What Comes At You Vs. What Comes From You

As a business leader there’s so much vying for your attention it can be difficult to get a great handle on your time. And often, that means what comes from you takes the back burner as you first deal with what comes at you.

This is because often what comes at you is loud! It’s the squeaky wheel because there’s often a person attached to it. A client that is upset. A vendor that’s on the phone. Someone that popped into your office. Or even an employee waiting to ask a question. And it’s important work.

But the problem with pushing the work that comes from you back is that it’s often the work that is vital to moving your business forward. Work like marketing, hiring strategies, growth strategies, systemization, and more. This isn’t to say that the work that comes at you isn’t important. It’s all important.

The question becomes, what should you being doing? Often, the work that comes at you is more teachable. With the right training, systems and discipline, someone else can handle the work that comes at you. The work that comes from you, typically, is more difficult to teach. Which means, if you don’t do the work it probably won’t be completed.

As a business leader, your job is to get better at saying no to what comes at you. And better at saying yes to what comes from you. Part of being a great leader is the ability to say no. Sometimes, it feels like you have to say yes to be a good leader. Yes, to helping your clients. Yes, to listening to your vendors. Yes, to helping your employees. The truth is, a great leader knows when to say yes and, more importantly, when to say no.

That starts with giving yourself permission to say no. It’s okay to say no. And that doesn’t mean saying “not right now,” it means no. No, you can’t do it. No, you shouldn’t be doing it. It doesn’t mean trying to fit it all onto your plate at another time. It means no.

It also means that once you say no, you don’t take the task back. Once you say no, it’s no longer yours. You don’t just ignore it. You officially file a change ownership notice and move the task to its rightful owner, which is not you.

We know it’s not as easy as saying, “It’s no longer mine. Someone else is doing it.” If it were that easy, you wouldn’t be reading this. There’s a skill to developing the systems and training needed to get your team up to speed to take certain tasks off your place. There’s also structures in your business that are needed. 

The good news is, we’ve helped hundreds of clients establish the disciplines, training, and systems that are needed to control what comes at you. We’ve got the answer. You just need to decide that it’s time. And when it’s time, our business coaches are ready to help.