0:00:00.1 S1: Are you living your life full of false priorities and are these priorities holding you back from what you really want to get out of life?
0:00:12.4 S2: The landscape of business is changing radically, yeah, leadership is being taught the same hallway, it's always been to when the world is changing, it's time to bring our leadership styles along for the ride, thanks to cutting edge neuroscience, none access to new tools and new language that inspires action, collaboration and innovation in the modern workplace. I started this podcast to bring you the best of these cutting at tools exercises as practices and modern leadership strategies every single week, whether you're a company leader, a corporate visionary or an entrepreneur, this show gives you new insights and center OSCE CE and language of leadership as well, as practical steps and tempts, you can take back to the office so you can lead your team in a powerful way, keeping your people happy and engaged while achieving your biggest goals, because no one has ever changed the world by doing things the way they've always been done. I'm your host, Jen Ford. I'm a talent strategist, an executive coach, speaker in the founder of rear coaching. Now, let's fix leadership.
0:01:16.2 S1: Welcome back to Let's fix leadership, and today we're gonna talk about false priorities, it is a topic that I coach on every single day, there are a few sessions that go by where I don't say Is that your true priority or a false priority, and we work through it... So what are these false priorities that are so common in our day-to-day life? Well, there are parties that we act on, that we think are a priority, then we stop to think about it, they really hurt our true strategic priorities we have set for ourself and for our life. I can give you countless examples. So let's just go through some... So let's see that... Say you want a promotion but you really don't like your boss, well, that can happen, but if you don't work with that supervisor, you don't help that supervisor, you don't find common grounds with that supervisor, it might be hard for you to get promoted because you're gonna be acting in a way that's inconsistent with who you are, inconsistent with what it takes to get promoted, so our priority is actually getting promoted, but the priority we act on is making your boss look bad or make in our boss's life harder on them.
0:02:31.2 S1: Another one of my favorite is, we'd rather be overwhelmed, then trust others, and so I see this a lot with people saying, I just don't have time to train my team, I'm like, Okay, so you have time to continue to work 10 extra hours every single week. Well, gosh. Now, what would solve that? Well, what would solve that? If my team was better... Okay, so what would that take? It would take me prioritizing development. Absolutely. Now, you just told me you didn't have time for it, what is your priority, so you can see how fast these falls priorities show up. Some people would rather have social approval then to say what they should say or to say what everyone's thinking in the room, and that's a really common false priority, what we're thinking, Hey, we really should say this PE, someone really needs to know this, but I would really hate to upset that person or I just don't know if my voice should be heard, that's a false priority. The priority is being honest with each other and trusting each other in the workplace, not... I don't wanna be, I don't wanna upset someone and not get light...
0:03:36.7 S1: That's not a priority. Another common false priority is we allow under-performers to continue doing what they do because the conversation is uncomfortable for us, and that happens all the time, we shy away from uncomfortable conversations, which is a false priority, the party in your mind is, I don't wanna have an uncomfortable conversation, but your true priority is a high-functioning team, a team where everyone is held accountable to the same standards and everyone contributes. Oftentimes, our priority is watching someone fall that we don't like, or someone that we think has it coming to them, and so our priority is to let them fall and not step in and help them when they need it the most, and sometimes we'd rather be in control we hold on to information from time to time because it allows us to be in control, it allows us to be the important one, the person no one can live without, and that becomes that day's priority, but the real priority is no single points of failure, share that information, 'cause you don't want single points of failure or share that information to your team develops, really start to think about how our day-to-day actions are creating these false priorities that are damaging our long-term priorities, so that's a lot of examples.
0:04:59.7 S1: Again, I could go on for hours, I see this all of the time.
0:05:05.9 S2: Let's take a quick break from the conversation, do you have new leaders on your team and you can see their potential, you can see their runway, but you can not figure out how to get them across the finish line, reach out to three or four coaching and learn more about our brain-based competency-focused executive coaching. So
0:05:26.5 S1: Why do we do this? I don't know, I wish I knew. I wish I knew why we have false priorities because the only thing I can come up with is because we are human, and as humans, we have emotions, we have ego, we have fear, we have all of the above, and those often act for us and set of our mature creative mind making our decisions, and that's why we do it, we're human, and from time to time, we act like humans. So what do we wanna do about this? How do we want to move from leveraging false priorities to damage our big ideas and start moving to a place where we really focus on our true priorities? The first thing you can do is start to listen to yourself every time you start to make a decision or you go to act on something, figure out, Does this really impact my long-term priorities, Does this really impact what I wanna do with my life, my career my community, wherever it is, we're talking about the workplace today, but false priorities get to show up in all aspects of your life, so use this everywhere, really start to think about what the priority is, then go a step further and start listening for them in your team, you will hear them all day, every day, start thinking about when someone on your team says they're going to do something, don't just redirect them 'cause you're probably doing that, you're probably just redirecting, redirecting them.
0:06:59.9 S1: But stop and ask them, how does that decision impact? What really matters? How does that decision impact what really matters? That's an important question, and that allows you to be a leader, a coach, a mentor, and not someone just directing work that help people understand that every one of their actions and decisions has a direct impact to the overall true priorities of the situation and when making decisions, really think about how your decisions impact the true parties for yourself and the team, you can make a list of your true priorities and have them very close by to you, have them some place that you can view them every single day. And the reason why it's important to do that is you need a filter, and you need to be able to filter your decisions through something, and when you have a list and you've come to terms which your true priorities are, whether it's your career or your personal life, now, when you start to make decisions against it, you will find that it's much easier to do it because you're reminding yourself every single day, these are my priorities, this is what's important to me, and so the awareness starts to go up, you know how...
0:08:20.3 S1: If you decide to buy a new car and you're gonna buy, I don't know, a white Toyota or runner, and do you start looking at them online, and then all of a sudden when you're out driving, you're like, Why am I seeing so many of these cars all of a sudden, it's because you are aware, it's because you have it top of mind, it's the only reason there was the same amount of those cars on the road the day before, but when you put it at the top of your mind, your brain started seeing it more often. And so when you have a really clear list of what your priorities are and you use it as a filter, it's gonna become easier and easier for you every single day to focus your energy on what really matters and what really drives those priorities that are important to you... Alright, this is a fun coaching topic or false priorities. I hope you found this concept helpful, chances are, you will go on about your day and something will pop up and you'll be like, Oh, that's a false priority, and I hope it does for you because again, you're human and you're gonna have these...
0:09:25.3 S1: Just like all of the rest of us too. So I want you to go out there, fix your priorities, because when you're fixing your priorities, you are definitely fixing leadership.
0:09:37.7 S2: Thanks for listening to Les fix leadership. By hanging out with me today, you're a hardy on your path. If you're looking to learn more and to see if your company is a good fit for our coaching and leadership education and Hey, visit 304 coaching, if you got value out the podcast, share it with a friend. And it would mean the world to me if you live a bottle review and a rating on iTunes. Thanks again for listening, and I appreciate your work and fixing leadership.