Stop Firefighting, Controlling, Enabling

So I appreciate the vulnerability from this commenter because yeah there are various points throughout any given week when we can all become the firefighter, the enabler, or the controller. And the key is we want to try to limit that as much as possible. So yes there are some strategies we can implement. So let's take the firefighter.

When we're in firefighting mode there could be a lot of reasons for that. It could be because the talent around us is very poor. It could be because we're scared of change. There could be several reasons.

We could just be that we're buried in work and that we just lack the tool set to learn how to optimize our own work. Before we can really learn how to optimize the team, the systems and process around us. And we try to sort of take that approach and look at that and say, okay, well, as we're optimizing the team, which takes a little bit longer, can we look at how that person, when they get a task, what do they do with it? Do they do it or do they say to themselves, do I automate, eliminate, delegate or simplify?

All or some of it? And that's kind of the key habit to get people into a foreign firefighting mode is before you touch it, kind of automate, eliminate, delegate, simplify. And by doing that, again, that's not gonna necessarily solve firefighting, but what it does, it gives them time back in their day. If they can sort of say, you know, can I free up a half to a full day?

And a lot of people can, by the way, going through that process, they can save up to half for a full day a week just by going through that mental process with tasks. What they can get back is time where they can look at the systems, the processes that they own, and then start to look for patterns. What's occurring again and again and again that shouldn't be happening? Where are the gaps?

Where are the opportunities? And what are the patterns that you see? And sometimes just being able to free themselves up, people can start to see those patterns. Now, it can come from a different place, meaning sometimes it's hardwired within us.

It's built into our mind's ability to either be more of an abstract slash, excuse me, an abstract slash systems thinker or a linear thinker. And what I mean by that is, you know, a linear thinker, we tend to see things in sort of very black and white way. And your abstract or systems thinker will tend to see patterns more consistently. They'll tend to be able to compare two things and see the differences and similarities in them.

They'll tend to be able to, you know, see something that maybe comes from a completely different place and see the similarities and something else they're working on at that given period of time. They'll be able to then compare those two things and pull a scenario out of their head that says, you know, here's a way to optimize or improve what I'm saying. They can see a pattern and they economize or optimize output. That can be a harder shift to make if it's hard coded.

And by the way, there are some great A players who are systems thinkers, I mean, who are linear thinkers. They tend to be more doers sometimes than leaders. And our leaders, we like them to be a little bit more abstract because we have to have them help other people see patterns. To the extent that they can and teach them how to act on when they see patterns, act on situations when they see patterns.

But you can have some great A players who are linear thinkers and they're very black and white thinkers, but they can absolutely optimize this right in front of their face. They're just not very good at being able to compare two different variables and make logical extrapolations that economize output consistently, which again is what we want to see out of our leaders. So I would, if, if it, if this was something that you were challenged with, I would go to thesystems thinker. com and there is a page called Making the Jump to Systems Thinking.

And there are several questions that they ask you that they ask you about making the shift. So instead of thinking this way, try this way. And over time, what that's designed to do is to help us become more of a system/abstract thinker, which again, and if you read through this page, you'll see they talk about pattern recognition. That is what, you know, I would say is the true mark of the A-player.

The A-player sort of systems thinker is I can see a pattern, I can optimize that output. And again, getting out of firefighting mode requires that you have some level of pattern recognition. So I would try those approaches to get there. Number two, when we talk about enabling, and we talked about enabling learned helplessness by solving tasks for our team members that they could definitely solve on their own.

And I made another video about this, but it's worth talking about it here, which is the next time a team member comes to you with something that they need to be solving on their own, First question back to them before you attempt to solve it for them, which is, what do you recommend? And that what do you recommend is, it's a very cool thing because number one, it does create a pause and it becomes really exciting actually when you see a team member sort of process and think through a situation and come up with the right answer. Now, they're always gonna come up with the right answer? No.

You're gonna have to coach, you know, occasionally, but a lot of times they'll come up with the correct answer and they'll be able to solve a problem on their own. And this is a breakthrough moment for this person, right? And hopefully it is for the leader as well, seeing that people can solve issues on their own and team members can have breakthroughs. So what this does, this eliminates sort of this need to be the hero and the enabling that we create and instead we get greater satisfaction out of helping people help themselves.

So what do you recommend? That's the solution for number two. And then for the controller, now this one, it can be caused by various things. Sometimes again, we talk about people being overwhelmed.

They get conditioned to sort of take control of situations because they've had bad talent around them and maybe they use that as an excuse. Maybe it's the truth. They've had bad talent around them, had bad leadership. Those can definitely cause some control behaviors.

In a lot of cases though, and when you remove those situations, you'll see magically, hey, we add more talent. We give more talent to this person. We hire better. We teach them how to coach.

We teach them how to hire. We teach them how to evaluate their team and what happens is they start freeing themselves up, their attitude starts to change, the control mode goes down. I wish that happened more often. And what you'll find with the control behavior is it might be one of the more difficult ones to break, meaning it's more deep-seated.

There tends to be more childhood trauma that's rooted with this one. And honestly, in a lot of cases, when you take those pressures away from that person, you still see the same behaviors and it's not getting better consistently. It's not consistently sort of tamping down. Then usually that person has to seek professional help.

Sort of goes beyond the scope of what coaching can do in a lot of cases and what relearning sort of some new work-based patterns, routines, and behaviors can do. It's really got to be sort of dealt with at a deep-seated level that only psychological counseling can handle. That's the unfortunate part. But those are kind of the, at least on two out of those three, There are some pretty tactical things you can try to be able to change them.

The control one is a little bit harder because it requires more, you know, systematic change and improvement of the scenario around that person to see if they can then improve as well and takes a little bit longer period of time. But in a lot of cases, if you feel that you've got those sort of major control issues and they're manifesting, I highly recommend seeking professional guidance.