Welcome to Backing your Leadership. I'm Chris Lorenzo, and welcome to this week's Thoughtful Thursday. Don't forget to follow us on YouTube at Hacking Leadership and leave us a review on iTunes. On this Thoughtful Thursday, I want to talk about rituals. I was getting my computer ready for a zoom call, and I found myself doing things, you know, that I'd done many times before and kind of focusing on that. So I made sure that my chair and
my standing desk were at the right height. I had a cup of coffee and a water bottle that I had in the same that I put in the same spot. There was no other clutter. I had notes open on the screen that I always put in the same corner of a monitor. Like. I started doing these things and then I just I realized in the moment that these are things that I had done over and over and over again for you
know, previous zoom call interviews. And it got me thinking that, you know, there are things that we do as leaders every day that we are they're kind of like bedrocks of how we move forward in processes as leaders that they would be considered ritualistic and and how you know, sometimes they don't work. Like I've been in situations where you know, there, for whatever the reason, I had to do a zoom call, but I wasn't at my my main desktop computer. I was at a laptop in a hotel room somewhere,
and it just felt off. It felt off because I wasn't in my my my ritual or my routine. But that can't necessarily be an excuse for not doing the thing well that you were doing, even though they are important to have in general. We're your thoughts about this, Yeah, I think we've talked about it before, but just kind of the idea of having some type of you know, some normalcy and the routine that you have in building
routines and whatnot. But I think ritual I like that word better because I think that like that, it's it's things that really get you into a mind space of being like I'm going to do great work. And I think that's the difference between to me, a routine and a ritual is that there's some intention there, Like what you're talking about preparing for the interview, like all of this is intentional to make sure that I have what I need at my
fingertips. That I have you know that I'm systems ready to go, that I that I've done the work even to say like I've cleared my desk, which then is like clearing my brain to be fully involved and fully committed to the moment that I'm going to be in. And I think that same thing when it comes to like leadership rituals around like when you you know, when I get up in the morning, what am I doing to set my day
up? You know, I only like to go to work and have emails that have shown as unread because I've actually already read them, but I know I need to take action on something. So like I know that there are things that I do from a from a ritual standpoint that helped me to build
my day up. But when it comes to my people and the development and the things that I really want to make sure are happening and we kind of bringing my values to life, that's where I build in rituals to do things like once a month going through my open and paper notebooks and going through notes and looking at things and reflecting and saying, all right, what are some things that from this last month that I think when well, what are some
things with this maybe this this leader's development where I, you know, want to make sure I follow back on that or I look for more themes of this behavior, both maybe positive or an opportunity. And so like I build in these rituals that allow me to make sure I have the time to really be highly effective of the role that I have. And then I even think about like the rituals that we have for like the podcast and the things that we've done for six years now that are just making us ready to get on
and talk about the things that we want to talk about. Right But in the world in which we live, sometimes the ritual can cannot help you because if you are so beholden to it that it causes you to not get the job done, then that's a problem too. And in the world of leadership, you can't always plan out every moment every day. You can't always say,
Okay, I'm gonna do this first and this second. You know, it's one thing to say, you know, I have a ritual of if I'm doing a sit down with an employee in the room, I want to have a pen and my notebook with me because I don't want to have my phone out. I want to be able to take notes, but it still feels rude to me if someone is on the phone or if I'm on the phone. Even if I'm taking notes and it's clear I'm taking notes, it needs to be written down on paper and pen, and so I have to
have that. I will stop a one on one to go get that if I don't have it, if I haven't prepared for it in advance. To me, that's an incredibly important ritual that has to take precedent in order to make sure that what I'm trying to accomplish gets done well. Other times you miss the boat on getting done the thing you have to get done because you were so beholden to the ritual. And so what I'm ask you, Lorenzo, is what's a ritual that you have that it is so important that you
will put something off in order to make sure it happens. It's not something you can kind of pick and choose or you know, kind of take as accounts. That has to happen or you can't be as productive as you need to be on doing something that is expected of you. So I want to ask you that at first, I want to get up to word for one of our sponsors. All right, Lorenzo, And thinking about your role as a leader, what's a kind of air quote ritual that you do that is
incredibly important to you? You know, you have to plan it out and make sure that's able to happen because you just won't be able to do the job well if you haven't done this in advance. I think, and this is something relatively new to me that I've learned about, but pre planning agendas when I spend time with leaders, knowing there are things that I want to talk to that leader about, whether it's about their development, their people,
their business. You know, for a long time, I could write that in my little book and go back and reference it ahead of time and think about it, and would I would know that these are the things that we're going to touch on or talk through. When you move into a space where you have multiple leaders in multiple different places, the intention behind that is a
lot more important. So like as I if I know that I'm going to go spend time with you Chris on next Friday, and between now and then, there may be conversations that you and I have, there may be things that I'm looking at as it pertains to you, your business, your team, that type of thing. In those moments, I will then go to that invitation that we have for next week for our time together, and I will type in like this an agenda item. This is an agenda item.
I will add those ahead of time, but in real time, so that they actually never even make it necessarily to maybe the pen and paper, but they are definitely added to the conversation that we're going to have next Friday. And so I've learned that that's a ritual that has been extremely helpful for me to make sure that I'm like, man, I gotta remember to tell Chris
that, or I gotta remember to talk to Chris about that. If I take that second, if I add that to the agenda of the time that I already know that we have together, I can then allow that to go away and then focus my attention on the task in hand, or the conversation that I'm currently in or whatever whatever I'm working on. And I've had to do that because there's been times when I'm like, oh, yeah, I gotta remember to tell Chris that, but because I'm doing something else in the
moments, I forget to get that down somewhere. I forget to reference that, you know, and then maybe I remember when we're together, maybe gets brought up again at that point. But I've really had to work on that as a ritual, right, Right, I've been in that same situation where I have forgotten and then I remember the thing that I wanted to say seconds
after the end of whatever that meeting was. Right, There's just there's this thing that happens when you're in the moment, and I think it's because you're trying to be in the moment. You're trying to be there with the person, not thinking back to something that you were trying to recall that you tried to file away. So yeah, writing it down in advance is something that
kind of allows you to free up that brain space, you know. I think Albert Einstein was asked for his phone number once and he said, I don't know my own phone number. What when doever call myself? And it was this idea of why would he fill up space in his brain with information he doesn't need? And that's just that that's kind of a foreign concept of
people. We fill up our brain with these things that we probably should be allowing, you know, pen and paper or other things to kind of take off of our plates, because when you're talking about leading people, the the ultimate goal is to actually be a good leader, and if the ritual can allow you to do that, then that's a very good thing. If it can help you, you know, kind of get in that mindspace. If you don't do this, if you're ual is just all gonna file it away
remember it later. The brain power it takes to kind of recall that in the moment is brain power you should have been spending listening to that employee talk about what's on their mind and being able to help them. The writing it down just allows you to say, all right, I'm going to reference this one. I need it, but it doesn't need to occupy space in the
front of my mind, so I make sure I don't forget it. These rituals are really important to do. But again, if if you've forgotten to do that in advance and you still have that meeting that employee come up, does that mean you reschedule it or does that mean that you go forward with it and you hope it goes well. I mean, what's what's how important
is it? Really? Yeah, it's a great question. I think it's it's I think going forward with the time that we would have together, I think is critical like that that was already planned time for the things that we have. I think that from a ritual standpoint, what I've learned very quickly is that this is this is a very very important ritual if I want to get the most productivity out of that time together, because there are there are
there are definitely things that we're going to talk about. And again having the plan time means we're going to have a conversation, We're going to discuss. There are things that I already have that are big things on the agenda, but there are many things that come up across from time to time that that should be discussed or talked about, or it could be a heads up or
something like that. So now what I'm learning in this ritual is like when I when I create the invite, here are the big thing agenda items, and then as I go here's the ones that I would add to it as
we're getting closer to something. So I in the past, if I just have the time, and then if I just have the information in my book that I want to discuss, that's also not helping to prepare the leader and that's the other The other thing that I want to be able to do is make sure hey that you know, Chris, like, here's all the things that we're going to talk about next Friday when we're together. You know.
That way, you have time to think about it, you have time to be prepared, you have time for us to discuss, and that makes our time together much more productive. Oh, I totally agree with that. In fact, it doesn't just do that, I think. I think it lets the person who's being invited to this meeting off the hook a little bit.
I know, if I was invited to a meeting by my leader and they didn't send me an agenda, there's a part of me, and I think a part of most people who in the back of their mind is thinking I'm about to get fired, Like there's that little tiny bit, right, And even though you know realistically that's not the case, there's this part of the
mind that will go there. And so as a leader, if you put out an agenda that says all these things that you plan on talking about, the big things and the little things, I think that does an incredible service to your people in terms of allowing them to not let their mind run as far as what's going to happen in this meeting. You're telling them now right, this is what we're going to discuss, and anything they want to bring, they're more than welcome to bring. But you want to talk about being
productive in a meeting, put it out there in advance. And that way you can actually hold them accountable to not being able to talk to these things if you've given them enough time. But two again, it lets them stop trying to focus on I wonder what Lorenzo is going to talk to me about. Let me get all my numbers in a row and make sure that all these things I can talk about, And they start spending a ton of effort in time preparing for a meeting with you on things that you weren't even planning
on talking about to begin with. And so, yeah, it's not These rituals aren't just important for leaders, they are important for people who have to live with and work with these leaders too, absolutely, and with that it brings us at the end of this episode, this is hack your leadership. I'm Lorenzo and I'm Chris, and have a great day.