Carla Miller [00:00:02]:
If your calendar is packed, your to do list is never ending, and you're constantly answering questions that your team should be able to handle, you may well be stuck in the leadership trap, where you're spending more time doing and managing tasks than you are leading. In today's episode, I'm talking about the powerful shift from doing to leading. Why staying stuck in the weeds is holding you and your team back and how to rise above the day to day so so that you can lead strategically, not just operationally. If you want to be the kind of leader who drives impact without burning out, then this episode is for you. I'm Carla Miller, leadership coach and founder of Impactful Training and this is Influence and Impact for Leaders, the podcast that helps leaders like you increase your impact and build a happy and high performing team. Each episode delivers focused, actionable insights you can implement immediately to be better at your job without working harder. Now, before we roll into today's episode, a bit of an update from me. So I am recording this about halfway through the school summer holidays and so far so good.

Carla Miller [00:01:17]:
We've actually been on holiday for quite a bit of it, so we headed down to Bluestone in south Wales near 10B, which is not an area of the world I know very well. Just the two of us for an activity type holiday. He absolutely loved it there. It was so beautiful around there. We had a fantastic time. The site was lovely. We made one error so I'd booked this place thinking he really loves his bike and it's very hilly and lots of windy roads around here. So I don't love cycling on the roads with my 7 year old, so I really like the idea of somewhere that we could cycle around quite easily.

Carla Miller [00:01:55]:
So we hired bikes. Anyway. It's on quite a big hill so it was fine going downhill, but going uphill was not a very pleasant experience. You had to get up and walk for half of it. And I should have hired these little golf buggies that were going around that looked so much fun and Charlie really wanted one but obviously they were all fully booked. So top tip, if you head to Bluestone, A it's fantastic, you will love it. B book yourself a golf buggy or, or be prepared to do lots of walking around and getting really fit. But don't go for the bike option.

Carla Miller [00:02:28]:
We came back from there and then we visited friends down in Hertfordshire. So another very long drive but really nice to see them and now I've got a few weeks at home. Bit more relaxing before we head off on holiday. So that's what's been going on for me. I've been doing small amounts of work, not a lot because as I think I've said before, I messed up my childcare. So I've only got about four days of childcare in this summer holidays, which was a bit of an error. So we're doing that in evenings and when he is watching television. And I'm sure many of you working parents will be doing that balance as well.

Carla Miller [00:03:06]:
Got some good news in that we will be running a management training course for a small medium sized company which I'm very excited about. And we weren't successful trying to do some leadership training for a charity that I'm really passionate about. So a bit disappointed about that. But I'm sure they've got the people that they need to work with and some new coaching clients as well. So it's, it's all good. Business is gently ticking along, which I am very grateful for because I know many businesses are not even gently ticking along. Anyway, are you ready to become a more impactful leader and step back from the doing? Let's get started. So first of all, I want to talk about the difference between, between operational and strategic leadership.

Carla Miller [00:04:00]:
So operational leadership is very hands on, very in the weeds, if you will. It's focused on managing tasks, on making sure everything gets done. There's a lot of firefighting going on, there's a lot of being pulled into, lots of different things that perhaps you shouldn't need to be pulled into. And when we are doing a lot of operational leadership, we are often not creating the space that we need to operate at the level that we're actually being paid to lead at. So operational leadership often involves dipping down into tasks that really aren't probably appropriately at your level. And I'm going to talk about why we do this and what we can do about it and how we can start to do things differently. And when I talk about strategic leadership, I'm talking about things that are more big picture, more long term, or at least medium to long term. Because operational leadership or operational management is often about the here and now and the short term.

Carla Miller [00:05:04]:
It might be looking at budgeting and strategy, it might be thinking about long term direction. Strategic leadership also might involve oversight, note the word oversight, not hands on management of key projects. It definitely involves relationship building. Now if relationship building externally is relevant to your role, then that definitely fits in this area. But also relationship building and influencing internally, building that influence upwards and sideways to be able to advocate for your team and advise the rest of the organization on your areas of expertise. And if operational management is about firefighting, strategic leadership is about trying to stop those fires from occurring in the first place. So having that time to sit back and say, well, why did that happen? What were the consequences of that? What can we do differently going forward? It's also about developing the team rather than stepping in and doing things for them. And I do speak to quite a lot of coaching clients who come to me feeling bad because they want to be operating at a strategic level.

Carla Miller [00:06:19]:
They're often operating and they're often hired in director level jobs, but they find themselves spending a lot of their time in that operational space instead. And listen, sometimes we all have to go into that operational space, but if you are finding that you are spending the majority of your time there and the things on your leadership strategic thinking to do list just never get prioritised and therefore never happen, then you haven't got that balance right. So why do leaders get stuck in doing mode? There are so many different reasons for this. Some very practical and some psychological. So first of all, it actually feels good to get tangible things done operating strategically sometimes because it is longer term, you're not getting those results immediately and you're having to influence through other people. And so you don't get that same dopamine hit that you get from going, I can get that task done, I can solve that problem. It feels good to tick things off the list that are tangible, that are solvable and, and also it feels good to be able to solve problems that other people can't easily solve. Our ego gets a boost from that and we all want a bit of an ego boost every now and then.

Carla Miller [00:07:45]:
It's also probably very much in our comfort zone because it's where we came from, like when we were earlier in our career, getting things done, doing things to a high standard, making stuff happen, well, that's what we got praised for, that's what we got promoted for. But there is a point where obviously you have to start doing that through other, other people. Your ability to lead a team is not based on how good you are at getting things done, it's based on how good they are at getting things done. But it can be really hard to step out of our comfort zone, especially if you're, for example, new to a director role. And when someone says the word strategy, you freak out because you're making it something super, super complicated in your head. Or someone says the word budgets and you are not good at maths at school and so you panic that you won't be able to do it. Side note, I was terrible at maths for most of school and I love a budget. It's very different from maths.

Carla Miller [00:08:41]:
Another reason that we get dragged into the weeds is we want to be helpful and support our team. And I imagine for a lot of you this is a big reason. And the other really big reason is there's just too much to do and there are gaps. Often people are sick, people leave and you can't replace them straight away. There's restructures and you simply don't have enough people for the amount of work that needs to be done. And it's very hard to sit there as a leader and say, no, I'm not going to dip in and do what needs to be done. That can feel quite selfish. So that's a very big reason.

Carla Miller [00:09:22]:
Another reason is that it's not always clear what's expected of leaders. Like in your organization. Are you clear what it means to operate as a leader? What's expected of leaders versus managers, for example? And so if you only have a vague idea about what leading strategically looks like, of course you're not going to be able to put much time into it because it's all just going to be too vague and easily get shoved aside for the to do list. There's also potentially some challenges if you experience perfectionism or if you're feeling insecure in your position and you want more of a sense of control. Those two things can often lead to us being way more hands on than we need to be. I have done plenty of episodes on perfectionism in the past. If that's something you struggle with, do head over to my website carlamiller.co.uk if you go to the podcast page, you can actually search by topic. So just type perfectionism in there and you'll have a good few episodes come up for you.

Carla Miller [00:10:23]:
And of course it might be that you feel like your team is not ready to be doing these things themselves. Perhaps you haven't quite built your trust in your team and their level of expertise. Yeah, so loads of really good reasons that we get stuck in the doing. So don't beat yourself up if that's what you've been doing. But there is a cost to it because yes, those things get ticked off to the to do list. Yes, people were waiting for those things to be done and now they've been done. But whilst you've been spending your time acting operationally, getting really hands on, what haven't you been doing? It's likely you have not been Developing your team as much as you could be, partly because you've not got time to reflect on what they need and to mentor them and coach them so that they can develop those skills. And partly because you're stepping in and doing it for them so they never really need to develop those skills and the things that you have had the opportunity to learn how to do.

Carla Miller [00:11:26]:
Another cost is missed opportunities. So missed opportunities to influence upwards and sideways to make some of those long term issues either go away or those areas of work run more smoothly. Missed opportunities to work on interesting or career building projects. Missed opportunities to take the initiative. So you're not, you're not giving yourself the headspace to sit back and go what needs to be done that isn't being done, not at the level below you, but at your level and the level above. That's how I ended up developing quite a lot of my career is just noticing those things where it's like, this is not running smoothly, there's a much better way of doing this. Why don't I see if I can make that happen? Wasn't doing it to get promoted, but it always seemed to end up heading in that direction. So you're also not working on solving the problems that are relevant to your level.

Carla Miller [00:12:23]:
If you're busy solving problems at the levels below you, you're not putting enough time and thought into the problems at your level. Another cost of doing this is burnout and overwhelm because you've still got your to do list of your own things to do. You're still in probably quite a large amount of meetings and you've got that guilt of the things that you feel like you should be doing at a strategic level that you're just not doing. And finally, there's no time for imagination, for creativity, for vision, innovation, looking at how you can create growth or improvements. So there's actually quite a big cost to staying stuck in doing rather than leading. So from what I've said so far, you may already have a little bit of an inkling as to whether or not this episode is relevant to you. I suspect if you're still listening, it probably is. Or you're listening for someone in your team so that you can then forward it to them.

Carla Miller [00:13:24]:
But here are some signs that perhaps you're being too operational. One, you're the bottleneck. So there's lots of people waiting on you to approve things, to give your input, to do things. That is a sign that there's too much relying on you and you need to restructure things so that that isn't the case. Another sign is that your team are overly dependent on you. So you're sat there thinking, surely they could have thought that through themselves or done that themselves, or should I really be doing this? If you're having those thoughts, I'd encourage you to trust your intuition on that. And your team probably are overly dependent on you, especially if you have been really fantastic at solving their problems in the past. Because of course they're going to keep bringing you their problems if you struggle to take a real break.

Carla Miller [00:14:16]:
Like if you cannot find any time in your diary to do thinking or to have that time off in lieu that you've built up that you've been meaning to take, or to book a couple of days annual leave because there's just so much in there there. If you're spending enough of your time operating strategically, there's quite a bit more diary spaciousness around that because there should be quite a lot of thinking time and, you know, strategic time. And if your diary is full of doing, not thinking, that's a sign you're too operational. And finally, if you're stepping into a gap every time it occurs, so every time someone's on holiday, offset sick, there's a gap. If you are stepping down into that gap every time, that is a sign that you're too operational and that you've not got those systems in place so that other people can start to step into those gaps. Okay, so what does it mean to be a strategic leader? Well, there are some general things to think about. It's about setting direction, not necessarily on your own. You might well be doing that in collaboration with other people.

Carla Miller [00:15:23]:
Personally, I really love to do that with a team if I'm leading a team. But people like to know where they're going, why they're going there and how they're going to get there. Strategic leaders develop people so they sit back and look at how's everyone doing. Where can I play to someone's strengths? Where can I build someone's confidence? Where can I help someone develop skills? Where can I get them exposure to the right people or the right learning opportunities, strategically to make space for innovation and creativity. And it is literally about creating space. A 20 minute gap is not going to be a great time to be creative. If you've got a 20 minute gap, go for a walk. That might get the creative juices going, but really it takes space.

Carla Miller [00:16:09]:
And a strategic leader is there to ask better questions, not give answers. And I'm not going to labour that point because I'VE done a recent episode, episode 184. Leaders don't need to have all the answers. So if that point resonates with you, you want to go and check out that episode. There's also something in our psychology that we worry that we might be letting people down. We might struggle to delegate because we think of delegating as giving other people our jobs to do, as something bad that we do to other people. When in fact, delegation can be a fantastic development opportunity for somebody. So if you know that you struggle to delegate, I'd head over to episode 61, how to Be great at delegation.

Carla Miller [00:16:55]:
Because if I go through all of these, this will be the longest episode ever. Another thing that you want, another skill you really want to develop, is the ability to coach as a manager. So we talked about, you don't need to provide all the answers, you need to ask better questions. Well, how do you learn to ask better questions? By taking more of a coaching approach. Coaching rather than doing. Coaching rather than telling, asking questions rather than answering them. And for some inspiration on that, head over to episode 174, how to Be a Coach Like Manager with Jude Slater. And what we want to work towards is to build a team that.

Carla Miller [00:17:38]:
Not that it can operate entirely without you, but build a team that can be more self sufficient than your team is at the moment. I did a podcast interview a couple of years ago with someone, Jodi Flynn I think her surname was, and she made the great point that if you are indispensable in your current role, if they just could not do without you in your current role, why would they promote you upwards? And I think there's something to be said here about recognizing you're probably not going to be in that role forever. And it will be fantastic to develop your team members and to find people that can step in and do some things that you are doing at the moment as a development opportunity for them. So quite often when I'm coaching someone, we will look at their specific situation because every situation is different, every person is different. But what's come up more than a few times is the idea that when you've got a larger team of having a deputy or a couple of people that can act up so that it's not all on you, so that you've got other people to bounce ideas off so that if you leave that succession planning is in place and it's not a whole new person from outside coming in. So think about that, think about succession planning, think about how can you empower and develop your team And I have a coaching question for you in terms of how you can be more strategic, which is if you created more time in your working week, how or where would you invest that time to make maximum impact? So if you created more time for yourself, how or where would you invest that time to make maximum impact? You can pause me if you like, go and think about that, or you can contemplate it for a little while. But I think it can be quite a powerful question to think about what's the thing that is going to move the needle the most? Or what's the thing that only I uniquely have the skills or experience or knowledge to do? What's in my zone of genius, or what's really about someone operating at my level doing it. And that's where you should be focusing your time and attention.

Carla Miller [00:20:07]:
And then I had a final practical point around building a team that's better at operating without you, which is looking at the processes that you have within your team now. Don't switch off. I know process might seem like a boring word, but where there are repeatable tasks going on, it's a really good idea to have written down somewhere or in some form your standard operating procedures. How are people doing those roles? So if someone is off sick for two weeks, anybody could step in and do those roles because it's written down. Now, there are apps that can do this for you. There's one, I think it might be called Scribe. I haven't used it myself, but it's meant to be really good at creating those standard operating procedures. Sops.

Carla Miller [00:20:57]:
But it might be as simple as a checklist. You can use Trello, you can use a spreadsheet, you can use Airtable, you could use whatever you want to create. Create it. It's also really helpful for handovers if people are leaving and it tells you what's going on in your team. Because if people do not want to share it, then there's a little bit of information. Is power or not feeling safe and feeling like they might be replaceable, in which case you've got some other work to be done. But looking at where are we doing repeatable tasks, how can we capture that so that anyone can step in and do it? Because often, let's say someone's off sick for a period of time and your line manager might say, well, you can have a temp or someone on the short term to fill that gap. Immediately our head goes to, well, actually, it's too complicated.

Carla Miller [00:21:43]:
Someone couldn't just step in and do it. But if everything has standard operating procedures, then they could step in and do it, or they could step in and help someone at a lower level and release them to move upwards and do it. So have a think about what are the things that you do or your team do where actually if you just turn that into a really clear checklist of step by step, someone else could come and do it. And then when it comes to creating space for strategic thinking, see if you can schedule some thinking time, block time for reflection. See if you can have even like half a day or two hours a week where you're not scheduled in meetings and where you do not go. And try and get through your email inbox where instead you have thought beforehand about what do I want to focus on in that area? What's my goal for that time? I do think it's helpful to be focused if you just leave it wide open. It's really hard to then prioritize wide open nothingness over the very tangible fires that need fighting. But if you have.

Carla Miller [00:22:54]:
Actually these are the three questions I'm going to ask myself or this is the bit of the strategy that I am going to focus on this time or I'm going to do this review or this audit, or I'm going to reach out and set up these meetings to build my relationships. Could be anything but scheduling some time to do that and thinking beforehand about what you want to focus that time on. Okay, so we've covered quite a lot of things today. We've talked about that difference between operational and strategic leadership. We've talked about all the very practical and good reasons why we can get stuck in doing mode. But we've also looked at the cost of those. I've given you a little checklist to work out if you might be being too operational and talked a little bit about what it means to be a strategic leader. Then we've talked about some of the practicalities around delegation, coaching and systems and creating some space.

Carla Miller [00:23:51]:
So my challenge is that the word, my challenge to you is to look at how can you carve out even just two hours of space in the next week and to ask yourself that question, I said earlier, if you created more time, how or where would you invest that time to make maximum impact. It's been lovely chatting to you. I will be back in a couple of weeks time. Take care.