#26: Availability ≠ Effectiveness: Rethinking Leadership Boundaries

1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:01,000
Eric:  Welcome to the Empower Podcast. I'm your host, Eric Pfeiffer, CEO of Empower. Coaching leadership isn't about titles or positions. It's actually about the influence and impact we have on our environments. This is where we get to learn how to operate well under pressure, lead with confidence and drive meaningful results.

2
00:00:01,000 --> 00:00:02,000
Leadership often pulls us in a hundred different directions. Everyone needs something. Every opportunity starts to look important and without even realizing it, we start saying yes to everything. It feels like we're being helpful. All those yeses add up and suddenly we're stretched too thin, unclear on our priorities,  and carrying things that don't even belong to us.

3
00:00:02,000 --> 00:00:03,000
Why? Because we want to be supportive. We want to be seen as helpful. We wanna be seen as an effective leader. And we think that  saying yes all the time is what's going to add up to effective, helpful, supportive. Without boundaries. We're actually not serving our people. We're just running ourselves ragged.

4
00:00:03,000 --> 00:00:04,000
Right? Um, and that's normally driven by fear and insecurity. Now, the positive side of that, that internal drive, is that we feel responsibility. Mm-hmm. Whether it's for our team or for the organization or for whatever  context, or we feel responsibility, we want to be successful, and because of that, it drives us to want to engage so that we can have the best chance at winning.

5
00:00:04,000 --> 00:00:05,000
And the more driven, more ambitious, um, of a human being that we are,  the more. Painful it is to recognize our limitations. We wanna believe that we can do it all, be everywhere, have every conversation, help everybody. Um, we also fear disappointing people or missing out. So we keep saying yes. Mm-hmm. Hoping it'll prove our value.

6
00:00:05,000 --> 00:00:06,000
Eric's new book, upgrade. Your leadership is officially available for pre-order. You already know the tools. They're the ones that we walk through on this podcast, the ones we call the Leadership Operating System. Well, the book breaks them all down step by step, and when you pre-order, you're going to get free access to the  Full Leadership Operating System e-course, which is the deep dive training on all eight tools.

7
00:00:06,000 --> 00:00:07,000
And, um, people would ask, like, you just naturally gravitate towards certain kids. You give certain kids more attention. And, and people were like, how can you do that? Isn't it unfair? And I was like. If everybody is equally as important, then nobody's important. And the beautiful thing is like everybody can have different people that are  important, different priorities that are important, but if you aren't able to identify if certain things aren't special or elevated, then everything's vanilla.

8
00:00:07,000 --> 00:00:08,000
Eric: I love that it reminds me of you sharing the story of, of the orphanage you guys worked in. It reminds me of, of, you know, just watching my wife as she tends to her vegetable gardens in our, in our backyard, and obviously there are different seasons for planting different vegetables,  but even within a particular season where she has a whole variety of vegetables that are growing, not every plant requires the same.

9
00:00:08,000 --> 00:00:09,000
Just like every team member in our organization, every child in that orphanage is actually valuable and important. Yes, but that we as leaders, because we are finite in our time, energy, and resource, have to learn how to discern  in different times, seasons, different days, different situations. Um, which of those persons or which activities, um, require, uh, a priority of our time, attention, and resource.

10
00:00:09,000 --> 00:00:10,000
Eric: So let, let's jump in and kind of push this deeper and offer a kind of mental framework to help us begin to understand how we as leaders can avoid Right. The, the, the burnout and the dissolution of our, of our energy. Um, for lack of boundaries.  Healthy leadership means owning what's ours. And I would even add to that, owning what's ours based on the day, the time, the situation, and then knowing how to release what isn't.

11
00:00:10,000 --> 00:00:11,000
And I've got texts from my, my size to my  kids, and I've got team, my team members who are wanting to get approval on something or permission to spend money on something. It's just, I mean, let's be honest. All of us mm-hmm. Are constantly being bombarded with requests. So giving ourselves permission to pause before we just default to our response.

12
00:00:11,000 --> 00:00:12,000
Mm-hmm. What's really mine in this, in this, in this situation, and what belongs to someone else? The number of times I have rejoiced in that I get to just forward an email to you or to Aura or to some other, to say, Hey guys, this isn't mine to carry. And and part of that is because you, you guys have helped me over, over the last couple  years identify, Hey Eric, that's not for you to worry about.

13
00:00:12,000 --> 00:00:13,000
That kind of reflection, that permission to pause and ask these question changes everything instead of reacting in the moment or choosing with intention, right? Instead of feeling constantly overloaded by all the yeses that we've made, we begin to experience the freedom and actually the margin, the mental and  emotional margin.

14
00:00:13,000 --> 00:00:14,000
He's being super brave. Like, let's honor that. You know, she's there, everybody's looking at them and she. Said yes because of the pressures of the situation. Yeah. And  later she reflected to me, she's like, I don't even, like, I didn't even wanna say yes, but I had to say yes. And I was like. So here's where a pause would've been super helpful.

15
00:00:14,000 --> 00:00:15,000
Dawn: Oh, right. I know. I, but you know, like, there's just another example I have. I use, we use these in our own parenting in our own lives all the time. I was just having this exact conversation, but that exact idea is why creating boundaries frees us up, you know, in, in so many ways. Whether you're creating a boundary of pausing, where whether you're creating a boundary of being, recognizing what is yours to own and what is somebody else's, um, those boundaries give us  permission to show up clearer.

16
00:00:15,000 --> 00:00:16,000
Eric: number of times in my life where I have found myself overwhelmed, beat up, exhausted because I'm trying to do so much and, and then realizing I'm not even doing the  things that I should be doing.

17
00:00:16,000 --> 00:00:17,000
Dawn: I have one leader that I work with on a weekly basis, and they are incredibly talented,  very high functioning, very high achieving. Um. A common conversation we are having is, uh, setting, uh, reasonable expectations not only for themselves but for their team members. And this boundary conversation comes up a lot because the root problem is this leader has a fear that their team cannot deliver at the level that they themselves would deliver at.

18
00:00:17,000 --> 00:00:18,000
For one,  because she's not utilizing our team. She's trying to do everything, trying to vet everything, trying to oversee the outcomes of everything. And she is an executive in a huge company. There's, there's no way for her to do that. But the other problem that it's creating is at some point. Her and the rest of her executive team need to know if her team can actually sink or swim.

19
00:00:18,000 --> 00:00:19,000
Dawn: She keeps rescuing the situation. And so it's almost gonna be like a rug is pulled out, a trap door is pulled for everybody. Um, either when she finally comes to the limit of herself or she finally starts to set these boundaries, um, I think, you know, there's gonna be some,  some rude awakenings happening.

20
00:00:19,000 --> 00:00:20,000
Everything required. His fingerprints, um, literal sign off, literally signing off on anything and  everything. So many layers, you know, down chain in the, in the, in the leadership structure of the organization. And I remember saying to this individual one day, I said, you know, he was constantly complaining about being burned out and tired and exhausted.

21
00:00:20,000 --> 00:00:21,000
You choose, you're making a choice to do this. Yeah, and I'll never forget the look on his face. He kind of had that, he kind of had that  caught with his hand in the cookie jar. And, and uh, and he might, he might have used some expletives to tell me how unhappy he was with my pointing this out, your

22
00:00:21,000 --> 00:00:22,000
However, number one, you shouldn't be, you shouldn't be  bunging down too far because otherwise you begin to rob your lower level leaders of the opportunity for them to have the responsibility and contribution, right? Um, and you need to know how to bounce back up appropriately so that you have enough time and energy so that you can do what only you can do at your level of the organization.

23
00:00:22,000 --> 00:00:23,000
Eric:  And he said, I said, W and I asked this question oftentimes of leaders when they're over-functioning, what are you so afraid of?

24
00:00:23,000 --> 00:00:24,000
We're so afraid that people aren't gonna figure this stuff out, that we feel like we have to constantly swoop in. This is no, this is no different to this concept of  helicopter parenting that's become very popular over the last 20 years. Yes. Right. Where we swoop in to save our kids every time for fear that they're gonna make some massive.

25
00:00:24,000 --> 00:00:25,000
Those responsibilities. And then how do I invest appropriately into the people down  chain so that they feel in increasingly more equipped Yeah. And have a chance. Now, at the end of the day, over time, maybe some of those people can't cut it and they don't work out, and we have to make changes. Fine. But in the same way in our households, the antidote is not to over-function and do all the chores for your kids.

26
00:00:25,000 --> 00:00:26,000
Um, so we, we'd worked all that out, right? We'd come up with a plan, and then at the right  before we went in, you were like, Hey, and don't worry. Like there's nothing, there's no trouble that you can get into in this scenario that I can't get you out of.

27
00:00:26,000 --> 00:00:27,000
Right. We're gonna start with spaghetti or something. Really? Macaroni and cheese. Macaroni and cheese. Although that's a dicey one in my house if you've listened to some previous episodes, but yeah. Right. That. That is how we avoid, that's how we create boundaries, is how we create space for ourself as leaders and continue  to create opportunities for the people on our teams to rise to the occasion.

28
00:00:27,000 --> 00:00:28,000
Yeah. Um, so the temptation in me to over-function is there. Right. Like, wouldn't it just be easier if I did everything? Um, secondly, while in that one of those particular instances while you were presenting, I remember thinking, Hmm, do I need to jump in right now? Do I need to, do I need to, do I need to  kinda steer this in a different direction, right?

29
00:00:28,000 --> 00:00:29,000
But I just wanna acknowledge from the leadership perspective that it is unnerving. Yeah, this is scary because you wanna win, you wanna succeed, you know that you can  succeed on your own. But to build a team, to build an organization, um, that can succeed in greater ways. Um, we've got to be willing to set those healthy boundaries to say, I'm not gonna participate in that.

30
00:00:29,000 --> 00:00:30,000
Our abilities through other people so  that we can actually accomplish more than we could by ourselves.

31
00:00:30,000 --> 00:00:31,000
Um, I think every, every wife that's listening to this, if you're a wife out there or you have a significant life partner, most women tend to over function in the household and the husbands kind of get off without, you know, doing as much. Right. 'cause it's just easier to do it all. Um, that is a generalization, but I think one that we, we find resonates with many people, uh, whether it's with our kids, whether it's  in with our teens, whatever the context is to reflect on where do I feel like I'm over-functioning?

32
00:00:31,000 --> 00:00:32,000
Um, so number one, what we, what we call time blocking. We don't normally think about setting  boundaries in our schedule for the week, but like setting, like looking through our calendar for the week ahead and asking the question, am I blocking out the appropriate amount of time for the things that are most important, that are the priorities for me?

33
00:00:32,000 --> 00:00:33,000
There may be that we're, that because we're not setting healthy boundaries, we're not spending  enough time and attention investing in the people that really do matter most. So whether it's, you know, our, our schedules, our time, our calendars, whether it's our tasks load that we're trying to navigate, or whether it's the relationships of our life.

34
00:00:33,000 --> 00:00:34,000
Dawn: good.  I, I honestly, I'm think, I'm thinking about how, uh, the, the initial work, even in my family life of delegating things to my kids, creating space for my kids to step up. Now that they are 13 and 15, the.

35
00:00:34,000 --> 00:00:35,000
Did it result in some times where they didn't have what they need? Yes. Were there hard conversations around grades or dropped balls because they weren't on top of things that were now their responsibilities? Yes, but  ultimately in our families, just like on our teams, that is the hard work that we have to do as leaders of setting boundaries so that we can increase the cap, the capacity of our team.

36
00:00:35,000 --> 00:00:36,000
And don't miss. Next week one, we're gonna be talking about decision fatigue. Oh my  gosh. Talked about boundaries today, decision fatigue next week. These are really important conversations. Um, decision fatigue, why constant choices wear us down, and how the best leaders simplify to lead with greater clarity and energy.