Carla Miller [00:00:02]:
Do you ever find yourself over promising, creating unnecessary stress for yourself? Or putting in loads more effort than anyone expects you to, or actually needs you to. How about saying yes, when you haven't actually got the capacity to get more work done? Or jumping in to help with something when nobody has asked you to? If any of those resonate, it sounds like you may be over committing. Constantly trying to show how much value you add by going above and beyond when it isn't needed. In this episode, I'm going to break down the ways we over commit, why we do it, and how we can dial it back and still do a great job. Because over committing often leads to overwhelm. Now this is the first in a series of 3 solo podcast episodes I'm doing this summer around mindset and setting boundaries, saying no, overwhelm, all those sorts of topics. So you can expect an episode on people pleasing and 1 on when you worry too much, what people think of you. As an aside, I've also been recording some fantastic guest interviews on topics like, executive presence and managing the menopause, so they will be coming your way over the coming months as well.

Carla Miller [00:01:19]:
This is the influence and impact podcast for women leaders, helping you confidently navigate the ups and downs of leadership and feel less alone on your journey as a leader. My name's Carla Miller. I've been coaching leaders for the last 15 years, and I am your new leadership bestie. I'm here to remind you of the value that you bring to your organization, to help you believe in yourself, and to share practical tools and insights from myself and my brilliant guests that will help you to succeed in your career. Now before we go on to today's episode, I have an exciting announcement to make which is I have created something for you. And it's called the how to say no challenge. It's a 5 day challenge delivered to you via email. You basically get an email a day for 5 days, super short with a super short video within it that takes you through the 5 steps of my how to say no framework.

Carla Miller [00:02:18]:
Because so many of the things we're talking about here and we talk about on the podcast and link to overwhelm come down to the fact that we find it really, really difficult to say no. So the 5 step framework includes understanding where at the moment you're saying yes and then regretting it, working out why you're saying yes when you want to say no, doing some mindset work so that you don't want to say yes anymore, and then where they get on to helping you to actually say no. Now that's completely free of charge, and you can go and sign up for that now at carlamillertraining.comforward/sayno. There's no space between that. It's just SAYN0. So carlamillertraining.comforward/sayno. Go and give that a go. There are some really practical exercises in there, and it could make a significant change to your working life and possibly your personal life as well.

Carla Miller [00:03:23]:
Now, let's talk about over committing and whether you're over committing or not. I'm gonna share some stories from myself and my clients that will bring to life what overcommitting looks like, what it's costing us, and what we can do about it. So I'm going to give you some coaching questions that you can use to help you move from overcommitting to a healthier version of high performance. Let's start by looking at what does overcommitting look like. So 1 way that we overcommit is that we overpromise and create extra stress for ourselves as a result. And I do this all the time. So I'll be talking to someone about a possible piece of work, and they will probably be totally happy with waiting a week for a proposal. But for some reason, I will offer to do it by the end of the day or first thing the next day.

Carla Miller [00:04:21]:
I used to be a fundraising director and set targets, and I would always make those targets for myself stretching. Not super stretching, they were stretching but achievable. But rather than going for not quite so stretching and then over delivering, I would push myself right from the beginning. I just tend to go around over promising even to myself. I will overpromise and go, I am completely going to give up sugar, or I am going to go for a run every day this week. I think I am a serial overpromiser. But what happens when we overpromise is that we create stress and tension for ourself when it's completely unnecessary. No 1 is asking us in those situations to deliver super quick or to deliver more detail, more reports, whatever it is that we are overpromising.

Carla Miller [00:05:19]:
So in that situation, what is it that drives us to over commit? And I know certainly for me, a lot of it was around wanting to prove to myself and others that I deserved to be in my senior role, like really wanting to meet others' expectations and making up in my head what those expectations were and making them way, way, way higher than other people's expectations actually were, and then trying to live up to them. And we do that to ourselves all the time. So back then, I was wanting to prove that I deserved to be there. Why am I doing it now? I should have reflected on this before I hit record on the podcast. Why am I doing it now? I think it's still that inherent eagerness to please. I think I want to be seen as responsive. And I think I'm probably just aware it's a really competitive market at the moment, and I want to be able to kind of deliver things as soon as possible and just be the best possible choice, when they're determining who to work with. So all sorts of different things going on in our heads when it comes to overpromising and creating extra stress for ourselves.

Carla Miller [00:06:44]:
Now the second way that overcommitting shows up is basically as overdelivering or overengineering things. So instead of providing a simple good enough solution, we try and create the absolute best possible solution. And I have a client example for you, and I will share that. But as I say that out loud, I'm like, oh, yeah. Totally doing that at the moment. I've totally done that in women leading. I have put everything in there, everything that could possibly be helpful. There's, like, 4 different types of events that you can come to in there, and there's all sorts of brilliant resources.

Carla Miller [00:07:21]:
And they're all really valuable, but are they all needed in order for it to be successful and super helpful? For? I don't know. Now the example that came to mind for me for this 1 was when I actually heard on a podcast of a speaker who was asked to deliver a talk that he delivered before, and the person who commissioned him said, yeah, it was brilliant. Let's get you to deliver that to my team. And he was gonna go along, deliver it a few times, and then roll it out from there. So this was gonna be a huge project, and it was a big name organization. And so he looked at what he was going to deliver, and he thought, well, what if I can do better than that? What if I can really impress them? And he took something that already the client was super happy with and wanted and put lots of stuff in there last minute. So the night before he was due to give the first presentation, piled all this other stuff in there. And anyone that's ever done any teaching or training will recognize that kind of inherent desire to add as much value as possible when actually, we're training less is often more.

Carla Miller [00:08:27]:
Anyway, he put everything in there, didn't have a chance to rehearse it, turned up the next day, and delivered this presentation that wasn't as smooth or slick as his previous 1, had bits in it. They were a bit clunky. And, basically, the client wasn't happy and did not commission him to go on and roll out the program. And this was all because he had effectively overengineered it. And have a think about where you might be overengineering things in your own working life as well. And some of it's around being intimidated by whoever it is that we're delivering for. Some of it can be around wanting to be the best, to be seen as the best for people to give us that validation of that was fantastic. It's the best presentation we've ever seen as opposed to, yeah, that was a great presentation.

Carla Miller [00:09:22]:
For many of us, certainly of my generation, when we were growing up, parents were not as verbally affectionate as they are now. So my son probably hears way too often how much I love him. He hears it multiple times a day. He hears it as the first thing in the morning when he comes and snuggles into my bed. That was not something that I heard a lot growing up at all. I knew that my parents loved me, but it wasn't something that was ever really articulated. But when I did get praise and attention was for when I worked hard and did good at school and got good grades. And so like many of us at a fairly young age, my little child brain equated working hard and getting praise for that as love.

Carla Miller [00:10:08]:
And therefore decided I was more lovable when I worked hard, when I got results, when I got that positive feedback. And that has been driving my operating system ever since. And I hear that different versions of that, but I hear that with my clients as well. So sometimes we're just seeking. When when it's not there, when that structure isn't there to get that ongoing feedback, we look for ways to stand out so that we can get that validation and feel like we are good enough. Sometimes we also overdeliver because we're having imposter feelings. We're worried about being found out about people thinking realizing we don't know as much as they think we know, fear of not being good enough and someone working that out. And so we're constantly trying our absolute best and trying to over deliver on things so that we don't get found out.

Carla Miller [00:11:02]:
I was, on a call recently, and someone was saying that they'd left their job and they've been in this job for a really long time, like 8 or 10 years. And they had left after that period of time and thought, yay, they never really found me out. So despite delivering incredibly well during the time period that they were in their job, they still couldn't believe that they were good at their job. They've been doing it for a really long time, and they still worried that they were going to be found out. So sometimes those imposter feelings can be incredibly strong. And we quite often find ourselves, I think, putting in effort beyond what is actually needed or valued. So I had a client who led a team, and each month, she would hold a team meeting, and she would spend hours pulling the reports for this team meeting. And, eventually, she was offered another job within the organization.

Carla Miller [00:12:00]:
And for a period of time, these 2 jobs were going to have to cross over. She was going to have to do both. So she had to look at what can I stop doing in my old job in order to be able to start my new job? I know. It's a nightmare. You shouldn't have to do 2 jobs at the same time, but that was the situation that she found herself in. And when she looked at it, these reports that she'd been doing for the monthly meeting and spending hours on, I said, do you really need to do those or do they need to be that complicated? And she took a minute to think and she went, no. I don't actually need to do those. In fact, I could ask them to do x, y, and z, and that will probably be more engaging for them because they don't really engage with the reports.

Carla Miller [00:12:45]:
It would certainly be easier for me. And she'd been doing those reports because it was her first line management role. She'd been promoted into it, and she was really trying to over deliver. Like, she was trying to do everything to the best possible level so that she felt she deserved to be there and so that others felt she deserved to be there. So she had literally every month been creating hours and hours of extra work for herself that wasn't even getting the results that she wanted in order to feel like she deserved to be there. So that's another way that we over deliver. And then a couple of final ways that we find ourselves over delivering. 1 of them is saying yes to things that aren't in our role despite the fact that we have no capacity to take things on.

Carla Miller [00:13:40]:
So we're already overworked. We're overwhelmed. We love working long hours. We're stressed out. And then someone asks us to do them a favor or someone asks us to take on a piece of work that isn't actually our role, and we say yes even though we know we are going to really, really struggle to deliver it. And I can think of a couple of clients that have been doing that quite frequently, and we have worked together on on why they do that. And often, it's around fear of judgment by others. So fear of being seen as unhelpful or not nice enough or not doing our jobs properly even though that is actually an extension of our job and not our actual job.

Carla Miller [00:14:22]:
And sometimes it's just really, really hard to say no, isn't it? It takes courage to say no. We have all these things going on in our heads about, well, how are people gonna react? And that's why I've created my how to say no challenge. So just a reminder of that, head over to carlamillertraining.comforward/sayno, and sign up for the free 5 day how to say no challenge, and we'll we will get you feeling more comfortable saying no to the things that you need to say no to. And then there's 1 final way that I see people over committing, and that is jumping in to tasks and activities and meetings when you're not really needed. And this quite often happens when someone is promoted into a role and part of them still wants to keep doing their old role. They probably really enjoyed bits of their old role. They were good at it. It was easy compared to this new role where they've gotta practice.

Carla Miller [00:15:21]:
They've gotta learn how to do new things. It feels uncomfortable. So jumping in when you're not really needed. So helping people when they haven't asked for your help, giving advice rather than letting them work it out for them selves. I call that spoon feeding the people that work for you. When someone does come to you for help, taking it on and doing it yourself because it's quicker rather than effectively training them and empowering them to be able to do it themselves. Do you find yourself doing that sometimes? We we're so keen to help, to be seen as helpful, to solve people's problems that we don't always stop and think, is that the most helpful thing to do? And we had a podcast on that, a couple of months ago as well. Also, when you're a line manager, you're being held responsible for everything that happens in your team.

Carla Miller [00:16:13]:
And it's a part of human nature to have, like, that urge to have some control over that because it is scary at first learning to deliver through other people when until now you've been rewarded for doing the delivery yourself really well. And also if that's you, reflect on, is it really helpful that I'm doing that and why am I doing that? Am I doing that to help them or am I doing it because I'm getting a bit of a dopamine hit from being able to do this thing that I find easy? So those are some of the ways in which we find ourselves over committing, over promising, over delivering, putting in too much effort, saying yes when we should be saying no because we've got no capacity, or jumping in and contributing to things that actually don't really need our contributions. We've also talked about some of the reasons that are driving it, and lots of these are around mindset. Now what I'd love to do is to help you to apply this to what's going on for you at the moment. So I have a series of coaching questions. Now I know lots of you listen to this when you're out walking your dog and doing various things. What I would encourage you to do, if you are out walking your dog, then do pause this and walk and reflect on the questions I'm asking. Or if you're at home, grab a pen and paper and write down your answers to these questions.

Carla Miller [00:17:42]:
Don't stop listening if you're walking your dog and think I will do that later because you will never do that later. Your brain is going, that sounds like homework, and you will never do it and you will never get the richness of what you're gonna get from your answers. Okay. So I have a series of questions for you to help you work out what's going on for you. So the first 1 is, where are you over committing in your role right now? So where are you doing too much going above and beyond in order to prove to yourself and everybody else that you're good enough. So see if you can got any examples. It might be particular interactions, particular types of work, it might be when a certain person asks you to do something. But where are you over committing right now? I'm gonna go through these questions 1 at a time, but I would obviously suggest you hit pause in between the questions.

Carla Miller [00:18:39]:
Okay. So second question. Now you've identified where you are over committing, what is that costing you? So if I think about some of those examples I shared earlier for myself and my clients, it's cost me my sanity, my spare time. It's cost clients hours of their time when they were working late and they couldn't sustain that. Sometimes it's cost them potential promotions or potential pieces of work because they've over engineered things. Sometimes it's caused tension between them and other team members. Sometimes it's caused tension between them and their line manager because they're going above and beyond, and that's not really being recognized because it's not really needed. So what is that costing you? You're over committing, what is it costing you? Now the next question is, at the moment, you're you're, holding yourself to these standards that are really high.

Carla Miller [00:19:39]:
So you don't just think I could do a good report. You think, how do I do the most credible report that's ever been done? How do I do a great report that gets praise from so and so? How can I make this as good as it possibly can be? What I'd love you to do is look at the areas where you're over committing and think what would be a more realistic standard to set myself. So in other words, what does good enough look like? Like, what's your baseline where it's good enough that you feel happy with it and confident even if, yes, if you spent 10 more hours on it, you could probably make it 10% better. What is good enough? What can be a more realistic standard for you to set yourself in those areas? And the next question is, what conversations could you have to get clear on expectations that people have of you? So maybe you're over delivering or maybe you have no idea really because you don't really know what others expect. And so in your head, you make up that they expect something really complicated. Like, someone says, can I have a plan? And in your head, you're going, right, a plan. That's a 10 page document, like a strategy. And instead, they're what they actually wanted was, like, 1 slide with some bullet points on it so they knew how you were gonna approach it.

Carla Miller [00:20:55]:
Like, if we don't have that conversation about expectations and we're someone that sets ourself high standards, wants to be as good as we possibly can be, we will towards over delivering. And quite frankly, it's not the most strategic and smart use of our time to do that. So what conversations could you have so that you can get clear on what other people's expectations of you are? Okay. 2 more questions. The next 1, what do you need to renegotiate? So maybe you've over committed because you're trying to be helpful. You're looking at your to do list, and you're totally freaking out or feeling overwhelmed because there's just too much on there, and it can't be done even if you try and break yourself working all the hours. What do you need to renegotiate? What conversations can you have that go back and say, look. I said I could do this, but actually, realistically, it's not gonna get done in this time frame.

Carla Miller [00:21:57]:
Can we look at extending the deadline, or can we look at doing a lighter touch version at this point, or can we take something else off my workload? So what do you need to renegotiate? And then my final question is, if you know that you are someone who is prone to over committing, what could you say to yourself when you're tempted to over commit? So when that urge is there, when you're about to say in that meeting, on that phone call, in that email, in that report, when you were about to over commit and over promise, what could you say to yourself that would help you not to do that? So for me, what I often say to myself is check expectations before jumping in and offering something that's over committing. So that's what I say to myself. But what could you say to yourself when you're tempted to over commit? Okay. So you've now got your answers in front of you, and hopefully, that's giving you some insight. Some questions might be more relevant to your situation than others. You are in all likelihood leading a team. I suspect that there will be other people in your team that are overcommitting, and you may be able to see those people that are overcommitting and struggling to deliver as a result because they're trying to do their absolute best, but they just can't get everything done. So these could be some really interesting questions to talk through with them as well.

Carla Miller [00:23:31]:
So what I'd love you to do is just look at your answers and just decide which answer are you going to act on. You don't have to act on all of them, but take 1 light bulb moment, 1 gem, 1 action from what you've heard today and what you've thought through for yourself, and go and put that into action. Creating change in our mindset is not an overnight thing, and it starts with understanding. Oh, yeah. I do that. And understanding why you do that and deciding to make a shift. And then you just try different ways to do it until you find something that works for you. So I hope that's been helpful.

Carla Miller [00:24:16]:
Don't forget about the how to say no challenge. If you found this episode helpful, you are definitely gonna find that really helpful because say no is linked to all of this. And we're gonna alternate these, episodes, these solo episodes with guest episodes over the coming weeks of the summer. So, it won't be the next episode you hear, but there will become 1 coming your way very soon on people pleasing as well. Now as we bring today's episode to a close, what I wanted to do was to remind you briefly of a couple of things and make a request to you. So let's make the request first. The request is, if you've listened to my podcast for a while or if this is the first episode that you've come across and you find it useful, please can you give it a rating and leave a review wherever you listen to it? So whether you're listening to it on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or somewhere else, it should be really easy to do. So on Apple Podcasts, I listen on my phone.

Carla Miller [00:25:17]:
And if you're on the show, you scroll down, there's a star saying give it a rating, and a little bit below that, you can give it a review. Reviews really help other people to discover the podcast, and I would love to have more reviews on that. So if you found this useful, please do leave a review. Now the other thing I wanted to let you know is, basically, as an individual, there are 3 ways you can work with me now. So we are not running be bolder at the moment. We don't have plans to run that for the foreseeable future. So the 3 ways you can work with me are 1 to 1 coaching, which is pretty straightforward, women leading, which is my membership community, which is about helping women to lead without overwhelm. That's just £49 a month and includes all sorts of support calls, group coaching, workshops, menopause gatherings, all the stuff is in there, as I said earlier.

Carla Miller [00:26:13]:
So that's 1 way to work with me. And the other way is influence and impact, which is my 3 month program specifically about tackling self doubt, increasing your impact, being becoming brilliant at influencing, getting your voice heard, basically. That's a small group of up to 20 people. We are running that in September. I don't know when we'll be running it again after that. I don't know that we definitely will be running it again after that. So if you have been thinking for a while, oh, yeah, influence and impact, I want to do that, this is the cohort to sign up for. You can find all of the information about all of those on my website.

Carla Miller [00:26:48]:
So, yeah, hope to see you in 1 of those soon. Take care. Bye.