Move away from these behaviors to empower your team, improve communication, and save time.

I used to think that personal and professional growth involved adding more to an already full plate: more objectives, challenges, opportunities, etc. So, I seized upon productivity hacks to do more in the same amount of time. I thought it was the best way to bridge the gap between my performance and potential. 

We used to joke as we trudged up and down mountains in Afghanistan about carrying 200 lbs of lightweight equipment. My life felt like that.

I became super organized and hyper-efficient, but my unforced errors increased, creating rework that added even more to the plate. The quality of my personal interactions diminished as I tried to split my attention between the person in front of me and other tasks I needed to complete. 

I was doing more, but to a lower standard, while getting burned out and losing friends. 

Dr. Mark Goulston helped me to see a different perspective. 

“Do you know what Michelangelo (the famous Renaissance artist) said when he asked how he made David?”

I took away everything that was not David.

Let’s call it the Michelangelo Principle: to begin closing the gap between your performance and potential, remove what’s holding you back. 

One of the most powerful ways is to prune away behaviors that create needless friction. 

Behaviors—how you apply your standards to the people and situations around you—can ease your path to success or create needless friction. 

For people like you at the tail end of the curve, your skills and experiences no longer differentiate you. Your behaviors set you apart. Advance even further into the tail end of the curve by removing your self-inflicted obstacles.

Draining Your Time and Energy: 14 Behaviors

Below are fourteen behaviors that drain your time and energy. Most leaders have two or three of these. Prune these away, and you’ll save hours each week in no longer correcting miscommunication and misaligned work or having to pick up the slack that didn’t need to happen.

1. Adding unnecessary value. When you improve someone’s idea by 5%, you reduce their commitment by 50%. Your employees perform far better with an 80% solution that they own than with a 100% solution you provide. Stop the happy-to-glad.

2. Offering unsolicited advice. Your good intentions can create resentment by saying, “I’m better than you.” Instead, ask what support you can provide to help them succeed faster.

3. Winning every argument. When you insist on winning every argument, you drag out meetings, create unnecessary conflict, and undermine goodwill. Gaining people’s buy-in is more important. Once you’ve got that, shut up and move out.

4. Butting in. Nothing matters before the “but.” The same goes for “however” and “no.” You create resentment with these words that say, “You make a good point, but my point is better than yours.”

5. Providing constructive criticism. Criticism builds defensiveness, which impedes progress. You waste time and energy relitigating the past, and your employees are less likely to innovate and try new things. Stop dwelling on history and start framing a better future by feeding forward: “How will you do it better next time?”

6. Justifying your actions after requesting feedback. You asked for feedback on what you can do better. Your employee tells you something you do that bothers them. When you justify your actions, you imply someone other than you is at fault. They feel they stuck their neck out, wasted their time, and gained your resentment. When you ask for advice and get it, say, “Thank you.”

7. Not listening. Instead of focusing on your employees, you try to multitask. Your employees think they are unimportant to you, and you get only a fraction of what they say. You may listen to respond (see winning every argument), so you miss their more essential points. You waste time and energy on misunderstandings and rework. Focus 100 percent of your attention on listening without passing judgment. Seek first to understand.

8. Speaking (or typing) when angry. You are guaranteed to worsen the situation by creating resentment, putting your foot in your mouth, and piling on problems. Step away from the keyboard, go for a walk, and ask, “What can I do to improve the situation?”

9. Negativity fixation. You want to show how smart you are by explaining why every new idea will fail, so you stifle initiative, undermine ownership, and stay mired in a failing status quo. Ask instead, “How will you address this challenge?”

10. Feeding someone’s negativity fixation. You’ll waste hours arguing back and forth with a know-it-all who’s stuck in their ways. Ask instead, “If it were possible, how would you do it?”

11. Letting perfectionism impede progress. Moving from an 80 to 90 percent solution can be prohibitive regarding time, money, and opportunity cost, so stop waiting for perfection. Go with the 80 percent solution and adapt as needed. You’ll save time, energy, and resources while seizing opportunities that grow your business.

12. Obsessive fault-finding. Some leaders treat finding an error as if discovering a buried treasure. You spend so much time looking for what’s wrong that you miss seeing and recognizing what’s right. You spend time correcting faults but fail to reinforce productive behavior. So, unnecessary problems keep piling up.

13. Finger-pointing. Leaders who obsess over faults tend to fixate on blame. This tendency creates predictable backlash as people try to defend themselves, cover their backsides, and re-litigate the past. While you waste all this time and energy, the cause of the problem remains. Focus on the cause, not blame, address it, and move on.

14. Being the hero. When you parachute to solve everyone’s problems and answer their questions, you become a crutch for your employees. Instead of building self-reliance, you create dependency. You rob yourself of the time to do your job and rob your employer of the value you should provide. Instead of solving the problem for them, ask, “How would you do it?”

Are you ready to slay your time and energy vampires and become an ever-better you? I can help you zero in on the behaviors that close the gap between your performance and potential, revealing your own David. Schedule a call here, and let’s get started.