Are you a perfectionist? Do you have perfectionist traits?

Engineers by nature have a deep desire to get things 100% correct and perfect. And don't get me wrong, this personality trait is completely functional and needed when it comes to de-risking a project, system or process. In fact the general population who use or are affected by the things you design and create WANT you to use your perfectionist so that nothing goes wrong! 

However, sometimes this perfectionist trait can cause friction within yourself as well as your clients and your team.

Let me explain. 

Have you ever had a client call you up and ask you to get your deliverables done more quickly? Or a client bring forward a project deadline by a week just because they can? Have you ever had a team member get frustrated with you that you're taking too long on the element that you're working on and it's delaying them getting started?

And when this happened, did you FEEL yourself getting frustrated, overwhelmed and maybe eve...

I hope you’re having an amazing day. 

In my last couple of posts I’ve been talking a lot about strategy and strategic actions that you could be taking to grow your team and grow your business. 

Today I want to talk to you about something slightly different. And that’s the importance of managing your energy. 

You see, if you’re like most leaders and business owners in the engineering and construction industry at the moment, you’re super busy! There’s a fair bit of work on at the moment and everyone is scrambling and doing their best to deliver for their clients as well as generating new business and making hay while the sun shines - so to speak.

At the moment, there is a huge sense of overwhelm and a huge amount of busyness happening. 

This period at the moment is ripe for burnout. 

So today I want to talk to you about the importance of managing your day, managing your tasks and managing your energy. 

Right now, there is a tendency to just be running hard. To not be taking breaks...

Do you know whether your mindset and your thoughts are supporting you and where you want to take your career, your team or your business? 

Or holding you back? 

Do you notice that you have some thoughts and perhaps a mindset that at times doesn’t support you and where you want to be taking things? 

Do you notice sometimes that you’re just not in the right headspace to create great outcomes and that you feel flat or tired or just not with it? 

Do you just sometimes feel like you’re not dialled in and ready to make the most of each hour, each day, or each week? 

You see you can have the best strategy in the world. The best game plan. The best to do list. 

But if your mindset is not right, if your psychology isn’t supportive of your game plan and your strategy, then you’ll be spinning your wheels and going nowhere. 

I don’t want to repeat something that you probably already know, but I’m going to anyway…. 

Mindset is everything. 

And the exciting thing is that our minds are ma...

This week I ran a really simple but effective exercise with my clients in my coaching programs. 

Now the exercise only took about 20 minutes, but it was incredibly powerful and gave my clients some key insights into how to build, develop and deepen their relationships with their key clients. 

Let me explain.

You see, everyone is so busy at the moment. Most people I’m talking to have work coming out of their ears!!

The big opportunity I see right now is developing your key client relationships. 

All of us are working on projects with key clients. All of us have key client relationships that we are honestly not nurturing properly at the moment. 

So, as I said, this exercise is really simple and I want to walk you through it right now.

The first step is to look at what it’s like right now for you and your key client relationships.

What are your clients pain points? What are they frustrated about right now? What are the things that are annoying them and the things that they’re stru...

Hope you’re well. 

This week I was talking with a client who is super frustrated about how their team just aren't performing. 

They were really frustrated about the fact that their team members and the people around them are taking way longer to do things, are not hitting their deadlines and are just generally quite slow and not responsive.

They were their wits end. 

So if this is you, today I want to look at how do you take a team that's not performing well and build a team of high performing people around you.

The main concept I want to explore with you today is making sure that you’re leading your team and managing them in a way that suits their personality style. 

Let me explain. 

You see all of us have a unique personality style. Are unique set of personality traits. We all have ways that we like to be communicated to. We all have ways we like to be delegated to. We have strengths. We have weaknesses. We have types of work that we like doing and we have types of work that w...

So many consultants and contractors get caught up in pricing wars and feeling like they’ve got to be cheaper than everyone else. They feel like they’re going to lose the work or not be able to build a project pipeline if they raise their prices or are more expensive than their competitors.

Today I want to flip this viewpoint and this discussion on its head. 

I’ve been doing a lot of work recently with clients in my coaching programs around pricing, the value proposition and their positioning in the marketplace. 

You see if you get your positioning wrong in the marketplace, meaning that you've positioned yourself as a generalist, that you can do everything and that you’re all things to all people AND you don’t talk about the value that you add or how you solve your clients problems or how you deeply understand your clients world, then of course you have to be the cheapest!! 

But if you completely flipped this on its head and can change your thinking around your positioning and you s...

Today I want to explore with you why being busy means that you can't and won’t be a good leader… 

Big statement I know! 

You see, most of us are so conditioned to being busy. We think that being busy and ticking things off our to-do list, running around all day every day and getting to the end of every day exhausted is the way to achieving the success that we want to achieve. 

However, the issue with being busy all the time and trying to get things done all the time is that you're never slowing down and taking the time to think strategically about where your team or your business is going. 

Let me explain. 

By being busy all the time you are robbing yourself, your team and your business of your ability to think creatively, your ability to think strategically and your ability to set a vision for where your team and your business is going. 

So by being busy all the time and rushing around all the time and trying to fill your days full of busyness all the time you are actually sabot...

How often do you stop to question and critique where you are spending your time and energy during the week?

Do you know which aspects within your team or business that you do each and every day are your high dollar productive activities?

The only way you will be able to get your team or business humming is for you to get super focused on focusing your time, effort and energy on YOUR high dollar productive activities and the aspects that move the needle the most. 

In today's video I walk you through how to move into a strategic leadership role and the steps required to get you there.

If you want to learn more, follow the link below to watch the video. 

Click Here  to watch now. 

Josh ‘Delegate’ Stone

PS: If you’re interested, here are 4 ways I can help you right now:

1. Join the Leaders In Engineering community designed specifically for engineering leaders and business owners
   It’s our new Facebook community where engineering leaders and business owners are learning the strategies
...

This week I was talking with a client who was struggling with feelings of overwhelm and feeling like they just didn’t have the time in their days and weeks to get everything done.

As we started to explore this, it became super evident that:

• They were trying to do EVERYTHING themselves.
• They were worried about what their team would think of them if they asked for help. 

Sound familiar? 

As we dug further into this sense of overwhelm, we uncovered that they were really worried that if they asked for help their team around them:

• Would think less of them.
• Would judge them for admitting they needed help with something.
• Would think they weren’t technically competent is they were asking questions or asking for help.

Here’s the thing - as my business coach Taki says:

“If you want to go fast - go alone. If you want to go far - go together.”

Meaning - sure, you can do things on your own, never asking for help and doing the lone wolf thing. And sure - you might be able to go fa...

Procrastination is single-handedly the biggest productivity and goal achieving killer. 

Do you find yourself regularly doing things that you KNOW aren’t really that important? 

Do you even catch yourself, acknowledge what you're doing isn’t that important - but keep doing it anyway??!! 

Have you ever stopped to ask yourself: 

 "I know this isn't that important - so why am I doing it?"

 "What's the REAL reason I'm procrastinating here?"

This week I explored with my clients on our coaching call the real and underlying reasons why you ACTUALLY procrastinate. 

Think about it for yourself - what do you do when you're procrastinating? 

Some of the answers from my clients on the coaching call to this question:

• Eating / snacking.
• Getting another coffee.
• Mindlessly responding to or cleaning up emails.
• Talking to colleagues about things that just aren’t important.
• Surfing carsales.com!!

Then we got to the heart of what is REALLY going on when I asked WHY? 

Some of the response...