6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 1

hey as we launch into a new year let's talk about your leadership habits because we know when it comes to leadership the potential of your leadership is a reflection of the quality of your habits so to maximize your leadership impact you don't want to just develop the right habits you also need to eliminate the wrong habits so in this episode we're talking about the six habits great leaders avoid when it comes to your leadership habits remember the potential of your leadership is a reflection of the quality of your habits in other words if you want

to have a bigger impact develop better habits I've taught extensively on habits one of my favorite subjects um in fact we have five different episodes on habits uh and they're on starting the right habits uh we will link to all of those in the leader guide but we're going to take a different approach to it today to succeed in your leadership you don't want to just develop the right habits but you need to eliminate the wrong ones super important you don't just bring in what works but you have to eliminate what doesn't work and most

people know this and apply this principle like in ordinary life all the time right like we know we need to stop eating unhealthy snacks or we know that we need to stop criticizing our spouse don't do that most people know we need to stop bad habits in their personal lives but many leaders don't know or think about that they need to stop the wrong leadership habits to have a better leadership impact they may not realize I need to stop Mis prioritizing my time or I I always react instead of initiate so I need to stop

reacting and start initiating why does this matter because your habits will shape your results for Better or For Worse if you want to change your leadership change your habits So today we're going to start part one of a two-part little miniseries and we're talking about six habits great leaders avoid chances are you have one or more of these and we're going to work hard to get rid of them we're going to talk about three today and then the first Thursday of next month we'll talk about the next three let's name the first three then I'll

tease you what's coming up in the future number one we're talking about today the habit of doing too much avoid it stay away from it most leaders fall victim to it number two we're going to avoid the habit of avoiding conflict number three today we're going to talk about the habit of doing what you've always done then a little teaser we have a bonus episode coming this month with the one the only Simon cynic I promise you're going to want to hear that it drops in two weeks then the first Thursday of next month we're

going to talk about three more habits the best leaders avoid they avoid the habit of micromanaging the habit of hiding and the habit of hesitation let's talk about the first three the good news is if you do have bad leadership habits Breaking Free from these habits it's not just possible but it's gamechanging what we're going to do is we're going to try to stop whatever is holding you back and then we're going to create the right habits to propel you forward so let's start with the first bad habit we're going to avoid number one we

are going to righteously passionately avoid number one the habit of doing too much why this is one of the most common bad habits that limit leaders all over the world with a very good heart and good intentions leaders um end up doing too much and where does this come from it comes from a very good and positive drive because as a leader what I know about you is you are results driven but if you do too much doing too much will be crippling to your leadership I would say it this way doing too much doesn't

just steal your energy it suffocates your productivity let me say it again doing too much it doesn't just rob you of energy but it suffocates your productivity we don't just want to be busy but we want to be effective and what I'm going to tell you sounds counterintuitive but I promise you it is true in your leadership and it's this take it to the bank you don't grow by doing more you grow by doing more of what matters most think about it let it sink in uh most leaders just want to do more more more

busier busier busier take on more conquer more and you do not grow more and your impact in your influence in your production by just simply doing more but you have to really focus on doing more of what matters most uh there's a good book on productivity in fact we'll give some copies away I'll tell you how to get them at the end of the episode but it's um an older book but a very helpful book called getting things done by David Allen if you want to work in growing in your productivity that's a book that

I recommend uh but what do you do when you know you're doing too much some of you this is a really bad habit and I'm going to give you four things to do super important you're doing too much you're worn out you're almost burned out you're kind of sporadic you're trying to keep all the plates spinning what are you going to do four things you're going to evaluate eliminate delegate and automate you're going to evaluate eliminate delegate and automate let's talk about them the first thing you're going to do is you're going to look at

everything you do you're going to evaluate every task every meeting every activity and then I'm going to encourage you to put all that you do into one of four tiers uh there is an episode I want you to listen to if you haven't heard it it's episode 79 I call it the four tiers of efficiency but you're going to look at every meeting you attend every task that you do every kind of decision that you make every activity every kind of conversation you're going to put them into one of four tiers of productivity and let

me just give you the tiers really really quickly tier one is what's absolutely Mission critical there are very very very few things that are tier one in your leadership and you you need know exactly what they are tier two is what I call very important and strategic it's not Mission critical but it's still pretty important and it is strategic tier three is Meaningful but not vital and every leader has tons of stuff that is Meaningful you enjoy it kind of moves the need a little bit but it is not vital and it can rob you

from tier one production tier four is exter internally initiated and a lower priority let me repeat them tier one is Mission critical tier two is important um and strategic tier three is Meaningful but not vital tier four is externally initiated in other words someone else is saying hey could you do this for me could you come here could you run this meeting whatever it is it's externally initiated and it's a lower priority what you're going to do is you're going to evaluate and then eliminate as many tasks as possible from the lower tiers uh you

don't change the world living in tier three or tier four and so you're going to eliminate as many different things you can that are in the lower tiers why because growing impact starts with subtraction not addition you're not trying to do more you want to do more of what matters and the only way you can do more of what matters is if you do less of what doesn't matter and forgive me if that sounds insultingly uh simple it is simple but is so powerful most leaders and promise you you're probably like this we we all

are the most driven leaders end up doing too much so how do you eliminate well I would say the best way to eliminate is to change the question that you ask yourself uh an opportunity pops up something new to do uh can you speak here can you start this product can you uh add more one more thing to your daily list uh what you're going to typically ask is can I do this can I accomplish it can I get it done don't ask can I do this instead ask should I do this GameChanger over and

over and over again someone presents an idea an opportunity to you you're not going to say um do I have room on my calendar can I do this that's that is not the best question the best question is should I do this and here's a little secret if you hesitate like hm let me think about it let me let me look at it if you hesitate at all you should probably say no remember just because you could do something does doesn't mean you should you're going to evaluate you're going to eliminate you're going to delegate

you're going to hand stuff off to other trusted leaders if you don't delegate I promise you this is true your unwillingness to delegate will eventually become the bottleneck that strangles your team's potential if you don't delegate you get in the way too many leaders have the bad habit of doing too much what are you going to do you're going to evaluate eliminate delegate and automate you're going to look at anything that you can streamline or automate um we do it over and over and over again in so many different areas here uh for example uh

as a pastor of a church uh with a podcast you might ask do I read all the emails that come in and do I reply to all of them and the answer is like I used to in the early years a long long time ago every single email that came into the church I read and responded to um same with the podcast in the early years but I do not do that now instead I have a team of people that care a lot about you and they have a system of how to reply to different

subjects and questions in needs so there are literally dozens of categories with starting points of an automated reply that has a personal touch why because we care and we want to be efficient and we want to make sure every email that's appropriate gets a response uh there's another area that a lot of leaders don't realize they can automate that's decision-making uh there are a lot of things that are going to come to you that if you put a thoughtful process in place you can actually automate decision- making for example uh my office might receive quite

a few invitations for me to speak in a given month and it could take a lot of time for me to read every one of them look at where it is who it is what it's for uh and such but what we've done is determine certain thresholds of impact if an invitation doesn't hit the target then we have an automatic no I I don't even see it uh you need to be fierce about protecting your time do not let your schedule happen to you you plan and protect your time fiercely how do you do it

you're not going to do too much you're going to evaluate eliminate delegate and automate why because to be great at what you do you don't let others determine where you spend your time in fact you don't just spend your time you invest it you don't change the world in lower tiers you're not living in tier three or tier four you're not trying to do more you're trying to do more of what matters most the best leaders never just do more they do more of what matters most great leaders they avoid number one the habit of

doing too much if you're doing too much this is the best time of the year to change it you're going to be very very intentional about what you do the second bad habit that you want to overcome number two is the habit of avoiding conflict don't we know so many leaders uh we avoid conflict and we have to understand that conflict is absolutely completely inevitable in leadership and yet many of us and I've done this too we fall into the bad habit of avoiding conflict uh it might be because we're afraid of it we don't

want to hurt people's feelings uh we're not comfortable with tension we desire that everybody's happy and we have to remember that avoiding conflict may feel easy in the moment but it's is always more difficult in the long run why because unresolved problems rarely fix themselves if you got conflict with someone or your team's fighting and you just hope it gets better unresolved problems rarely fix themselves why if problems were easy to solve without leaders then leaders wouldn't be necessary so how do we learn to handle conflict well as a leader uh this is way way

way too important and too complex of a subject for me to handle in a five-minute teaching so I will recommend a good resource one of the best books I've read on the subject is called crucial conversations uh we will link to that book in the leader guide as well uh that's a great book to help you learn how to have really more difficult conversations but I am going to give you a real short teaching just to kind of give you a few ideas to get you started um how do you become better at conflict well

number one change your mindset about conflict uh most people try to avoid it but you might want to think of conflict like um in a marriage if you are married you probably figured out by now that conflict is inevitable in a marriage and the reality is that all couples are going to fight right but the best couples healthy couples they fight clean they fight fair um the unhealthy couples they fight dirty and so it's not like if you're going to have conflict but it's how you're going to have conflict in your leadership um you you

want to change your mindset conflict doesn't mean that a relationship is coming to an end it's actually often a chance to strengthen the relationship in fact the people that I'm closest to and Trust the most are the people that we've worked through the most and so I would tell you don't be afraid of conflict be afraid of unresolved conflict uh second thing you want to do is you want to see problems early and solve them quickly if you have a bad interaction if someone hurts you if you might hurt someone someone offends you I would

suggest like immediately go to them and say hey you know your relationship is important to me and I don't want to let something get between us so I just kind of want to ask you what do you mean by that what you're doing is you're saying this could actually be a problem and so I'm not going to ignore it I'm going to address it quickly or maybe someone's disrespectful in a meeting and so you just go to them and say Hey I want to check and see if you're going through something because you know what

you said that's not really like you um what you're going to do is you're going to see problems early and solve them quickly don't sit on it and hope that you know a year from now things are going to get better because unresolved conflict usually doesn't get better by itself it was John Maxwell who said this he said conflict is like cancer early detection increases the likelihood of a positive outcome you want to see problems early and solve them quickly then number three you want to be willing to Hash it out and walk out United

uh you want to be realize that you can you can get in a real fight and you can argue and and you can work through some things and you can come out much better and stronger and more united on the backside because healthy conflict isn't about winning or losing it's about growing and learning and I umum one of the things that's most special to me is uh we are now 29 years old as a church organization and I have a group of four leaders three others uh Jerry Hurley Sam Roberts and Bobby Gruenewald who have

served with me for over 25 years we've served together and what do we do we we work through conflict together that's what we do I mean our basically our full-time job is we solve problems together and there's always challenges and there's often tension there's fast moving parts and tons and tons of relationships and so anytime something small happens we just say hey we're going to give each other the benefit of the doubt and we're not going to let a small offense become a big wedge one of the greatest things you can do to have a

strong organization is keep tenur trusted leaders together and in order to do that you have to be able to handle conflict well as Leaders we're going to avoid the bad habit of doing too much we're not going to avoid conflict and then the third thing we're going to talk about is this um we're going to avoid the habit of doing what you've always done this is a very common problem and a lot of leaders do the same thing over and over and over again uh this quote is attributed to Henry Ford some people debate whether

he said or not but um I'll attribute it to Henry Ford he says if you do what you've always done you'll get what you've always got I like that that quote's powerful but I would suggest is not always true and I'll give you a couple of exceptions exception number one is this sometimes if you do what you've always done you'll get less than what you've always got if you do what you've always done sometimes you don't get the same result why because the world changes and what works last year might not work this year markets

evolve and Technology Advan and Team Dynamics shift and so sometimes what used to work doesn't work as well as it used to and leaders sometimes we're slow to notice we don't tell the truth or we even double down on an old idea and try to do a bad idea better I've said this before that the greatest threat to future success is often past success just because it worked in uh the past doesn't mean it's going to continue to bring the same results so we're going to be careful to watch for the law of diminishing returns

what is that sometimes what you did gets you less than it used to get you Ford's quote is also not true on the other end and I would say here's another exception and that that would be this if you do what you've always done sometimes you'll get more than you've always got sometimes you do the same thing you used to do and all of a sudden it seems to work better it's a little bit like investing money if you are uh consistent investing a little bit money over time guess what happens money starts to compound

and so you put the same in little by little by little but over time Boom the results are exponential so what are you going to do well you may do the right thing you're focusing on leadership development and in the early days you're working on it you're trying to develop leaders and you're not seeing very big results and then you just keep focusing the same energy and on year five all the sudden you're still trying to develop leaders and you get explosive results things have changed you're seeing C compounding faithfulness uh the same thing might

be you're working really hard to create efficiencies or you're designing your system to scale and you're like going it's not moving the needle that much and you keep working on then one day guess what you hit a Tipping Point and suddenly you're wildly profitable or you see exponential growth so you might say Okay Craig New Year I'm in I don't want to have the bad habit so should I do what I've always done or should I do something different and my answer is emphatically it depends it really does depend the the main thought is this

you don't want to do what you've done accidentally or you don't want to change what you've done without intention what you want to do is you want to be intentional prayerful thoughtful and you always want to be strategic and you want to remember these two thoughts remember this take it to the bank being static about what you do is dangerous and being erratic about what you do is dangerous you want to be intentional there's some things you don't want to change some things that you do want to change but what you want to do is

you want to do it with intentionality I'll give you some questions that can be very helpful for you to determine do we keep doing this and we'll put these in the leader guide as well um here's a few questions ask yourself this is this task habit or strategy still aligned with our current goals really important question and tell the truth number two uh are we committed to this strategy because it's effective or just because it's comfortable number three where are we seeing diminishing returns and what should we do about it important question number four if

someone replaced me in my role what's the first thing they'd change think about it do not listen to that little section on 1.5 speed I forbid you to slow it down ask those questions be honest about your answer and be ready to change because eventually if you're not changing you're not growing now is the perfect time to change New Year eliminating the old bad habits replacing them with the good habits and is super super important because you will never ever change what you're willing to tolerate and you won't change What You Won't confront so whatever

it is wherever it is if you recognize I actually do have a bad habit a bad mindset I'm doing too much I'm too controlling I'm I'm uh involved in things that don't really matter we're going to call it what it is we're going to be honest and we're going to make some changes now let me wrap it up with this if you haven't rated or reviewed the content and you wouldn't mind doing that it would mean the world to me if you share on social media I want to tell you thank you for inviting others

to be a part of our community if you don't have the leader guide go to life. leadership podcast get the Guide don't forget two weeks now we have a bonus episode with Simon syic powerful powerful incredibly helpful next month we're going to talk about three more habits bad habits that the best leaders avoid we're going to talk about the habit of micromanaging the habit of hiding and the habit of hesitation uh if you'd like the possibility of winning a copy of the book getting things done uh I want to give away five copies go to

YouTube and uh type in the comment section I want to get things done just type in there I want to get things done and then we'll do a drawing for five of those copies and um hopefully you'll be the one to win as we're starting a new year let's just be uh real person to person leader to leader um we all have bad leadership habits the people around us know it we often don't and what I want you to do is just have the courage to look in the mirror and be honest about what you

see that's holding you back and I've talked all this time just kind of straight leadership I want to shift gears just for a moment and and if you've listened for a while you know that um I'm also a pastor and so as a pastor I just want to say to you that if there's something that you want to change you don't have to attempt to change it alone that I believe with all my heart that there is a God who loves you that he is for you and he's given you everything you need to do

everything that he's calling you to do whenever you're weak wherever you're weak um his strength is made perfect in your weakness and so if you find yourself struggling you don't have to do it alone maybe as you launch into a new year you might call on a power so much greater than anything that you have um we serve a god with whom all things are possible and his work in you is possible to change you to become exactly who he wants you to be as a leader and then as a person who impacts families and

Legacies in years to come I want you to know that I love you so thankful for you thank thank you for trusting me with your time uh each month I believe in you and I'm going to work really really hard to bring content that adds value to your leadership I'm going to help you get better and this year you are going to get better and that's going to make a big difference because we know that everyone wins when the leader gets better [Music]