CHAPTER 08
DEFEND THE SACRED

Conferences and seminars are a big part of my world. Sitting in them, speaking at them, organising them (not to mention judging the quality of their morning teas; seriously — don't be scrimping on those scones, people). The insights and the learnings from these events can shift your thinking and have a significant impact on what you do when you get back to so-called life as usual. The importance of defending what's sacred and making time for what matters was a lesson that hit me as I was sitting in the audience of a seminar a number of years ago.

The speaker was a highly sought-after social sciences researcher. The truth is I can't recall his name, or even the research he was sharing; what I do recall was his personal commitment to his health, even in a busy position. He shared with us that his personal non-negotiable was to do 30 minutes of exercise every single day. While this might not sound like much, with global travel and hours of back-to-back meetings, this non-negotiable was challenged daily. He shared how he cut short a significant meeting with the CEO, CFO and executives of a big organisation because he had to do his half hour of exercise. They tried to dismiss this but he didn't back down. His commitment to protect the sacred ground of what mattered to him, his health, so that his contribution could continue to be world-class struck me. When you get clear on what matters, you've got to work hard to protect it.

At times your values will be tested, and you'll be asked to guard these values against forces that try to sway them or knock them into irrelevancy. When this happens, you'll need to go into battle on behalf of those whispers that nudge you — to honour them and find protection for them. Because unless you defend what is sacred to you, you will be exposed to the elements of busy, lashed at by other people's priorities. It'll leave you dizzier then a two-year-old in a tea-cup ride at the local country show, not sure which way is up. Remember: your values are your true north.

The hard work around values isn't in finding out what they are; the hard work is defending them in a world with competing priorities. In my work, I've seen well-intentioned teams and leaders dedicate time, resources and effort to exploring what really matters to them, and aligning this with organisational strategy — only to then let this work gather dust in the corner as they go about their ‘real work'. The individuals, teams and organisations who bring their values to life in a way that they become enmeshed in their identity and reputation are the ones who also commit to this step in the process — that is, they defend them incessantly.

We are drawn to people, teams and brands who know with certainty who they are, and are proud to shout it from the rooftops. Stop apologising for being passionate about what matters; be vulnerable enough to get over feeling embarrassed by who you are, even if it's dramatically different from others. All too often I see people playing it cool, and hiding and downplaying their values for fear that others may ridicule the very thing that sits at the core of who they are. If you don't honour, uphold and love these truths about you, others won't either. It starts with you defending what's sacred in your life.

FROM EXPOSED TO PROTECTED

Busy can be armour we wear to protect us from facing the thing that really matters, providing a legitimate reason to put off or avoid the conversations we need to have with others. In a busy world, getting caught up in our ever-growing to-do list is not only seen as okay, but it's also rewarded. Here's the thing, though — defaulting to going through email distracts us from doing the hard work of standing for what matters. Checking our phones the moment we step out of a meeting stops us from connecting with the person walking out next to us. Rushing to our next meeting gets in the way of us having that boundary-setting conversation we know we need to have.

To defend your values, to hold true to the anchor of what matters to you — truly matters to you — you need to hold back the tide of busy and be purposeful about where your energy and your focus go. Doing so can actually move you from feeling exposed to feeling protected — so you don't need the flimsy armour of busy anyway. Because the thing is this armour of busy is a false shield. It's as useful at protecting us as putting on moisturiser in the sunshine. No matter how much you put on you'll still get burnt.

And when your focus gets sucked back into the vortex of email dings, comments on your latest social media post, or obsessing about whether you should get the blue or the purple wrapping paper, pause and ask, ‘Is this the best use of my time right now?' Centre yourself by protecting what matters, and dropping the rest.

LET GO OF #FOMO

Part of what keeps us on the treadmill of busy is we get asked to do a million things and say (usually in our high-pitched, saying-yes-because-I-should voice), ‘Sure thing' right before the tsunami of regret kicks in. When it comes to defending our most important currency, our time, we drop our guard.

Saying no is hard. It's hard because, as the modern-day peeps say, we can slide into #FOMO (fear of missing out). If everyone else is having a great time (or at least looking like they're having a great time, based on the photos they post on Instagram #YOLO (you only live once)) and I'm not part of it, I must be on the outer. Even if doing something doesn't feel right or is going to drain us, we usually end up saying yes anyway and stretching ourselves too thin. Why? Because we fear that saying no will end the asking.

For me, the fear of saying ‘No, not now', and so knocking back an opportunity, ignites the internal gremlins that ask, ‘But what if you never get asked again?' ‘What if the work enquiries stop coming through the door?', ‘What if my friends move on?' With a jam-packed calendar and multiple trips away from home, blocking out time on a quieter week to hang with my kids and recharge feels selfish and indulgent, yet it is absolutely aligned to my values. Letting go of #FOMO and owning our values-based choices is critical to combatting Burn Out.

When you set these clear lines in the sand, others have permission to do the same. You become known as the person who won't stretch themselves too thin, who is really present when they turn up because regret doesn't follow them around. Your ‘yes' carries far more weight because you can deliver on your commitment. Ironically, that's the kind of person a manager looks for on their team and it's the kind of person your friends admire. Drop the #FOMO and you'll find that it's because of this stance that the opportunities keep coming back.

DRAW THE LINE

It's time to draw the line and go boss-like on our lives. The quickest way we can defend our values is to ensure our behaviours — the actions that we engage in on a regular basis — are aligned with what matters to us. In order to do this, we need to get forensic about where we're actually spending our time. Get curious about where your attention is drawn towards and what it's drawn away from. This will give you a clue about the current behaviours you want to defend and the behaviours that can be shifted.

The quickest way we can defend our values is to ensure our behaviours — the actions that we engage in on a regular basis — are aligned with what matters to us.

Take a moment to grab a piece of paper and write down the activities in your week that drain you. What are the things you feel like you're dragging your heels on? Or what's the stuff that you keep putting off? Write down anything that comes to mind. It doesn't matter if it's having to wash the dishes verses having to call clients about a project. Whatever it is, as big or as small it is, I want you to write it down. The longer the list, the better.

When we understand our current default way of behaving, we can be strategic about whether these behaviours are serving us or not. Review your list through the lens of three actions that will free up time and energy: sort out what you can mitigate (reduce the impact of), delegate (hand over responsibility for) or eliminate (remove all together).

MITIGATE THE IMPACT

Mitigating tasks means reducing the gravity or the impact of them. The reduction might be in the impact on your thinking or productivity, or on how you feel. Mitigation is the first step in reducing the impact of the tasks that drain you. Your focus isn't on stopping doing them but on changing how you do them. For example, rather than have continual interruptions at work, set clear times when you're available and clear times that are peak productivity for you and explain that you're not available during those time. Or instead of having coffee catch-ups that may go longer than you anticipated, catch up with a friend over a walk-and-talk. Or instead of putting off mundane administration tasks, engineer a game for yourself — do them for 20 minutes and then you can have a tea break. Look at your procrastination list and identify the tasks you have to do but could redesign how you do them so they are more engaging. From a mindset perspective, if you mitigate tasks in three main areas, you will see a significant impact on how you face your day.

The first starts with addressing the internal guilt of ‘should'. Whenever we use the word should — ‘Oh, I should lose those 5 kilos', ‘I should work back late', ‘I should spend more time with my kids' — guilt always tags along for the ride, like an unwelcome passenger, leaving us feeling bad. Guilt doesn't serve us to get into action. And piling ourselves full of ‘shoulds' certainly doesn't serve us to Stand Out. Mitigate the hold that ‘should' has on your internal thinking.

Second, mitigation requires sitting down with our inner critic and telling it who's boss. Self-flagellation has no place in building a Stand Out life. Now, working hard is different from beating yourself up. They're two separate things, but often we work hard and in the process still say, ‘Oh, I didn't quite get around to that. I could have done that better. It's not quite good enough'. With all that constant internal chatter, we fall into bed at night feeling bad about ourselves — because that's what we've heard all day. We need to mitigate the impact this internal critic has on us and instead celebrate turning up and putting in the effort we did.

The third thing we need to mitigate is the time we spend with dream stealers. You know who they are: the people who when you talk about your dreams or where you want to go, seem to feel like it's their job to poke as many holes in that dream as they possibly can. They leave you feeling drained, don't they? Maybe you can't actually get some of these people out of your life — they're family, work colleagues or the barista who serves your morning coffee with a side order of contempt (but you keep going back because no-one brews coffee like they do). We can't rid them from our lives, but we can mitigate the impact they have. Sometimes that's about protecting your dreams by not pouring your whole heart out to those people, but instead finding common ground to talk about what's important to them. You can talk about the weather. You can talk about who's winning the footy. Whatever it is, find ways to mitigate around that.

DELEGATE LIKE A BOSS

Defending your values means you have to master the art of delegation — that is, entrusting tasks and responsibilities to someone else. Delegating is hard because others will do the tasks differently from you — they may take longer, they may go down a different path, and they may make mistakes. Handing stuff over can be one of the scariest tasks you take on, but it's a crucial skill. The people you hold in high regard — whatever their field of expertise — have all mastered it. Not only do they know how to delegate well, but they also have clarity about what to delegate and what tasks fall squarely in their lap.

It can be challenging, but don't dismiss the importance of delegation. Mastering the art will give you the space and time to step into the actions that matter and the areas where you can make the biggest difference.

Over many years Gallup researched thousands of great leaders from across the world, and from various industries, with the goal of articulating the top three to five qualities all great leaders share.¹ Because, of course, when we know what these qualities are, we can teach them to emerging leaders and they will, by default, become great leaders. This sounds great in theory.

What Gallup actually found was fascinating. They found that no consistent set of qualities is common to great leaders. Leadership styles, personalities, characters and qualities were as varied as the leaders studied. But the one thing the great leaders had in common was their certainty around their strengths, and they engineered their work to ensure they operated within these strengths most of the time. They then outsourced the rest. If their job required them to be financially savvy, and this wasn't a key strength for them, they'd build a team around them that filled that gap.

We can learn from these leaders who have clarity about their greatest contribution and find ways to delegate the rest. I believe you need to delegate any task where 80 per cent or up to 80 per cent is fine. If output needs to be 100 per cent, and you've got 100 per cent responsibility and risk, this task likely falls in your lap. But if all you need to do is either oversee the task or you don't really need to be involved at all, find a way to delegate it.

We live in an era where you can outsource pretty much anything, to anyone, even for a short period of time. This trend is growing. If you just need someone to do some transcribing for you, you can get that done while you sleep and it's ready when you wake in the morning. If you need someone to organise an Excel spreadsheet for you, you can get it done with a few clicks of your mouse.

We also need to delegate anything that enables others. Remember: there are no martyrs here. If that means getting your kids to clean their room rather than you begrudgingly doing so, do that. Give them the opportunity to be enabled to clean up, or to help with preparing and cooking meals once they're old enough. (You want them to move out at some point, don't you?) Delegate anything that will help others to grow. No-one can learn a skill or how to do new things if you keep doing it for them.

So delegate the tasks that you can still oversee and have influence on but where the ultimate outcome doesn't have to fall to you.

ELIMINATE IT, STAT

You can cut some tasks and actions out altogether. Here are three categories to get you started on what you can eliminate:

1. Eliminate the goals you serially ignore: if you keep writing down certain goals but don't get around to doing them, put these goals to the values test. Are they really important to you, but you're not getting any traction on them? Then we'll unpack how to make progress in the Freak Out section. If, on the other hand, they are fun but not really connected to the core of who you are, it's time to let them go. This is not a bad thing — clearly at this stage, the task isn't a high priority, so stop feeling guilty about it.
2. Eliminate any activities that are no longer serving you: don't keep doing something just because it's the way it's always been done. Instead, get rid of it. Is there anything on your ‘what drains you' list you might be able to eliminate? For example, ironing tea towels could definitely be on this list — they don't need it, no-one notices it, and wrinkled tea towels dry just as well.
3. Eliminate people who drain you: I'm talking metaphorically here, not literally, of course. Focus on spending time with people who are going to lift you up, who inspire you, and are going to be your champions to moving toward.

Return to your ‘what drains you' list and put M for mitigate, D for delegate or E for eliminate against each item. Imagine the time and space you'd have to focus on the stuff that energises you if you were to mitigate, delegate or eliminate these things — because ‘busy' doesn't have to be a part of your story.

The badge of busy is not serving us or anyone. I want you to put your hand on your heart, raise your other hand in the air and repeat after me: ‘I promise,' (I'm waiting for you to say it). ‘I promise to never again — never again — say that I'm busy when someone asks me how I am.'

Brilliant. Now I want you to come up with another way of answering that question — an answer that is actually going to leave you feeling uplifted. That's your one simple task from this lesson: stop making ‘busy' your default and come up with an uplifting statement for when people ask you how you are. Be inventive. Say, ‘You know what? I'm cranking things out and hitting some really cool targets' or ‘I'm creating something that's never been created before, and I'm really excited about it'. Notice how different that feels to say? Defend the sacred energy of your words.

Put a voice to your values, design them to be embedded in your life and then protect them from both outside influences and direct attacks.

When you've mitigated, delegated or eliminated those things on your ‘what drains me' list, it's time to declare what matters. Put a voice to your values, design them to be embedded in your life and then protect them from both outside influences and direct attacks.

LEADERSHIP: DEFEND WHAT'S SACRED IN YOUR WORKPLACE

If you're a leader in your workplace or you run your own business, your ability to treat your values as sacred is critical for the people you lead. Simon Sinek is a world-renowned speaker and author of the best-selling books Start with Why and Leaders Eat Last. In his current research, he talks about the responsibility of leaders to create safe environments, particularly in environments of high change, shifting customer base and rapid technology advances.

Values provide the anchor that individuals, teams and leaders can hold onto among the noise and uncertainty. As a leader, you need to know your own and the team's values off by heart and defend their sacredness. In chapter 9 we'll step through how.

SET NON-NEGOTIABLES

In a team and group setting, jointly clarify expected behaviours, and agree to hold each other to account. The key is to create a set of non-negotiable behaviours that align with values. And remember: when exploring non-negotiables you should include no more than five behaviours, because if everything becomes important, nothing is important.

In our business, every position has a set of non-negotiable behaviours that are relevant to that role as well as ‘10 ways to make us love you' — that is, nice-to-have behaviours. But these nice-to-haves never replace the non-negotiable behaviours. Providing clarity of expected behaviours ensures people are aligned with a values-focused way of working.

MAKE IT PUBLIC

Declare it out loud. This sounds obvious, but so many leaders and organisations simply post their values on a plaque or on a page on their website, and then everywhere else they remain hidden. Embed your values into every touchpoint with clients and every discussion within the team, and get visual with them in your waiting room, interview room and business cards.

CELEBRATE AND REWARD

Catch people out when they act in alignment with your organisation's values, and celebrate and reward the efforts of coming together. If your team's values are connected to ‘creative ideation', as the leader, you need to celebrate every idea that comes to the table and recognise the effort it takes to speak up, even if the idea isn't going to fly or isn't relevant. It's the idea creation itself that needs to be defended and protected.

KNOW THE ‘WHY' BEHIND THE ‘WHAT'

The reason we are seeking to define, design and defend our values is to move away from having ‘no why' towards the space where we ‘know why'. This is where we walk with a strut, shoulders back, head straight, chest out.

As my great friend Matt Church says, it's your job to be the CEO: the Chief Energy Officer. You are responsible for the energy you bring in the space. You are responsible for how you respond when crazy-busy turns up. You are responsible for pausing and reconnecting to the why of here and now. Our values get tested when we're faced with exposure and, like with our health, being exposed to toxins is not good for us. If we're not protecting our values vigilantly the toxins of busy and the priorities of others have the capacity to infect us.

    BURN OUT WRAP UP

When it comes to investing in values, your goal is to make sure they shift from being obscure to clear, from diminished to amplified and from exposed to protected. To achieve this, centre your attention on these three key actions:

1. Define what's important: dedicate the time needed to get clear on what matters in your life now. Combat the vague, and get specific about your unique blend of values. When we can articulate what matters, and know ourselves well enough to stand behind it, we have our own battery charger to reenergise us in a busy world.
2. Design a values-aligned life: this is your life and you have the choice to engineer it. From your behaviours, to your environment, to the rituals of your week, find the art to express what's in your heart. No matter what comes your way, these become your anchors that bring you back to what matters in this moment.
3. Defend the sacred: combat the false armour of busy by defending what's sacred to you. Explore those tasks that you can mitigate, delegate or eliminate, and focus on protecting the activities that matter.