Why You Need a “To-Don’t List”

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 are a leader and feel as though you never have time to complete all of your leadership tasks and responsibilities, or worse, if you're a leader and you feel as though you are simply leading in your spare time, when you finally have time, when all of the other tasks and doing has been done, then today's episode of the Leaders Kit Bag is for you. Let me start with a question. Have you ever been on a leadership or management training course and been told what not to do? Have you ever been given a long list of things to stop doing? I'm guessing probably no, I certainly haven't. But that's what I'm going to do today and that's what you get if you come on my leadership training programs. The task for you in today's episode of the Leaders Kit Bag is to create your very own Stop Doing list. You've probably got a to do list, but I want you to think about a to don't list. You see, if you've watched the previous episode of the Leaders Kit Bag where I spoke about my leadership equalizer model, it will make sense to you when I say that if we want to push up our leading dial and do a little more leading, then we need to push down our doing dial. We need to start doing a little less of the practical work and potentially you might need to push down your managing dial. Simply put, to simply put, to have more time to step into leader mode, there will be a list of things that we need to let go of and this will probably feel hard and difficult and scary. There will probably be tasks that you are doing, but it's no longer your responsibility to do them. Or at least you're no longer the best person to be doing them. There might be tasks that you're doing simply because you've always done them. That report that gets completed every week, but you're pretty certain nothing ever happens with it. So you need to be quite ruthless in finding things that you can stop doing, you can ditch or you can delegate to other people. And this is where it feels hard, especially for newly appointed leaders and managers, because the big fear is, if I stop doing this and start delegating that, then what are my people going to think of me? Are they going to think I'm lazy? I'm not pulling my weight? Are they going to think I shouldn't be the leader or manager because I'm not working hard enough? But we simply cannot allow these fears to dictate what we do. And there are three main risks or dangers of letting these fears run our days at work. Number one, the first risk is if we are not letting go of things that perhaps we used to do before we got promoted, then we are not allowing our people to develop. We're not allowing them to learn new skills and step up and grow. Number two, if we are not letting go of things, then we don't have the time to support our people. We can't be the one who can scan ahead and identify obstacles and clear those obstacles. We can't be there to support them and be the leader and manager that they need. And the third risk of not letting go is a significant one. The third risk is that we end up communicating things to our team at the last minute. We end up communicating poorly and with a lack of clarity. Why? Because we are working really, really hard and fast and at a frenetic pace to get everything done that we used to do before we got promoted and trying to squeeze in all of the tasks and responsibilities that come with being a leader and manager. And this working at pace and trying to spin so many plates and means we end up getting to things last minute. Or when we do send emails to our team asking them to do stuff, there's a lack of clarity, which leads to confusion, which leads to things being done wrong, which leads to rework, which leads to us getting frustrated, and so on and so on. So the challenge from today's episode of the Leaders Kit Bag, to look at everything on your to do list and create that to don't list. What can you ditch? What can you delegate to people in your team? Hope it's been useful. As always, folks, look after yourself, look after those you've got the privilege and responsibility to lead. And until next time, lead on.