Do you feel stuck in your leadership, or spread too thin? Are you in The Leadership Crazy Cycle?
Let Me Tell You A Story About My Friend Magnus
When Magnus was promoted to Vice President of his company, he basically didn’t know what to do from 8am to 5pm.
He lacked direction in his new leadership role, and didn’t know how to lead well, so he spent every day reacting to fires, solving other people’s problems, and bogged down in an endless list of tasks.
It was pretty chaotic.
He was doing a heck of a lot of work, but it wasn’t moving the company forward. It was work for the sake of work, but without fruit.
Work came home with him, was with him every night, and consumed his weekends. And he expected his team members to do the same. It was bad for more than just him.
Magnus wasn’t just living to work, he had become his work.
And he was absolutely overwhelmed with no end in sight. Does this sound familiar? This is an all too common story for so many leaders, entrepreneurs, and business owners.
Task Saturation Destroys Leadership and Teams
If I’m guessing right, you can relate to Magnus’ story.
Task saturation is one of the fastest ways to leadership destruction.
It leads to people drama and conflict that’s exhausting, and team members not being productive as they should be. So you spend a ton of time doing other people’s work because you don’t trust them to do it, or do it as well as you can.
It’s a vicious cycle.
The Leadership Crazy Cycle
It’s so common, I’ve given it a name: The Leadership Crazy Cycle.
It makes you frustrated and overwhelmed, keeps you from growing at the pace you want, has you working all of the time, and growing apart from your family…
Your mantra is, “It’s just easier to do it myself.”
But is it really?
If you’re being honest with yourself, you know the answer is “no.”
Where Magnus Is Today, And You Can Be, Too
You don’t have to settle for living overwhelmed, stressed out, and unhappy.
Today, Magnus spends most of his time working on his strengths as a leader, and was named President of his company in 2015!
Magnus’ company is growing rapidly, and on target with a growth goal of 40% this year (in previous years it was 5-10%), his team is far more focused and productive, and his leadership team has never been more unified.
And to top it all off, Magnus hardly ever works in the evenings or on weekends anymore, so he’s spending more quality time with his wife and boys.
This type of transformation doesn’t happen overnight, but what it takes to get there can be learned in just a few hours.
Here is some coaching on how to get started killing The Leadership Crazy Cycle and balancing your life.
Complete the Love, Hate, Delegate Process: Step 1. Make a long list of all the tasks that you perform on a daily basis.
Step 2. Separate the list into two shorter lists; things you love to do, and things you hate to do. (Or just don’t like to do)
Step 3. Go through the Hate It lists and remove the things that you must do because you’re the only one who should be focused on it, or because your role requires you to do it, and add them back to the Love It list.
Step 4. On the Love It list, remove anything that you shouldn’t be doing because it’s holding you back as a leader, and add it to the Hate It list.
Step 5. When possible, properly delegate everything on the Hate It lists.
Resources:
Check out our Executive Coaching program and book a free coaching call.
3 Critical Lessons From My Leadership Journey
