I Quit – There’s Too Much Homework

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Perry Holley:
Welcome to the Maxwell Leadership Executive Podcast where our goal is to help you increase your reputation as a leader, increase your ability to influence others, and increase your ability to fully engage your team to deliver remark results. Hi, I’m Perry Holley, a Maxwell Leadership facilitator and coach.

Chris Goede:
And I’m Chris Goede, executive vice president with Maxwell Leadership. Welcome and thank you for joining. Now I have to tell you, if you’ve never watched us on YouTube and you just listen to us, I don’t know if they’re trying to make us look better, but we’ve gone from the basement to the penthouse. We are in our brand new studio and was this part of your negotiations?

Perry Holley:
I believe it’s an indication. It’s an indication that we have made it.

Chris Goede:
We have made it, but we are super excited. If you haven’t watched us on YouTube, we would encourage you to do that. We’d love to love to see you on there and make some comments and notes and we’ll follow back up with you. But we are in our new studio and I want to remind you as we get started to go to MaxwellLeadership.com/ExecutivePodcast and there you can leave us a topic. You have a question for us that you want us to answer and follow back up. Or maybe even your organization needs some leadership coaching, culture training, man. That’s what we do and we would love to serve you in that way. Well, today’s topic I think is personal.

Chris Goede:
Perry knows how much I’m carrying lately and. Or maybe he’s already there because he’s already Experienced this. So we’re going to talk about this title and it tops the cake, as you say, one of the best ever. It is. I quit. There’s too much homework for me as a leader or period. So, Perry, where in the world did this come from?

Perry Holley:
Yeah, I was going to title. It was how to Manage Cognitive Load, but I couldn’t picture anybody clicking on that.

Chris Goede:
Yeah, that would be the skip amount.

Perry Holley:
Let’s skip that. Now, this came about with talking to a coaching client actually out outside the US but he was very frustrated with the fact that his. He was recruiting new talent, and he was very impressed with the talent. They’re young people, but they were eager, energetic, smart and willing. And he was training. They were experiencing some early success. And he was really excited about the quick start they had in the business they were in. And they resigned.

Perry Holley:
And he said, why are you resigning? You’re just hitting your stride and you’re going to get better, you’re going to do more. They said that the essence of there’s too much homework is that I think about this 24 hours a day. I’m never off. It’s like, I want a job. And one of them had a family member that worked in. And he said, I watched my father go to his roofing job, and when he comes home at night, he doesn’t think about roofing until tomorrow. And he goes, I don’t want to think about this all the time. And it really resonated with me because I thought you would as well, that we think about this all the time.

Perry Holley:
We do, but there’s got to be. That’s what I really want to talk about is as a leader, are there things we can do to help establish boundaries, put in guardrails, teach and train? Because this is intellectual work we’re doing. Your mind doesn’t shut off from it. But can you train yourself? Can you. Can you build a system, I guess, to help you do that? That’s where we came from, guardrails.

Chris Goede:
You know, Sarah, my wife, is a registered nurse and has been for a long time, and that’s one thing we’ve talked about periodically, is the same thing with the root. For example, right? She can go to work and then comes home and it’s, it’s. It’s off. It’s all family and personal, you and I. It’s a little bit different. And I’m sure a lot of people that are listening, even if you’re in a trade like that, it’s different. And so back to this kind of always on this, this load, this cognitive, cognitive load that is on us that we’re thinking about impacts us physically. It’ll show up.

Chris Goede:
But even more so, it’s showing up mentally. And I think now, and I think this reason this is coming up too is that, man, the younger workers are talking about balance. They’re talking about, man, how do I have, you know, a, a job or a career and then how do I have another part of my life? And so they never feel fully off. And we’re hearing that feedback. And so I think that’s what we’re going to talk about, which is I struggle with this. So like you said, I think it’s just something that maybe comes with different personalities. We’re going to talk a little bit about that, but also different trades.

Perry Holley:
Yeah.

Chris Goede:
And then how you’re wired. Right. So.

Perry Holley:
And generationally, I think with my coaching client, he was worried that with generational, and I’ve heard a lot of generational, you know, they say, well, these Gen Gen Z’s are just weak. They’re just snowflakes. They just can’t handle. No, no, this is, this is, they have so much to bring. We, we’ve, we got a lot of podcasts on how strong this generation is and how you need to build a bridge, not a wall between your younger generations. But you’re a, you’re a Gen X.

Chris Goede:
I am, I am 100 latchkey kid. Right. Don’t, don’t trust a lot of people. And then also just we are of the mentality we’re going to figure it out. Like we’re going to figure it ourselves.

Perry Holley:
Yeah. And I’m.

Chris Goede:
No matter how long that takes or

Perry Holley:
when it is, I’m a baby boomer. Very young, young, early, early young baby boomer. But this really about the cognitive load idea, which is how they scientifically categorize this. It’s not about just being busy, it’s about all that you carry with you and trying to keep up with all the complexity, the ambiguity, the interruptions, deadlines, communication, email, slack, all the things you need to be preparing for, for the next day, those types of things. But as a baby boomer, this was almost being busy and being overloaded was almost like a virtue. We counted that as part of our merit badge. We got that. And I think it’s the very first thing I need to consider as a senior leader is that is not a merit badge for these other generations.

Perry Holley:
And you’re, I think it still is for you. I think when you get into the millennials and especially the Gen Z’S, who were the youngers in our workplace. That is not what they signed up for.

Chris Goede:
I was just in a meeting and a person in the meeting said, yeah, I mean, I was here until 9:15pm you know, working on this. Like. And so there is part of that right there. There is part of that. We also talk a lot about in the five levels of leadership. We talk about at level two where you connect with people, that one of the things that comes out of that is discretionary effort. And this really convicted me as I was reading through this because I was thinking about we, we drive and we talk about increasing influence and connection so that we get discretionary effort. Engagement.

Perry Holley:
Yeah, full engagement.

Chris Goede:
Do I want discretion? Because sometimes I use the example when I’m speaking or teaching be like, hey, instead of being at home watching Atlanta Housewives, right. They’re thinking about our business. And now I’m feeling a little convicted about this, this lesson today. Because human capital is our most important asset.

Perry Holley:
Yeah. Well, you remember Valerie Burton a few podcasts ago talking about in Resilience about. We talk about, you excuse the term psychological capital. Do you remember that?

Chris Goede:
I do, yeah.

Perry Holley:
Remind us on that.

Chris Goede:
Yeah. So that is where they feel safe. They are in a place where they can voice their opinion. They can tell you that they are maybe thinking about work too much. They’re overloaded. Right. And if they’re not psychologically safe, they won’t share that with you. They’re going to burn out.

Chris Goede:
And then they’re going to be like, to your example, I’m out. And we’ve got to, we got to think about that.

Perry Holley:
Well, it is in a knowledge economy and we’re. It doesn’t shut off. It’s that constant stream. I know you feel it. I feel it is that when I shut my laptop at what I can think is my end of my day, that the email is not a reservoir just sitting there. It’s a river that’s flowing constantly and all the other things that are coming on and the work is never truly finished. And I think for some of us and my colleague, the coaching client, he was really feeling that how do I encourage these younger people especially. But it could be anyone.

Perry Holley:
I don’t, I don’t want to let this not just a Gen Z problem. I think this is as much for me and you as it is for them to say, you know, can we help close these mental loops that are going on? There’s these that every night I have to carry this home. And that’s why I said it’s Too much homework. I never stop thinking about it.

Chris Goede:
Yeah. And let’s talk about boomers for just a minute. So. Because you said it’s for every generation. So you guys grew up at a place where you worked hard. To my example. Just a minute. You were at the office till nine o’ clock at night.

Chris Goede:
Right. You pushed through, you didn’t complain.

Perry Holley:
And we bragged about it.

Chris Goede:
And you bragged about it. Right. Like the, the commitment that you made to the organization was how much you sacrificed. And man, this makes me think so much about. Even when you hear people that at the end of their careers and, and, and maybe even on their deathbed and they’re like, you never hear anybody say, man, I wish I would have stayed till 9 o’ clock 1 more time. You know, at the office. And, and, but when it’s how you were raised or, or even your generation. Right.

Chris Goede:
You want to be constantly available. There’s never a time that I’ve ever text you or called you vacation, not night that you haven’t responded. Right. And so how do we get to a place to where we allow those boundaries to be set? Because otherwise we’re, we’re rewarding or encouraging as leaders, unhealthy behavior. And so I know with you we’re wired very similar, even though you are a much older generation than I am.

Perry Holley:
The word much.

Chris Goede:
And, and so we don’t, we don’t talk about a lot of stress. We actually internalize it.

Perry Holley:
Yeah.

Chris Goede:
And we carry it very quietly. And so. But that’s going to lead to irritability, workaholic. Right. Exhaustion, health issues. I’m leaning in, but I’m also talking to both of us. And so we want to just make sure that, man, how do we, how do we go about leading people the right way? Because they all need to be led differently.

Perry Holley:
Yeah. The Gen X, you came through a little bit different from me. You’ve, you’ve, you faced layoffs. I don’t think we ever had that in my early days. Corporate restructuring, a lot of economic uncertainty, a lot of, A lot of external factors there internally. You know, you’re carrying an invisible. I think they’ve a lot of research on the Gen X is you’re carrying a lot of invisible cognitive load, which is, and I can relate to this as well. Aging parents, aging children.

Perry Holley:
Your, your leadership role. You’re right in the, in the heart of your leadership executive things right now.

Chris Goede:
So that’s interesting. Let me interrupt you for like, that’s so real. Because if I flesh that out really quick, I My daughter just got married.

Perry Holley:
Yep.

Chris Goede:
I have a son that’s been married for three years. He’s dealing with.

Perry Holley:
He just got a new job, new transfer, new state.

Chris Goede:
Right. Both sets of our parents are, are dealing with some health issues, some living situations that, that we’re dealing with. And maximum leadership is here.

Perry Holley:
Yeah.

Chris Goede:
And this podcast is showing up. So it’s interesting. You said that I hadn’t put all those together about even just our generation and where I’m at as a leader, what all is coming on top of it.

Perry Holley:
But interesting. That’s a great lesson right there for anybody listening is, are you just being considerate of the weight that different generational. The youngers aren’t really carrying the weight of their aging parents the way you at a Gen X and me as a boomer might have passed now, but I carried that when I was your age, suffering through all of those things we had to do and my kids getting married and moving on and moving out and carrying and then, and then now mine is. My cognitive load is kind of lessened in these later years, but as you’re in the throes of yours. So as a leader, I think considering where people are, people are just that they, they. It’s not like you, you know, different perspectives on the load that they’re carrying on that.

Chris Goede:
Now let’s talk about Gen Y and Gen Z. We, we can’t leave them out and just. But Perry and I thought we’d go first. Now we’re talking about you. But you guys experience things or those that are on your team in Gen Y, Gen Z very differently where you are. You didn’t transition into a connected world. You grew up in it. You were raised inside a, a connected world.

Chris Goede:
So man, constant stimulation like I, when I think about even just my, my children that are in this generation and how much screen time and it’s always there and it just, that doesn’t ever face them. It doesn’t ever burn them out. But it’s just, it’s part of normal what you guys do. And so that stress of, of being connected and on feels more like, man, my brain never shuts off and how do I power that down? What does that look like? So many younger workers are questioning, you know, whether endless cognitive occupation is really even worth it. This is fascinating too because they’re like, why would I do that? Like almost kind of like opened up with. I want to have a separation between the cognitive work and then what my cognitive, you know, personal life is like. And so that’s why when we talk about coaching clients. And we hear younger employees say things like, I wish I had a job where work ended when I left.

Chris Goede:
Like I, I was a trade and I could go home and not think about work and not talk about. And it doesn’t matter if you’re in a non profit or for profit, it. It’s just ever consuming. And so I think the Gen Y and Gen Z, what they’re longing for is, is. Is better boundaries. And why we’re sharing this is because you have to lead them this way and you have to have. They want to have closure, they want to have tangible accomplishments and then they want to have mental recovery. Have you ever taken a mental recovery day?

Perry Holley:
Well, I’m learning about it, but yeah,

Chris Goede:
because now it’s important. Right. And we need to. Because we didn’t grow up with those. But I think it’s super important.

Perry Holley:
But when you said that, and I think this is what’s. Where the problem is, is we’re labeling. I almost label that up here. You need a mental recovery. That’s weakness. That is weakness. And I think that’s what sometimes being. These younger generations are being labeled as lazy or weak.

Perry Holley:
They are not. Because I’m feeling it now too. The reality is it’s really cognitive exhaustion that we’re feeling. And you know, it can be tempting as a leader to evaluate workload strictly by how many hours they work, how much, you know, the visible activity you see from them, how responsive they are, their meeting volume, how engaged you’re feeling this. It could be just that cognitive exhaustion. So I’d like to in the remaining time, maybe help us get started on some practical things. As a leader, what can we do to help them?

Chris Goede:
I think too there’ll be some studies down the road that will probably show that those generations are healthier. Yeah, right. Than, than your generation, my generation, because of their desired approach, you know, to that. So I love what you said. Let’s talk. Okay, what does this look like? How do we lead our team members? Because we have probably a we talk about this, the diversity. Matter of fact, Perry helped Tim Elmore create a course for us. We do a lot of work with organizations around leading multi generational teams.

Chris Goede:
Again, I’m gonna direct you back to, you know, MaxwellLeadership.com/ExecutivePodcast. There’s a button right there. Maybe that’s a training. You think about the different generations you have and we can actually dig into a little bit of that. But for today, we wanted to give you a framework to work with. We wanted something actionable. So we have A acronym with the word reset. And Perry likes to do acronyms, usually with three.

Chris Goede:
We’re expanding it to five. We like the number five here in this number. That’s right. So the first one don’t talk about as much anymore. We don’t. We don’t. Is restore clear boundaries for them. Okay.

Chris Goede:
So leaders, you need to really help them define and talk through what is urgent. What’s urgent for you. What’s urgent for them to make sure that there is alignment. You guys have heard us talk about the Eisenhower matrix, right? And. And create those four buckets and make them part of that con, that conversation. And so some, some examples would be communication with the team. What. What does that look like? I have, you know, this.

Chris Goede:
I sometimes don’t even get to my emails till late at night. Maybe we’re on a plane traveling from a client. Maybe it’s, we’re going to speak somewhere on a weekend. And so I have told my team over and over again, just because you get an email from me or a communication from me outside of work hours does not mean you need to respond. I just need to get it off of my to do list. And so just accept it. Now, some people say, well, use the schedule and send it out at a different time. And I understand all that, but when it comes to technology, for me, that’s the best I can do.

Chris Goede:
Sometimes also leave them, you know, when they’re on pto, let them have pto. And, and don’t, don’t ping him. One of the things we talk about as a team is, hey, Perry’s on pto. Don’t reach out to him unless it’s an absolute emergency. Come to me first, and I’ll determine whether or not we need to reach out to Perry. So things like that, how do we go about doing that? And then the last thing is, as a leader, you should have this. But then how do you also encourage us with your team to schedule some time on their calendar where there are not to dos? It’s just them being able to think and, and be able to have some creative time. And so here’s a great quote that Perry put in my notes.

Chris Goede:
One of the healthiest things leaders can say is this. You don’t need to prove commitment through constant availability. Your team, they’re committed. They’re already spending enough hours with you, so they don’t need to be constantly available to you.

Perry Holley:
Well, I think that it’s really important for a leader, what Chris has talked about, for you to model that, by the way. So do you have office hours, do you? After hour emails or text messages like you said, we try not to do that. I have discovered the send later button to say I actually send you the podcast scripts. I thought, well, it’s going to send on a holiday or on a weekend. I thought, I’ll make it go on Monday. I know you’re not going to look at it and I don’t want you looking at it. So I didn’t decide when I want those to go, even though I had them done. But if you’re not modeling, if you’re sending after hour emails and text messages to the team, it’s bad.

Perry Holley:
Model start and stop times. This is something I had to say. I come to work at a certain time, even though I’m up earlier. I don’t make that time available to others. I stop at a certain time. I’ve committed to my wife. I’m going to stop. Laptop lid drops at a certain time.

Perry Holley:
It can always drop earlier but never later. But I model that for others to do that. Talk about what you do when you’re not working because it sounds like if you talk to me like I’m always working, but I’ve started really in the last few years talking about what I cook on my grills, what I do in my woodworking shop, what I do in my holiday. What tours did we have?

Chris Goede:
Like, oh, Barry does have a life.

Perry Holley:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Make. Make having a life not. Not sound like a luxury. It’s like it’s normal. It’s normal to do that. All right. The E in reset is to eliminate artificial urgencies.

Perry Holley:
This is a lot. I just have found this to be true. But a lot of urgent. Now we. We also probably have done podcasts on having your people pick up the urgency. However, a lot of urgency is self created here. And so leaders should really be asking what would. What would happen if what you think needs to be done by tomorrow is done by next week? Would it.

Perry Holley:
Would it matter? Sometimes it will and you need to know when that is. But not, not all the time. If it’s. If it’s not, you know, not. Not much, then maybe you move that. But I think we sometimes we kind of secretly create a permanent emergency culture. Everything is urgent and important. Back to your eyes and our matrix.

Perry Holley:
Everything is not urgent and important. There are a lot of things that are important but not urgent and so that are we focusing on those. So I always think of John Wooden might even been a title of a book that he had but it said what he would tell his players be Quick, but don’t hurry. Be quick but don’t hurry. And if you think about that a minute, that it’s really a kind of a nice way to lead.

Chris Goede:
The S in the framework stands for simplify priorities. This is, I think, one of the biggest things that drive weight on some of our, our team members. I recently had a conversation with one of our team members and I said, your list of to dos is always going to be there. Like, one of my favorite things to do is to have a list and cross it off and go, man, I, I’m gonna show up tomorrow. There’s gonna be nothing on this list wrong. Like there’s gonna be anything. And so I had this conversation with her and I said, look, let’s just say there’s 15 of them. What you need to make sure is that you and I are in alignment of what are the top three priorities out of those 15.

Chris Goede:
And then you need to mentally be able to accept that the other 12 that are on there are gonna, they’re gonna come next or something else might jump up. And I think this reduces anxiety of, man, I gotta get all this done for my leader and the expectation that they have. And so one of the things I would encourage you to do often is to talk to your team about, hey, what is on your list right now? What does that look like? And then tell me how you rank them in priority and help them realign that and then give them a line of saying, hey, these are this week. These are the top three.

Perry Holley:
Yeah, good.

Chris Goede:
This is what this looks like. So, you know, yesterday in our team meeting, one of the things I, I reached out to two of our team members, I said, hey, I just want you to share what’s on your mind, what are your priorities going on into this week? And I wanted them to let the team know that, but I also wanted to know what it was because I don’t have a one on one with them this week. But that was a way for me to do that so that I could make sure that that was in alignment with it. They just need that conversation. And by doing that, I think you’ll be able to reset, which is part of this framework.

Perry Holley:
The second eat in reset is to encourage recovery. We mentioned that just a bit ago. But encourage recovery needs to not seem like some sort of indulgence. It needs to be a requirement for everybody on your team, including you. It could include making sure that you’re getting enough sleep, you’re detaching from the work enough, you’re moving, you’re having Social connection, mental downtime, whatever. However you need to do that, as John would teach, is that leaders model the way people do what people see. So if you’re glorifying burnout, making it sound like you said I was here at 9 o’ clock last night, really took one for the team. That’s not good.

Perry Holley:
You’re modeling something that’s going to really cause them to have more problems.

Chris Goede:
The T stands for Tangibilize progress. Stop right here. I don’t know for you long time listeners throw words in here and I

Perry Holley:
make sure they end up on the

Chris Goede:
side of the table when we’re going through this and they may not be aware a word but what we’re talking about is, is you know that physical accomplishments, you can see that as a team and that’s rewarding. Right. But how do you, how do you show and, and talk about and recognize progress of knowledge, of movement, of things? And you know, one of the things that we think about is on our weekly team meetings and we’re going to be changing up our structure is going back to some things that are knowledge based, that get accomplished that the team needs to be aware of that they’re not aware of right now. And so I think this is something to where if you can think about what does this look like. Yes, the physical ones, you know, they’re going to show up the manual labor but the knowledge stuff and the movement also needs to be talked about because there’s a lot of team members that are moving the needle on some knowledge stuff for you guys and they need to make sure that they see accomplishment in it as well.

Perry Holley:
Well, there’s a teaching from Dan Sullivan on the gap in the gain. And I always think about that. We, we tend to, and you’re, you can really help your people is they’re looking at, look how the gap look have to go and it feels like we’re never getting there. And you say no, turn around and look at the game, look how far you’ve come and, and focus on like you said, the, the victories, the, the progress that’s being made. There’s always going to be a gap. The gap is always going to be there. Behind those mountains are more mountains, more mountains. However, we have made a lot of progress so that I will tell you there’s a law I’m going to mess this up.

Perry Holley:
But I want to say it’s like Patterson’s law that work fills time allotted. So if you say I’m only going to work three hours today, guess what, you have three hours Worth of work. And if you say, I’m going to work eight hours today, imagine you have eight hours worth of work. If you said 12, 12 hours worth of work. When you get that in your mind, you say, guess what? I’m going to have a start and stop time, and the work will be here tomorrow. Go back to your priorities thing. If you got the right priorities. I’m doing the three things I need to be working on today, then everything else will be here tomorrow.

Chris Goede:
Hey, is that law the reason why, like, if I have a deadline and I know it’s going to take me an hour to do it, I wait till the hour before the deadline to do it. In essence, right? Like, you know, it’s going to take. Well, as we wrap up, here’s the thing. Perry and I talk about this every single week. Our goal is to allow you to increase your influence with people. And this is an awareness topic, but it also gave you some practical things to think about. And people quit. People, okay? They don’t quit organizations.

Chris Goede:
And so we need to lead the whole person. We often will hear, well, when I show up at work, I’m this versus when I go home, I’m that. Okay, if you can do that, more power to you. But I promise you there, you’re showing up at home at what happened at work, and you’re showing up at work. And so as leaders, we need to be aware of that and we need to be having these conversations with our leaders, especially since there are five, I think now, maybe six different generations in the workforce, because that each generation handles these things a little bit differently. And each generation needs help in how to set guardrails to be able to help them, because it is healthier for us to be at a place to where we’re not overloading our team. We do want a little discretionary effort, but we don’t want them taking all that work home every single night and then on the weekends, because they will burn.

Perry Holley:
That’s good. I saw one of our millennial employees brought their child to work today. So with me actually being in the building, you do have six generations. Just thought I’d point that.

Chris Goede:
That’s so good.

Perry Holley:
All right, great stuff. Thank you so much. And as a reminder, if you’d like to get the learner guide for this episode, if you’d like to learn more about our offerings, learn more about our other podcast offerings, you can do all that at MaxwellLeadership.com/ExecutivePodcast. You can also leave us a question or a comment there. We love hearing from you very grateful you’d spend this time with us. That’s all today from the Maxwell Leadership Executive Podcast.

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