Executive Podcast #246: Priority Principles for Leaders

It’s not who gets the most things done, but the one you gets the right things done who wins.  By winning we mean achieving the desired outcomes and results. Today, we will look into the five principles for being a high priority leader.

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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 remarkable results. Hi, I’m Perry Holly, 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. Perry and I were just talking just a few minutes ago. We love hearing from you that are listening to our podcast. It just energizes us, man. We just are excited to know that people are getting value from this. This is why we do this. And what we’re doing is we’re just taking from what we’re hearing in the field, in organizations and leaders that we’re working with, and we’re bringing it to you. I know some of our listeners are actually then taking it and using it as kind of a team kickoff of, hey, what did you learn from the podcast this week? What are your thoughts? What are your takeaways? And it creates that leadership dialogue. So love hearing from you and appreciate each one of you that are listening or watching us via YouTube. As we get started, I want to encourage you to go to Maxwellleadership.com/podcast. There you can download our learner guide. You can learn more about some of our corporate offerings to help with just team engagement development of your leaders. The other thing is we have a family of podcasts there. You can just experience the Corporate Competitor Podcast, which is one of our favorites, and then Maxwell Leadership, another one of our favorites that you can go and learn just a ton of different leadership from Don Jaeger, Mark Cole, and then obviously continue to listen to ours.

Perry Holley:

You want to know my favorite?

Chris Goede:

Yes. What’s yours?

Perry Holley:

This one?

Chris Goede:

Yeah. Okay. Well, we didn’t want to say that. We wanted to make sure that we were not trying to be biased. We’ll talk about bias on another podcast. Well, today’s topic we’re going to talk about is priority principles for leaders. And I have to tell you, when I saw priority principles, I almost didn’t want to talk about it because this is something that I struggle with. I’m continuing to grow and continuing to learn, but it’s not who gets the most things done. Although I do like to create a checklist and see how many lines by the end of the day I can have on my piece of paper. But it’s about who gets the right things done, who really wins at the end of the day. And so really thinking about what are those right things, what are the desired outcomes and results that we need? And so today we’re going to look at five principles. You guessed it, our favorite number of how do you become really a leader that understands how to prioritize the things that need to get done?

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Perry Holley:

Yeah, and I don’t break it to you you’re not the only one struggling with this. Don’t take your hand off the wheel where you are right now. But show of hands, how many of you struggle with being busy, but busy doing what? That was my little motto for years. Perry, I know you’re busy, but busy doing what? Because it’s almost like an honor badge. Now that we get by being busy, we want everybody to know how busy we are. But am I actually working on important things? And I get done at the end of the day? I said I had a very busy day. I got a lot done. Did any of it matter? Not one thing, but I got a lot done. I want to get the right things done. So that’s where I thought we’d look at some of this again from some of John’s teaching. That really resonated with me. I’ve been applying it. I’m teaching it a lot. We’re doing a lot of leaders asking for help in coaching on how to get managed time. They usually say time management, but it really is priority management and knowing what your priorities are and working those yeah.

Chris Goede:

Because we all know that we can’t manage time. It’s going to happen, but you can lead your priorities in the right way. So let’s talk about these priority principles that we have for you today. Number one, working smarter has a higher return than working harder. And again, you may go, well, that makes sense. I understand that. But I think when we begin to think about what we’re doing and what we need to accomplish as a leader, and we begin to go this way and begin to work smarter implies that we’re becoming more efficient. We’re becoming more effective versus just putting in more time. Now, you and I will roll up our sleeves. And we were talking about before we started recording today about well, I mean, I just got to leave a couple of hours early. I got to leave the night before. I’m going to work harder. I’m going to do whatever that may not be the best thing as a leader, depending on what the priority is. And I think if we think about optimizing our workflow, if we think about focusing on the highest return of some of the things we need to get done, could we be leveraging technology? Jake was just talking to us a little bit before we started about one of the things that he’s been able to take off your plate, that you can then rearrange your priorities because of some technology that he is. Using versus if we don’t go that route. The age old burnout, which we’ve heard a lot of people talk about this I think when you get down that road, and if you’re not doing this, you’re just going to get diminishing returns as a leader. And ultimately, it’s about balance. That’s extremely hard as I sit here and smile at you. For those that aren’t on YouTube watching us talk about balance, but, man, we really need to continue to think about as a leader, are we working smart?

Perry Holley:

Did you just say I was being replaced by technology?

Chris Goede:

Well, I didn’t want to tell you that, but Jake and I, we’re going to get there. This was just the first thing. Yeah, but there are things right, that are coming out and about that we can use and leverage, not replace. I don’t think it’ll ever replace the human element of what we do.

Perry Holley:

That doesn’t make me feel any better. Working smarter makes me think about big rocks first. And Stephen Covey’s. Great lesson around. If you’re filling your time with the pebbles and the stones, you can’t get the big rocks done. So figure out what your big rocks are, what your priorities are, and do those first and then fill in around that with what’s left. Number two was an interesting there’s a statement, some of you can’t have it all. And if you’re like us, you say, what?

Chris Goede:

Why not?

Perry Holley:

What was that about? Yes, it’s easy to go into the day to the week to the month to think I’m going to get it all done, and it just doesn’t happen that way. So if you’re trying to get everything done, if everything’s A priority, then nothing’s a priority. So figuring out what are and there’s all kind of methodologies for doing this that just practically looking at what you need to get done in a week or a month and saying, what are my top A priorities? And what would be secondary A B priority? And then what would be A-C-I never do a B before I finish my A’s. I never do a C before I finish my B’s. Will I ever get to my C’s? Perhaps not if I’m still working on A’s. And then B’s, I may not get to those, but I know what the next ones are, but I don’t jump to them to do that. And for me, this is really about saying, I’m probably not going to get it all done. Work is going to expand to fill all the time I give it. So let’s just figure out what needs to be done and get that most important stuff done. And don’t worry about all of it.

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Chris Goede:

I love what you’re saying. I went through an exercise a couple of weeks ago where I listed out everything that I had on my mind and every kind of thing project that we’re working on and what’s going on. And then I went through and I ranked them on paper and categorized them to your point and by priority because I do want to accomplish it all as an achiever, you’re like, hey, I can get all of this done and that’s not realistic. And so kind of developed a system to help fight myself in that because you can’t have it all. And there are things that I continue to just pin right, I just leave on there or table from week to week. And it’s been several weeks. And to your point, I may never get to it, but just understanding and seeing what that priority filter is has brought to my attention that I can’t get it all done right now. The third one is the good is always the enemy of the best. I think in this, it makes me think about a couple of things where if things are good, maybe we get a little bit too content with the way that things are going. We don’t take risks, we don’t invest in different things for our business, for our team. We’re less likely to want to change. By the way, if you don’t like change, you will not last very long. And so you’ll like irrelevance a whole lot less. As we’ve said here before, I also think if we continue to just be content and stay in the good, we’re missing out on our full potential. It’s got to be a priority of ours to make sure that we’re continuing to strive. And for me it’s really having that mindset of growth and so what am I doing to grow so that I’m not staying in the good?

Perry Holley:

I was listening to a recording of John the other day, and he was telling a story about being new in communication and as a young pastor. And the realized that he could just kind of mail it in, he could kind of wing it, and that the people in his congregation didn’t have that high of expectation and he could meet whatever they had. And he decided right then that being good is the enemy of being great and that he would actually take it to the next level to raise it to be great, to focus on the things that only he could. Do to focus on the great things, not all the dozens of good things you could be doing or complacency may sit in. But to really figure out what are the big high impact things I can be doing. So for me, that’s when I thought about that one, it was around sometimes you could just settle it’s good enough. No, I’m going to pick out a couple of things that make impact and work on those and let the good things go for now, which is you can’t have it all. Number four, I want to play with you a little game here about back and forth off this, but the idea was simple but says that proactive beats reactive when it comes to being productive. Proactive beats reactive. And so a little word association. I gave you some ideas here, but I’ll take the proactive side, which is really an initiator. And by the way, leaders always initiate. Leaders don’t wait for things to come. Leaders initiate. So if something about being productive and this goes back to John’s, today matters. But I love this. I think about it all the time. Initiators we prepare. What do the reactors do?

Chris Goede:

Clean up messes. The word here is repair. But man, ultimately if you’re reacting, you ended up cleaning up stuff. You haven’t really kind of had the lens of what could be and then you end up getting yourself in trouble.

Perry Holley:

Hearing what you didn’t do yesterday to do it today on that. If I’m an initiator, I plan ahead.

Chris Goede:

And if I’m a reactor, I live for the moment. And I say that with a smile because I am not like that. But I do have some people in my life and on my team that are like that. And for me, I just think that they are things you can miss out on if you don’t plan ahead.

Perry Holley:

If I’m an initiator, I pick up the phone and make contact.

Chris Goede:

If I’m a reactor, I just wait for the phone to ring.

Perry Holley:

Yeah, good. If I’m an initiator, I anticipate problems.

Chris Goede:

And then as a reactor, I just react to the problems that show up on my plate. And I’ll tell you, this is one thing right here for me that I love with people that I work with and on my team, is that if we are all thinking and anticipating problems ahead of time and sharing those, then I am hearing from my team and those around me things that I hadn’t even thought about, that helps me anticipate. And so love being around people that anticipate the problem.

Perry Holley:

Totally agree. If I’m proactive and I initiate, I.

Chris Goede:

Seize the moment and as if I’m reacting, I just wait for the right moment.

Perry Holley:

If I’m an initiator, I put priorities.

Chris Goede:

In my calendar and if I react, I put others request in their calendars. Yeah, talk a little bit about this one from your lens.

Perry Holley:

Yeah, you put the request in your calendar, it should read, but when people come and make a request of you, you start scheduling your time and putting things out versus putting my priorities in my calendar first.

Chris Goede:

Yeah, like even just thinking about this podcast. Right. One of the things, this is a priority to us and we have some team around us that helps us with this and one of the things that we wanted to initiate was, hey, we’ve got to make this a priority. We’ve got to get this on our calendar. And so we have it calendar out all the way for the whole year so that we know that we can make sure that this is a priority and it’s in our calendar and we don’t allow other things to detract from it.

Perry Holley:

I love that initiators, I would invest.

Chris Goede:

Time in people, and as a reactor, I would spend time with people. This right here stands out to me in regards to level four influence we talk about at level four. What are you doing to develop people personally and professionally? And it’s not just about spending time with them. You begin to develop people when you invest time in them and it’s a different mindset.

Perry Holley:

I love that too. I think the same thing is that when I’m in those precious one on one moments when you have time with people, are you just spending time talking about menial things or are you actually investing time and talking about meaningful things? And finally, if I’m an initiator, I.

Chris Goede:

Choose and as a reactor, I lose. I love that. And I love that we kind of shared that. And that’ll be in the Learner’s guide. And you can download and see that chart there. That’s from John. Well, number five is we want to talk about the important needs to take precedent over the urgent. And obviously, this leads right into the Eisenhower matrix that we’re all very familiar with. If not, take a look at that. And that is where we talk about, hey, the important and the urgent. The not important and the not urgent. And what is on your plate? What priorities do you have and where does it fall in that bucket? And I would encourage you not only to do this as an individual, but to do this with your team. The purpose of the content we bring with you is to help you lead and develop your team. And that Team Co, he said this is a great exercise to have your team walk through where everybody’s putting things that they’re on the board and which category does it fall into? Because, hey, there’s a couple of things that may need to be eliminated off that.

Perry Holley:

And it’s probably one of the biggest challenges I see in this topic of being productive is we spend all the time in the urgent and important quadrant, the upper left and not in the upper right, which is not urgent, but important is where most of your productivity is going to happen. And I just had a huge coaching call yesterday with someone who had not really ever thought about this. I’ll probably do a podcast in the future about this dastardly little quadrant there called Not Important but Urgent. It’s urgent, but not important. And I just noticed that a lot of people think everything that if it’s urgent, it has to be important. And it starts to distract you from the things that really are important. We talk about working above the line. So at the top of that line, it’s both important and urgent. Important and not urgent. Below the line, it’s not important and urgent. Not important and not urgent. So below the line, everything’s not important. Above the line, everything’s important. How much time are you spending above the line? If I looked at your calendar and what you did today, what you’re planning to do tomorrow, would it be above the line? Things? It’s huge productivity gain if you can work above the line.

Chris Goede:

Well, as we wrap up leaders, I want you to understand this leadership is complex, right? Yes. You kind of giggle and 14,000 thoughts just rolled through your head on why I said that. And there are different situations that require different approaches, and those approaches are going to be based off of how you prioritize what’s on your plate. And you need to understand that you don’t need to do everything. John talks a lot about the fact that if someone can do something as good as you, 80%, as good as you, then give it to them. You’ll create a natural coaching relationship, but more importantly, they’re going to learn, they’re going to grow, and they’re going to be able to do it better than you. And so I really want you to begin thinking about what are the priorities? How do I go through the five things that we just talked about and really assess what my priorities are and realign it? Because it is the key that there are only certain things that you can do as a leader that others can’t do. But too many times, again, I speak for myself. I find myself with a list of things that I just want to be able to cross the list off of, that somebody else in the team that may even be equipped better to do than me, and it’s not the right priority. So these were just five principles that you brought to us that I think are key to us of saying, hey, let me dig into these principles. Let me write out all the things that I’m doing, and then how do they overlap, and then how do I have the right priorities?

Perry Holley:

Fantastic. Well, thank you, Chris. And just a reminder that if you do want the learner guide for this episode, you can find that at MaxwellLeadership.com/Podcast. You can also leave a comment or a question for us there. You can also see the family of podcasts that we offer there. We love hearing from you, and we’re very grateful you’d spend this time with us. That’s all today from the Maxwell Leadership executive podcast.