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A
Foreign. 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. Holly a. Maxwell leadership facilitator and coach.
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And I'm Chris Cody, executive vice president with Maxwell Leadership. Welcome and thank you for joining. I want to encourage you. Go to maxwellleadership.com executive podcast. There you'll see that there's a link to the blog that'll go along with this podcast. You can download the learner guide right there, or you can actually leave us a thought, a question that we can unpack in a future episode. Well, today's topic is titled how to Eliminate Stress.
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A
Wow. If that doesn't bring them running, I
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can't wait to hear what Perry's got in store for us today. It's going to be amazing, but it's about really trying to figure out really what's the source that's driving the stress? How do you eliminate stress at the source of what you're dealing with, not just managing the symptoms that we all have around the stress. And so this big idea comes from Travis Bradbury, shared by George Stern on LinkedIn. And it hits leaders, like, right where we are. Like, if you say that to me, I think all of us go, I get it. Yeah, me too. I feel that type of stress. So really, the secret in beating it and we're going to unpack this today is, is how do we become proactive in the things that we're doing it. It's not just about your mindset. It's actually about how you design your day. And what does that structure look like? And so if your calendar is packed, like each one of us are, then so is your nervous system. And so that's. It's a leadership issue. It's not your personality issue. And John Maxwell says this. You don't manage time, you manage your priorities. And so if you don't protect your priorities, then stress is going to show up. Perry, I cannot wait for you to tell me how we're going to eliminate stress.
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Well, I've been worried about you.
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B
Us. Us? Yeah.
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Yes. People say, are you. How do you manage? Do I look stressed? I mean, do I. You know, but I don't feel it. Like, I guess some people might, but this was helpful to me.
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B
So some of us hide it better than others. We all have it, right? Yeah.
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But before to something practical, I definitely want to give you some practical ideas, but the authors kind of Laid the ideas out in three areas to kind of frame the discussion. Number one was that calm is, is designed, it's not reactive. And so I think this one really hit me was low, Low stress isn't something you rise to, to come up to in the moment. It's, it's a invisible kind of preparation for things and that you, you can't just be reactive. The more reactive you are, the more stress you're going to feel.
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B
I believe that.
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I think so, yeah. The second thing they brought up was that stress comes from friction, not workload. This one was really surprising to me because calm leaders aren't doing less, they're just switching less back and forth. The things that are coming and going and the switching costs. They talked about rush transitions, decision fatigue. That's kind of where stress lives. And John teaches that energy, not time, is a leader's most valuable asset. So I think what I took from this was it's not doing a lot of work that stresses me out. It's kind of doing the wrong kind of work or work that's not fulfilling or work that's outside of my area. Number three, they talked about white space is a leadership signal. And this was when leaders protect margin, they communicate that they have boundaries, they control, they have long term thinking. And I thought that was so impressive. I'm going to do next week's podcast on margin. Just thought this was something my wife challenged me on about 20 years ago and I struggle big time with putting margin into my day.
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B
You're going to need somebody else to help you with that.
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A
Yeah, I think we are both. I see your calendar as well, but we'll get to that next week. Yeah.
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B
Well, so let's look at some of these practical secrets as Perry kind of set that up for us of people who never seem stressed now they probably are, but, but they have a little bit of stress. So this one has your name written all over it. It prep the night before I I. Preparation is a leadership behavior because it does protect what Perry was saying, that it protects how much you are reacting throughout the day, throughout a situation, throughout a meeting, whatever. And, and as you plan and you prepare, it can have a little bit more structure. And if not and it's chaos, then you kind of feel like you're playing catch up all single. I know that's something that would, would drive stress. John says it with the phrase of you're either preparing or repairing.
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Oh, man.
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And that could be a meeting, a relationship, your day, your schedule. And so make sure that you are preparing for what's coming up. And. And you're spending time preparing for all that you have to do the next day. And I know for you and why I thought about you immediately is that, you know, all the way back to one of our lessons we did with Tuesday's coming, right? Like, you know, it. You know, when you're with clients, you know, when you're coaching calls, you spend time preparing. You have a schedule in the morning of. Of, you know, preparing, and. And it just helps reduce the stress when that moment arrives.
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A few weeks ago, I had something on my calendar that you and I were doing together, but neither one of us had really talked about it. But I. But seven, eight days in advance we started like, what's that about? And what do they expect? And that preparation, I would have been freaking out a little bit. Like, you're putting me in front of an audience. I don't really know. Doing what? I don't know. No, I have time. And so I was able to prepare for that. So I think it lowers that level of. And I noticed that preparing Repairing comes from Today Matters. John's book. I swore I'd never read it. And then somebody said, you need it. So I read it, and it changed my life. But about how John says your success is determined by your daily agenda. So what are you doing today? Are you repairing from all the things you didn't do yesterday or preparing for what's to come? And that's. Preparing for what's to come is what helps bring the stress level down. Number two was always arrive early. And I was known for coming in on two wheels late in a hurry, you know, hair on fire. And stress just flies from that. It's just I'm just, I'm not prepared. I'm not. I'm not on time, those types of things. And that event that we're talking about, you and I, you know, we arrived, I think 40 minutes, 30 minutes early, and that gave us time. And then people had things going on. You and I were calm. We had done some prep, and we got there on time with plenty of time to get set up and to go with it. So I think you can start to calm, invite calm in. When you said, I'm prepared and I'm early to do that, that sounds so basic.
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Yeah, but it's true.
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It's 101. But we don't do it. We're not prepared. And we come in fast and come in hot. I'm going to be stressed.
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And even a benefit of that in this example was that we were able to gain some additional intel.
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Yes.
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That helped you.
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That was big.
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Yeah. Set up. Right. The content, because we were there, we didn't come flying in and whatnot. So it's good. Number three is schedule what matters. If it's a priority to you, but it's not on your calendar, at least in my world, it just feels like that's not a priority. And so I need to make sure that everything I have with appointments, think time, project time, downtime, my calendar is blocked out now. You then have to follow through with what's on there. And that's something I've had to learn over time too, is I'm going to schedule it. I have great intentions. I just got to keep it on the schedule because it matters.
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Yeah. Tell me just before I go to number four, just thinking about. And if we set it up right to say why does this even matter? Why is your stress level or how you show stress level affect your leadership? I mean, the reason I brought this is that I'm thinking so many people I've worked for over the years were hair on fire, out of control, and I was not influenced positive by that. I kind of back off. And are they a wreck getting ready to happen or are they in control of their surroundings and themselves? Is it self management, self leadership that makes me have. Makes you have more influence than me? How do you see that?
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And don't you say that you're making everyone feel something. Right. And so you know it when someone's stressed, you can feel it. You can sense it. So how approachable do they feel? Right. Like how. And so I think the fact that you are making people feel something and it's contagious. We talk about this too. Contagious. And so the last thing I want is for my team to be, you know, leveled up and stressed when they don't have to be. And so, yeah, I think you're making them feel something. You gotta be aware of that. And then it's contagious. So then all of a sudden they're gonna start being that way as well.
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Home is contagious. And if you're. So is anxiety.
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Yeah.
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If I'm watching my leader, they're freaking out. Maybe I should freaking out.
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Yeah.
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But, oh, no, I don't want to. I don't want to be passing this on to the team to do that. Number four, I just wrote down like reset quickly. So if you do find yourself that you don't. This isn't a. I'm never going to be stressed. I'm never going to be freaking out, I'm never going to be anxious. But when I find myself there, is there something that resets me that I can go to? Is it a walk, get up and walk around the building one time? Is it go get a cup of coffee? Is it go sit down and talk to a trusted friend? Is it go, you know, go listen to some music during lunch hour? What is it that helps reset you and makes you calm? I just, I was thinking about it for me was I tend to want to just get up and go. Walk.
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Yeah.
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And if I can walk and maybe it'll talk to myself a little bit. But I don't, I don't really want to be around others. Do you know what it is?
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Yeah.
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What resets.
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So for me it is being by myself.
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Yeah.
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Right. Which it's interesting as you think about my personality, I, I can come across as extroverted, but I'm right in the middle and so I can go either way. And for me it is to just, just have some, some self time, quiet, nobody around. Similar obviously what you're talking about with the, with walking around. I would also say too, I love being outside when the weather's appropriate. Right. To be able to do that and. But you got to figure it out to your point. Figure it out what it is that can reset you. Breathing techniques, all kinds of things.
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It could be. It's a secret. Yeah. For you.
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Yeah. The next one is. And I'm going to laugh by this one, keep one list because I mean I am notorious for sticky notes and give me that paper and oh, now I'm using a remarkable. And I'm gonna send myself an email. And so man, what I found is that I have to kind of reset. I have to take all of my notes sometimes when I'm moving fast and then I have to put them in one place and when I know that they're there and I've cleaned up all the scrap paper and put it on, that reduces my level of stress. And so it's so true. Right. So how do we keep one list? And for me, the importance of keeping a list is getting it out of my brain and getting it out of my head because if not I'm thinking about it, I don't want to forget about it. Right. And so your brain is created to help solve problems and to creatively think. It's not created to store a ton of information. And I mean, I don't know about you, but the older I get, the harder it's getting to keep all that stuff stored up in there, so I got to get it out.
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I'm just saying, just the older you get.
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I'm just saying I don't know if you're there yet, but I feel that you're a child.
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But that leads into another one that this is, it's called it capture your inputs. And this is probably David Allen and getting things done type of stuff from years ago. But saying that, like you said, I've got all this stuff coming at me. I've got text messages, I've got emails, I've got phone calls and voice messages. I've got people stopping by the door and jumping into your office and sliding into my dm. Can I say that? Right? I've said that twice today already. Proud of you. Yeah.
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So good.
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I've never said it. Never. And now I've said it twice in one day. Trying to remember things is dangerous because it adds stress, because then you just hit on it. Your brain is, is trained to close loops. This is David Allen, close loops. And if I have an open loop, like, you'll do this. Don't forget to take the trash out. Don't forget to take the trash out. Don't forget to take the trash out. Your brain keeps going on it until you say, I'm writing it on the sticky, right next to the, on the kitchen counter it says don't forget. Now my brain can let that go, I can close that loop. And so capturing my inputs and keeping one list, you know, you and I both have gone to electronic paper, we've gone to electronic notebooks. And I struggled with that at once. But, you know, I had files everywhere, I had paper everywhere, I had notepad, I had sticky notes. I had to do list. Now I just opened up my remarkable. Put it in there. I can search on it. It's there. I know, I know it's captured. So by you making the List 1 list, capturing your inputs, closing the loops in your head, it brings your, your stress level down to. I know. It's all captured. I know. I didn't have to remember that. I didn't. What am I forgetting? I didn't forget anything because it's written, it's written down.
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Number seven is man. How do you choose your top three? I think this is so important. Not your easiest three, but your top three. And for me, most of my days will fall apart because I've just had way too much to do. And then I get to the end of the day and I don't really even feel like I completed anything. How many of you felt that way? Well, that's because there's no, like, for me, what I realized, no finish line. If I knew that, I say, okay, these are the three things I've got to get done. Back to David Allen and getting things done, the three most important. And then one must. He says, right. And so everything else is not as urgent as those things. And we got to make sure we focus on. If you do that, you go, man, I feel like I crossed the finish line today, even though we know we're going to get up tomorrow and there's going to be a ton of work there. And so the other thing is I, you know, with the Eisenhower matrix, when you look at this and you start talking about the, the urgent, what's important and what are you focused on? And where your priorities try to steal it down right to, hey, what are the three most important? And one must that I do and then knock that out so that you feel like you accomplished something.
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Well, I had it yesterday. I was. I had something I wanted to do, but I had something that I was required to do. And I had a deadline and something I had to get done. And I knew I needed to get done, but I was really enjoying working on something that I could use down the road somewhere. But it was a little creative moment and I really had to kind of call myself on it because what's going to happen is I'm going to play with the thing that I wanted to play with. The day's going to end. I'm going to be required to be at the dinner table and be with the family. Now instead of preparing, I'm now going to be repairing tomorrow, having to do the thing I shouldn't have done, which is going to raise my stress level, raise my anxiety level when I should have just done the right thing. The priority thing. This is the problem with these lists that we make these to do lists is that they're not in priority order. That's right. They're in brand. I just thought of that. I wrote it down. And then when I have a moment, what should I do? I look over there. I don't do I go to the most important thing? No, I go the easiest thing.
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I want to scratch that list. I mean, I want to scratch something I'm taking off.
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But it raises my stress level because now I've got important things that are hanging out there. So this is this three most importants. And one must. It frees you. Are you, are you ever going to get all the work done in the day.
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No, no, no. It's always going to show up.
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There's always going to be more tomorrow. And so I just say if I start my day with an idea. Actually what I do is I close my day. I'm not at my desk, but I have index cards, and I just grab an index card and I really look real quickly at my to do list and my calendar and what's coming. I've been planning for a week or more about what I. And what are the three most important things I need to get done tomorrow. And then I'll just circle one of them. They said that's my must. The must gets done probably before 10am because the more get past 10am the more my day gets out of control. You know about that. And so if. But then if I don't get any of the other things on my list done, I look at that and say, did I get my three most important yes. I'm okay with. I can go home, have an enjoyable evening, and get up tomorrow and come back and do my next three most important things. Will the list ever be empty? No. Will I ever get it all done? No. But I will have gotten the most important things done. And that was what relieves this pressure off of me to say, I'm so far behind, I'm never. Chris is going to call me and I'm not going to have it. Well, why don't you have it? Because I was playing, you know, mahjong or something.
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Yeah, yeah, I love it.
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I wasn't playing my.
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No, I'm sure you weren't. All right, number nine, leading into this, one of the things that Perry and I talk a lot about is the fact that, hey, what are the things that you're doing that only you can be doing for your team and for the organization? And this one is in alignment with that, which is how do you protect the deep work? Right? How do you protect the stuff that. Where you're creating value for the organization and the team and you're thinking and you're innovating things that can't be delegated. Like, you've got to protect that. You got to block that time and you got to make sure that you are making a little bit of progress in that, that you're taking the next step, that you're thinking on it. If just like you mentioned, like, if I go throughout my day and I'm just doing the busy work and then I get home, I'm like, you know what? I'm gonna spend some time tonight getting in my deep Work road to hell was paid with good attention. I get home and I eat and maybe I work out. I'm like, right, Like, I'm like, what?
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No, but also, if you're super disciplined and you. You eat and then you go get your laptop out and start doing deep work, I mean, what message you send it now? Now I'm stressed for a whole nother reason.
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Yeah. Well, yes. And maybe more stress. That's right. Yeah. And so you got to protect your time. Yeah.
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And it's hard. Do you schedule time with yourself and, you know, things kind of jump on your calendar and people want it, but I. I give that away. No, I can reschedule it, but I need to keep the time with myself because that's when I do my work. I had a leader once. I said, you're on every call. He was this very senior guy. You're on every call all day long. You're on your phone. I don't. When do you do your. You take to dos? When do you do your to dos? He said, I schedule it. I go, I can't even get lunch because I schedule that too. What? I didn't. That's why I'm not getting lunch, because I don't block time. And so by blocking the time, said I don't have to stress about not getting things done because I know I've got time coming up to get things done. Now the temptation there is going to be that people are going to steal those. You're going to give away those slots because nobody knows you canceled the call but you. Yeah, yeah. No, no, I. I don't. I have real rule. I can't cancel. I can only reschedule. Oh, yeah. I can give you 30 minutes now, but I'm going to take 30 minutes later to do something else. But if our viewers at home, if you were keeping a scorecard that we skipped number eight. So number eight says, sync your calendars. This was huge for me because I said I have, you know, a weekly alignment. I just noticed I have a calendar for my work and my family has a calendar at home, and maybe I have a calendar for something else. You know, all these ways I track. And so I started having Sunday night calendar talks. We call it time to have a calendar talk at our home, where I take my work calendar with all my commitments and, you know, we travel and we're about. So I'm not. And she needs to know when I'm not going to be there and what she needs to plan for and all that. But I also need to know what's coming up with the family calendar. Where are the kids going to be playing ball? Where's the dance recital? Where does she have a ladies meeting that she needs to go to that I need to cover and all these things. And so we map this out a month to six weeks in advance. And can things change? Of course they can change. Do they flex? Yes, of course they flex. But. And then. But, yeah, I got to go back and say, I see I committed that I could be here. Then I have an opportunity to go and speak at this thing. What do you think about that? And then she'll say, yes, I can move this and do that. But by having different calendars, there's a lot of surprises, which then causes a lot of stress. A lot of, you know, we're not on the same page. And now my stress is going up at home and at work. And so I just find, have one calendar, but sync it with everybody else's calendar. You may have kids that don't live at home. I have kids aren't at home. They have. They might be counting on me to do something where. Where are all my commitments? That's good. So I can track all that to do that. But let me before I flip with you to close the idea of these small things, I'm gonna tell you, if you listen to this podcast, well, that was a bunch of easy stuff. No, it's simple stuff. It's not easy.
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That's right.
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And it requires a lot of discipline and effort to say, I'm going to reduce my stress and anxiety because I'm going to take a few steps to self manage and decide once and manage daily how I'm going to do things. Yeah, I think that some of these tips were. I didn't just make them up. They came from a life of trying to figure out how to get it all done but not freak out about doing it.
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B
So I had the opportunity a couple weeks ago to spend the morning with an organization, and we rolled out the resilience content that we've talked about here and had Valerie on. And again, I want to encourage you to go to the forum and just put resilience in there if this is right for you or your team. But it was, it was a. It was a great conversation. We get to one of the rules, right? We were talking about, hey, what would the future self. Thank you now for doing? That's what you're talking about, right? You're like the preventive measures of being able to do that. And what are those things instead of saying, you know, I'm just going to keep playing the game or I'm going to keep doing this. I'm going to, okay, you go ahead and do that. But your future self is going to be under stress and that. And that's what you're saying here. And that's part of that, that resilience. You know, a lot of times I think leaders feel like stress is a badge of honor. I got a lot going on, right? Like, no, it's a design flaw or discipline that you don't have that even sometimes I don't have that I fall back into that I need to make sure that I fix. Because it's not about surviving chaos. Because then your team feels that. That we were just talking about because it is contagious, right? It's about creating clarity. And we've said here that if you have lack of clarity on what's priorities to you, what's driving stress for you, then you're going to be confused. And if you're confused, then you're going to have some failures, which we are going to call stress today. So my challenge for you is I wrap up not only to go and put resilience in the form and so we can come help you and your team, but also do you have clarity on what is causing you stress? And we just gave you 10 items to go back and say, I want you to self assess. Where am I at on this? Because I know Perry and I would sit here and say, man, if we were to do that, like, there's some areas on here that are pretty low. We have systems in place, but maybe we get a little bit complacent. So go back through and figure out, man, where are the root causes of my stress and how do I make some changes so that your future self will thank you for doing that.
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Great catch on that one. Thank you, Chris. And as a reminder, if you'd like the learn guide for this episode or you'd like to learn more about our offerings, especially that resilience offering, you can do all that@maxwellleadership.com.com executive podcast. You can also leave us a comment or a question 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.