Decoding Leadership for First-Time CEOS with Byron Morrison

Speaker 1: Welcome to the Future of Teamwork podcast, where we explore cutting edge strategies to keep teams human- centered, drive innovation, and empower you with the tools and insights needed to help your teams excel and thrive in today's rapidly changing world. Your host is Dane Groeneveld, a seasoned expert with over 20 years of experience enhancing team dynamics and innovation. Ever wonder how top CEOs manage to lead effectively, inspire innovation, and maintain balance? Today we're delighted to have Byron Morrison, a leading CEO coach and author, who specializes in transforming leadership approaches and fostering high- performance cultures. With Byron's unique insights, we delve into critical strategies for any leader aiming to excel in the business environment. In this episode, Dane and Byron will explore three pivotal areas. First, redefining leadership. Learn from Byron about the essential role of the CEO in forming, planning, and evaluating team effectiveness. Discover strategies that anyone can employ to achieve clarity, and boost team performance. Second, decoding decision- making for CEOs. Byron advocates a transformative approach for CEOs to categorize decisions into three types: autonomous decisions that team members handle without CEO involvement, informed decisions where actions are taken but the CEO is kept in the loop, and executive decisions requiring the CEO's direct input, streamlining operations and empowering teams for efficiency and growth. Third, Byron and Dane will discuss optimizing your work week. Byron introduces the concept of push/ pull days, offering a new way to organize your week for maximum efficiency and wellbeing. So teamwork makes the dream work, and we are here to inspire your next collaborative breakthrough. Gather your team or put on your headphones, and let's dive in together.

Dane Groeneveld: Welcome to the Future of Teamwork podcast. My name is Dane Groeneveld, CEO of the HUDDL3 group, and today I'm joined by Byron Morrison. Byron is based in Warwick in the UK. He is the author of a number of books, and he's a CEO coach, so this is going to be a really great episode to listen to for all the listeners out there, but hopefully, it's a little bit of a workshop for me, too. Welcome to the show, Byron.

Byron Morrison: Hey, thanks having me on. I know we've been connected for ages and trying to make this happen, so I'm glad we finally made it work.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, me too. Thanks for making the time. So a CEO coach, that's a really targeted place to be spending a lot of your time around research, writing, doing work with CEOs. What's the story? How did you come to be doing this really cool work?

Byron Morrison: Yeah, so to cut a long story short, essentially if I take you back over a decade, I went through this journey of transformation after my dad's cancer. I lost all this weight, I got my health on track, and I wrote my first bestselling book, and I started a business working with people from around the world to really turn around their lives and live healthier, happier lives. While I was really good at the helping people part, I was completely in over my head when it came to running a company. I'd never managed people, I'd never dealt with making decisions, or conflicts, or anything that really comes up with being a leader. And I remember just looking at my calendar with this feeling of dread over the next fight I had to face, and I just reached a point where I was just burnt out and exhausted and I was like, do you know what? I don't know if I can do this anymore. And I knew I either needed to go do something else or find a way to get it under control. So I spent the next few years studying psychology, mindset, leadership, getting coached, mentored, learning everything I could about how to really become the leader my business needed. And at the time, I was working with a lot of entrepreneurs and business owners on their health and their energy and naturally, the things that came into the conversations that were stressing them or making this these spiral where all these leadership issues. And I found that for me, helping people navigate it wasn't just my superpower, it's what I love to do. So it was very much the natural evolution of helping people who are like I was. And this is why I predominantly work with first- time CEOs. At this point, I've been fortunate to work with leaders in 16 different countries. It's very much the people who are feeling like I was, like a founder or a first-time CEO has been thrown into the deep end, but they don't have the skills or the experience in managing people, or bringing out the best in those around them, or really executing at the level they need to. So that's an overview of the last decade, really.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, it's a great story. I love that it starts with personal wellness and that transformation, and then it moves into business. Because we talk about a lot of where wellness and productivity, they can either come together and reinforce each other, or they can pull apart and hurt each other. And so, by pulling the two together, I think there is this momentum, there is this sustainability for the leader, and for their family members, and for their team members, if you can balance that.

Byron Morrison: I couldn't agree more, and this is why I always say to clients, we have to get their life and business in sync and both of them under control. Because while we focus on performance and productivity and mindset in what they're doing in the day-to-day, if outside of work they don't have any balance, they're not sleeping properly, they're not eating right, all of that's going to affect their energy, and then they're not going to perform properly in their role, and it's really easy to fall into the zone where you're working 12, 14 hours, and you push yourself to the limit. And we all think that burnout isn't going to happen to us, and then it does, and it's just this compounding effect of not looking after ourselves. And this is why I'm such a big advocate, I'm really glad you're pushing the message as well, is you have to get your health under control. If you don't, you're never going to perform at the level you need to long term.

Dane Groeneveld: And it's interesting that you pick first time CEOs, because it would be normal to think, well, it's the CEO that's been in the seat for five years, 10 years, 15 years, second job, third job, that's really hurting, because they've done a lot of damage already. But you are working with these first- time CEOs who may be coming into the damage, and maybe you can get a bit more preventative outlook. I don't know, what was it that specifically drew your attention to them?

Byron Morrison: It's more of looking back where I was when I was that first time leader for a business. It's very much wanting to help the people who are in the situation that I was in, people who are really good at what they do. For an example, a lot of people in the tech space might be an engineer or a developer who's had this idea, brought the project, scaled it, and now he's at a point. He's never run a team, he's never dealt with stakeholders, he's never kept people accountable. So while he was amazing at his area, he's in uncharted territory. And that's the situation I was in. I was really good at helping people, but I'd never done any of the other stuff, so I had to figure it out. Whereas someone who's a seasoned executive, that's not really the person where I would be the good fit to go in and tell them what to do, and this is really why I found my niche and my market. It's the people I enjoy working with. It's the people I'm really good at helping, and so it's a good mesh of everything, passion, purpose, and this excitement.

Dane Groeneveld: Neat. And actually that makes a lot of sense when you think of someone who's been more of an individual contributor or a team leader, but they haven't worked their way up through the more traditional corporate career path to get to CEO. They've moved into more of a founder- CEO role. That's a big leap.

Byron Morrison: Yeah, it's something that a lot of people struggle with, because when you're that founder, you've never had to manage people before. Whereas someone who's a CEO in a company, because I do work with CEOs who have gone to corporate background, and they're a lot more confident when it comes to managing their people, and having tough conversations, and holding them accountable, because they've had to do it. But when you're just a founder, and it's a very uncomfortable thing to face. No one's taught you, you've never had to experience it. Now all of a sudden, you have to do it. It can be pretty overwhelming, and I think this is where a lot of people get in their own way and they struggle, going back to the theme of the podcast, is getting the best out of their team, because they don't know how to do it and it's not something they enjoy or would choose to do. They didn't want to get a job, they didn't want to manage people, but unfortunately this is the reality they're in now.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, that's a good call out. It's interesting, I saw one of the testimonials on your LinkedIn profile from one of your CEO coaches and I think his words were, " I didn't get control back. I found it for the first time." And that's a pretty powerful statement, and it's also true. A lot of us wake up in a role that we're very grateful and lucky and fortunate to have, but you wake up and you're like, " Oh, my gosh, I'm doing all of this work, and all of a sudden I realized I never really had much control." We've been chasing some big goals. We've been knocking down some nice milestones along the way, but there isn't always a lot of intentionality to it. So I like that concept of finding control rather than getting it back.

Byron Morrison: Just one of the big things, I think a lot of CEOs, especially people who are new to the role have to recognize is that in my experience, the biggest bottleneck in most businesses is the CEO. Because when you're a founder, you can get away with doing everything. If anything, it's usual that you're involved in all aspects because you have to get the business to grow. But what a lot of founders struggle to do is to transition, where their focus has to be become more honed in, because they're not used to delegating, trusting people, or letting go, because they want everything done their way, and therefore they take on too much. They overload themselves, and either they burn themselves out, or they just create a company culture where decisions just get stalled. I had one guy I was working with a couple of years ago, and I always use this an example of he came to me, and because his team were just frustrated that they couldn't get anything done. He had just on his decks piled up all these projects and decisions, and he had the final say on everything, and people were just getting annoyed. They're like, " I want to move stuff forward, but he was holding everything up," and it's just this repeating pattern. If you don't learn to trust your team, you will start stagnating growth or make things go backwards. Then, people get frustrated, they leave, or they just don't perform well, and that's why you have to really look. And I always say to people, if you don't trust your team, either you've done a really bad job hiring the wrong people, or you're the problem that you haven't given them enough opportunity to step up and prove that actually they can do it. And a lot of the time, it's the second. It's people want to do good work, but if you don't let them do so, it's just going to be a frustration all around.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, I like that. I've been talking to a lot of guests lately around the importance of structure, and we have some guests that come on the show and say, " Hey, the CEO's primary job is to work out who to hire and fire," and that's an oversimplification because your second point, which is actually work out who to hire and fire, but make sure that you really create that environment for them to flourish with the trust, with the feedback. I know we talked a lot about feedback and communication before the show. That's a really pivotal role for any CEO to be driving and creating that environment for their teams.

Byron Morrison: It's an interesting one, because it's a question I get asked quite a lot, especially from first time CEOs. " What does an effective CEO actually do? Where should I be spending my time?" And the answer is always the same: it depends. Because there's no playbook of a CEO has to do X, Y, Z. Yes, they're going to be in charge of the vision and ultimate direction of the business, but every CEO is going to have a different zone of genius. Some of them, it could be the financial aspects, some of them it could be marketing or product, and it's just rather than putting themselves in a box of what they feel like they should be doing, it's really looking at, okay, this is your skill set, this is where you thrive, and then hire around your weaknesses and the things you don't want to get done rather than forcing yourself of, if I want to be a CEO, these are the things I should be doing, and then taking yourself away from actually where your time has the greatest impact. And I think that's really where, in my opinion anyway, it's a misguided thing of the CEO should only do this thing. Because really, it's like they've got to that point because of their skill set and what they're amazing at, and it's just then looking at how do you free yourself up to do more of that, and then hire an exceptional team to handle everything else.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, I think you're right. I love the use of the word zone of genius because one of our former guests, and a now friend and colleague that I work with on a few projects, Dr. Ernesto Solari, he talks a lot about the fact that you generally are, and you called them all out, you're either heavy in finance or heavy in marketing and heavy in product. And if you do all three, you don't do anyone any favors because you're giving up your genius abilities to be mediocre at these other things. So finding your zone of genius and then hiring, the way you stated it, hiring that excellent team around you, that's a big unlock for a team and for a CEO.

Byron Morrison: That's also where you've got to learn to check your ego at the door as well. I find a lot of first time CEOs have this belief that they should know everything, and they almost want to keep up this facade that they've got all the answers. And what I always try and push back on people, it's not your job to know everything. It's your job to surround yourself with the right people that do, so you can then make informed decisions based on the information and ideas they bring to the table. It's like if you're going into a pitch, chances are if you want to get to the numbers, you'll bring your CFO in, and you'll get them to dive in deep into all of the minutia of it. But a lot of first time CEOs are like, " No, I should know all of this." And yes, they do need to know their numbers. I'm not saying they don't, but it's like if you try and master every single area, you're really selling the business short. It's like, no, these are the people who are the experts at this. Get the right information and then make decisions rather than trying to do that fake it till you make it. Because if you go into meetings and try and just pretend you know everything, but you feel like you're the one who has to guide everything, it's really doing the team a disservice, because it's like why have you hired them, then? It's like, no, they're the expert at what they're doing for a reason. Trust them and listen to them.

Dane Groeneveld: That's interesting. And I love check the ego at the door, and there's a fine balance between being a leader that's got that ivory tower, like, Hey, just bring the ideas to me and I'll call the shots from my office, and being in the trenches and being too much in the way of being that bottleneck you talked about. It's easy to get far out on either side, but to get that balance where you are able to be removed and trust your team to do their best work and help make those decisions, call those shots, but also do your best work in there with them, that feels like a sweet spot. But I guess it's always moving, because the business is ebbing and flowing through growth and changes in product and everything else. How do you check in with the CEO and their team on that dynamic over time? Are they too close or are they too far away? Are they too flexible? Are they too structured?

Byron Morrison: For me, it's really about taking a step back and auditing what's happening. Are they getting pulled too much into stuff they shouldn't? Are they finding that mistakes are coming up that could have been prevented? It's just having a look and having an honest breakdown of are things moving in the right direction, or are issues coming up? Because if there's a lot of repeating patterns, is it because things haven't been communicated properly? People aren't being kept accountable? The right expectations haven't been put in place? I'll give you an example of this. There was one guy I was working with who one of his big frustrations was, this guy's a genius, one of the smartest people I've met, but he's just not very good at explaining stuff. And their product and the business they do, it's very detail- orientated, and he would then go and explain to someone, I need you to this, this, this. They would just overwhelm them and overcomplicate so much, and then they would just be like, " Yeah, I know what to do." And a lot of the time it would then come back a month later and they actually didn't understand, and they made all these mistakes, and then he would get frustrated because he'd have to dive back in and fix it. And when we really broke it down, it's like he wasn't communicating properly. He was just bouncing around between ideas, and they didn't know what to think or where to go. So it was really working out okay, he was the problem here. He needed to take a step back and make sure that rather than trying to rush it, that he actually communicated, " This is what I need you to do." And then looking at feedback loops of, okay, rather than a month before we touch base at the end of the project, maybe there's various different steps where we just have a quick touch point to feedback of, okay, where are you at? What support do you need? What problems are you having? And then adjust it accordingly. And one of the things I found really impactful for him was just really simplify it, because it was so detail- orientated, is take someone third and then be like, "Oh, just explain back to me what you need to do." And if they couldn't explain it back, they didn't understand it. And it's just like, I know that sounds a little bit micro- managey, but the reason it worked for him is just because of the way his brain worked. A lot of the time, he assumed people knew and understood what he said, but they didn't. But because of his personality, they didn't want to speak up. And that's why I just loved that as a really easy thing of him just to clarify that they were on the same page.

Dane Groeneveld: That clarity is huge.

Byron Morrison: Yeah, it's just being like, " Look, I know I don't explain stuff properly. Can you explain it back?" And it's just like it works so well.

Dane Groeneveld: I like the explain it back piece, because if you invite them in the right way, " Hey, look, I know Bob or Jenny, I've been running pretty hot today on all of these ideas and I threw a lot at you, so help me out by playing back what you heard that resonated, or what you heard of the direction that we're going in." That's teamwork, right? That's you giving that team member or group of team members the gift of trust and saying, " Play it back. I'm happy to take critique. Where did I go too fast? Where did I have blind spots?" I actually like that framework far better than sending them off to do the work and then headlining a whole bunch of it in a week or two weeks time.

Byron Morrison: Yeah, it's just really understanding of how do you bring out the best in people? And a lot of the time, it just comes to slowing down. This is the problem when you're a founder, CEO, you're so used to going at 100 miles an hour, everything's execution and pace, and as you scale and you've got a team, you have to slow down. And this is why I see a lot of leaders become their own worst enemy, because they know what's going on, so they just assume that everyone else around them does as well. But people can't read your mind, and this is why you're doing the team a disservice if you don't take the time. And this doesn't mean spend hours on it, just take a few minutes. Is everyone on the same page? Do they understand? Can you move forward? But if you don't, and you rush it, that's when mistakes get made, and then you just get frustrated with them because they're not delivering. And this is really why I have to challenge a lot of clients on this when they come to me, and I can't get this person to deliver, or they keep making mistakes. And it's like, is it because they don't have the skill set, or is it because you're not clearly communicating, setting expectations, and empowering them? And it goes both ways. Sometimes, it is a case the person is not the right person for the job. But a lot of the time it is, because the leader isn't giving them the tools and structure they need to actually perform. And it goes back to the check the ego at the door. It's being okay of, "Do you know what? Okay, maybe I haven't done this as well, and I need to slow down and clarify so that I can actually give this person what they need."

Dane Groeneveld: I really like that call out, and it takes us back around to your audit idea, which is you check the ego at the door, you give them the room, you audit and check back in, and then you make those kinds of micro or incremental corrections. It really underlines, as you shared before the show, the importance of those feedback loops, and creating that shared learning opportunity. I think that's a really good call out.

Byron Morrison: The final thing I just want to add into that quickly, it's just not to brush over it, is also just looking if there's reoccurring patterns. Because if it is a case of it's not just one team member who's underperforming, it's multiple, then you need to look at why. Because, like I said with clients, I'll have this where they'll come in and be like, " The team's just not getting results." And it's like if it's that many people, it's probably not the team's fault completely, and it's just taking stock and being like, okay, what else is going on? And I found it is a simple case of, some of the time, not always, of just being okay, let's just slow down and communicate, make sure the expectations are in place, people being accountable and they know what they need to do. It just sounds really simple, but it's like this is what people miss because they're just in a rush to get to the next meeting, get the next thing done, and it's so focused on their role. But as a leader, you can't be like that. You need to make sure you bring out the best in everyone around you.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, no, I like that. I think you and I were talking earlier about my belief in the power of small teams, and having teams of teams. And I think as a leader, when you've got teams of teams and you are, to your point, seeing a pattern of results that aren't optimal, you do have to look a bit in the mirror and say, " What is it that I've allowed to turn up in this organization that is slowing down the whole movement, or not allowing teams to work well together across functions?" And I've personally found a few of those problems in the past, throwing too many change initiatives at people around wellness, or around learning, and doing it without contemplating the roles that all of those people have gotten, the workloads that all of those teams have got.

Byron Morrison: Just to build slightly on your philosophy as well, there is a thing, it's too many cooks in a kitchen. And a lot of people are like, we need all hands on deck, and we need to get everyone in this. But if you have too many people in all of these meetings and teams, there's no way you can get enough ideas. There's too many competing opinions. And it's also a waste of time. I was talking to someone about this the other day, and they were just on about how many meetings they were pulled into where there was 17 people in there or something they were telling me about. And it's just like if you take that... I think the one meeting they used as the example, it was a three- hour meeting, 17 people in it. They were like, " I don't know why I'm even in this." But the cost to the company of having that many people out of their roles to just be in that meeting, you're losing so much productivity time, and it's just going back of okay, who actually needs to be involved? Who are the people to execute? Because if you have 2, 3, 4 people, it's just like it's easy to brainstorm ideas and get stuff together. When you've got 10 plus people in a room, people talking over each other, people don't want to say something in front of that many people in case they get it wrong. It's a very unproductive environment, and it's just like it's such a big problem when people scale. It's just like, yeah, you need to, yes, scale and grow, but then keep the intimacy and the relationship.

Dane Groeneveld: I think that's a compounding effect in the wrong direction, right? Because not only, to your point, are you killing productivity in the team by having all of these brain hours wrapped up in a meeting where they're not getting to contribute, you're adding frustration to when they do go back to their desks and their roles. So that's a grind. That's probably a good segue into the point you made before the show around the three types of decisions to delegate to your team. If you're moving away from management by committee, where you or your key leaders need to be in a large group making decisions and scrutinizing decisions, how do you start to create those types of decisions that you can flow down and trust the organization to be making at the right levels?

Byron Morrison: The way I always teach this to clients is if you want to empower your team, you need to show them that there's three decisions they need to make. The first type of decision is the day- to- day that's involved with their role, but they're the one who can make an informed decision or judgment and just do it. The second type of decision is the decision that has broader implications or bigger stakes. They're still the person to make it, but you need to know about it in case it comes back on you. Let's say it's on a client's account, you make an action and take a decision, you need to know about in case it ever comes up, or the client raises it with you, or something goes wrong, you're aware of what's happening. And then the third type of decision is the one that said you either need to be involved with, or you're the one who needs to make it. And if you have the right team around you, they can make an educated guess. They could be like, " Do you know what, actually? This is something I need to feed back, that they need to be aware about, management need to know that we're doing. Or, " This is the decision, do you know what? My boss is one who needs to be making this, it's above my pay grade, or I'm not the person have the final say on this." Or if it's something of just I've just ordered some new office supplies, you don't need to go feed that back to the CEO. And it sounds ridiculous, but one lady I was working with, all of this was hitting her plate. She just got the admin person coming to her being like, " Which pen should I order?" She's like, "I don't care, just find good ones and get it done with it."

Dane Groeneveld: Just get on with it.

Byron Morrison: It's all of this stuff, every single day, is just coming to her, and then she can't get any work done because it's just constant firefighting and just being pulled into things she shouldn't be doing. And it's just, just make a decision if it's within your realm. If you can make a decision that's not going to have too much of an impact, or if it's something that's within your expertise and it's what relates to your job, that's what you need to do.

Dane Groeneveld: I think that's powerful. When working with the CEO, how do you explore or discover, codify those decisions so that the team knows if it is a one, two, or a three?

Byron Morrison: It's just looking at the bigger implication. If it goes wrong, is this going to have huge ramifications in which case the CEO is probably going to have to be involved? Is it something that ultimately it is a big decision that could go one way or another, which again, CEO is going to be involved? Or is it something that it's within their job, and they've been hired to do a particular thing? Say they're running a project, they're in charge of it, they're the one who has to make a call. Therefore, in that situation, it could just be a case of just feed back, like, look, this is the path. This is what's happened, this is what we decided to do. Because you want to keep them in the loop. And it's having the conversations. And if you create the culture where you set the expectation of these are the sort of decisions you need to make, if someone comes to you and they're like, " Oh, I need to make this decision," then you can push back and be like, " Do you know what? This is a decision you should be making," because it's then empowering people and not them feeling like you have to hold everything over them. I was talking to someone the other day, and I love the example of this, it was one of my friends, he was telling me about, he's new in a role and he went to his boss about wanting to make a choice on something, and the guy was like, " This is what I'm paying you to do." And it was almost empowering for him of being like, "Do you know what, actually? This person's not expecting me to go to them for everything, and I can actually make decisions and move forward." So it's not a negative thing of being like, " Oh, this is what I'm paying you to do." It's actually giving people that ownership.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, that makes sense. And the way I hear you say it then, Byron, is that it's really about setting a tone, creating some language around it in the team. You don't have to go out and write a menu of the 120 decisions we make every week, and which is a one, two, or a three.

Byron Morrison: You should also be able to gauge it pretty well. Anyone who's fairly competent in their job can make a judgment call, is this a one, two, or three? And if you're unsure, then it's probably going to be a two or three. And you could just go back and be full divisions like this, ask, it's this something that you would want me to do or whatever. It's just having that feedback. I know it can dialogue, but I think most people can make an informed decision as to which category it's going to fall into. You're going to know with what you're doing of, okay, is this something I should be keeping people in the loop, or going higher up for a call on?

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, that makes sense. I'm envisaging a poster on the wall that says here's a one decision, two decision, a three decision.

Byron Morrison: No, I think that falls into the micromanaging category.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, I don't know, I'm a visual guy. I think it's funny the way that different teams are going to apply things as mantras. Some teams are going to apply it very formally and rigidly. Other teams are just going to organically land on it over time through discussion. But I really like the framework and the approach. We were talking earlier, if a team's doing a really good job, we've covered the feedback and the building trust, and then they're doing a great job of letting people make the decisions in place. So now that CEO that you're working with is getting some control back, they've got some more time. What are you doing around energy and energy management? I know we were talking about some concepts there before the show.

Byron Morrison: Yeah, so one of the things I see that as high performers, this isn't going to apply to everyone, but one challenge of high performance is they try and treat every day the same. They try and have the same structure, the same routine, because they feel that's how they're going to get their best work done. And while that can work, in my experience, it's far from optimal. I'll give you an example, and then I'll give you a solution to it. I had a CEO come to me who was absolutely crushing Monday and Tuesday. He was energized, he was getting stuff done, really productive. Then we looked at Wednesday, he was dwindling off. He wasn't as focused, he was a bit tired, wasn't getting as much done. Thursday was even worse, and Friday was a complete write- off. So in reality, he was having two really productive days a week. What I encouraged him to do was incorporate, and I talk about this in one of my books, it's a philosophy that I call push and pull days. Essentially, a push day is a day that you go all out, you take on more work, you do more high bandwidth tasks, you maybe work longer hours. A pull day is a day that you pull back, you focus on rest, recovery, you maybe take on less bandwidth tasks, and you allow yourself to just get your head space back. And what I encouraged the CEO to do is treat Wednesday as a pull day. I was like, " Sleep in a bit, start later, have less meetings, finish early, go play tennis, hit the gym, get a massage, do whatever you want to do." And at first, he was really reluctant. He was like, "I can't do that." And he felt really guilty, he was being lazy, but he was like, " Okay." I was like, " Just test it, and let's see what happens." And he found that by taking that Wednesday to pull back and recover his energy, he was then able to come back in on Thursday and Friday with the same energy as Monday and Tuesday. So he went from having two productive days a week to four and it was just by looking at the bigger picture and not treating every day the same. This is why I'm a big advocate of looking at your energy in the long haul, and treating high performance as a marathon, not a race. But the important thing to take away from this is you have to look at your own schedule and routine. What works for one person isn't going to work for another. I'll give you two quick other examples, so anyone looking at this can think about it. I've got another lady I work with who she travels a lot into London. She does some days in the office, some days at home. And she was trying to treat every day the same. So she was trying to exercise every day, trying to do all these things, and just kept dropping the ball, and there was too many moving parts. So I was like, " We need to treat your commute days as push days. They are the days you go in, you do longer hours, but maybe on those days you don't pressure yourself to exercise. You're getting back at 8: 00, 9: 00 PM it's just not going to happen. But then you pull back on the home days, and those are the days that you may have had more balance. You go for a walk, you get your work workout in." And for her it was just having that mentality of, okay, " This is a push day, this is what I take on." Or using myself as a different example, weirdly, Mondays are my least productive days of the week, for some reason. We have do a lot of stuff on weekends. My energy is not great on a Monday morning. So I find for me, I pull back on a Monday. If I try and do content creation, or videos, or anything like that, it just doesn't go as well. I don't have the right energy, it takes longer. If I treat Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday's push days, they're the days I get up earlier. I focus on creative energy tasks, and that's what works for me. So it's just all about understanding your energy. And going back to the point of the question, I had a guy that I worked with who runs a sales team, and he did this, and it was just a game changer for him, and he loved it. So he took it and he spoke to his team about it, and getting them to look at their own schedules, and family commitments, and things they got going on and giving them permission. They don't have to go at 100 miles an hour every single day. And it's going to, when do you need to push and pull back? So to get that high caliber performance over the long run, and not just that couple of hours here and there.

Dane Groeneveld: That's powerful. I really like that. And I read an interesting stat, I'm thinking about how that plays out for other leaders and team members in the business. I read an interesting stat that said when bosses call in sick, they think the team feels burdened that the boss won't be there to help. But actually, most teams when you survey them, their energy lifts, because they're like, " Oh, the boss isn't coming today. That means we can do our work without worrying about having to answer a random question, or explain our work. We can just get on with it." So maybe if the boss is doing the push/ pull days, on your pullback days, your team's actually getting an opportunity to really push.

Byron Morrison: It's also recognizing that what you set as behaviors at the top trickles down. If you're creating a culture of working ridiculous hours and having to burn yourself out, people see them, they feel like they need to emulate it. Whereas if you're like, "Do you know what, actually? Let's go for an approach that's built around energy and high performance and longevity," that's very empowering, because then people don't feel guilty that maybe one day they want to pull back and spend time with the family and do something. But over the course of the week, they're still getting their work done, they're going to a higher caliber, in which case the leader, you don't really care. The worst leaders are the ones that are clocking people's hours and just being like, "What are you at your desk every minute?" But it's like, yeah, people can be busy, but are they being productive? And this is why I'm a big advocate for leaders of looking at the energy of the people around them, and how do you bring up their best?

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. I like that you put emphasis on the word guilty, because as a leader, I've personally struggled with that over the years. Even in the pandemic, if I choose to go on work from Utah for a week and do some skiing with my family, even though I crushed the hours early in the morning when they're all still in bed, being on the ski slopes at 10:00 in the morning when I know the team's working and then planning to check back in later, that you do feel a bit guilty. But maybe that's because we're just not talking about it enough in teams about the importance of working when your energy's high, and taking the time to recover and look after wellness.

Byron Morrison: I'd say that's definitely a part of it. I'd say the other part of it is we normalize what we repeatedly do, and this is why as high performance, we're so used to working 50, 60 hours a week that anything counter to that is just off- putting, like we feel guilty that we're not doing more. I've started working with a new CEO recently, and his big goal for the end of our time is he wants to get down to doing 30 hours a week. And with the team he's got, it's perfectly achievable. And I said to him, "I'm going to warn you right now that the hardest part of you doing this is going to be the mental shift to actually follow through with it." Because as entrepreneurs we all say we want freedom, but when we actually get it, we don't know what to do with ourselves. And with this client, I was using myself as an example, because last year, I did this huge book launch and we went through a 15- month project. It was absolutely intense. And it came out in July, and by the end of it, I didn't know what to do with myself. I essentially got 20 to 30 hours a week back. There's only so much client work I can do, and content I create, and other tasks. And for a lot of it, I was just lost. I felt so guilty, I was like, I should be being productive. Business was still growing, things were going well, and I was just like, yeah. It was just very, just happening, and it's just like I've seen this happen with a lot of people. You see these CEOs who get this big exit, they're finally got freedom, they got all the money, and they get depressed because they don't know what to do with themselves. That's because they've normalized overworking and the grind, their taking time off feels uncomfortable. And this is why you've really got to understand your own triggers and patterns, because it is one of the pitfalls of it. It goes back to that guilt where you feel bad that you should be working more, even when things are running really well and things are getting done. I see this with clients where we get all the delegation, and the processes, and everything else in place and things are running smoothly and they're like, " Now what?" I had one guy come to me, and he's like, " I'm getting all my work done by 11: 00 AM. I'm like, what do I do with my day?" And I was like, " Well, you said to me you want to go play golf and do all these things. Give yourself permission to do it." But it just feels bad. He's like, " Yeah, but I should be working." It's where we were our own worst enemies.

Dane Groeneveld: It's a fascinating point, and I hadn't given it thought, but you're right. When you normalize that behavior, it's like a withdrawal. You're a bit of an addict to your work, and that is uncomfortable. So if we dig a little bit deeper on that, push/ pull concept's awesome. I can see myself really wanting to lean into that, but you are talking push/ pull on the days of the week. Your book example was where you pushed for months on end. How do you plan ahead if you know you're going into a big project, a book release, a product release, an acquisition, a divestment, whatever it is, if you know you're going to be crushing it for three months, six months, do you plan an approach, a model at the end once you get there? Or do you try and carve out blocks of time, long weekends? Is there anything that you've got a view on there?

Byron Morrison: It's going to be different for everyone, so I'll just throw a few different examples of inaudible. I think anyone listening can pull out of that what they need to. I'm a big advocate as well of let's say someone's going on a business trip, and they're taking a week where they're traveling, they're going to be jet- lagged and all of these things. That might be a push week, in which case they might need a pool week the week afterwards where they work short hours. I find that after a trip, whether it's a holiday or for business, generally people need a pull day coming back to ease back into it. Another example is I've got one guy I work with who they've got two really busy production periods every year, where it's a month flat out. And during this time, it's very much a push month for him. He's in the trenches getting all this stuff done, but it means they pulls back on other stuff. Prior to this, his mentality was trying to take on everything. Whereas now the process that we put in place is one to two weeks out from this production period, he then starts transitioning. He's like, okay, all these projects that I'm working on, what do I need to have in place? I can either get them done or put them aside. And then he is mentally at peace that during that push month, he's not working on any of this other stuff. He'll maybe have three to four hours a week carved out where he can do some stuff on it, but he's not pressuring himself to move it all forward, because he's in a push period where he doesn't have the time or bandwidth to commit to it like he would in other periods. So it is looking at, okay, if you're going into this big push, all out run, do you need some time afterwards just to give yourself a break? Because burnout is something we all think is never going to happen to us. And it's like when you have that over an extended period, you might have to take some time off. It's why the first thing I did after my book launch is I took two weeks off. I booked a trip to Cancun. The book came out, it came out the UK two weeks later, and it was like, I think four days into the UK launch. I was like, I've done everything I can. I went to Cancun, left my phone at home. I was like, I'm taking two weeks off. I'm off the grid. I'm not doing anything. Because I knew my energy was fried, and this is why I'm a big advocate for having the foresight where you look ahead and you're like, I know this is going to be an extensive period. What am I doing afterwards to recover? Because what most people do is they get through it and then they're straight to the next thing, and it's just where things just fall apart.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, definitely. And I like that you included in there, not just creating the space afterwards, but creating space ahead of time by saying no to those non- core tasks in the busy period. That's a really good hack.

Byron Morrison: But sorry, just one thing to throw in there. It goes back to that guilt, because it's like that guy I gave as the examples, he felt guilty during different busy periods that he wasn't moving forward these other tasks. And it was just having the thing of being like, " Do you know what? This is a push period. I need to get this done because it's our priority, it's our busy season. It's okay that these other things pull back." And it was like him just being at peace with that. It was the pressure he was putting on himself, the deadlines and everything else were self- imposed. He was the one who put them in place previously, and it was causing him so much anxiety and stress. And once he could just view it in different periods and pulling and pushing back, all of a sudden it was so much easier for him to just mentally cope with.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, so it's both control and peace, being able to just be at peace with yourself.

Byron Morrison: Yeah, exactly. We're our own worst enemies. As leaders and high performers, so much of the pressure we put on ourselves is self- imposed, because of the standards and expectations we have. And while it's amazing, it gets us to where we are, it's also the biggest thing that can cause us to feel like we're not doing enough, question our self- worth, knock our confidence, or the thing that I've said multiple times today, burn ourselves out. It's something that I just see across the board with so many of the people I work with, where they're just exhausted, and it's just a constant state of trying to get through the day. And as someone who's been through extreme burnout on more than one occasion, it's just like... And that's why I'm such a big advocate on pushing people. It's like, no, that's just not a good head space to be in, or to thrive, or to build a company.

Dane Groeneveld: No, that's a really good call to action for all leaders. We've covered some great topics today from creating feedback loops, building trust in teams, decision- making being delegated down in teams, and this energy management piece, this push/ pull, I think that's applicable in every single role in every single business. That's a gift. Thanks for sharing that. Byron. You've got the four books out there. You do your work with CEO coaches. How can our listeners find you if what we've discussed today resonates, if they want to start putting more of these practices into their lives?

Byron Morrison: The best place to find more about me is byronmorrison. com, or connect with me on LinkedIn. I do daily posts on everything from mindset to leadership, and energy, and everything else involved with being an effective CEO. So those are the best two places to reach out.

Dane Groeneveld: That's awesome. Well, I'm definitely going to look forward to reconnecting soon and letting you know how I go on my push/ pull application.

Byron Morrison: Try it. It's my favorite strategy to use, energy- wise. So yeah, let me know how you get on with it.

Dane Groeneveld: I will. All right. Thanks for your time today, Byron.

Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us. Remember that by embracing vulnerability, trusting our intuition, and approaching challenges with compassion, we not only strengthen our teams, but also pave the way for a future where collaboration thrives. If you're hungry for more insights, strategies, and research on collaboration, head over to thefutureofteamwork. com. There, you can join our mailing list to stay updated with the latest episodes, and get access to exclusive content tailored to make your team thrive. Together, we can build the future of teamwork. Until next time.