Each Sunday, our goal is to share a piece of gold with you. Some small piece of information that helps you to have a better week and achieve a better outcome.  

If I have learned anything over the years, it is that, even though I’ve learned a lot, I still don’t know $h!t in the big scheme of things!  

Maybe I’m a little odd, but it seems the more that I know, the more I realize that I don’t know. Being a leader means being a consummate student. It does not mean that I have to know everything, it does not mean that I need to be the smartest person in the room, it simply means that I have to have enough sense to surround myself with the best and the brightest in their area of specialty.  

As the CEO of JMARK, I push a great many things into motion, from a vision perspective. Then the awesome people I get to work with, carry that vision to the next level and execute and refine to make things happen. It is not long before I turn into the student—learning about what they have done to mature projects and take them to the next level. I’ve certainly had the opportunity to build and execute, but it is so awesome to see those around me become masters in their craft.  

This does create challenges as problems or hurdles arise, because it becomes very important to pull the right people into the conversation to ensure the various stakeholders are involved—and that can quickly turn into meeting hell, where it is one meeting after the other, with more email and more tasks to follow.  

Therefore, it is our job as leaders to manage capacity, creating the ability and permission for people to say, “No,” or better yet, “Not right now.” We want to depend on them to execute well, but we also have to respect capacity and create the safety for them to manage their own workload.  

In the EOS methodology, this promotes the idea of “delegate and elevate.” I didn’t always understand this idea. The goal isn’t to push the yucky work down, the point is for each person to focus where they bring the greatest value.  

In a conversation with Dan Reiter recently, he said it well: “Know your role.” Know it and do it well, and empower your team to rise and say, “Not right now.” When you do, I’ve learned that you will soon hear, “Done… What’s next?”  

The goal of Adapt or Die is to build better leaders who run better companies and change the world. “Better leaders” doesn’t just mean in the office, but at home too. If you’d like a copy of our 1-on-1 Template, purchase your copy of Adapt or Die here and then go to adaptordie.com/assets to get started. I hope you enjoy it!