Episode 847 - Master What You Can, Release the Rest

0:04 Helping leaders motivate their people to a higher level of performance through strong human relations, team building, and goal achieving. This is the 7-Minute Leadership Podcast with your host, Paul Falavolito.

0:22 Hello, everyone, and welcome to the 7-Minute Leadership Podcast. It's episode 847. There is a sentence I think every leader needs to hear at some point in their career. You are responsible for a lot. You are not responsible for everything. And knowing the difference might save your leadership. Think about how much mental energy we burn every day trying to control things that were never ours to control in the first place. What somebody thinks about us, whether an employee likes a decision. what the economy is going to do, what somebody posts online, whether a competitor opens across the street, or how somebody reacts when we hold them accountable, whether a customer understands our intentions, or whether the plan survives

1:14 first contact with reality. We carry all of it around like somehow if we worry hard enough, we can influence the outcome. We can't. And that's where today's title comes from. Master what you can. Release the rest. I want you to picture two circles. The first circle contains everything you can directly influence. Your preparation, response, standards, efforts, decisions, communication, and follow-through. The second circle contains everything outside of your control.

1:51 Other people's emotions, their opinions, their The weather, the market, unexpected problems, bad timing, random events in the past. Some leaders spend their entire career standing in the second circle screaming at things they cannot change. Then they wonder why they're exhausted. Leadership gets a lot easier when you become extremely disciplined about where you spend your energy. I learned this years ago in emergency services. You arrive At an emergency scene and immediately discover that the situation doesn't care about your plans. You didn't choose what happened. You didn't choose where it happened. You didn't choose when it happened.

2:34 You didn't choose the weather, the traffic, the people involved, the available resources, or what even happened before you arrived. Those things are already on the table. Your job begins with the next decision. What can I control right now? I can control my assessment. I can control how I communicate.

2:55 I can control the resources I request. I can control whether I follow the process. I can control how I treat the people around me. And I can control whether I make the situation better or worse. That's leadership. And I think a lot of leaders have quietly become overwhelmed because they have confused responsibility with control. Being responsible for leading an organization doesn't mean you control every outcome. Being responsible for a team doesn't mean you control every employee's behavior.

3:31 Being responsible for a project doesn't mean every variable belongs to you. Your responsibility is to master your part. That's an important distinction. Let's say you have an employee who isn't performing. You can coach them. You can explain expectations. You can provide training. You can document performance. You can hold them accountable. You can give them every reasonable opportunity to succeed. And at some point, they have to decide what they're going to do with that opportunity. You cannot want success more than they do. You cannot drag somebody into becoming the employee you know they could be. Eventually, you reach the edge of your circle. That's where you release the rest. Release doesn't mean you stop caring. It

4:19 means you stop pretending you have control where you don't. And there's tremendous freedom in that. And this applies outside of work too. Think about criticism. Every leader eventually gets criticized. Someone will disagree with you. Someone will misunderstand you. Someone will tell a version of the story that leaves out half the facts. Someone may decide they don't like you.

4:45 You can spend six hours trying to change their opinion, or you can ask a better question. Did I act with integrity? Did I make the best decision I could with the information available? Did I communicate clearly? Did I own my mistakes? Did I follow the standards? If the answer is yes, you may have reached the edge of your circle. Release the rest. This idea also applies to mistakes.

5:13 I've watched leaders make one bad decision and mentally replay it for months. They keep going back. What if I had said this? What if I had noticed that? What if I had made the decision sooner? There is value in reviewing a mistake. There is no value in living inside of one. The past belongs in the second circle.

5:35 You cannot change it. What you learn from it belongs in the first circle. That you can control. Take the lesson. Make the correction.

5:45 Move forward.

5:46 The same thing happens with uncertainty. Leaders love certainty. We want the spreadsheet to tell us exactly what will happen. We want the forecast to be perfect. We want the new hire to work out. We want the new program to succeed. We want the strategic plan to unfold exactly as written. Leadership doesn't give you those guarantees. Sometimes you can make a great decision and still get a bad outcome.

6:13 That's difficult for leaders because we naturally connect outcomes with decision quality. Good outcome, good decision. Bad outcome, bad decision. Life doesn't always work that way. You can prepare incredibly well and still get surprised. You can hire someone who interviews beautifully and discovers things six weeks later that it isn't working. You can launch a strong product at the wrong time. You can lead your team well and still lose a great employee because another opportunity was better for their life. Master the process. Release your obsession with guaranteeing the outcome. This is something aviation teaches very quickly too.

6:57 A pilot cannot control the atmosphere and You can't negotiate with the wind. You can't tell a thunderstorm that today's schedule is really important. You work with the conditions you have. You gather information. You understand the aircraft. You know your limitations. You make the safest decision available. Then you keep evaluating as conditions change. That mindset belongs in leadership. We spend too much time wishing reality were different. I wish my team understood. I wish we had more money. I wish corporate would listen. I wish the market was stronger. I wish this person would change. Okay, maybe all of those things are true. Now what? What can you do with the reality you actually have? That's the question. Your power

7:48 exists in the next decision. And here's something else I've learned. When you stop trying to control everything, you often become A stronger leader. You listen better. You make cleaner decisions. You become less reactive. You stop chasing every opinion. You stop treating every problem like a personal attack. You conserve energy for the things that actually require your leadership. Your team notices that. People trust leaders who remain steady when circumstances get messy. Your people don't need you controlling every variable anymore. They need you controlling yourself. That might be the most important part of today's conversation. Master yourself first.

8:36 Master your response when someone challenges you. Master your emotions when the plan changes. Master your preparation before the meeting. Master your communication when the answer isn't popular. Master your standards when it would be easier to look the other way. and master your discipline when nobody is watching. Those things belong to you. So here's a practical exercise I want you to try. The next time something is keeping you awake, grab a piece of paper, write down the problem, and then separate everything surrounding that problem into two categories. What belongs to me? What doesn't? And be ruthless about it.

9:24 If it belongs to you, Take action. Make the call. Have the conversation. Fix the process. Prepare better. Own the mistake. Make the decision. If it doesn't belong to you, acknowledge it and release it. Because carrying something you cannot control doesn't make you more responsible. It just makes you tired.

9:47 And tired leaders eventually start making tired decisions. Your leadership energy is already limited. spend it where it can actually change something. There will always be another problem, another opinion, another unknown, and another outcome that you cannot guarantee. Your job isn't to control the entire world around you. Your job is to become exceptionally good at controlling what belongs to you, your preparations, decisions, actions, standards, and your response.

10:30 Master what you can and release the rest. This has been the 7-Minute Leadership Podcast, and I thank you for listening.

10:38 For more Paul Falivalito podcasts, visit paulfalivalito.com.