Finding The Time To Lead

Hi there, I'm Ben Morton and welcome to another episode of the Leaders Kit Bag. It's the weekly micro edition of my podcast. Each episode is just six minutes long and is designed to provide you with tips, tools and tactics around specific aspects of leadership and management. It addresses some of the most common, common challenges you will face as a leader or manager. They are all recorded unscripted whilst I'm out walking in the countryside. So you'll probably hear birds tweeting in the background or just ambient noise as the people around me are going about their day to day life. That's all I'm going to say by way of an introduction. So let's dive straight in to this week's episode. If you're in any sort of leadership and management position and feel as though you never quite have enough time to step into leader mode and do all of the things you know you could and perhaps should be doing as a leader, then today's episode of the Leaders Kit Bag is for you. In this episode I'm going to talk you through my Leadership Equalizer framework and how you can use it to find the time that you desperately want to step into leader mode much more often. If we step back for a second and think about a leader's job in a big picture perspective, we can say there are essentially three things that a leader has to do, and you can think of these as being like a graphic equalizer on an old stereo or perhaps a DJ mixing deck. So the first dial on the Leadership Equalizer is what I call doing things. No matter how senior we are, there will always be stuff that we are responsible for and have to do ourself as a leader. And that dial on the Leadership Equalizer often gets pushed right up. Why? Because you probably enjoy doing those things. That's why we ended up in the career that we're in or the function that we work in. And secondly, it's those things that we do that are likely to have got us promoted to our leadership or management position. So for most leaders and managers, their doing things dial is pushed up pretty high. The second dial on the Leadership Equalizer is the managing things dial. Now we all have things to manage and these things normally have some sort of KPI objective or target on them. And the old adage of what gets measured gets done really kicks in here, which means that dial also gets gets cranked up. Then we get to the third dial on the Leadership Equalizer which is the leading people dial. And notice my language there. Doing things, managing things because we absolutely manage things, but we also absolutely lead people. Now, the challenge here is that for many people, we didn't set out in our career wanting to be a leader. There are very few people who sit in their school careers office saying to their teacher, when I grow up, I want to be a leader. So because it's not what we set out in our career necessarily wanting to do primarily, it doesn't get as much focus as doing things. And then it's almost here. The Opposite of the Managing things dial There are very few organizations still, in my experience, that measure their leaders on how they lead. Instead, we measure them on what they deliver, which really falls under the managing things dial. So the opposite of the old adage is true. What doesn't get measured doesn't get done. And this means if we're not very careful, we simply end up leading in our spare time or leading when we have the time, when all of the doing and managing is done. So how do we solve it? It's easier said than done, but there is a solution. Firstly, we need to find ways to push down the door doing things dial. We need to find the things that we can let go of, the things we can ditch, and the things we can delegate. And sometimes these will be things that we really enjoy doing. But if we are now in a leadership or management position, we have to ask ourselves the question, am I really the right person to be doing this task right now? So we need to force the doing things dial down, which will give us more time to push up the leading people dial. And finally, or finally for now, there's a mindset shift that can help us. Instead of thinking of your dials as doing managing leading, flip the dials and think leading managing, doing. Because that really is our priority. And as a leader, hope it's been useful. And as always, take care of yourself. Look after those you've got the privilege and responsibility to lead. And until next time, folks, lead on.