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Hello there, and welcome back to another episode of the Powerhouse Revolution podcast. How is your 2023 going so far? Did you set some lovely goals for yourself and it’s work already taken over and those goals are going in the back of your mind. If that is the case, you are not alone. But you are not going to allow that kind of mindset to defeat you No way. Because you know that 2023 is going to be your year, you know that you need to make some changes in how you’re operating, especially when it comes to your time management. Right. quarter four for me, I’m just going to share a quick story was absolutely mental. And I know a lot of you felt the very same way. It’s the end of your deadlines. It’s looking ahead and next year, its budgets, its its headcount costs, its hiring, it’s getting clear on your strategy for next year. It’s there’s just so much going on. And I was doing all the same things as you and I really had to rely on prioritisation and boundaries and quarter four, to make sure that I kind of didn’t lose my mind. And there was a point in late November when I was in the middle of my launch for the powerhouse revelation experience. I had loads of corporate master classes booked in I had podcast recordings, I had award ceremonies, and it was all happening. That was a little a little job there actually, because I was up for two awards, one was with VIP magazine and air for the power of women awards, was celebrating women in business, and also at my local enterprise office for best air startup of the year, which I actually won, which was so exciting. But yeah, sidenote, I was completely overwhelmed with workload. So I really had to get really ruthless with my time and really start looking at what was actual priority. And what was I telling myself was a priority. So it involved having a few tough conversations with some people, including my team who I knew needed me, but I couldn’t give them the time that they needed. And I explained exactly why. Because I couldn’t focus on their priorities because I had my own. And that’s something I’ve had to learn over the years is that, as a leader, you sometimes have to make those tough calls. You know, I’m very empathetic, I want to always be there for my team. But when you’re in situations when you are totally overwhelmed workload, unfortunately, you have to be able to prioritise and that is exactly what I am going to be talking to you about today. So today is going to be a nice short episode, but it’s going to be action packed value packed so that you can take away this method I’m going to teach you Okay, so do you ever look at your to do list and feel completely defeated as you have so many priorities, so many to do’s that you don’t even know where to start? If that’s the case, you are not alone. And today I am going to share with you a simple tool, like I said, help you prioritise like a CEO. So I did a LinkedIn poll in quarter four on prioritisation. And there were over 100 respondents and 67% of the people who responded said that they found it difficult to prioritise. So you are not alone. Okay, it’s it’s not normal to be able to prioritise because especially if you are a people pleaser, or you’re juggling a lot of balls, and there’s so many things that actually are a priority. And it can be super difficult. So please don’t beat yourself up for not being better because I’m going to give you a tool today that’s going to help. So you may have heard of the Steve Covey matrix, the urgent and important matrix, which originated from the Eisenhower matrix, which came from President Eisenhower who was known for his prioritisation on I suppose time management skills. And a lot of this comes from boundaries and getting really clear on what the real priorities Are what? The Eisenhower matrix, the urgent, important famous matrix doesn’t really take into account limiting beliefs that you might hold about yourself on people pleasing and confidence and all of that. And the fact that urgent and important is extremely subjective. So it depends, you know, what I might deem is urgent and important is very different to what you might deem as urgent and important. So this really prompted me to create what I call the powerhouse prioritisation matrix. And this is based on my simple way of thinking, because I always like to just take things back to basics, let’s strip it back, get rid of the corporate jargon. And let’s just go back to our language. Are you with me? Okay, good. So, you’re in luck, because I have actually included this powerhouse prioritisation matrix in a free guide that I have created, especially for you. Now, I’ve mentioned it before. But in this guide, it’s called five strategies to stop negative self talk and take control of work life balance. So you excel in your leadership career. And one of the five strategies is this prioritisation matrix. So, the link to this guide will be in the show notes where you’re listening to this podcast, if you go into the notes on Spotify, or Apple podcasts, or wherever you’re listening, you’ll see the link to the guide, and you’ll be able to grab the matrix and I want you to take this matrix and print it on habit because my clients tell me it’s super powerful. So it’s a matrix that basically has four quadrants. And the first quadrant is called the most do it’s the second one is the could do it’s the third one is the don’t want it. And the fourth one is the Stamets. So I’m going to take you through each one of those categories now.
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So we’ll start with the must do, it’s so these are tasks with clear deadlines, and significant consequences, if not done on time. So these are real emergencies and crisis issues. So I’m talking real emergencies here, not apparent emergencies, because Mary tells you that there was a meeting, because it was a problem last night, you have to drop everything, okay? That’s not actually that’s just people panicking, and getting people into a room without really thinking through the purpose of the meeting, what you’re trying to achieve in the meeting, it’s literally just panic stations. So that to me is not a must do it. Right? That’s where sometimes you need to put your big girl pants on and get really clear on your business goals for the week, okay, and think about what you actually have to do. So a real emergency might be where there is a safety issue, or a HR issue that is I suppose about to escalate, or a crisis in that there’s something wrong with a product or a service that’s going to, you know, impact your reputation or something like that, that’s significant is a real crisis. customer demands are almost do it. So as that as a leader, you’re, you’re in business to serve customers, be it customers internally, or customers externally, or maybe it’s bolt. So if you have customer demands that need to be met on that particular day, there must do its however, there’s a caveat to that sometimes with your customers, and even you know, even with me, my clients, I have to have boundaries. So, you know, you see, you can put rules in place around what’s reasonable what your customers, your clients, okay? So just for example, you know, I do have a 24 hour turnaround time on emails. So I explained that to my clients, I when I start working with them, that I will endeavour myself, or my team will respond within 24 hours, because I can’t run a business by just checking emails, every time something comes in, it’s not efficient, it’s not how I teach. So I have to practice what I preach. So it’s the same for you. The other kind of things that will be in the must do it’s would be planned tasks or work that’s actually do now. So something that’s maybe related to a KPI that has to get done today, or, you know, the running the business stuff that needs to get done, or your must do. It’s important meetings with agendas with agendas is the key, the key phrase there, if your team issue if you’ve to have team issues that really need to be resolved, you know, you’re a leader, you’re there for your team. But obviously, you got to make a decision on what’s a must do it or what’s in one of the other categories when it comes to your team. And then problem resolution and firefighting actually is a must do it. So something I hear over and over and over again, is I’m so sick of firefighting, I’m sick of all the change and the problems every single day. But you need to shift your mindset around that because that’s a part of your role. So you’ve got to plan for that. So that is what I would consider a must do it, stop resisting it and realise you need to do that.
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The next category then is called the could do it’s so these are tasks with no set deadline, but that they move you along towards longer term goals. So this is all my favourite stuff. So this is the call to strategic stuff, and the planning and strategizing and things like developing your team and your own development, increasing your visibility, networking, continuous improvement, developing strategies for change and setting the direction for your business, or your department or your region. These are all the things you’re like, I could do them today, but I don’t have to. But yet, they’re super important. And this is the stuff that’s really hard for us. It’s the stuff that, you know, we need to actually sit down and be more strategic thinkers and carve out the time. But we’re so busy firefighting, that we don’t have the time, we’ve got to make the time for this stuff, okay, because if you don’t do today, it’s actually going to cause more fires in the future. But the reason that you don’t do that stuff is because you’re probably spending time in some of the last two buckets.
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So the third category or bucket is the don’t want it’s, so these are tasks that need to be dealt with. But they don’t actually need your specific expertise. So it might be things like a department rep at a meeting, or other people’s priorities. So if somebody comes to you with something that’s an emergency and apparent emergency, it’s their priority, they haven’t been organised enough, they have something common due, that all of a sudden is being landed on you it happens all the time. You don’t want that. It’s you teach people how to treat you. So you know, again, I in my programmes, I kind of we go through this in more detail, there’s a whole kind of system around setting boundaries, but you really don’t want to be just dropping all of your important stuff to support somebody else, if it’s going to affect your productivity or, ultimately, if it’s not aligned with the business goals, okay? Trivial requests from others. So you don’t want to be doing that stuff you have worked too hard to get where you are to be spending time searching for things and administrative tasks and things you don’t want that stuff, right. But you need to delegate those things. And providing solutions again, will be another thing too, with for other people without them even trying themselves. So some leaders are fantastic at coaching. And again, this is something I teach in my programmes, coaching and helping their teams to come up with solutions or pushing back. Because if you don’t, if your team don’t learn to problem solve and learn to become I suppose self sufficient, it actually damages their not only their performance, it actually limits their confidence and they won’t really grow. So I’m a big fan of, you know, given autonomy to my team and asking them to try figure it out. Not because I’m being mean, it’s actually for two reasons. Number one, because I want them to learn and grow themselves, because that’s what we’re here for on this earth to learn and grow to solve problems to feel accomplished when we do things we didn’t really think we could. And also because I have other stuff I need to be do. I want you to adopt the same kind of mindset.
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And then finally, we have the stop its. So these are the tasks that distract you, and they really don’t add value. So things like perfectionism and wordsmithing How many times do you find yourself rereading a presentation or rereading an email and making sure that it looks okay, and that there’s no spelling mistakes, and that your point is clear. And you might go back to at a later time, I hear that a lot from some people, maybe that doesn’t land, but you maybe that’s not you, but it’s definitely people on your team. So you want you want to either stop that or you want to encourage your team to stop that. And being too picky just because you can. So sometimes as leaders, I think, you know, we don’t like our teams, or I, some people don’t like to teams I love and actually to have better ideas than you because you feel like you should have all the answers and you should be in control. And sometimes you are too picky just because you can. But actually, you need to stop that. Because you’re not only wasting your time, you’re actually stunting your own team’s development and you’re blocking progress. And then you wonder why you don’t have enough time. Some of the other things you’d need to stop is like gossip and giving out I swear like I never entered into negative conversations at work and it probably was why I I didn’t have a lot of friends in the workplace because I was always kind of focused on work, which is not always a good thing. But I just don’t enter into negativity. I don’t enter into problems. I’m always solution focused. And I feel like that’s always so to me because I have great work life balance. And you know, I’ve had it for years. Junk Email is another thing aimless meetings with no agenda. I mean, I could do I need to do a full episode on that stage. But really, if you’re going into a meeting and you’re not clear on what your role is, what the objectives are, what people want, what the outcome is, is what people are working towards, if you’re going in, and it’s an hour long meeting, but actually, you’re really only needed for 10 minutes, you are just wasting your time when you’re not focusing on where you need to focus. And then another thing you need to stop really is labouring details without making a decision. So you need to learn to make rapid decisions, fast decisions that are based on data, but also based on your goals. Because sometimes I think we labour too much detail asking for more data asking for more this, when really, you know what you need to do. So there are the four kind of quadrants. Okay, and it will be where you’re listening to this episode.
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So again, just to summarise, you have your must do it’s so there your tasks that you have to get done today that have clear deadlines with significant consequences if not done on time. The second one is your could do it’s This is all your strategic stuff, your tasks that have no set deadline, but they move you along towards long term goals, then you have the don’t want it switches the stuff that you don’t want, that they’re tasks that you don’t need your specific expertise, but they absolutely need to be dealt with. So you need to delegate this stuff. And then you have to stop it’s so these are the tasks that distract you and don’t add value. So like I said, I really want you to download the guide, print off this matrix. And every time you’re feeling overwhelmed, or you’re looking at your workload, run all of your tasks to those four filters, and challenge yourself to make sure that you’re focusing on the stuff that is strategic, the stuff that is is in the most do, it’s on the could do its pockets, because they are the stuff that’s going to get you noticed. They are the things that are going to increase your visibility, increase your impact, and improve your work life balance. So that’s it. We’re at the end of another episode. I hope you found that valuable.
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I hope it I suppose I was able to articulate it because without seeing it, it can be hard. So that’s why I want you to go and grab that free guide. So that is it for this week. My dear. I hope you have an absolutely fabulous week in work. If you found this valuable and you know somebody who would absolutely love this guide with the matrix and all the other strategies in there for leadership success. Can you please forward this podcast to them because as always, I totally rely on you to help me to spread the word I don’t pay for advertising or anything like that on this podcast. So I would absolutely be so so grateful. If you would share this episode on the guide with your pals. I’d love you forever. So until next time, have a great week and I will talk to you same time, same place next Wednesday.
