Where can you lower your standards and be crappy?

Ahoy! Today we are talking about being crappy at certain things. This topic is one that doesn't get a lot of airtime and isn't something that I think has ever really been super topical, but is a good opportunity to give you some one percenters and time back in your day. Now, when I get to kind of the peak coaching with clients who have their leadership act pretty well together, but are looking for ways to just move to that next level. So they're going from Well, look, I'm pretty good. Got this under control. But I'd like to be amazing, or I'd like to even be great. What are the things that I can do to start to enhance my leadership ability, get time towards the things I want to work on and move away from the things that I probably am not doing all that well. And so the first thing I asked them is, what are the things you're doing that you hate? I think that's a good question to ask yourself. Now, we're not going to immediately move to strike those things out. That's not the point of this topic. But the second question is, all right, of the things you hate, and of the things you'd like, so if we can have those into two separate lists, before we do this? The second question then is, what adds value and not value in terms of the organization or the team or any of that value in terms of you being the person to do that activity? Now, if the answer is it doesn't add a lot of value, or I just like it, because I've always done it or while my team isn't really trained, and I don't have the time, this falls into a bucket that I really want you to hone in on for today, which is things you need to either get rid of, or be okay with being crappy doing. So for example, I had a leader I worked with recently, where their job was really around sales outcomes, right, they needed to drive high levels of sales volume and traffic into the organization. But they were doing a ton of reporting TON TON of reporting lots of compliance, lots of tracking, lots of messy things that you look at, they go, Well, it's good, they're doing that, you know, it's good for the organization, because it keeps a level of governance. And to a degree, I agree. But what's the main thing they need to achieve? What's the target outcome, and the target outcome is not, or they were really good at reporting or keeping their inbox to zero for internal emails, know, the target outcome for that person, and where they really needed to drive the most value and attention, word sales, that's what they needed the most sales possible with the time they were able to give towards creating those sales. So then, if you look at things like reporting, or you know, responding to internal communications, yes, those things are to a degree important. But the question then became, well, what if you let those things go? What if instead of every time there was a group message about a certain topic that was unrelated to what you're trying to achieve? What if you just ignored it for a day or two? or what have you said to people thrown out of office? Hey, you know, I'm not available. Most of the day, I don't check my emails, except once a day for internal communications. If you need me for something urgent, or something related to a particular sale opportunity, please call me or text me on my mobile. What would that do? And their response was, oh, I don't, I don't know if I'd be comfortable with that. And I said, Fine, or changes about being uncomfortable. But would it get you closer to your outcome? Would not being great at responding to internal, sometimes nonsensical emails or internal comms on teams, or slack or whatever device you're using? Would it be okay, just for a couple of days or a week or a couple of weeks? Ideally, to test this and go? How does life look? So we tested it, we did, I said, I want you to commit, give it two weeks, let's see what happens. And one, not only did their stress improve a little bit, which was an unintended secondary benefit, but something I knew from experience was likely to happen. So the stress of I haven't responded to that internal email about the type of coffee beans we'd like in the office. Not only did the stress decrease, but secondary. And the primary benefit was actually they were able to better focus on their deals and their sales. If you're not in sales deal flow was what we're talking about here. And not only from a contact perspective, not only did they get more time to contact those targets that they had identified for sales, but they had more time to think, focused thoughts, specifically on sales. So if they knew that, hey, an email came in and it was internal, but a response has already gone. I don't even need To allocate any mental energy to that, instead of worrying, oh, okay, I need to remember to respond later, I'm going to respond with this. But you know, that spiral, we don't want that. So sales outcomes, increased quality of outreach and thoughts around a specific customer and their deal improved, and their stress decreased. That then takes us back to the central point for today. And the primary question really is, what things do you need to be crappy at in order to be more successful at what you're trying to achieve? Go through that list. Think about some of these buckets that I'll give you. First admin, what are some of the admin tasks that in might annoy someone, but if you told them upfront, hey, I'm not going to be good at replying to these things or doing these things because I am prioritizing these goals. They might not love it, but you've told them and that's just the way it is. So admin, one, two emails. And you might say, well, that's kind of an admin thing. Not always, I think some people live in their inbox, and they feel the need to immediately respond, we all know that person where you send them an email, and literally a millisecond later, you get a response back and you're like, oh, this person. And you could say, well, it's good that they're in there. Because what if a customer contacts them, a customer's not going to be sitting around immediately for high flow, high ideal turnover, organizations waiting for an immediate response, key customers are going to pick up the phone, or they'll send an email, but they'll be so busy that they're not going to be waiting for a response right then in there. It almost actually, if you're in a sales organization, this isn't just for sales. But that's the example for today. If you're in a sales organization, being super responsive, when you're trying to win work can actually have the opposite effect, this kind of like wait, why is this person never busy? Why are they always readily available? So be aware of that. So inboxes, the second 1/3 is attending certain meetings and functions and preparing for things. So could you turn up to a meeting with enough knowledge to be someone who contributes but not over preparing for the meeting, you know, people who arrive achievers I have found can sometimes over prepare for everything and makes them look really good. But actually, they're just not successful at the level they want to be at. And some of that is driven by this habit of constantly focusing on being great at everything. And then a fourth bucket to consider. And this is always a fun one is what are some areas where you're trying to build skills, that really you're not all that great at, and it takes you longer than everyone else and or it takes you longer than someone who is skilled at it. And as much as you like to be the one to do it, would it add better value for you and another person if you delegate it or allocated that task to someone else. So for example, I am terrible. I would say not terrible, but some people would say terrible. doing graphic design work, oh $hit, this isn't working, or that model doesn't look good. Because you're small business, I've got some graphics, I've got a graphic designer. But sometimes I sit back and go, Oh, it's late at night, I just want to quickly turn this out. But the problem is, is that quickly turn this out idea turns into 20 or 30 minutes of me tinkering with formatting and changing stuff and moving in. And then ultimately, it doesn't look as good as if the graphic designer had done it. And to probably if I just planned ahead a little bit or had allocated time earlier on, I could have just briefed the graphic designer and I wouldn't have had to go through this task. So that fourth bucket is really around skills and areas where I don't ever need to be a great graphic designer, my skill and my passion. And where I'm really good at is coaching. That's what I do really well coaching strategy and psychology, I go in and I do a phenomenal job of those. That's where I drive the most value for the business and the team and my customers. Why the hell am I taking some of my mental energy to focus on building a graphic, that's not useful, nor is that the best possible good or the most monetary value for the company that I could drive? So you need to factor all those things in. And to do that, there's a couple of tips I'll give you. So first, I mentioned those questions. Look at the things that you do that either don't add value, or you know, someone else could be doing. I think another tip is to just look at, does it add stress or fatigue? Or does it talk to you up so some of those tasks will recharge your battery and I would argue that even if they're not the most good you could do if they make you feel recharged after doing it. Great. So for example, if that graphic design one only took a couple of minutes and I was reasonably good at it and it was good enough to do what it needed to do. Then I could just do it myself and I could be crappy at it because I enjoy it and it gives me energy. So I'm not taking a purist view or a totalitarian In viewer, it's like you have to do this thing. That's not the aim of any of the advice I give you. It's a series of things you bundle together that suit your need your energy and your mindset to give you that target outcome. So I'd suggest for this, think about those things that you could or couldn't be crappy at, say no to some things, other things. Just allow yourself the permission to not be excellent at it. You know, in having those conversations with other leaders, I've often found that it's the perfectionist or the high achiever, which I am as well will struggle with that. But that's okay. Try it, try it on a task, see what happens. You'll notice that actually, it didn't matter all that much. Or, hey, if that report was at standard B, instead of standard A, it didn't make a difference, because actually, no one's reading the da*n report. So I'd encourage you to take those tips. Look at those questions and the things we've covered. And I want you to go away this week. And you know, I'll see you tomorrow in the next episode. Go away this week and think about what am I going to choose to be crappy at so I can be better at the things that matter most to me as a kick@ss leader. Thanks for tuning into today's episode. You can subscribe to the podcast because there's a daily leadership question I answer every single day or topic we unpick every day. And if you want to find out more about what we do at a deeper level, you can head over to Team buffalo.co. I look forward to seeing you in the next episode. Keep being amazing.