Hi Reader,

You might need to add some tasks to your to-do list.

I know. I know. Your day is already filled with more work than you can possibly do in a month. And you don’t want to hear that you may need to do more.

But here’s an important lesson I was reminded of last week.

You may not be doing the work that will help you achieve your most important goals.

So, you may want to take a moment to pause and reflect.

This is especially important if you’re incredibly busy, feeling overloaded, and know deep down inside that it’s time to lighten your load. Because if you don’t get something off your proverbial plate soon, your plate is going to break. And that will not be good.

This was the case for “George,” one of the leaders in the Leadership Clarity Accelerator small-group cohort program.

During one of our recent LCA sessions, George was going through his list of tasks that had ended up on his plate after being a leader in his company for many years.

His list was long. Longer than one person could realistically handle for very long.

You can probably relate.

As he worked with me and the other leaders in the cohort, George was making good progress toward the overall goal of LCA: to stop doing work his team is ready to own.

He had written down what he’d been doing over the past few weeks, and he had a solid inventory of his current tasks.

We were down in the details talking about who on his team should be doing what and preparing for him to start thoughtfully and intentionally reassigning his work.

Strategic delegation was about to begin!

Thankfully, a step that’s built into the processes of the LCA program caused us to pause.

We did a quick check-in to help us zoom out to look at the big picture and ask, “Was the work George was currently doing helping him to achieve the outcome he wanted?”

When leaders begin the Leadership Clarity Accelerator program, I invite them to document what they want to accomplish by the end of the six sessions. They do this through a variety of exercises intended to help them clarify and write down their goals.

At the start of LCA, George wanted to build a team that could move work forward with less dependence on him.

As he put it, “I would like fewer decisions to require my direct involvement.”

He wanted greater clarity about what only he should do and what he could delegate. Less time reacting to day-to-day issues. And more time focused on strategy and helping his team grow.

He also had a specific question:

“What I am most interested in understanding… is whether I am spending enough time developing systems and processes versus personally helping remove obstacles.”

When we compared these goals with his current inventory of tasks, George made an important discovery.

As he put it, “the light bulb just went off for me.”

Through our conversation, George definitively answered his question about whether he was spending enough time developing systems and processes.

The answer was obvious because he didn’t have any tasks like this on his list.

He was so busy trying to keep up with the barrage of small tasks that had worked their way onto his schedule over the years that he wasn’t investing much, if any, of his time and energy into achieving his more important goals.

As we talked, this gap became obvious to both of us, and I made a simple suggestion:

“You may want to add some tasks like ‘Develop a system/process for _____________.’”

And that’s exactly what George did. He added tasks to his to-do list.

He’s taking steps to make sure he has time to do the tasks that will help him achieve his most important goals and have an even bigger positive impact for his company.

You can do the same thing by following the path that worked for George in LCA.

1. George wrote down the goals he wanted to achieve during the six weeks of LCA.
​The act of documenting his goals and setting a deadline required thought and time, but he did the work.

2. George created an inventory of his current tasks.
​Recording his current tasks helped George to clarify where he was really spending his time and decide if he wanted to make changes.

3. George made corrections.
​When George realized his current work wasn’t going to produce the outcome he wanted and his business needed, he took action to fill this gap.

Doing these three things isn’t always easy or enjoyable, but it was valuable for George, and I’m confident it will be for you too.

There’s one more thing that George did that’s important to highlight.

George got an outside perspective.

He joined LCA and invited me and other experienced leaders to review his list of tasks, compare them to his goals, and provide our input.

This is what allowed George to suddenly see what he was missing even though it had been right in front of him for years.

You’re welcome to talk with me about joining the next Leadership Clarity Accelerator cohort that starts in January. If LCA is a fit for you, I’d love to support you in this way.

But you don’t have to wait to join LCA to start making progress.

I encourage you to invite other leaders you trust to review your current task list and your most important goals once you’ve documented them. Ask them to help you identify areas for improvement and make corrections if beneficial.

If you can find someone with the Working Genius pairing of Enablement and Discernment, they’ll jump at the chance to do this for you. They get energy from providing others with guidance based on their intuition and instinct.

You probably feel like it’s impossible to find time in your already overloaded schedule to do this, and I understand.

But trust George and me when we tell you that adding this task to your to-do list will be worth it in the long run.

Helping you lead with kindness and confidence,

Greg