Are you one of those people who’s always trying to do “one more thing”? Do you have difficulty slowing down, being on time (because you’re always pushing the number of activities you’re doing to the limit), or (god forbid) asking for help? Well, true confession: I’m one of those people. Last week, I came into our office to drop off a refill 18L jug of water before heading out to facilitate a wrap-up Roundtable group. I had a bit of extra time, so decided I was going to put the jug into the reservoir by myself. If you’ve ever wrestled an 18L jug of water into a dispenser by yourself, you know this is a bit like playing Russian roulette where the first shots have been blanks and you’re down to the last 2 rounds. You have a 50/50 chance of inflicting serious damage. Which is exactly what happened to me.
The jug (cold and full of ice from being left in my car), started overflowing and the off-balanced jug slipped from my hands, hit the floor, cracked and 18L of icy cold water started spraying out of it like some crazy out-of-control fountain. Long story short, coworkers arrived, towels were thrown all over the floor and a stern warning was issued by the building superintendent. In recounting the story later that morning to another colleague, she said “Glain, what kind of message do you think the universe is trying to send you?”
Good question.
“Well, I said, maybe it means that I’m overflowing with work and I need to slow down”. Maybe it means that our business is about to start overflowing and thank God I have an amazing team because we all pulled together to clean up the mess (I know this one’s a stretch, but we entrepreneurs are ridiculously optimistic).
But the more likely message is this: stop trying to do it all. Ask for help.
As a leader, it’s very easy to feel like the weight of the world is on your shoulders. Often, we feel like we need to do things on our own for a variety of reasons – we don’t want to burden our teams, we want to help, we don’t feel like others will do it as well as we can do it, we’re afraid to let go… the reasons can be real or imagined. Most of the time, I think they’re imagined.
So, my personal goal for 2015 is not only to ask for more help but, and this is probably the harder part, to accept the help I do get.
On that note, if you’re reading this and like our work, I would like to ask you to consider referring us to someone in your network who might be interested in learning about our work too. We’ve got some big growth targets this year and I’d love your help to get us there.
How about you? What’s your personal goal for 2015 and how can I help you? Email me or leave a comment. In the meantime…
Happy leading!
