a team where you need to take people with you on the journey, your results have sort of backed off a little bit, and you find you're not able to get everything done that you need to get done because everyone else wants a piece of you?

Well, I totally understand that. It was something that was a big challenge for me, and it's definitely something that I work with people all around the world.

So, stick with me because I will show you how you can shift away from that problem and get more done for yourself.

Hi, this is Grant Herbert, VUCA Leadership and Sustainable Performance Coach, and today I want to continue our conversation around all things leadership by helping you to optimize your results.

Over the last few weeks we've been unpacking what it is to be a leader and last week we agreed that everyone is a leader, even if you're just leading yourself. Leadership is not about having a title or a team, but it’s about being able to demonstrate and utilise the characteristics of leadership.

Leadership is different today from what it needed to be before, and today's leaders need to be taught to lead in today's world. We're in the age of AI, and we've come out of VUCA, then shifted into super VUCA, and then pandemics and all those things.

But, as I've said over the last few weeks, those same foundational principles of leadership apply no matter which age we're operating in.

There are those three Ps of leadership that I introduced you to and if you haven't heard that yet, go back and unpack those for yourself so that you can know which of those skills you need to work on.

Last week, we talked about Personal Leadership, which is all about leading YOU. Then, we will continue to talk about People Leadership in the coming weeks.

Today, we’re going to talk about Professional Leadership, which is the area where you get results from your efforts.

This is not about leveraging or getting others to do what you need them to do.

This is about being able to focus and maintain your performance level in a way that stops you from burning out.

There are different types of leaders, and I was one who in the early stages didn't support my team all that well because I had things to do myself. I had my targets that I had to achieve, and therefore, my focus was on that.

So, that's the first type of leader: The leader who just neglects the people they're working with and the people who are in their team, who they need to lead and who are relying on them to have everything they need to do what they need.

So, the first time a leader just closes himself off and — just head down, tail up — gets their stuff done. When that happens, you've got people who don't know what they're supposed to be doing. They get disillusioned, disenfranchised, disengaged, and they leave.

Attraction and retention are still two of the major issues that we are all working through right now. On the other end of the scale, you have the micromanager.

Micromanagers are people who just will not leave you alone. They’re constantly on your back, checking in at every step you take to make sure you're doing it like they want it done.

What we want to do as we continue into that people leadership area next week is make sure that we can optimise our results without neglecting those people and without needing to micromanage everything that's going on.

Let's jump into it and look at the three shifts that every leader needs to make in this professional leadership area.

The first area is in your PERFORMANCE.

This is about you — as a brain and body — being able to physically get stuff done, mentally stay focused, and do this in a way that is not detrimental to your health.

This is shifting from high performance to sustainable performance, and it starts with changing your mindset around hustle-and-grind and all these things that people talk about like working longer hours, getting more done and putting more effort in at the detriment of your self-care.

I'm an expert in this area. I’ve had four physical and two mental breakdowns throughout my career. Some might think: “Well, how does that make you an expert? You clearly don't understand”, but what it's done is it has given me practical experience. I listened to mentors, doctors, nutritionists, and all the people who helped me get back on board where I needed to be, and now I'm able to perform at a very high level, travel the world and do all the things that I do without burning out.

So how do you do that?

To do that, you need to make sure that you shift that mindset first. However, you also need to make sure that you are doing things in a sustainable way.

We will talk about this in the coming weeks and go deeper into this particular competency area.

However, just to get you moving forward on this because it's something I'm so passionate about (particularly as we go into that holiday season), is thinking of yourself like a high-performance car.

There are times when you'll need to go flat out, and there are times when you'll need to have a pit stop..

There are times when you're going to need to look at your fuel consumption.

You're going to need a team around you to support you.

All those great analogies that I love to use when I'm talking about performance.

So, the first area is to be able to think and work differently to get the results you need out of YOU without burning out.

The second area is your POSITIONING.

Positioning can be looked at in two ways:

It depends on whether you are in an employment situation or whether you're running your own business or your practice.

If you are looking at this as an employee, this shift is going from being invisible to being in demand.

So, for you, it's about putting yourself in the right place at the right time. It's about marketing yourself and your brand to be able to take yourself on the journey that you want to go on so that people see you and the value you bring and that you have greater control over the development of your career.

If you're looking at this as a practice or a business owner, this is about your clients. This is about you being able to position yourself in their world so that they only see you and not all those other people who do what you do.

Beyond that, it's about getting the right fit clients.

You see, most of my clients love working with me, and I say “most" because I forget to go through the process that I'm going to teach you every now and then. For example, I take people who aren't quite a fit.

However, most people love me because I'm a great fit for them.

So, for me, it's about positioning myself in the part of the marketplace where I'm going to attract those people or I’m going to be like Simon Cowell instead of being a contestant, and I'm going to be able to choose who I work with.

The reason I do that is so they get the right person to mentor, coach, develop and train them.

The third area is your PRODUCTIVITY. This is about you getting results out of the time and energy that you put into what it is that you're doing.

It's that old chestnut that people talk about, and there are so many hacks and different things that people can teach you about productivity.

Unfortunately, as I've said before, a lot of those things didn't work back in the eighties when they were invented.

So, we need to do things differently now.

This shift is about going from looking at time to looking at outcomes.

If you're in a professional service practice, I'm not talking about billing here; I'm talking about your mindset around how you see yourself being able to get more done.

You see, time management is not something that I subscribe to at all. This is because you can't manage time.

Time is 24 hours in a day, 168 hours in a week. We've heard all these great things, and even if you worked longer hours, you can only work 24. I guarantee with those old-focused mindsets of time management, you're not going to get it all done.

It's about focusing on the things that you can control, like your expectations for both yourself and the others that you let have expectations of you as well.

It's about your environment and managing where it is that you are working.

I've heard it said, “An untidy desk is a sign of genius.” No, it’s not. It's just a really difficult place to get stuff done.

So, it's about being able to be more organised in your environment and protecting where it is that you work. It’s about thinking around things like open door policies and shifting your mindset and behaviour around that so that you and everybody else can get their stuff done in the day and not have to stay back and miss out on the things that they were going to do after they left work.

You can also manage your energy, and this is a big one. This is why this whole Professional Services area, which is in the middle of those nine crucial shifts, all work together.

So, your performance is definitely going to affect your productivity.

The way that you look after your brain-body balance and you refuel, and the things that you need to do are going to affect your productivity as well.

So, controlling your energy and productivity is about making sure that you decide where your energy goes. You look at things that suck energy from you and remove them from your environment.

You look at things that lift you up, and you do things in a way that helps you to maximise the energy that you have.

So, there you have the three areas of Professional Leadership:

Your PERFORMANCE.

Your POSITIONING.

Your PRODUCTIVITY.

As we go into the new year, I'm going to break each of these down as I will with the ones from last week and the ones we're doing next week. And we're going to learn how to do each of these things. So, make sure that you strap in and you come on the journey.

With this area in particular, what I find that people need to do is unlearn a lot of things because, for some reason, when I'm talking about these areas, I have people fight back, and they go:

“Oh no, that doesn't work for me.”

“That's different.”

“You are different to me, and what have you."

That's okay. That's the decision you want to make, just like I did years ago, which led to me burning out.

So, trust in the process. Trust in yourself.

Come with me on the journey, and I will help you as you go into 2024 to have more energy to be who you need to be in every area of your life.

Well, that's it from me for another week. Join me again next week as we continue this conversation around these nine crucial shifts that every leader needs to make by helping you to know the best way to take other people with you on the journey.

I'll see you then.