EP 202: Listener Q&A: How to Stay Focused When Everything Feels Like a Priority

In this first-ever listener Q&A episode, I answer Jason's question about prioritization challenges when leading a team of 20.

If you've ever struggled to say 'no' to "urgent" tasks that derail your most important work, this episode is for you. Join me as I share practical frameworks for filtering decisions, aligning your team around shared goals and saying 'no' without burning bridges.

💡 In This Episode, You’ll Learn How To: 

• How to create a filtering system for evaluating what's truly a priority vs. what's just urgent
• The North Star question that makes decision-making easier and faster
• Why unclear goals create team misalignment (and how to fix it)
• Word-for-word scripts for saying no tactfully when you're being pulled in too many directions
• The reality check: when everything is a priority, nothing is a priority

🔗 Resources & Links:

Apply for my 90-Day CEO Empowerment Intensive if you're a profitable female business owner that's ready to step into strategic CEO-level leadership with clarity, calm and an action plan that actually fits you, your business and your lifestyle.

Have a question you'd like me to answer on the show? I'd love to hear from you! Send me a DM on Instagram @leandracreates with your question. I'm reading every single one and personally selecting ones to answer in upcoming episodes.

Transcript

EP 202 Listener Q&A: How to Stay Focused When Everything Feels Like a Priority

[00:00:00]

Hey, it's Leandra. Welcome. As I shared with you in our first episode of season two, I am doing something new this season and this is it. I am so excited to be answering questions from you, my listeners, and so if you would like to have your question answered by me, then I will be sure to share at the end of this episode how you can do that.

So be sure to stick around. So for today, our first question I am answering comes from our listener, Jason, and it's all about prioritization. So let me share the question with you, Jason said. Prioritization is often challenging. While there are 20 people on my team, we're always having to pick one really important thing to work on over a different really important thing.

So my question is about how to stay [00:01:00] focused and to say no to the things that aren't critical on our path to success. First, I love this question and I think there are so many flavors and variety of this that we come up against in our day-to-day work and lives. So let's jump in and dive into this one a little bit.

So first, let me answer this from the perspective of a business owner. As business owners, we have a lot of things that come across our plates and radars. It's decisions that need to be made. It's changes that need to happen. It's weighing in with things that are happening with our team members, our clients, et cetera.

And so there's always something that might feel like a priority, but I would challenge you to be thinking about if it is the biggest priority at the moment, and think about how you can create a filtering system. And this applies actually, whether you're a business owner or not, but how can you filter the things that are coming across you, your path on a day-to-day basis?

And this could look like [00:02:00] something that can help you with decision making. So for example, you can be asking yourself, what is the biggest goal that I have for this week, for this month, for this quarter, for the year? And what I will encourage you to think about is if you're like, Ooh, I don't know. The answer to any of those questions, what that means is that it's an essential and opportune time to actually slow down and figure out what your goals are.

Because without having a clear roadmap, you're never going to get there. You don't know where you're going. It just like driving. Without GPS, you could end up anywhere. So think about what is that actual, as some people say, the North Star for you, whether it's in your business or your team, or your role.

What is the biggest impact mover in the business or in your department that is going to really help you moving forward? Because then it becomes easier to filter things that are coming your way if you can easily and quickly see, oh that's gonna completely [00:03:00] derail us. It's going to throw us off course if I say yes to this thing because it's going to stop me from either doing the thing that is the most impactful or it's just completely misaligned.

And it's not giving me the time, space, capacity, mental energy to stay aligned with what I actually need to be doing to move us forward. So that's one aspect. Also, if you are working within a team, it is very important that everyone is working toward the same end goal. So again, as we were just talking about, this comes back to goal setting.

If you don't know what the goals are, and if you have not shared and articulated those with other members of your team, it's going to be hard to make sure that you're all moving in the same direction. Think about it like rowing a boat. If one person's doing the opposite of what needs to be done, you're either just stalled out or you're going in circles.

And so that's really what we're trying to avoid within our businesses and within our teams and departments. [00:04:00] So thinking about, as I shared, what are the goals that you have? And as you're breaking them down, think about it both from the standpoint of the big large goals, but what are the actions and the steps that need to be taken on a recurring basis to help you move forward?

So then when things come your way, you can say, is this going to help us move forward or not? And if the answer is no, for some reason it feels no is the hardest word for us to say, even though it's one of the smallest. So what I would encourage you to think about is maybe you also need to come up with some type of script or wording, something that you feel comfortable saying, especially if you are a member of a team and someone else is delegating and dictating things to you.

So maybe it's very a simple phrase where you're coming up with something such as, I would love to be able to take that on, but our biggest priority for our team right now is X, Y, Z, so that we can make sure that we're meeting our month end deadline and that [00:05:00] nothing is falling behind. If, however, you feel that this is a bigger priority for me at the moment, let's sit down.

I'd love to be able to sit down and talk through what you think would be best to remove from my plate instead, so that you're putting it back on them and you're having that accountability check-in and that mutual discussion around. If this really is now what the priority is, then how do I actually make time and space for that?

The other option, instead of maybe if you'd feel more comfortable saying something along the lines of. I would love to be able to talk more about this project or this task and see how it fits in line with X, Y, Z goal, because sometimes we're all moving quickly, so somebody may be delegating something to you that feels like a priority in the moment, but they might have also forgotten about what the overall.

Goal or priorities are for the team, for the department, et cetera. So you calling that to mind and bringing it to attention could be a very quick reality check for them to be like, oh, yeah, you know what, actually, [00:06:00] let me think about that a little bit and get back to you. Maybe it's something that they will then self-identify to say, oh yeah, this really isn't.

Aligned with what we're trying to do, or your role or your department. Maybe this needs to go somewhere else or maybe it's not something that we need to be doing at all. So I would challenge you to think about what that could look like based on your role, your responsibilities,

where you're seeing some of these tasks or responsibilities coming from to see what would make the most sense and how to respond to those in a tactful way, but still getting the point across that it's misaligned and that not everything can be a priority, because then really in essence, nothing is a priority.

So Jason, hopefully this is helpful and spark some new ideas. And for the rest of our listeners, if you also find yourself in a similar situation, hopefully this brings up some new insights and ideas for you as well. And as I had shared, I would love to be able to answer your burning questions as well when it comes to business team and any of the topics that we've [00:07:00] been talking about here on Enlightened Entrepreneur to help ensure that you are moving out of that.

Successful but stressful stage within your business and are able to move forward with added confidence and clarity. So if you have a question that you would like me to answer, send it my way. Find me on Instagram and be sure to follow me and then send me a DM at Leandra Creates is my profile and I would love to answer your question on an upcoming episode.

I'll be sure to include that in the show notes as well so that you have that for reference. And I cannot wait to see you next week on Wednesday for our next episode. Have a great day.