THE POP IN!
ACTIONABLE ITEM 1 - from Stressed Leaders Keynote - Real productivity and leadership hacks
Here’s a great start to your weekend hangover, ripe off the Sunday Scaries, and limping through the coffee infused dread that is Monday…
A couple of weeks ago we hosted our 2nd Annual Stressed Leaders Summit to a thunderously positive response. It was an event full of gratitude. In my opening keynote, I shared actionable steps for improved leadership response. I’ve always enjoyed conferences where you have real, tangible takeaways, not sit and get fests. I am a man of action and, sadly, a lot of conferences fail to deliver on that action.
Many people have asked about the summit, and whether they might have been nervous, unsure, committed or afraid to take the plunge, they’ve heard about our keynotes. For 8 straight days, I am going to provide 8 takeaways from my keynote, Shock the System: Real Strategies to Quit Allowing Yourself to Fail as a Leader Under Fire.
As a subscriber, I’ll be sharing a takeaway each day with you for real, authentic actions you can take as a leader to avoid the pitfalls and snares that trap us. This isn’t rocket science, and I didn’t invent this wheel, some of these actions are compliments of Danny Bauer- Chief Ruckus Maker on “How to do school differently…”
*** THE POP IN…
Are you an Open Door Policy kind of leader? You want to be approachable, right? But what about those people who peek their head in your door, sidle in, and then ambush your productivity for the next 20 minutes?
"Hey… You Got a Minute?" (Translation: Ready for me to dump my laundry list of problems in your lap?)
Unscheduled pop-ins are ambushes.
"Got a sec?" usually means "Do you have 20 minutes to solve my crisis while I word vomit all over your desk or think out loud?" Check out my reflection about the “Pop In” on a sunrise ruck below.
There’s a reality in leadership about the investment in your time and someone else’s time; I learned this on a call with a business mentor months ago, and I was the Pop In- I was the culprit.
You see, I reached out to someone in the business world that I respect because I needed to pick his brain. This whole digital world is new to me, I’m a relationship first kind of guy, but I wasn’t ready for his response. I reached out, cold called and said, basically, “Hey, I’ve got this idea but I really need an expert to pick it apart and support me.” But then he hit me with, sure thing, “I’ll get you in next Tuesday for an hour at xxx rate.” I was stumped, I was not ready for that response. In my world, everyone comes to me for advice and I don’t charge a dime for it; I didn’t know what to say, I had to pivot, and pivot quick, and admitted, “Sorry, I’m not organizationally prepared for that call yet…” After I paused,
replied: “Dan is not organizationally prepared (my wording) for a paid call but was ready to waste my time on a free call.”As I tried to explain, feeling guilty, to him. You see, I’m used to an educator’s world where people dump their problems in my lap, for free, all day long. Then, they want me to rip out my fire hose to put out their dumpster fire immediately, hijacking my productivity and focus.
But, I’m a good boss, right? I’m approachable, right? My door is open, right? What my friend Zach was trying to explain to me, was that my time, my productivity has value, it is an investment. My frame of reference is that I usually am wasting my own time with other people’s problems, whereas I should view them in terms of my time being valuable. As he said, “There’s a lesson in there.”
Danny says, “If someone doesn't value your time enough to schedule it, it's not urgent — it's lazy. If it's truly a crisis, they'll find you.”
THE PIVOT: "I've got 10 minutes to solve this problem today at 12 PM. How does that sound?"
Stop sabatoging your own productivity to be someone else’s help desk. Quit mistaking availability for leadership. Boundaries rarely exist anymore, for most folks, whether it be in-person or the late night alarmist via email, text, or call on the cell phone. How did people lead in the 1980’s when you couldn’t be reached, or hijacked, or interrupted all hours of the day?
Need help figuring out how to lead in these types of situations? I have the playbook for ya, just click here: Get the Book
Love this...thank you for the post!