Quick note before Activate. If you’re following FRAMES in order, you might be wondering what happened to Reconcile between Foundation and this one. Well – you’ve already read it, you just didn’t know that’s what it was. Back in July I wrote about the pattern you keep recreating across roles – that’s Reconcile, I just hadn’t put the FRAMES name on it yet. Worth a read first if you want the sequence in order: [The pattern you keep recreating and how to finally see it]. If not, straight on to Activate.
A few months ago, maybe a year ago, a colleague said to me: “I see it all the time with you. You’re having an awful day and then you drag someone into a meeting room, help them sort out a problem and you come out lighter and happier.”
Now, my “I Hate People” t-shirt is almost infamous at this point. But really – my colleague was right. I do gain a lot of enjoyment from helping other people, I had it again a few weeks ago – sorting out a relatively small issue for someone, that really just took a conversation on my part to fix. (It was a misunderstanding between two people, both of whom were absolutely right – they just weren’t talking about the same thing.)
I like helping my team develop. I love the conversations about where they want to go and how they want to do it. It’s actually something they’re possibly all fed up of having to talk to me about cos I will follow up and ask them have they signed up for that free course they were thinking about, or do I need to create space in their diaries to get something they like done.
If you had asked me even 2 years ago if that energised me, I’d have laughed in your face. But the fact is – it does. I really enjoy that work.
So how do you actually tell?
Now, here’s the thing about Activate – you can’t just ask yourself “what energises me” and trust the answer. You’ll give yourself the answer that sounds impressive, not the true one. What actually works is looking at the data instead of your own head. Your calendar. What you kept finding excuses to push to the bottom of the list, versus what you kept coming back to without anyone chasing you.
For me? Easy enough looking back. Every meeting I’ve ever left feeling worse than I walked in – and we’ve established there’s been a fair few of those – versus every “quick chat” that turned into sorting someone’s actual problem, which I somehow never resent losing the time to. That’s the data. Not what I’d have told you two years ago if you’d asked me straight out.
This is where Leadership Load does some of its quietest damage, by the way. Spend long enough being the person who absorbs whatever needs doing, and competence stops telling you anything about what you actually want. You just get good at nearly everything. Sounds great. Isn’t, really – not once you realise you’ve lost the plot on what any of it was for.
Once you can actually see the gap – what you’re good at versus what you want more of – your next move looks different. A promotion into more of the stuff that drains you? Doesn’t read as progress anymore. Not just because you happen to be skilled at it already.
If that landed – if you just recognised yourself in what you just read – I have room for a small number of 1:1 clients before the end of the year. 4 spots left. Book a discovery call and let’s talk about whether it’s the right next step for you.
The other side of the ledger
On the other hand, I also know my technical work – working through reliability analysis, getting an excel workbook to well… work, linking a series of reactive maintenance efforts to a root cause and being able to fix the damn thing – or allow others to fix it – that gives me energy too.
What doesn’t give me energy and significantly reduces my will to live? Meetings. Especially the ones that could easily have been an email. The ones where there are 25+ people in an airtight room, with the CO2 levels rising by the minute and half the attendees are struggling to stay awake and the rest are only staying awake by surreptitiously – or not so surreptitiously – answering emails or getting some work done. Hate that shit.
I can only take on 4 Mastery clients this year, and 4 spots are still open. If this post described where you are, don’t sit on it. Book a discovery call and we’ll figure out together whether FRAMES is right for you.
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