Episode 1590 - Breaking up with deliverables

Dr. Jeff Moore // #LeadershipThursday // www.ptonice.com

In today's episode of the PT on ICE Daily Show, ICE CEO Jeff Moore discusses the idea that moving into a leadership role requires a shift in mindset from focusing on individual accomplishments and deliverables to prioritizing the building of culture and guiding the team. Jeff emphasizes that one of the hardest things about transitioning into a leadership role is separating your sense of worth from the tangible outcomes of projects. Instead, leaders need to concentrate on steering the team in the right direction and creating an environment that fosters productivity and engagement.

Jeff describes that a true leader's job is not to solve every problem or complete every project themselves. Instead, their role is to provide guidance and support to the team, ensuring that they stay on track and between the "buoys." This means constantly having touch points to build culture and considering where the team should go, as well as where they should not go.

Jeff also highlights the importance of reframing what being productive looks like in a leadership role. It suggests that leaders should focus their energy on three main areas: culture building, organizing and strategizing, and problem-solving. Culture building is described as the leader's top priority, as they need to create an environment that people want to be a part of. Organizing and strategizing involves evaluating when to intervene and when to let capable team members come to their own conclusions. And problem-solving requires knowing when to provide guidance, but not getting caught up in completing the task oneself.

Overall, Jeff suggests that moving into a leadership role requires a shift in mindset from individual achievement to team success.

Take a listen to the podcast episode or read the full transcription below.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION

JEFF MOORE All right team, what's up? Welcome to the PT on Ice Daily Show. My name is Dr. Jeff Moore, currently serving as a CEO of ICE, and always thrilled to be here on Leadership Thursday, which is always Gut Check Thursday. Let's get right to brass tacks. What's the workout this week? It is ascending squats, but of decreasing challenge, and then the reverse for our gymnastics. So it's gonna look like this, kind of an interesting workout. So it is for time, You're gonna open up with nine overhead squats. That barbell prescribed weight's gonna be 135, 95, so scale accordingly. Paired with 21 pull-ups. Then you're gonna increase your squat number 15, but moving to front squat, same barbell weight. gymnastics going to 15 chest-to-bars and then 21 back squats and then 9 muscle-ups. So you got kind of this 9, 15, 21 climbing a number of a decreasing complexity on the squats and then the opposite 21, 15, 9 as your gymnastics get more challenging. So should be a very interesting workout. Just one time through that for time. All right, regarding upcoming courses, it is all about the certifications this week. So if you have not heard, we launched our entire brand new suite of new and renovated certifications over on ice. So we've got our brand new pelvic certification. We've got our dry needling certification now. The group has launched that advanced course. We have our brand new ortho certification, the endurance athlete certification. on top of a tremendous amount of renovation and facelift on all the other ones. So if you have not browsed our new certification offerings, go to PTOnIce.com. That certification tab is right on the top. Jump in there and look at all those different search. Remember, One thing that separates ice certs from everybody else is live testing is involved in every single one of them. So regardless of which one of those you jump into, there is live testing. We believe that is really what holds the standard. So just know that you will be examined in person to make sure you indeed have the goods before we throw that stamp of approval on your work. So that is what's basically, involving all of our worlds this week is getting all the certifications launched. Hope those really improve not only your skill set next year, but your ability to market effectively that you're a specialist in these areas and really take over your geography and serve your community. So enjoy those certifications, check them out. All right, it is Leadership Thursday. BREAKING UP WITH DELIVERABLES We are talking about breaking up with deliverables. A challenging but necessary conversation. Challenging because… There's very few things, especially for really high performers, that is more satisfying than completing a really big project, right? Something you've been working on and chipping away on, very few things feel better than putting a bow on something like that, crossing that off that to-do list that you've been looking at for months as you kind of worked your way through the project, not to mention just delivering a beautiful deliverable. Nothing feels better. The bigger leader you become, the better leader you become, the less you will get to experience this. If your leadership trajectory really takes off, you will literally never, again, get to experience that wonderful feeling of wrapping up a project. The reason for this is it almost never makes sense For you to finish anything, right? Once your job is getting the train on the tracks, your job is approving the project. Your job is saying, you know what? That makes sense to put resources towards that. Considering all the other options available, your job. is figuring out the right combination of people that will maximally effectively take over that job and really bring it to completion as fast as possible and be able to scale it. So is it the right gig? Who are the right people to do it? What resources do they need? How can I collect those in the most cost and time effective manner? Those are your jobs. But once that train is on the tracks, proper delegation should always bring it to the finish line. It would be very rare, very rare, that a task needs your personal involvement end to end. Just because you want it to, doesn't mean it does. In almost every case, your job is going to be saying, yep, that's the right thing that we should do with our resources. These are the right people to make that happen. And here are all the resources they need to be freed up and made available so they can execute properly. Those are all of your jobs. The actual doing of it, the execution, the part you want to do, right? Cause it just, again, feel so wonderful to be a part of creating and finishing something like that is something you should almost always hold yourself back from. Now, I know what you're saying. You're saying, but that's what makes it feel like I've accomplished something. Like getting something to the finish line is what feels rewarding. You have got to reframe if you're truly moving into a leadership role. Like you're going to be organizing and strategizing a number of people that are in your circle and your job is kind of commander in chief. If you're heading in that space in whatever your division might be, you've got to reframe what being productive looks and feels like. You gotta reframe this, and you gotta think about three big buckets where your energy is gonna be going, and none of them are gonna be about bringing a project to execution. CULTURE BUILDING The first one is culture building. Your number one job, right, is that glue that keeps everything together, that makes the energy of the organization feel like something that people who are a part of it want to be a part of. Number one is culture building. In every single touchpoint, with another individual in the group is culture building. It doesn't need to accomplish anything, right? These touch points, these little moments of interaction don't need to finish anything. They don't need to accomplish anything. What they accomplish is you understanding each other just a little bit better. What they accomplish is you seeing where the other person's coming from, is a little bit of trust building because you had that moment of connection. They accomplish that. No, it's not finishing anything. This is an infinite game. Culture never has an end point. You never win culture, right? You nurture culture. And it's with every single touch point that you do so. So one of your biggest buckets as a leader is gonna be culture building. And culture building has no conclusion. So you'll never get that feeling of finishing. INNOVATING Number two, energy bucket number two is innovation. Time spent pondering solutions is one of your most important jobs. And here's the rub, here's the really uncomfortable part. 90% of your time will be considering solutions that you don't move forward with. You certainly can't finish anything you never start. And 90% of your time is going to be exploring options that don't wind up being the right call. But that is a critical part of your job. There's no way that you can rule down where your resources should go if you don't consider all the options and say no to most of them. So because so much of your time is going to be spent evaluating possibilities that literally never get off the ground because you decide they shouldn't, obviously you won't have any sense of completion there. But yet, if you're not in that role, you will never allocate your resources properly in a way that allows the company to move forward efficiently. Innovation, and namely deciding what shouldn't get off the ground, is a huge spend of your time and has no completion. PROBLEM SOLVING And finally, number three is problem solving. One of your key roles as a leader is evaluating when should you intervene. Oftentimes, my number one recommendation there is to restrain yourself, right? To let very capable, high-performing people come to their own conclusions, but be evaluating it from a 30,000 foot view. But you do need to sometimes say, you know what? I'm gonna jump in here. A little bit of restraint is always a good thing, right? But knowing when to jump in is very important. Now, here's the key. When you jump in, you jump in with a couple pieces of information or a little bit of guidance, again, to get the train back on the tracks. What you don't do is follow the train. Right, that's falling right back into that temptation of wanting to get something to completion. That's not your job anymore. Your job is, ooh, this isn't going in the right direction. Watch it, study it, think about it, find your moment, and then jump in and say, team, can I ask that we look at one thing a little bit differently? What are your thoughts here? Okay, now you jump in, you change the energy of that environment, of that project, you get people chiming in as a group, you decide, Oh, this is the one change we've got to make. And then very importantly, you get back out because you've got to go do that somewhere else. If you stay on that ride, you're not getting back over and solving that same problem in seven other spots. The people can handle it. Your job is just to steer, just to get them back in between the buoys and then get out of there. One of the hardest things about truly moving into a leadership role is you've got to divorce your sense of perceived worth from deliverables that you're a part of. Your energy needs to be in constantly having touch points to build culture. Your energy needs to be spent thinking about where should we go and maybe more importantly, where should we not go? Your energy needs to be in and out of different projects when you see an area that your experience or wisdom can nudge people in the right direction and get their momentum built back up before you remove your energy from the scenario. These things never feel done because they never are done. None of those buckets even move closer to a perceived finish line. You just keep nurturing and spinning those plates at all times and never ride any of them to the end. DIVORCE YOURSELF FROM DELIVERABLES TO IMPROVE THE EFFICIENCY OF YOUR BUSINESS You have to divorce yourself from deliverables, otherwise you're never going to take the true position of an effective leader. Give that some thought. I know you're high performers. I know you love finishing projects. I know for many, many, many years that has filled your cup, but it's killing your team. Try to reframe it. Let me know if you have any thoughts. PTOnIce.com. Thanks for being your team. We'll see you next week. OUTRO Hey, thanks for tuning in to the PT on Ice daily show. If you enjoyed this content, head on over to iTunes and leave us a review and be sure to check us out on Facebook and Instagram at the Institute of Clinical Excellence. If you're interested in getting plugged into more ice content on a weekly basis while earning CEUs from home, check out our virtual ice online mentorship program at ptonice.com. 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