About 10 years ago a mentor said to me, “The best way to avoid a meltdown is to avoid the possible situation from occurring.” I have never forgotten this statement and often think of it when things get heavy in the office.
But I have also wondered, what does that even mean?
Now, as a mom to a 4-year-old, I get it.
I’ll take you back to a week before Christmas 2016. I was cramming ALL the Christmas festivities into the few days remaining before Christmas. Determined to take my son to “the” Christmas light drive-through extravaganza I’d heard so much about, I planned it for the only evening we were available: a Tuesday night before Christmas. After work, I rushed to pick him up from school and make the 40-minute drive to this festive wonderland I’d heard about. And … we sat in traffic for almost two hours. He was starving, I was starving, we were munching goldfish. He went directly from all day at school to sitting strapped in a car seat for two hours (rather than being able to burn off his end-of-day energy) while I watched the clock tick down, hoping we would get into this stupid place before it closed. The last 30 minutes of the longest drive EVER consisted of me inching along while my son whined, “I’m bored, this is boring, I want to go to my dad’s, I don’t want to see lights.” Merry Freaking Christmas!!!
Now I get it. If I don’t want a whiny, overtired, bored 4-year-old, I shouldn’t plan an event that will stick us in rush-hour traffic right after school with no dinner. And I shouldn’t expect a 4-year-old to have the capacity to understand that mommy worked hard all day to get off work and take you to have this fantastic Christmas experience. I shouldn’t expect him to get it.
Or I could tell you about the time I let him stay up until midnight and REGRETTED it the next day when he was a beast ALL DAY LONG.
But it taught me, just like in business, that for the majority of the meltdowns and mishaps we have had, we had the power, through planning and teaching, to avoid them entirely.
If your team is constantly late on assignments, it could be that you are late on assignments … or you do not hold accountable others who are late. If your week is chaos and constant interruption, it could be that you aren’t doing a Monday morning huddle to proactively prep the week versus letting it blast you.
And employees, if your boss is driving you nuts with lack of focus and completion, it could be that you aren’t using any tools or techniques to run the week, versus letting it run you and your boss, which will surely give rise to those old habits that drive you crazy.
One of the things I LOVE about the Team Empowerment Academy™ is the tools we give you to focus the team on its top three MOST-IMPORTANT activities ? the ones that help grow the business. And the tools we give you to proactively support the boss are what the business NEEDS each week ? not what their habits tend to draw them into, which can harm the business (procrastination, lack of focus, etc.).
The academy is the distillation of 20+ years of our experience supporting entrepreneurs to success, without the pain and torture!
You will want to get in now. Hit 2018 with a mad crazy start chalk full of the tools you need for success. See you on the inside…