10 things that STOP people getting what they want that my clients don’t experience anymore
Over my 14 years of working with leaders I’ve frequently asked the question, ‘what stops you from getting what you want?’
If you can recognise what’s holding you back and remove or reduce its hold then forward movement is simple and often rapid.
Continuing to focus on finding the accelerator without every releasing the breaks is a recipe for disappointment.
These are some of the most frequent responses.
They don’t have the energy. The sad fact is that most leaders are being pulled in so many different directions and saying yes to so many different things that come the end of the day they have no energy left to spend with their kids or on doing the things that will support them to grow their energy.
My clients have a three pronged approach.
First is to remove what is draining their energy.
Second is to protect their energy, and third they grow it with simple time efficient systems that fit into even the busiest schedule.
The reason that MOST fail to create more energy is that they start with trying to add more sleep, exercise, diet, meditation without removing first and so become overwhelmed and end up in a worse place than when they started.
They don’t have control over their own diary. Most leaders have tricked themselves into thinking that they have control over their own diaries. They control what appointments and meetings go into it perhaps. But email, messenger and phones calls that we answer outside of pre-arranged or predetermined times are no different to someone walking into your office and taking a meeting completely unprepared and derailing your day with false urgency.
My clients decide what tasks are important to theirs and their companies goals and protect their time until those task are done. The result is that they actually have MORE time and attention to help those who were trying to contact them as well as for themselves. In fact hey very quickly become the confident and calm leaders they always imagined themselves to be who see things from a big picture perspective.
They are constantly fire fighting. They get caught up in the world of urgency where people come to them with their problems and challenges insisting that they CANNOT do it without them. Most leaders join them in this story of both incompetence and urgency and drop those things that aren’t urgent but are far more important.
My clients recognise that demands on their time will always come in the false package of urgency and incompetence and have learned the skill of creating calm and confidence in those that come to them without inheriting their problem.
They worry about what other people are thinking about them. Most leaders have got to where they are by being likeable, supportive and competent. They are good at pleasing people. The down side of this trait is that they always have their mind on others people’s demands and opinions being true and being their problem to fix.
My clients recognise that what got them where they are won’t keep them there and that leadership is about recreating independence and interdependence NOT dependence upon the leader. It is true that everyone does judge them, the human animal is a judge but they recognise that they would rather be judged for the ultimate outcomes and big picture than for sweating the small stuff.
They don’t know what to say. MOST leaders have got to where they are by taking responsibility for themselves, the problems and everyone else. They recognise that as leaders they need others to take responsibility but they often don’t know how to get them to do it. They end up semi delegating and so never really passing ownership. The result is that although they have some amazing staff who take full responsibility they have a few who they carry causing them to be constantly overwhelmed.
My clients have learned how to use curiosity based communication to support others in taking the responsibility that they ACTUALLY want to take and so freeing up their time and removing them as the bottleneck of the business.
They are still driven by productivity. Most leaders find themselves drawn to the wins of the to do list and so find themselves multitasking, repeating things they know how to do and things they are good at chasing the dopamine reward of success.
My clients recognise that this is no longer their role and that one well made decision or skilfully ran 1-2-1 can be more productive that 1000 productive days. They still get their ‘rewards’ but they get them from seeing the fruits of their decisions and conversations.
They feel an overwhelming pressure to have all the answers. Most leaders feel the pressure to be an oracle of knowledge to be able to answer every question and fix every problem. The result is actually slowing the business down while also getting stuck in impostor syndrome because this way of leading has them communicating from opinion rather than experience and evidence based certainty.
My clients understand that clarity comes from curiosity, asking questions and testing assumptions. In fact the business was likely built upon the principle of curiosity and running from a false sense of KNOWING is what causes businesses to stagnate and fail. They recognise that a leaders role is to keep the team in curiosity mode and remain there themselves.
They set their day up in such a way that guarantees stress and frustration on a daily basis. Most leaders have created their approach to leadership and doing their job by osmosis, observing the leadership style of others and bolting on new approaches based on what they have the mental capacity for in the moment. This causes 2 big problems. They appear schizophrenic to those they are leading AND as a result many of those they are leading who operate differently to them seem incompetent and hard to communicate with.
My clients know exactly what others need to create clarity for themselves and how to create a day energises and inspires them. While keeping the objective in mind they use extraction rather than instruction to support their team to finding clarity and the result is individuals that feel truly autonomous.
They can’t say NO. Most leaders start by wanting to be helpful, it’s in their nature and it makes them likeable and easy to get along with. But every single time you say yes to something you are saying no to something and someone else.
In fact it take VERY few yes’s to reach a stage where you have said no to your own work, no to your health and no to your family and your time is filled with meetings with no agenda or clear outcome, and fixing problems you hired other people to fix.
My clients learn to TEST the yes with a robust series of questions that they MUST have the answer to in order to know if they can say yes and if they should say yes so that they are never thrown off course again.
They wait for urgency before acting. Once upon a time this was their greatest asset. The spent time gathering the information need to complete the task then they were laser focused until it was doing using the adrenaline to support them in a sprint. The long term consequence is that they now NEED this adrenaline to act so they chase what is urgent rather than important, they constantly worry and they only give issues attention when they have become too painful to ignore.
My clients recognise their dopamine reward drive and strategically use it in ALL areas of their life to make sure they are fulfilled without having to constantly seek adrenaline in order to move themselves.
I absolutely LOVE working with leaders who are inspired to build something amazing while also uniting a group of people behind that cause. The truth is that they are highly competent individuals BUT in MOST cases the skills that got them to where they are are the exact same skills that are causing their struggles in health, energy, communication and relationship.
Through my REINVENTION programme I support them to adopt the skills of understanding and embracing their brain to use it more to their advantage. Using prediction and response to create calm in themselves and others and using curiosity to give themselves and others the clarity they need to become autonomous and happy.
