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[00:00]
A
If you've ever had an idea for a business but weren't sure where to start, Shopify makes it easy to turn that idea into something real. Everything you need to start selling is there from day one, so you can focus less on the setup and more on building what you want to create. One of the biggest hurdles for any new business is getting customers all the way through the checkout. Shopify Checkout helps make that process simple, so when someone's ready to buy, they can complete their purchase quickly and easily. And when they return, their information is already saved, making repeat purchases even smoother. And once the basics are taken care of, you can spend more time growing your business. Instead of managing the technical details, Shopify gives entrepreneurs the tools they need to build, adapt, and scale as they go. With Shopify, nothing stands between your idea and a real business. So go make it one. Start your free trial at shopify.com leadership that's shopify.com leadership when leaders are unhappy at work, they often blame the company, but more often it's a sign of dissatisfaction with their own inability to work within the constraints of the job. In this episode, I'm going to give you three mindset shifts to help you regain control.
[01:18]
B
Welcome to the no Bullshit Leadership Podcast. In a world where knowledge has become a commodity, this podcast is designed to give you something more access to the experience of a successful CEO who has already walked the path. So join your host, Martin Moore, who will unlock and bring to life your own leadership experiences and accelerate your journey to leadership excellence.
[01:41]
A
Hey there and welcome to episode 415 of the no Bullshit Leadership Podcast. This week's episode three mindset shifts when you're unhappy at work, no job is perfect. Every role comes with constraints, the things that stop you from operating at your best. Whether it's a bad boss, a lack of resources, or unrealistic expectations. The question isn't whether your job has constraints, it's whether or not you can live with them. If you don't proactively manage the constraints, then over time you might not like who you have to become just to function in your role. In this episode, I reveal the difference between genuine constraints and the artificial constraints we place on ourselves. I explore the symptoms of unhappiness at work so that you can identify them more accurately. And I give you three critical mindset shifts that are going to pull your focus off the daily grind and onto the long game so that you can get back to peak performance. So let's get into it. As a leader, you expect to do difficult things. You Know that you're going to have to make hard decisions, decisions that not everyone is going to agree with. You'll have a seemingly constant schedule of difficult conversations, and if you hang around long enough as a senior leader, you'll need to navigate your team through any number of crises. But as long as you've got your head around what it means to be a leader, this is all relatively manageable. What is it then, that makes you genuinely unhappy at work? I've promised to give you three mindset shifts to get you back on track when you are unhappy at work. But before I do, you need to understand what's at the root of your unhappiness. No job is perfect. You're always going to find parts of it that you'd rather not do. And every job comes with constraints. A constraint of the job is anything that stops you from operating at your peak. If there's a mismatch between your personal values and the way the CEO and the executive team want to run the business, well, that's a constraint. When politics is rife and it takes precedence over results, that's a constraint. When your boss places unrealistic expectations on you and your team, that's a constraint. When there's a lack of clarity around the organisation's purpose, strategy and operating objectives, well, that's a constraint. When the leaders above and around you turn a blind eye to poor behaviour and performance, that's a constraint. One of the biggest constraints is a lack of organizational support for strong leadership, the type of leadership that gets results. This plays out in things like lack of support for performance management, lack of accountability in decision making, which of course leads to an all care, no responsibility culture and and lack of focus on high value work. Instead preferring to fill your team's work program with low value, high volume activity. With any constraint of the job, you have to ask yourself one simple Can I live with this constraint or can't I live with this constraint? It's binary. The answer is simply yes or no. If you can live with it, then you just have to accept it. It's a characteristic of the environment you work in, so you need to put it aside and stop agonising over it. Your focus can then go onto doing the best you possibly can while working within the constraints of your job. But if you can't live with it, your only option is to vote with your feet. There's no other way around it. If you stay, the cognitive dissonance will eventually overwhelm you and your own personal unhappiness is going to Infect everyone else. We all wrestle with the constraints of our jobs. And even though it's really easy to ask can I live with it or can't I? The answer is often a lot more complicated than that. But what if it's not a real constraint of the job? What if it's actually a you problem? There are things that I call artificial constraints. They're not genuine constraints of the job. They're more like the barriers you make up in your own head. And they're artificial because they're not really constraints. They're well within your power to resolve. Here are a few of the more common ones. The first is I can't because my team is weak. Well, that sounds like a you problem to me. If your team's weak, then do what it takes to make it stronger. Lift the standard, remove the unwilling, and bring in better people. The second is I can't because I'm under resourced. Well, this sounds like a you problem to me. If you're under resourced, go back to your work program. You need to have the discipline to work out what the highest value pieces of work are and focus only on those. If you can't increase your resourcing levels to match the work program, then reduce the work program to meet your resourcing levels. Number three, I can't because I don't know what's expected of me. Well, that sounds like a you problem to me. If expectations aren't clear, go to your boss and ask the right questions until they are clear. If your boss remains uncooperative or is otherwise unable to tell you, then define the expectations for yourself and take them to your boss and say, in the absence of any better information, here's what I'll be doing. Tell me if you want me to do something different. 4. I can't because my boss wouldn't agree. Yeah, that also sounds like a you problem to me. We often make assumptions about what would be acceptable to the people above us. Now, I learned a really big lesson on this many years ago. I had assumed that I couldn't replace one of my executives because he had a very close relationship with the chairman. When I finally tested this, about nine months too late, the chairman told me that he had really no affinity with that executive, even though they'd worked together for years. My assumption was simply an artificial constraint that stopped me from doing something difficult. So don't fall prey to the victim mentality that goes hand in hand with your artificial constraints. Always be testing the constraints of your job. It's Is it Real or is it a me problem? I recently had a conversation with a friend of mine who's just navigated a difficult divorce. He told me a story about one of the marriage counselling sessions that he and his ex wife had. As they were trying to keep the relationship together, the marriage counsellor asked him an incredibly insightful question. Are you unhappy with the marriage or are you unhappy with the person you've become? You may still fundamentally like your job. You might like the company and you might like the people you work with, but the constraints of the job eat away at you. They can change the way you feel and over time, this can change the way you behave. Ultimately, high performers are not happy when they're not operating at their peak. So, with echoes of my friend's marriage counsellor ringing in my ears, I'll ask you, are you unhappy with your company or are you unhappy with what it's made you become? Frustration escalates when you feel as though you're trapped. You may have golden handcuffs. Staying in the job purely for the money. When I left Horizon to take up the CEO role at CS Energy, a number of senior colleagues came to me and said, marty, I wish I could leave too, but I know I could never get this kind of money anywhere else in Brisbane. It could just be a soft labour market or it could be your personal circumstances. But anything that makes you feel as though you have to hold on to the job you're in can make you feel as though you don't have any choice but to stay. One thing's for sure, if you do feel trapped, it will eat away at you. Many people become cynical, which, by the way, was my mo. Some just lose their energy, they stop pushing to be their best and others get drawn into the politics. When good leaders let this happen, it's the thin edge of the wedge. And it's not long before they become intensely unhappy with the person they've become. We produced a podcast episode about 12 months ago that explores this in more detail. It's episode 361, the hidden cost of Creeping Frustration. We'll leave a link in the show notes. Now, if this happens to you, it's extremely difficult to combat. You have to go back and examine the constraints of the job. The first question to ask yourself is, are the constraints real or are they artificial? What can you do to either remove the constraints or to learn to live them more comfortably? One of the best things I had going for me was was a healthy sense of fatalism about my career. I was never particularly worried about losing a job I was in. I knew that if I was too worried about it, it would force me into a defensive scarcity mentality. Instead of putting time and energy into protecting my job, I was able to put all my focus and energy into optimising my team's performance. I figured that knowing how much of my heart and soul I put into my work, if the company didn't appreciate that, it simply wasn't the right company for me. So I would quite happily take the hint that I should work for a different company, one where my value was recognized and appreciated. And not surprisingly, this gave me a feeling of choice and control whenever I felt that creeping frustration of unhappiness with my job. This is all well and good, but for those of you who are experiencing unhappiness with your job, it's often hard to see a way through that. The trick is to shift your gaze beyond the day to day and focus on the long term. This is easier said than done, but I'm going to give you three mindset shifts that will specifically help you to adopt that long term focus. The first Mindset Shift Focus on the ultimate outcome. When the micro level detail has you bogged down and frustrated, always focus on the distant horizon where you reach your eventual goal. There might be any number of things that cause you frustration every day, so you need to stop and ask can I handle this minor annoyance in order to deliver the outcome that we're working towards. If the answer to that one is no, then you might need to go back and rethink whether whatever it is you're working on is is sufficiently high value. Even if you don't like that answer, it's something you probably need to know because that in itself can add to the futility that you're feeling. And when the frustration drives you to fight tooth and nail for something that in the scheme of things is probably immaterial, ask yourself another question. Is this the hill I want to die on? When you focus on the value you're going to create with this deliverable you, you help your team to focus on the big picture as well. The second mindset shift is to focus on capability building. No matter what's going on above and around you, building capability in your team is a no regrets move. It creates positive momentum, and from that comes opportunity. Just think about the benefits of building a stronger team capability. It naturally reduces key person risk, it gives you more options for work allocation, and it reduces your personal workload because you're not forever dipping down in an attempt to cover for people who aren't performing. But most of all, when you stretch your people to achieve things that even they didn't think was possible, that's about the biggest payback that leadership offers. I got incredible satisfaction from seeing the people who worked for me going on to do great things in other businesses. And the third mindset shift is focus on your own professional growth. As you look back on the entirety of your career, you're going to forget the frustrations. You'll only remember those formative moments where you had to be at your best. When I think about the biggest moments in my career the Xstrata takeover of MIM replacing the operating system for National Transport Insurance, the IPO of Aurizon, and the turnaround of CS Energy, the frustrations and unhappiness that I felt from time to time in those roles are only a vague echo. But the outcomes we achieved are as clear in my mind's eye as if they had just happened yesterday. The things that I thought were the toughest at the time have turned out to be the experiences that I remember and the things that I value the most. If you find yourself in a situation where you're unhappy at work, remember no job is perfect. You just need to work out whether you can influence the constraints or not. If you can't, stop agonizing over them and accept the cold hard facts of your job. If you can shift your mindset using those three long term focus techniques, you'll be surprised how quickly the frustration subsides. And when that happens, you you won't need to be unhappy with the person you become. Alright, so that brings us to the end of episode 415. I really hope you enjoyed it, but as I'm sure you know, listening is easy, leading is hard, so keep the momentum up by following or subscribing to no Bullshit leadership on your favourite podcast player. I'm looking forward to next week's episode, spotting leaders who are likely to grow. Until then, I know you take every opportunity you can to be a no bullshit.

Summary5 min read

No Bullsh!t Leadership Podcast

Episode Summary: 3 Mindset Shifts When You're Unhappy At Work

Host: Martin G Moore
Date: August 11, 2026
Episode: #415

Overview

In this episode, Martin G Moore dives into a pervasive yet often unspoken challenge: being unhappy at work, especially for leaders. He uncovers the common constraints leaders experience in their roles and proposes three essential mindset shifts to reframe dissatisfaction, refocus on what truly matters, and empower high performance. Moore blends personal anecdotes, practical wisdom, and challenging questions, offering listeners not just advice, but a call to personal accountability and growth.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Understanding Constraints: Real vs. Artificial

[02:00–07:30]

All jobs come with constraints—such as lack of resources, poor bosses, politics, or unclear expectations.
The crucial question: Can I live with this constraint or not?
- If yes: Accept and refocus on doing your best within those limits.
- If no: The only healthy option is to "vote with your feet" (leave the role).
Moore warns that ongoing acceptance of unacceptable constraints leads to unhappiness and affects team morale.
Not all constraints are real; many are self-imposed or artificial—ones we mistakenly tell ourselves can't be changed.
- Examples:
  - Weak team? "That sounds like a you problem to me." ([07:45])
  - Under-resourced? Focus on highest-value work.
  - Unclear expectations? Seek clarity from your boss.
  - Assuming your boss won’t agree? Directly test your assumptions instead of being paralyzed by them.

"Don't fall prey to the victim mentality that goes hand in hand with your artificial constraints. Always be testing the constraints of your job. Is it real, or is it a me problem?"
— Martin G Moore [10:15]

2. The "You Problem": Challenging Assumptions

[07:30–12:00]

Often, frustrations at work are rooted in what we've allowed or believed, not immoveable obstacles.
A personal story: Martin assumed he couldn’t replace a key executive due to the chairman’s supposed loyalty—only to realize, months later, that assumption was unfounded. ([09:50])
Echoes a marriage counselor’s question:

"Are you unhappy with your company or are you unhappy with what it's made you become?"
— Martin G Moore (referencing a friend’s experience) [12:30]

3. Consequences of Staying Trapped

[12:20–15:30]

Feeling stuck due to "golden handcuffs" (financial/career dependency) breeds cynicism, loss of energy, and engagement in politics.
Unchecked, this turns good leaders sour, leading to intense dissatisfaction with themselves.

"When good leaders let this happen, it's the thin edge of the wedge, and it's not long before they become intensely unhappy with the person they've become."
— Martin G Moore [14:20]

4. Gaining Back Control: The Power of Fatalism

[16:00–17:50]

Healthy career “fatalism” keeps you from clinging too tightly to a role and frees you to focus on high performance rather than job protection.
If your value isn’t recognized, consider it a sign to move on, not a personal failing.
This mindset shifts your reference point from fear-based to opportunity-focused leadership.

"Instead of putting time and energy into protecting my job, I was able to put all my focus and energy into optimising my team's performance."
— Martin G Moore [16:35]

5. The 3 Mindset Shifts

[18:00–22:30]

1. Focus on the Ultimate Outcome

Shift gaze from daily irritations to long-term goals.
Ask yourself: Is this frustration worth it for the outcome we’re aiming for?
Don’t waste energy on trivial battles—pick your “hills to die on.”

"Always focus on the distant horizon where you reach your eventual goal. Can I handle this minor annoyance in order to deliver the outcome that we're working towards?"
— Martin G Moore [18:25]

2. Focus on Capability Building

Building team capability is always a “no regrets” move—it creates momentum and options.
Benefits include reducing key person risk, easier workload distribution, and the intrinsic reward of seeing your team grow beyond their expectations.

"When you stretch your people to achieve things that even they didn't think was possible, that's about the biggest payback that leadership offers."
— Martin G Moore [20:00]

3. Focus on Your Own Professional Growth

Over a career, you’ll remember formative growth moments, not daily frustrations.
The biggest challenges are often what shape and ultimately reward leaders.

"The things that I thought were the toughest at the time have turned out to be the experiences that I remember and the things that I value the most."
— Martin G Moore [21:55]

Memorable Quotes

"The question isn't whether your job has constraints, it's whether or not you can live with them."
— Martin G Moore [03:10]
"Are you unhappy with your company or are you unhappy with what it's made you become?"
— Martin G Moore [12:30]
"If you can't live with it, your only option is to vote with your feet. There's no other way around it."
— Martin G Moore [06:45]
"Always be testing the constraints of your job. Is it real, or is it a me problem?"
— Martin G Moore [10:15]
"Listening is easy, leading is hard."
— Martin G Moore [24:10]

Notable Moments & Timestamps

| Moment | Timestamp | |-----------------------------------------------|:-------------:| | Differentiating genuine vs. artificial constraints | [03:00–07:30] | | Personal anecdote: Executive assumption | [09:50] | | The marriage counselor analogy | [12:30] | | On feeling trapped and "golden handcuffs" | [14:00] | | Healthy career fatalism | [16:00–17:50] | | Mindset Shift 1: Ultimate Outcome | [18:00] | | Mindset Shift 2: Team Capability | [20:00] | | Mindset Shift 3: Professional Growth | [21:55] |

Tone & Takeaways

Martin G Moore's delivery is direct, pragmatic, and sometimes provocatively challenging. He urges leaders to take personal responsibility, to discern between unavoidable reality and self-created barriers, and to reframe dissatisfaction as an opportunity for growth. His approach is both empathetic and empowering, providing not just theory but actionable mindset shifts for real-world leadership.

Action Steps for Listeners

Audit your constraints honestly—are they real or self-imposed?
Accept or change: Determine if you can live with them, and if not, plan your exit pathway constructively.
Adopt the three mindset shifts to regain professional satisfaction and boost performance.

For deeper exploration, Martin references episode 361: The Hidden Cost of Creeping Frustration ([14:35]).

End of summary.

Loading summary

Transcript3 lines

[00:00]
A
If you've ever had an idea for a business but weren't sure where to start, Shopify makes it easy to turn that idea into something real. Everything you need to start selling is there from day one, so you can focus less on the setup and more on building what you want to create. One of the biggest hurdles for any new business is getting customers all the way through the checkout. Shopify Checkout helps make that process simple, so when someone's ready to buy, they can complete their purchase quickly and easily. And when they return, their information is already saved, making repeat purchases even smoother. And once the basics are taken care of, you can spend more time growing your business. Instead of managing the technical details, Shopify gives entrepreneurs the tools they need to build, adapt, and scale as they go. With Shopify, nothing stands between your idea and a real business. So go make it one. Start your free trial at shopify.com leadership that's shopify.com leadership when leaders are unhappy at work, they often blame the company, but more often it's a sign of dissatisfaction with their own inability to work within the constraints of the job. In this episode, I'm going to give you three mindset shifts to help you regain control.
[01:18]
B
Welcome to the no Bullshit Leadership Podcast. In a world where knowledge has become a commodity, this podcast is designed to give you something more access to the experience of a successful CEO who has already walked the path. So join your host, Martin Moore, who will unlock and bring to life your own leadership experiences and accelerate your journey to leadership excellence.
[01:41]
A
Hey there and welcome to episode 415 of the no Bullshit Leadership Podcast. This week's episode three mindset shifts when you're unhappy at work, no job is perfect. Every role comes with constraints, the things that stop you from operating at your best. Whether it's a bad boss, a lack of resources, or unrealistic expectations. The question isn't whether your job has constraints, it's whether or not you can live with them. If you don't proactively manage the constraints, then over time you might not like who you have to become just to function in your role. In this episode, I reveal the difference between genuine constraints and the artificial constraints we place on ourselves. I explore the symptoms of unhappiness at work so that you can identify them more accurately. And I give you three critical mindset shifts that are going to pull your focus off the daily grind and onto the long game so that you can get back to peak performance. So let's get into it. As a leader, you expect to do difficult things. You Know that you're going to have to make hard decisions, decisions that not everyone is going to agree with. You'll have a seemingly constant schedule of difficult conversations, and if you hang around long enough as a senior leader, you'll need to navigate your team through any number of crises. But as long as you've got your head around what it means to be a leader, this is all relatively manageable. What is it then, that makes you genuinely unhappy at work? I've promised to give you three mindset shifts to get you back on track when you are unhappy at work. But before I do, you need to understand what's at the root of your unhappiness. No job is perfect. You're always going to find parts of it that you'd rather not do. And every job comes with constraints. A constraint of the job is anything that stops you from operating at your peak. If there's a mismatch between your personal values and the way the CEO and the executive team want to run the business, well, that's a constraint. When politics is rife and it takes precedence over results, that's a constraint. When your boss places unrealistic expectations on you and your team, that's a constraint. When there's a lack of clarity around the organisation's purpose, strategy and operating objectives, well, that's a constraint. When the leaders above and around you turn a blind eye to poor behaviour and performance, that's a constraint. One of the biggest constraints is a lack of organizational support for strong leadership, the type of leadership that gets results. This plays out in things like lack of support for performance management, lack of accountability in decision making, which of course leads to an all care, no responsibility culture and and lack of focus on high value work. Instead preferring to fill your team's work program with low value, high volume activity. With any constraint of the job, you have to ask yourself one simple Can I live with this constraint or can't I live with this constraint? It's binary. The answer is simply yes or no. If you can live with it, then you just have to accept it. It's a characteristic of the environment you work in, so you need to put it aside and stop agonising over it. Your focus can then go onto doing the best you possibly can while working within the constraints of your job. But if you can't live with it, your only option is to vote with your feet. There's no other way around it. If you stay, the cognitive dissonance will eventually overwhelm you and your own personal unhappiness is going to Infect everyone else. We all wrestle with the constraints of our jobs. And even though it's really easy to ask can I live with it or can't I? The answer is often a lot more complicated than that. But what if it's not a real constraint of the job? What if it's actually a you problem? There are things that I call artificial constraints. They're not genuine constraints of the job. They're more like the barriers you make up in your own head. And they're artificial because they're not really constraints. They're well within your power to resolve. Here are a few of the more common ones. The first is I can't because my team is weak. Well, that sounds like a you problem to me. If your team's weak, then do what it takes to make it stronger. Lift the standard, remove the unwilling, and bring in better people. The second is I can't because I'm under resourced. Well, this sounds like a you problem to me. If you're under resourced, go back to your work program. You need to have the discipline to work out what the highest value pieces of work are and focus only on those. If you can't increase your resourcing levels to match the work program, then reduce the work program to meet your resourcing levels. Number three, I can't because I don't know what's expected of me. Well, that sounds like a you problem to me. If expectations aren't clear, go to your boss and ask the right questions until they are clear. If your boss remains uncooperative or is otherwise unable to tell you, then define the expectations for yourself and take them to your boss and say, in the absence of any better information, here's what I'll be doing. Tell me if you want me to do something different. 4. I can't because my boss wouldn't agree. Yeah, that also sounds like a you problem to me. We often make assumptions about what would be acceptable to the people above us. Now, I learned a really big lesson on this many years ago. I had assumed that I couldn't replace one of my executives because he had a very close relationship with the chairman. When I finally tested this, about nine months too late, the chairman told me that he had really no affinity with that executive, even though they'd worked together for years. My assumption was simply an artificial constraint that stopped me from doing something difficult. So don't fall prey to the victim mentality that goes hand in hand with your artificial constraints. Always be testing the constraints of your job. It's Is it Real or is it a me problem? I recently had a conversation with a friend of mine who's just navigated a difficult divorce. He told me a story about one of the marriage counselling sessions that he and his ex wife had. As they were trying to keep the relationship together, the marriage counsellor asked him an incredibly insightful question. Are you unhappy with the marriage or are you unhappy with the person you've become? You may still fundamentally like your job. You might like the company and you might like the people you work with, but the constraints of the job eat away at you. They can change the way you feel and over time, this can change the way you behave. Ultimately, high performers are not happy when they're not operating at their peak. So, with echoes of my friend's marriage counsellor ringing in my ears, I'll ask you, are you unhappy with your company or are you unhappy with what it's made you become? Frustration escalates when you feel as though you're trapped. You may have golden handcuffs. Staying in the job purely for the money. When I left Horizon to take up the CEO role at CS Energy, a number of senior colleagues came to me and said, marty, I wish I could leave too, but I know I could never get this kind of money anywhere else in Brisbane. It could just be a soft labour market or it could be your personal circumstances. But anything that makes you feel as though you have to hold on to the job you're in can make you feel as though you don't have any choice but to stay. One thing's for sure, if you do feel trapped, it will eat away at you. Many people become cynical, which, by the way, was my mo. Some just lose their energy, they stop pushing to be their best and others get drawn into the politics. When good leaders let this happen, it's the thin edge of the wedge. And it's not long before they become intensely unhappy with the person they've become. We produced a podcast episode about 12 months ago that explores this in more detail. It's episode 361, the hidden cost of Creeping Frustration. We'll leave a link in the show notes. Now, if this happens to you, it's extremely difficult to combat. You have to go back and examine the constraints of the job. The first question to ask yourself is, are the constraints real or are they artificial? What can you do to either remove the constraints or to learn to live them more comfortably? One of the best things I had going for me was was a healthy sense of fatalism about my career. I was never particularly worried about losing a job I was in. I knew that if I was too worried about it, it would force me into a defensive scarcity mentality. Instead of putting time and energy into protecting my job, I was able to put all my focus and energy into optimising my team's performance. I figured that knowing how much of my heart and soul I put into my work, if the company didn't appreciate that, it simply wasn't the right company for me. So I would quite happily take the hint that I should work for a different company, one where my value was recognized and appreciated. And not surprisingly, this gave me a feeling of choice and control whenever I felt that creeping frustration of unhappiness with my job. This is all well and good, but for those of you who are experiencing unhappiness with your job, it's often hard to see a way through that. The trick is to shift your gaze beyond the day to day and focus on the long term. This is easier said than done, but I'm going to give you three mindset shifts that will specifically help you to adopt that long term focus. The first Mindset Shift Focus on the ultimate outcome. When the micro level detail has you bogged down and frustrated, always focus on the distant horizon where you reach your eventual goal. There might be any number of things that cause you frustration every day, so you need to stop and ask can I handle this minor annoyance in order to deliver the outcome that we're working towards. If the answer to that one is no, then you might need to go back and rethink whether whatever it is you're working on is is sufficiently high value. Even if you don't like that answer, it's something you probably need to know because that in itself can add to the futility that you're feeling. And when the frustration drives you to fight tooth and nail for something that in the scheme of things is probably immaterial, ask yourself another question. Is this the hill I want to die on? When you focus on the value you're going to create with this deliverable you, you help your team to focus on the big picture as well. The second mindset shift is to focus on capability building. No matter what's going on above and around you, building capability in your team is a no regrets move. It creates positive momentum, and from that comes opportunity. Just think about the benefits of building a stronger team capability. It naturally reduces key person risk, it gives you more options for work allocation, and it reduces your personal workload because you're not forever dipping down in an attempt to cover for people who aren't performing. But most of all, when you stretch your people to achieve things that even they didn't think was possible, that's about the biggest payback that leadership offers. I got incredible satisfaction from seeing the people who worked for me going on to do great things in other businesses. And the third mindset shift is focus on your own professional growth. As you look back on the entirety of your career, you're going to forget the frustrations. You'll only remember those formative moments where you had to be at your best. When I think about the biggest moments in my career the Xstrata takeover of MIM replacing the operating system for National Transport Insurance, the IPO of Aurizon, and the turnaround of CS Energy, the frustrations and unhappiness that I felt from time to time in those roles are only a vague echo. But the outcomes we achieved are as clear in my mind's eye as if they had just happened yesterday. The things that I thought were the toughest at the time have turned out to be the experiences that I remember and the things that I value the most. If you find yourself in a situation where you're unhappy at work, remember no job is perfect. You just need to work out whether you can influence the constraints or not. If you can't, stop agonizing over them and accept the cold hard facts of your job. If you can shift your mindset using those three long term focus techniques, you'll be surprised how quickly the frustration subsides. And when that happens, you you won't need to be unhappy with the person you become. Alright, so that brings us to the end of episode 415. I really hope you enjoyed it, but as I'm sure you know, listening is easy, leading is hard, so keep the momentum up by following or subscribing to no Bullshit leadership on your favourite podcast player. I'm looking forward to next week's episode, spotting leaders who are likely to grow. Until then, I know you take every opportunity you can to be a no bullshit.