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Why more responsibility doesn’t have to mean more work.

Why more responsibility doesn’t have to mean more work.

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Have you been thinking you’re ready to step up to the next level of leadership but are holding back because you fear the extra workload?

Many mid-career women I speak to feel that accepting a growing workload and being willing to work long hours is the price they must pay to be considered for promotion.

There’s no doubt that the more senior you become – the more responsibility you take on.  The decisions get bigger.  The budgets get bigger.  The problems get bigger.

But it doesn’t necessarily mean your workload gets bigger.

Yes. That’s right!  A more senior role doesn’t have to lead to long hours, burnout and exhaustion.

So, how do you get results and stay on top of everything you are responsible for if you don’t work harder and longer hours?

It’s all about working smarter – not harder!

What needs to change is the way you work.

Take Jacinta, for example.  She knew that the way she was working was not sustainable.  She loved her work but not the long hours and the way it was impacting her health and intruding on her family time. 

She recognised she was giving a lot of herself to her organisation while neglecting her personal wellbeing. She knew she was ready to progress to the next level of leadership, but not if it meant working even harder than she already was.

Through her participation in Ignite (our online group coaching program for mid-career women) Jacinta began implementing a range of simple tips, tools and strategies that allowed her to achieve more with less effort.

She developed new habits, shifted where she was focusing her time and energy and…. most importantly, stopped working weekends!

Here are 4 strategies for leveraging your time and effort:

1. Focus on what matters most.

Start by identifying those activities and task that matter most to you, your team and the organisation.  Not all tasks are created equal and some will have a bigger impact than others.  Make sure you are focusing your time and attention on those activities that are business critical.  It’s amazing how much time and energy we can waste working on tasks with little impact. 

2. Progress over perfection.

Keeping projects moving forward matters more than making something perfect. Think about how much time you can spend making something perfect – but does it really matter and does anyone ever notice? With the odd exception, like board reports, KPI reporting and statistical analysis –  I’d suggest your 8/10 will be good enough!

3. Time blocking.

You may think you are a wiz at multi-tasking but this habit is not serving you well. Our brain is not wired to jump from task to task.  It slows us down, restricts critical thinking and promotes fatigue.

Try blocking out time in your calendar to dedicate to particular types of work.  Jacinta now has a number of 90 minute time slots in her calendar that are reserved for work that requires strategic or creative thinking.  This one strategy has helped her to fast track progress on a number of business critical projects.

4. Think who, not how.

This is a strategy I learnt from my own mentor and I love it!  We are not great at everything… and we don’t have to be.  Rather than trying to work out how to do something – think about who already has the skill and engage them in making it happen. This might mean asking for advice, outsourcing the project to an expert, or delegating the task to someone in your team.

So, if you are ready to step up to the next level of leadership, don’t fear the pace and volume of work.  Instead, commit to shifting the way you work to allow you to manage the increased responsibility without working harder or longer hours.

Good luck!

 

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7 simple ways to boost your capacity as a strategic thinker

7 simple ways to boost your capacity as a strategic thinker

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When you reach a certain level of leadership – you are employed to think not just do!  Being able to think creatively, solve problems and create new and innovative ideas will have you stand out in the crowd and put you in a powerful position. 

Innovation, creative thinking and problem solving are becoming increasingly important skillfor all leaders to foster.   Organisations are hungry for employees who can see things from a new perspective, solve long-standing problems with simple changes and really drive progress within the business. 

I once thought that I wasn’t creative, able to think strategically or to come up with innovative ideas. I now recognise that actually I am … I just hadn’t nurtured these skills or learnt how to create the best environments for me to allow my creative juices to run free. 

Here are 7 surprisingly simple ways to boost your capacity as a strategic thinker. 

1.  Create thinking time.

It is near impossible to be creative, let alone productive when you are surrounded by distractions or on high alert for the distractions that are likely to come your way. 

Put aside a chunk of time in your calendar each week dedicated for work that requires thinking clearly and creatively such aspecific project work, big picture planning or nutting out a problem.   Turn off your phone, shut down your emails and find a quiet space.  

 2. Manage your mood.

Research has found that we do our best creative work when we feel positive. We tend to be bolder and more focused on solutions and what is possible when we feel good. Think about what gets you in a positive moodIs it heading out for a quick coffee with colleagues, is it meditating in the mornings before work or hitting the gym? 

3.  Find your creative space.

Our work environment plays a huge part in our ability to think strategically and creatively 

One leader I worked with was struggling to come up with a business strategy that was innovative or inspiring. She felt bogged down and void of new ideas. Not surprising really… she was working in a classified area of the Defence Force requiring her to conduct all her work in a windowless bunker!   

I wonder where your creative space is? Is it a café, sitting on a park bench or your kitchen bench after the kids have gone to bed? Wherever it is … plan to spend more time there. Not only will it be good for your ability to think creatively and strategically, you will also see your productivity take off. 

4.  Get exercising.

We know exercise is good for us for lots of reasons and here’s another… studies have shown that exercise can improve our ability to think creatively.

I love the way it’s explained in this Psychology Today article: 

“Sweat is like WD-40 for your mind—it lubricates the rusty hinges of your brain and makes your thinking more fluid. Exercise allows your conscious mind to access fresh ideas that are buried in the subconscious.”

So … get into motion and notice the ideas begin to flow.  

5.  Extend your boundaries.

There is a very good reason why training programs usually involve butchers’ paper and colour textas. It is to encourage us to return to our childlike exploration of ideas and to remove the limits and linear thinking that comes with lined paper or the standard work document. 

To get ideas flowing ditch the computer and map out your thoughts on flip paper or a white board. Go analogue. Breakthroughs rarely happen on a laptop! And science backs this up. Apparently, paper and pixels access different parts of our brain. 

6.  Find some friends.

You are no doubt smart. It may be your responsibility … but you don’t have all the answers. Very often the best solutions and ideas happen through collaboration 

Reach out to your team, colleagues and mentors to bounce ideas around with. Ladies, we are known for our strength as collaborators so let’s put that skill to work. Stop believing you need to do it all. You don’t! 

 7. Be Inspired.

We do not find new solutions or become more creative by maintaining the status quo. New ideas come when we step outside what we already know and experience new things.   

Explore new places, seek out new experiences, visit places of inspiration, engage in wild and crazy conversations to extend your thinking of what is possible and expand your horizons by immersing in the works of the brightest thought leaders of today. 

Building your capacity to think creatively and strategically is just like building any muscle.  

It takes persistencepractice and perseverance. We were all born creative but somewhere along the way it gets beaten out of us. We are told to colour between the lines, to be like everyone else and to follow the rules. 

If you want to create innovating marketing ideas, develop game changing strategies or to solve the challenges that are thrown your way day in day out, you must flex your creative muscle. See this as a critical skill you can develop.  

Be bold. Be brave and have some fun. 

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LET'S CONNECT

Click below to…

Join “Leading Ladies” – a private FREE Facebook group of over 1600 other mid-career professional women to inspire and support
Join the newsletter list for weekly tips and strategies showing you how to ignite your career, lead your way and accelerate your success. 
Watch The Next Level Training to breakthrough to the next level of leadership, impact and recognition.  
Get my best tips on working smarter not harder 
Read my latest blog post.
Can’t find what you’re looking for? Contact my team.

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It’s a truth universally acknowledged that an incredibly accomplished woman may find herself held back… Held back from achieving her aspirations, from stepping into her leadership potential and from becoming even more accomplished.

Jane Benston

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Massive change ahead. Are you ready for the ride?

Massive change ahead. Are you ready for the ride?

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Massive change is ahead (or maybe it is already here.) Change in our workplaces, change in our society, change in how we live our life, change in how business operates, change in the type of jobs that we will be doing. You name it … we are living within a time of massive change.

We have a choice; to get on board and reap the rewards that are available to us by being part of this change… or resist and be left behind.

This is the primary message I took from the Wired For Wonder conference held in Melbourne last week.

My brain is tingling from the fresh ideas, the innovation and out of the box thinking, from taking a peak into the future and from the fabulous conversations with many forward thinking people.

The team at Wired For Wonder fired up my wonderings from the moment I stepped into the reception area of the venue.   They had set the scene with a team of white coat clad mad scientist types serving tomato infused tea amidst the theatre of smoking dry ice. At morning tea there were gorgeous flavoured donuts on plates suspended from the ceiling. And a magical table laden with sweet treats of all types that resembled a fairy’s garden greeted us at afternoon tea.

Clearly this was not going to be any ordinary conference.

Here are just a few of the ideas that have remained swimming in my mind over the last few days

1. Don’t be a zombie  Technology pioneer, Nolan Bushnell warned us not to be part of the “zombie apocalypse,” that is taking over many workplaces. He reminded us that we were all once creative, curious and willing to give things a go but somewhere along the way we have been trained to regurgitate the “right” answers and follow the status quo.

Innovative employers such as Apple and Google are regularly hiring people straight from high school who are passionate, self taught and making things happen. They are hiring on credentials, experience and merit rather than university degrees and marks.

2.  Embrace Entrepreneurial Thinking. Successful 21st Century leaders will be those people who can develop entrepreneurial thinking. To get ahead and stand out from the crowd, leaders must develop the ability to innovate, create and engage teams. Most importantly they must have clarity of vision and always be striving to do great work, focused on building trust with their community of customers.

Rachel Botsman made this clear in her presentation on the power of collaboration and sharing. The leaders of both Uber and Airbnb have done this brilliantly, rallying a tidal wave of loyal followers to their businesses. Regardless of the resistance from the traditional players in these industries, “the genie is now out of the bottle” with customers embracing this new way of business. There is clearly no going back from here.

3.  Persistence. Failure and rejection is the norm. The awe inspiringly brilliant Jack Andraka who at only 15 invented an inexpensive early detection test for pancreatic, ovarian and lung cancers had his request for lab space rejected by dozens of institutions before convincing an eminent cancer researcher to let him use his lab to develop his theory.

What a great reminder. If we want to achieve great things we must be prepared to back ourselves and to persist in the face of rejection and failure.

You will win some. You will loose some… that’s life.

And then there was Cindy Gallop who is on a mission to disrupt the way we view sex with her Make Love Not porn Website. Given that this website is all about showcasing real sex (rather than sanitized, commercialized and acted out porn sex) she has encounter a range of obstacles; including difficulty securing funding, finding a video platform that would allow her to show adult material and identifying a payment system that was prepared to be associated with her product.

This is a great example of new business thinking bumping up against old world standards and rules. Persistence will definitely be required to find new world solutions!

4.  Focus your mind. Within our mind is untapped potential. Tapping into that potential is ever so simple…. but not at all easy in the busyness of our world.

Aleks Krotosk shared with us that we do our best work when we are in “flow.” But more often than not we get into the state of flow not with important work but with responding to the constant disruption of emails. She asked “Are you focusing on emails because it is useful and productive or because you have been drawn into the vortex through trance?”

We all know that exercise is important. The fabulously high octane Libby Babet bounced onto the stage to get us out of our seats and moving. After 90 minutes of sitting our minds were starting to wander. But did you know that just 20 minutes of walking will increase your focus? And that a 20 minute nap will increase our effectiveness by up to 30%?

And one of my personal favourite moments of the day was being guided through a meditation by Hindu Priest and Mind Coach; Dandapani. Meditation has recently become a regular part of my day. Dandapani reaffirmed that meditation is not something we will get instantaneous gratification from, but the positive effects will come over time, through consistently including as part of our lifestyle.

The challenge from here….

We have no choice. Change is upon us and resistance will be fruitless. Lets embrace the new world and get on board for the ride. I know for one, I am excited about what the future holds.

Thank you Women In Focus for the opportunity to attend this event that has changed the way I think and see the world as it now is.

NEXT STEPS?

If you like what you have read, Click HERE  and pop your name and email into the boxes and come join this growing community of extraordinary, passionate, down to earth women just like you who are committed to finding their place at the leadership table.

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LET'S CONNECT

Click below to…

Join “Leading Ladies” – a private FREE Facebook group of over 1600 other mid-career professional women to inspire and support
Join the newsletter list for weekly tips and strategies showing you how to ignite your career, lead your way and accelerate your success. 
Watch The Next Level Training to breakthrough to the next level of leadership, impact and recognition.  
Get my best tips on working smarter not harder 
Read my latest blog post.
Can’t find what you’re looking for? Contact my team.

Similar Blog Posts

Side view.Young businesswoman dressed in light pink shirt sitting at wooden table and using laptop while talking on cellphone.Girl uses digital gadget. On table cup of coffee. Online shopping,working.

A Change of Perception

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that an incredibly accomplished woman may find herself held back… Held back from achieving her aspirations, from stepping into her leadership potential and from becoming even more accomplished.

Jane Benston

Front view of a doubtful woman shrugging shoulders and looking at you sitting on a sofa at home

What’s holding you back?

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that an incredibly accomplished woman may find herself held back… Held back from achieving her aspirations, from stepping into her leadership potential and from becoming even more accomplished.

Jane Benston

Portrait of stressed, crying, stylish, worried woman in shirt touching her head with two arms, sitting in work place, station at desktop, having close eyes

How to break free of the…

I’ve had some incredibly enlightening conversations this week with smart, mid-career professional women who, like me, fell into the sneaky trap of being the notorious “go-to girl.” Maybe you can relate. Are you known as the Jack of all trades, the fix-it woman, or have you earned the label of “reliable”? Oh boy, it’s time to take a closer look.

Jane Benston