#401: I Quit – There's Too Much Homework

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Welcome to the Maxwell Leadership Executive Podcast, where our goal is to help you increase your reputation as a leader, increase your ability to influence others, and increase your ability to fully engage your team to deliver remarkable Results. Hi, I'm Perry Holley, a Maxwell Leadership facilitator and coach. And I'm Chris Goede, Executive Vice President with Maxwell Leadership. Welcome and thank you for joining. Now, I have to tell you, if you've never watched us on YouTube and you've just listened to us, I don't know if they're trying to make us look better, but we've gone from the basement to the penthouse. We are in our brand new studio. And was this part of your negotiation? I believe it's an indication, it's an indication that we have made it. We have, we, we have made it, but we are excited. If you haven't watched us on YouTube, we would encourage you to do that. We'd love to see you on there and make some comments and notes, and we'll follow back up with you. But we are in our new studio, and I want to remind you as we get started to go to maxwellleadership.com/executivepodcast, and there you can leave us a topic. You have a question for us that you want us to answer and follow back up, or maybe even your organization needs some leadership coaching, culture training, Man, that's what we do, and we would love to serve you in that way. Well, today's topic I think is personal. Perry knows how much I'm carrying lately, and, uh, or maybe he's already there because he's already experienced this. So we're going to talk about this title, and it tops the cake, as you say, one of the best ever. It is "I Quit, There's Too Much Homework for Me as a Leader," or period. So Perry, where in the world did this come from? Yeah, I was going to title it was how to manage cognitive load, but I couldn't picture anybody clicking on that. Yeah, that would be the least amount of views. Uh, now this came about with talking to a coaching client, uh, actually out, outside the U.S., um, but he was very frustrated with the fact that his, uh, he was recruiting new talent and he was very impressed with the talent. Uh, they're young people, but they were eager, energetic, smart, and willing, and he was training. They were experiencing some early success, and he was really excited about the quick start they had in the business they were in, and they resigned. And he said, why are you resigning? You're just hitting your stride, and you're going to get better. You're going to do more. They said that the kind of the essence of there's too much homework is that I think about this 24 hours a day. I don't, I don't, I'm never off. It's, it's like I, I want a job. And one of them had a, uh, a family member that worked in roofing. And he said, I watched my father go to his roofing job. And when he comes home at night, he doesn't think about roofing until tomorrow. And he goes, I don't want to think about this all the time. And I, it really resonated with me because. And I think, I thought you would as well, that we think about this all the time. We do. But there's got to be, that's what I really want to talk about is as a leader, are there things we can do to help establish boundaries, put in guardrails, teach and train? Because this is intellectual work we're doing, your mind doesn't shut off from it. But can you train yourself? Can you build a system, I guess, to help you do that? That's where we're at. Guardrails. You know, Sarah, my wife, is a registered nurse and has been for a long time, and that's One thing we've talked about periodically is the same thing with Ruth, for example, right? She can go to work and then comes home and it's, it's, it's off. It's all family and personal. You and I, it's a little bit different. And I'm sure a lot of people that are listening, uh, even if you're in a trade like that, uh, it's different. And so back to this kind of always-on, this, this load, this cognitive load that is on us that we're thinking about, um, impacts us physically it'll show up, but even more so it's showing up mentally. And I think now, and I think this reason this is coming up too, is that, um, man, the younger workers are talking about balance. They're talking about, man, how do I have, you know, a, a job or a career, and then how do I have another part of my life? And so they never feel fully off, and we're hearing that feedback. And so I think that's what we're going to talk about, which is I struggle with this. So like you said, I think it's just something that, um, maybe comes with different personalities. We're going to talk a little bit about that, but also different trades and then how you're wired, right? So, and, uh, generationally, I think with my coaching client, he was worried that it was generational. And I've heard a lot of the generational, um, you know, they say, well, these Gen Zs are just weak, they're just snowflakes, they just can't handle that. No, no, this is, this is— they have so much to bring. We, we've we got a lot of podcasts on how strong this generation is and how you need to build a bridge, not a wall between your younger generation. But you're a, you're a Gen X. I am. I am 100% latchkey kid, right? Don't, don't trust a lot of people. And then also just, we are of the mentality, we're going to figure it out. Like we're going to figure it out ourselves. Yeah. So, and I'm a— so no matter when, when that, how long that takes or when it is. I'm a baby boomer, very young, young, early, early young baby boomer. But This really about the cognitive load idea, which is how they scientifically categorize this. It's not about just being busy. It's about all that you carry with you and trying to keep up with all the complexity, the ambiguity, the interruptions, deadlines, communication, email, Slack, all the things you need to be preparing for for the next day, those types of things. But as a baby boomer, this was almost being busy and being overloaded was almost like a virtue. We counted that as part of our merit badge. Yeah, badge of pride, right? Yeah, we got that. And I think it's the very first thing I need to consider as a senior leader is that is not a merit badge for these other generations. I think it still is for you. I think when you get into the millennials and especially the Gen Zs who were the youngers in our workplace, that is not what they signed up for. I was just in a meeting and a person in the meeting said, Yeah, I mean, I was here till 9:15 PM working on this. And so there is part of that, right? There is part of that. We also talk a lot about in the 5 Levels of Leadership, we talk about at level 2 where you connect with people, that one of the things that comes out of that is discretionary effort. And this really convicted me as I was reading through this, because I was thinking about we drive and we talk about increasing influence and connection. So that we get discretionary effort. And then I was like, yeah, full engagement. Hmm, do I want discretion? Because sometimes I use the example when I'm speaking or teaching, be like, hey, instead of being at home watching Atlanta Housewives, right, they're thinking about our business. And now I'm feeling a little convicted about this, uh, this lesson today, because human capital is our most important asset. Yeah. Well, do you remember Valerie Burton a few, uh, podcasts ago talking about, and resilience, about We talk about— you use the term psychological capital. Do you remember that? I do, yeah. Remind us on that. Yeah, so that is where they feel safe. They are in a place where they can voice their opinion. They can tell you that they are, uh, maybe thinking about work too much, they're overloaded, right? And if they're not psychologically safe, they won't share that with you. They're going to burn out, and then they're going to be like, To your example, I'm out, and we've got to think about that. Well, it is in a knowledge economy and where it doesn't shut off, it's that constant stream. I know you feel it, I feel it, is that when I shut my laptop at what I can think is my end of my day, that the email is not a reservoir just sitting there, it's a river that's flowing constantly and all the other things that are coming on. And the work is never truly finished. And I think for some of us and my colleague, the coaching client, he was really feeling that, that how do I encourage these younger people especially, but it could be anyone. I don't, I don't want to let this— it's not just a Gen Z problem. I think this is as much for me and you as it is for them. 100% say, uh, you know, can we help close these mental loops that are going on? There's these, uh, that every night I have to carry this home. And it did. That's why I said it's too much homework. I never stop thinking about it. Yeah. And let's talk about boomers for just a minute. So, because you said it's for every generation, so you guys grew up at a place where You worked hard. To my example, just a minute, you were at the office till 9 o'clock at night, right? You pushed through, you didn't complain, and we bragged about it, and you bragged about it, right? Like, the, the commitment that you made, um, to the organization was how much you sacrificed. And this, man, this makes me think so much about even when you hear people that at the end of their careers and, and, and maybe even on their deathbed, and they're like, you never hear anybody say, man, I wish I would have stayed 'til 9 o'clock one more time, you know, at the office. And, and, but when it's how you were raised or, or even your generation, right, you want to be constantly available. There's never a time that I've ever texted you or called you vacation night that you haven't responded, right? And so how do we get to a place to where we allow those boundaries to be set? Because otherwise we're, we're rewarding or encouraging as leaders unhealthy behavior. And so I know with you, we're wired very similar, even though you are a much older generation than I am. Um, the word much. And, and so we don't, we don't talk about a lot of stress. We actually internalize it and we carry it very quietly. And so, but that's going to lead to, uh, irritability, workaholic, right? Uh, exhaustion, health issues. I'm leaning in, but I'm also talking to, to both of us. And so, uh, we want to just make sure that, man, how do How do we go about leading people the right way? Because they all need to be led differently. Yeah, the Gen X, you came through a little bit different from me. You've, you've, have you faced layoffs? I don't think we ever had that in my early days. Corporate restructuring, a lot of economic uncertainty, a lot of, there are a lot of external factors there. Internally, uh, you know, you're carrying an invisible, I think they've done a lot of research on the Gen X is you're carrying a lot of invisible cognitive load, which is, uh, and I can relate to this as well, aging parents, uh, aging children, the, um, your your leadership role. You're right in the, in the heart of your leadership executive things right now. Yeah. So that's interesting. Let me interrupt you for a second. That's so real because if I flesh that out really quick, I, my daughter just got married. I have a son that's been married for 3 years. He's dealing with, he just got a new job, the new transfer, new state, right? Both sets of our parents are, are dealing with some health issues, some living situations that, that we're dealing with, and Maxwell Leadership is here. Yeah. And this podcast is showing up on my schedule. So it's interesting you said that. I hadn't put all those together about even just our generation and where I'm at as a leader, what all is, is coming on top of that. Interesting. That's a great lesson right there for anybody listening is, are you just being considerate of the weight that different generational— the youngers aren't really carrying the weight of their aging parents the way you at a Gen X and me as a boomer. Mine have passed now, but I carried that when I was your age, suffering through all of those things we had to do. Uh, and my kids getting married and moving on and moving out and carrying. And then, and then now mine is— my cognitive load is kind of lessened, uh, in these later years, uh, but as you're in the throes of yours. So as a leader, I think considering where people are, just that they, they— it's not like you, they have different perspectives on the load that they're carrying on that. Now let's talk about Gen Y, uh, and Gen Z. We, we can't leave them out. And just— but Perry and I thought we'd go first, uh, now we're talking about you, but you guys experience things, uh, or those that are on your team in Gen Y, Gen Z very differently, um, where you are, you didn't transition into a connected world, you grew up in it, you were raised inside a connected world. So man, constant stimulation. Like, I, when I think about even just my, my children that are in this generation and how much screen time, and it's always there, and it just, that doesn't ever faze them, it doesn't ever burn them out, but it's just, it's part of normal what you guys do. And so that stress of, of being connected and on feels more like, man, my brain never shuts off. And how do I power that down? What does that look like? So many younger workers are questioning whether endless cognitive occupation is really even worth it. And this is fascinating too, because they're like, why would I do that? Almost kind of opened up with, I want to have a separation between the cognitive work and then what my cognitive personal life is like. And so that's why when we talk about coaching clients and we hear younger employees say things like, I wish I had a job where work ended when I left. Like, I, I was a trade and I could go home and not think about work and not talk about— and it doesn't matter if you're in a nonprofit or for-profit, it, it's just ever-consuming. And so I think the Gen Y and Gen Z, what they're longing for is, is, is better boundaries. And why we're sharing this is because you have to lead them this way, um, and you have to have— they want to have closure. They want to have tangible accomplishments, and then they want to have mental recovery. Have you ever taken a mental recovery day? Well, I'm learning about it, but because now it's important, right? And we need to because we didn't grow up with those. But I think it's super important. But when you said that, and I think this is what's get— the— where the problem is, is we're labeling. I almost label that, you appear, you need a mental recovery, that's weakness. That is weakness. And I think that's what sometimes being, uh, these younger generations are being labeled as lazy or weak. They are not, because I'm feeling it now too. The reality is it's really cognitive exhaustion that we're feeling. And it can be tempting as a leader to evaluate workload strictly by how many hours they work, how much the visible activity you see from them, how responsive they are, their meeting volume, how engaged. You're feeling this, it could be just that cognitive exhaustion. So I'd like to, in the remaining time, maybe help us Let's get started on some practical things as a leader. What can we do to help them? I think too, there'll be some studies down the road that will probably show that those generations are healthier. Yeah. Right? Than your generation, my generation, because of their desired approach to that. So I love what you said. Let's talk. Okay, what does this look like? How do we lead our team members? Because we have probably a, we talk about this, the diversity, matter of fact, Perry helped Tim Elmore create a course for us. We do a lot of work with organizations around leading multigenerational teams. Again, I'm gonna direct you back to, you know, maxwellleadership.com/executivepodcast. There's a button right there. Maybe that's a training you think about the different generations you have, and we can actually dig into a little bit of that. But for today, we wanted to give you a framework to work with. We wanted something actionable. So, uh, We have an acronym with the word RESET, and Perry likes to do acronyms usually with 3. We're expanding it to 5. We like the number 5 here. We love 5. In this number. That's right. So the first one— don't talk about it as much anymore. We don't. We don't. Is RESTORE clear boundaries for them. Okay? So leaders, you need to really help them define and talk through what is urgent. What's urgent for you? What's urgent for them to make sure that there is alignment? You guys have heard us talk about the Eisenhower matrix, right? And create those 4 buckets and make them part of that conversation. And so some examples would be communication with the team. What does that look like? I have, you know this, I sometimes don't even get to my emails till late at night. Maybe we're on a plane traveling from a client. Maybe it's we're going to speak somewhere on a weekend. And so I have told my team over and over again, Just because you get an email from me or a communication from me outside of work hours does not mean you need to respond. I just need to get it off of my to-do list. And so just accept it. Now, some people say, well, use the schedule and send it out at a different time. And I understand all that. But when it comes to technology for me, that's the best I can do. Uh, sometimes also leave, you know, when they're on PTO, let them have PTO. And don't ping him. One of the things we talk about as a team is, hey, Perry's on PTO. Don't reach out to him unless it's an absolute emergency. Come to me first and I'll determine whether or not we need to reach out to Perry. So things like that. How do we go about doing that? And then the last thing is, as a leader, you should have this, but then how do you also encourage this with your team to schedule some time on their calendar where there are not to-dos? It's just them being able to think and be able to have some creative time. And so here's a great quote that Perry put in my notes. One of the healthiest things leaders can say is this, you don't need to prove commitment through constant availability. Your team, they're committed, they're already spending enough hours with you, so they don't need to be constantly available to you. Well, I think that it's really important for a leader, what Chris just talked about, for you to model that, by the way. So do you have office hours? Do you after-hour emails or text messages? Like you said, we try not to do that. Try not to do that. I have discovered the send later model. Button to say— and because I actually send you the podcast scripts, I thought, well, it's going to send on a holiday or on a weekend. I thought, I'll make it go on Monday. I know you're not going to look at it, and I don't want you looking at it. So I didn't decide when I want those to go, even though I had them done. But if you're not modeling, if you're sending after-hour emails and text messages to the team, it's bad. Model start and stop times. This is something I had to say. I come to work at a certain time, even though I'm up earlier. I don't make that time available to others. I stop at a certain time. I've committed to my wife I'm going to stop. Lid drops at a certain time. It can always drop earlier but never later. But I model that for others to do that. Talk about what you do when you're not working, because it sounds like if you talk to me, like I'm always working. But I've started really in the last few years talking about what I cook on my grill, woodworking, what I do in my woodworking shop, what I do in my holiday, what, what tours do we— we were like, oh, Perry does have a life outside of what we do here. Yeah, yeah. Make You make having a life not sound like a luxury. It's normal. Yeah, it's normal. It should be part of your life. All right, the E in RESET is to eliminate artificial urgencies. This is a lot. I've just found this to be true, but a lot of urgent— we also probably have done podcasts on having your people pick up the urgency. However, a lot of urgency is self-created here, and so leaders should really be asking, what would What would happen if what you think needs to be done by tomorrow is done by next week? Would it matter? Sometimes it will, and you need to know when that is, but not all the time. If it's not much, then maybe you move that. But I think sometimes we kind of secretly create a permanent emergency culture. Everything is urgent and important. Back to your Eisenhower Matrix, everything is not urgent and important. There are a lot of things that are important but not urgent. And so are we focusing on those? So I always think of a John Wooden might even been the title of a book that he had, but it said when he would tell his players, be quick, but don't hurry. Be quick, but don't hurry. And if you think about that a minute, that it's really a kind of a nice way to lead. The S in the framework stands for simplify priorities. This is, I think, one of the biggest things that drive weight on some of our team members. I recently had a conversation with one of our team members And I said, your list of to-dos is always gonna be there. Like, one of my favorite things to do is to have a list and cross it off and go, man, I, I'm gonna show up tomorrow. There's gonna be nothing on this list. Wrong. Like there's gonna be anything. And so I had this conversation with her and I, I said, look, let's just say there's 15 of them. What you need to make sure is that you and I are in alignment of what are the top 3 priorities out of those 15?, and then you need to mentally be able to accept that the other 12 that are on there are gonna, they're gonna come next or something else might jump up. And I think this reduces anxiety of, man, I gotta get all this done for my leader and the expectations that they have. And so one of the things I would encourage you to do often is to talk to your team about, hey, what is on your list right now? What does that look like? And then tell me how you rank them in priority and help them realign that. And then give them a line of saying, hey, these are— this week, these are the top 3. Yeah, good. This is what this looks like. So, you know, yesterday in our team meeting, one of the things I, I reached out to 2 of our team members. I said, hey, I just want you to share what's on your mind. What are your priorities going on into this week? And I wanted them to let the team know that, but I also wanted to know what it was because I don't have a one-on-one with them this week, but that was a way for me to do that so that I could make sure that that was in alignment with it. They just need that conversation, and by doing that, I think you'll be able to reset, which is part of this framework. The second E in RESET is to encourage recovery. We mentioned that just a bit ago, but recovery needs to not seem like some sort of indulgence. It, it needs to be a requirement for everybody on your team, including you. Um, it could It could include making sure that you're getting enough sleep, you're detaching from the work enough, you're moving, you're having social connection, mental downtime, whatever, however you need to do that. As John would teach is that leaders model the way. People do what people see. So if you're glorifying burnout, making it sound like you said, I was here at 9:00 last night, really took one for the team, that's not good. You're modeling something that's going to really cause them to have more problems. The T stands for tangibilize progress. That'll work. Stop right here. Okay. I don't know, for our— you long-time listeners, okay, throw words in here, but somehow they end up on my side of the table, uh, when we're going through this, and they may not be aware— a word. But what we're talking about is, is, you know, the physical accomplishments, you can see that as a team, and that's rewarding, right? But how do you How do you show and talk about and recognize progress of knowledge, of movement of things? And one of the things that we think about is on our weekly team meetings, and we're going to be changing up our structures, going back to some things that are knowledge-based that get accomplished that the team needs to be aware of that they're not aware of right now. And so I think this is something to where If you can think about what does this look like, yes, the physical ones, you know, they're going to show up, uh, the manual labor, but the knowledge stuff and the movement also needs to be talked about because there's a lot of team members that are moving the needle on some knowledge stuff for you guys, and they need to make sure that, uh, they see accomplishment in it as well. Well, there's a teaching from Dan Sullivan on the gap and the gain, and always think about that. We, we tend to— and you can really help your people— is they're looking at, look how the gap, look how far we have to go, and it feels like we're never getting there. And you say, no, around and look at the game, look how far you've come, and focus on, like you said, the victories, the progress that's being made. There's always going to be a gap. The gap is always going to be there. Behind those mountains are more mountains. More mountains. However, we have made a lot of progress so that— I will tell you, there's a law. I'm going to mess this up, but I want to say it's like Patterson's Law, that work fills time allotted. So if you say, I'm only going to work 3 hours today, guess what? You have 3 hours worth of work. And if you say, I'm going to work 8 hours today, Imagine you have 8 hours worth of work. If you said 12, 12 hours worth of work. When you get that in your mind, you say, guess what? I'm gonna have a start and stop time and the work will be here tomorrow. Go back to your priorities thing. If you got the right priorities, I'm doing the 3 things I need to be working on today, then everything else will be here tomorrow. Hey, is that law the reason why, like, if I have a deadline and I know it's gonna take me an hour to do it, I wait till the hour before the deadline to do it? In essence, right? Like, you know what it's gonna take. Well, as we wrap up, here's the thing. Perry and I talk about this every single week. Our goal is to allow you to increase your influence with people. And this is an awareness topic, but it also gave you some practical things to think about. And people quit people, okay? They don't quit organizations. And so we need to lead the whole person. We often will hear, well, when I show up at work, I'm this versus when I go home, I'm that. That. Okay, if you can do that, more power to you. But I promise you, there you're showing up at home at what happened at work, and you're showing up at work. And so as leaders, we need to be aware of that, and we need to be having these conversations with our leaders, especially since there are 5, I think now maybe 6 different generations in the workforce. Because that each generation handles these things a little bit differently, and each generation needs help in how to set guardrails, uh, to be able to help them. Because it is healthier for us to be at a place to where we're not overloading our team. We do want a little discretionary effort, but we don't want them taking all that work home every single night and then on the weekends, because they will burn out. That's good. I saw one of our millennial employees brought their child to work today. So with me actually being in the building, you do have 6 generations. Just thought I'd point that out. Oh, that's so good. All Great stuff. Thank you so much. And as a reminder, if you'd like to get the learner guide for this episode, if you'd like to learn more about our offerings, learn more about our other podcast offerings, you can do all that at maxwellleadership.com/executivepodcast. You can also leave us a question or a comment there. We love hearing from you. Very grateful you'd spend this time with us. That's all today from the Maxwell Leadership Executive Podcast.