Jody Holland (00:10.658)
Hey guys, Jody Holland here with Mike Grigsby, Megan Slaughter, and Malia Grigsby. And we've got a great show for you today. But I want to start with a just kind of a quick story. Back in the original design of the helicopter, helicopters are cool, by the way, but in the original design, they built in all kinds of redundancies, a backup fuel system, an easy way to switch over from one tank to another. They built in extra hydraulics in case the hydraulics went out. But there's just one piece that sits at the top of the rotor mast.
And it says nuts about the size of your fist. This nut that they tighten it down and it holds the rotor on. The problem is, it is the only thing that has to fail for the entire rotor to come off of the helicopter and it is lights out. Game over, nothing you can do to save it. The pilots started calling that the Jesus nut because they said if you're up in the air and that one nut comes loose, then
Mike Grigsby (01:03.327)
you
Jody Holland (01:07.286)
The only thing that's going to save you from that point forward is Jesus, because you're going to die. So I always thought that was kind of a funny story thinking about that, but I correlated that to what we go through in business when we develop that one person that is the go-to person. Now imagine they've been there for 22 years. They know everything there is to know about the accounting system, but nobody else knows. That one nut comes loose. Like they leave, they quit, they die. There's no backup plan.
Mike Grigsby (01:07.615)
Good luck.
Mike Grigsby (01:22.686)
Hmm.
Jody Holland (01:36.355)
And there's nothing that's going to save you. And so it's same thing in all these different areas. You know, the one person that has all the client relationships, the one person that knows the software, the one person that understands how things really work. You've got to build in redundancy. So we want to talk to you today about why it's not always a great idea to be the go-to person. So I want to start with Megan. This was kind of your idea for the show topic. So you kick us off and talk just a little bit.
Meghan Slaughter (02:04.469)
Think the consequences of being the go-to person are twofold. One, that puts a lot of pressure on the person individually and everything that they have to do, and that can lead to burnout. But also, the second one is what you were just mentioning that there's no fail-safe if they're not present and the organization needs them. We've talked a little bit about that in succession planning in the past, that sometimes it's that people just don't think about writing things down and putting a plan in place for.
while they're on vacation or if they retire and who they're gonna pass it along to. But a lot of the time I truly do think it's because we like to feel important. I mean, I can't deny it. I like to feel important. But if I make myself so important to the company that I am irreplaceable, that means they need me for everything and that can be exhausting over time. So you want to be able to share your work, delegate where necessary
Mike Grigsby (02:59.038)
Yep.
Meghan Slaughter (03:03.477)
But also, even if it's just writing out your responsibilities and how to accomplish some of your key tasks, that can go a long way if you're out of the office or if you're retiring.
Jody Holland (03:15.316)
Absolutely. So Mike, you've been a go to person quite a bit in your career.
Mike Grigsby (03:21.619)
Yes, yes. Do I have that look or you just kind of by osmosis, none of that?
Jody Holland (03:23.202)
How does that
Well, you're just I mean, honestly you and I are a lot the same. That's why I know that. So I'm gonna pick on you instead of picking on myself. But when you are the go to person, I mean Megan just talked about how it can be really exhausting, but what are what do you see as some of the other drawbacks, not just for you, but to the people around you, if you're the one that knows all the answers and other people do not?
Mike Grigsby (03:48.297)
Malia has seen this. have a photo. keep it as a favorites in my phone and it's a picture of a page that I took out of the Dr. Seuss book, Fox and Socks. And it says, like our Mike and this is why, when he does all the work when the hills get high. My name be a Mike, I took that out and I used to have that as just kind of a badge of honor. I can do all the work when the hills get high.
But the problem is, and Megan said this, you get exhausted doing all the work when the hills get high. Remember a few years ago, I looked at that picture again and the kids on the bike, they are just giddy and having a grand old time. And Mike has this look of consternation on him, like, why am I having to push this dang bike up the hill again? So I think not only does it breed exhaustion or result in exhaustion, I think it breeds contempt. And you set yourself up for failure.
because you're wanting to do that. As Megan mentioned, you're wanting to feel important. Everybody does. But when you become so important that you're irreplaceable, you actually foster contempt and you start finding ways to kind of either self-sabotage or even undermine the work that's going on in the organization because you know it's going to fall to you. I don't have any more hours out of the day. I'm not going to do this. So I'm going to self-sabotage or I'm going to undermine the work that's going on out there.
And it's important to realize that because a lot of people, most people I would say go into their job wanting to be of good use and good benefit. And by just that kind of our, you know, that mindset, people start heaping things onto you. Many people remember the book, you know, the one minute manager meets the monkey, right? You'll start taking on these problems that don't belong to you. And then suddenly, you know, a year or two or 30 years down the road,
You're like, Hey, this isn't in my job description. Like, well, you've had 30 years of doing this. How come you didn't say this, you know, 30 years ago that it wasn't in your job description. So I think contempt is one of the other things that it breeds.
Jody Holland (05:56.131)
And I hadn't thought about that from the contempt standpoint, but I totally agree that you do start to actually resent the organization. And it's not because the organization is quote unquote doing this thing to you, but a lot of times it's you don't know how to undo this thing that's been done to you. And we we done part of it to ourselves, which I think kind of makes it worse. And I I would imagine, Malia, in what you do with
you know, working with can a community organization and organizing and influencing, you get stuck as the hub quite a bit with all the spokes running into you. And that can pull you in a lot of directions. What's what are some things that you do to regain your balance when it feels like you are too much the go to person?
Maleah Grigsby (06:42.83)
I think the biggest thing that has been beneficial for me is not seeing myself as the the end point, but rather the connector. So being the if people come to me, that's great. I'm glad that I get to be a a point in the line, but I'm not the end of the line. So I either teach the the necessary skills or the necessary information. I teach that information so that they can go and do it and then they can continue on
Or I say, you know what, I can do that, I know how to do that, but you're actually gonna get way more benefit if you go talk to this person or if you go do this thing instead. so not necessarily being the stop, but the being the the person to move someone forward along.
Jody Holland (07:25.42)
And I I think getting people to listen to that can sometimes be a challenge of hey, we got to move forward. So I'm gonna kind of combine one thing that Megan said and one thing you said there. I I worked with this guy at a hospital in Louisiana and brilliant guy. He knew all the answers and ran the best dietary department I had ever seen in a hospital. The problem is he was so good at it, everything fell on him. So Lend a little bit of this, Mike. He had contempt for his staff.
Because they always asked him what to do. But if if they did something without asking him, because he naturally micromanaged, he would get mad at them. But he was mad at them for not doing the thing without asking him, even though it'd be mad at them if they did the thing without asking him. Then you add in the that second piece of it. He wanted to be valuable. And he when I started meeting with him, it's like second or third coaching session I did with him, he goes, I don't think you understand. I am irreplaceable.
And he was saying, I'm so valuable, I'm so important. And he kept going, why won't they promote me? Because he wanted to move up to the regional level. And the on, I think it was a third session. I go, here's the deal. If you are irreplaceable, you have made yourself unpromotable. You can't be moved up because they can't afford to lose you in that position. So he saw himself as the endpoint and the conduit. That he was the connector, but he was also the endpoint.
And it took a few more sessions to teach him how to let go and how to delegate. Delegating without following up is abdication. Delegating with a good follow-up plan is leadership. And the part we had to get him to is he would delegate and then get mad if it didn't get done and they didn't come back to him. So getting him to delegate and then say, hey, let's meet back at the end of this week and let's discuss how that went. When he started doing that, he's like, wow, that that works really good.
You had a level of accountability for the next level to learn, and you had a way to know whether or not the thing was actually done. So he was able to let go of his need to micromanage a little bit. But that's the part that I think is so hard for people is we stack the deck against ourselves and then get mad that the deck is stacked against ourselves. And I'm not saying I'm not guilty of it. I'm just saying it's not a good idea.
Mike Grigsby (09:30.548)
Yeah.
Mike Grigsby (09:46.431)
Thank
Jody Holland (09:49.707)
And it it is a constant struggle to make sure that you keep your balance. I know Megan's talk, she's taught quite a few seminars now on stress management and balance. So I'm gonna put you on the spot here. What's some of the the stress that happens to a person when they get overloaded? Like how do they react to that and then how can they get out of it?
Meghan Slaughter (10:11.729)
We often find ourselves in this chronic stress loop because we become stressed and overloaded, and then we are stressed about how much we have on our plate, and then we're stressed that we can't get rid of the stress, and then we just keep adding to it, and it's this cycle that seems to just bog us down. And the only real way to overcome stress is to face it head on. stress has long-term impacts psychologically and
physiologically. So it actually starts transforming parts of your brain if you don't deal with your stress. And it can lead to chronic fatigue and exhaustion. It can lead to poor decision making. And so it's really, really important that you do deal with your stress. and you take that in baby steps. I'm not expecting you to overcome this giant project in one day. But what can you do today
that can make some improvement, make some headway towards accomplishing what you need to accomplish. So you figure out what you need to do in small doses and then you map it out moving forward. And that's how you kind of overcome some of that stress of the entire project. And like you said, you can also delegate out to other people when that's necessary. but you're still staying involved in the process. So you're not letting go of it. You're not losing control.
You you don't have to worry about not having a handle on things, but you can let go of a piece of it. And I think that can be really helpful.
Jody Holland (11:50.575)
And I I will tell you so many times in the last twenty-seven years of doing executive coaching and training, I've talked to the person that was the knowledge bearer, the one that had all the information about something. In one particular case was an organizational development director who did all the training. It was for a pretty significant organization in the Fort Worth area. And I go, Well, you you've indicated that you're within a year of retirement. What's your plan for the transfer of knowledge? He goes,
What do you mean? I go, okay, so you know the stuff. Is it written down somewhere? That's what I'm asking. He goes, Nope. All up here. I go, well, what happens when you leave? He goes, not my problem. And I remember thinking, okay, that scares me. And the question I think a lot of organizations have to ask themselves is who is it that if in your organization, if they walked out, would be walking out with a
Mike Grigsby (12:42.163)
Thank
Jody Holland (12:47.454)
an amount of institutional knowledge that would make it very difficult to recover. And that's where those stretch assignments come in. And Mike, I know you've done a lot of the working with people in stretch assignments, especially when you were running the transit authority and things like that. So talk about some of how people could set up that stretch to the next level.
Mike Grigsby (12:52.051)
Yeah.
Mike Grigsby (12:58.981)
And.
Mike Grigsby (13:07.647)
Well, let me before I do that, I'll touch on the thing that you and I have been talking about for the last several years and it's the future of work, right? And you know, when you look at, we've, we've, we've kind of jumped into this topic from the position of the person who is the go-to person. Now I'll flip it around and say, if you're the organization that has a go-to person, you've created an element of, of organizational risk that is.
is being, there's a ton of pressure being applied, especially as the nature of work changes over the last 10 years and certainly what it's gonna look like in 2030 and beyond. The reality is it was easy to go to Betty or to go to Frank and let them be the person who was the go-to person who had all that information because typically they would be in that role for 20 plus years, maybe 25 years.
get the gold watch and retire and somebody would come alongside and have watched them along those times who had also been with the organization for a very long time. That kind of paradigm of work has changed and shifted and COVID was really the wake up call. It had already been happening, but COVID was the wake up call to that shift in work. The reality is now you might have a go-to person in your organization for three years or five years.
maybe seven years, I mean, you're talking about an old salty dog if you've been on a job for seven years, right? You're gonna lose that institutional knowledge on a more frequent basis. So you have to start thinking about how do you help those individuals, both from a promotional and from a career standpoint, because they're gonna inject more back into your organization, but you also have to approach it from a risk management standpoint.
a good friend of mine, he asked the question, goes, did you know or should you have known? if so, what did you do about it? If you knew Frank had all the knowledge and was going to retire in a year and you didn't do anything about it, that's right. That's not Frank's problem. That's you as the organization and you should have known that you should have done what you needed to do it to kind of manage that and mitigate that.
Jody Holland (15:18.338)
Yeah. And I I think setting up mentoring programs where you're passing knowledge from one person to the next is a good idea. I also believe in interviewing people and recording it. Interview them about their job, the most important things they do on the job, what that means. Now with things like AI summaries, you can record with otter.ai or Microsoft Teams or whatever, feed the transcript in and say, create a training plan based on what they just described on these.
Mike Grigsby (15:36.415)
Yes. Yeah.
Jody Holland (15:47.907)
Five key skills, which were boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And when you do that, you have accelerated your ability to transfer knowledge from one generational leader to the next generational leader so that we're actually ready for that shift. I think the loss of knowledge when the boomers started retiring like crazy, it was so epic that we started reinventing things. And I think that's part of the technology advancement that we've seen, but AI now allows us.
To create centralized knowledge repositories. We've been telling people, man, I've been telling people since the year 2000, you've got to be interviewing new people. You gotta find out what the key skills are that they do and how they do that job and how the next person who does the job can do it that good or better. And still to this day, people are like, we're so caught off guard that that person left. I'm like, really?
I've been telling you for a quarter of a century plus that you should be doing that. I I'm not sure why you're surprised by this at this moment.
Mike Grigsby (16:45.439)
That's right. They've had their retirement clock on the countdown on their desk for the last five years. should have seen it. I want to say something because it's essential for you to ask and find out what people are doing. That is crucial. The way you should look at it or the lens you should view that through though is what are they trying to accomplish, not how are they doing it.
Jody Holland (16:52.738)
Yeah. They've been there eighteen years.
Meghan Slaughter (16:52.905)
Yeah.
Jody Holland (17:12.576)
Okay. Yeah.
Mike Grigsby (17:13.919)
because if Betty or Frank has been here for 30 years, they are most likely thinking with their memory and not their imagination. So you need to think about what they're trying to accomplish and what is needing to be done because it could be a massive process gain if you can skinny down what Betty has been doing for the last three years or for the last 30 years or what Frank has been doing for the last 15 years. If you can skinny that process down to two steps instead of 17 or
two forms instead of 32, you're gonna get a massive efficiency gain out of that as you begin to transition from those go-to people.
Jody Holland (17:52.088)
Yeah. All right. Megan, Malia, which one of y'all's jumping in next? What do you want to add?
Meghan Slaughter (18:00.462)
I was just going to say as far as becoming the go-to person as well, when somebody comes and is trying to dump something on you and you're feeling overwhelmed, part of what you can do is turn it around on them and kind of use the Socratic method of if they come to you with a problem and they say, Well, I just can't deal with it, then you start asking them questions and you're trying to guide them in the right direction without giving them the answer.
So that they come to that conclusion on their own. And that's when they realize that, I actually can handle that and I don't need to dump it on you. And that used to drive me crazy when the Socratic method was used on me, but it's so effective because it gets the person to own responsibility for that outcome. And that's when they start, you know, really thinking for themselves. And in the future, you encourage them to do that before just trying to dump it on anybody else.
But take some time, reflect on it, walk through these questions that I've given you, come up with your own questions and really try to sort through it. Because becoming the bottleneck for your organization is not effective for anybody. It might feel good in the moment to be important, but it's going to cost a lot more down the road. And part of that cost is how overloaded you feel. So start teaching your people.
Jody Holland (19:14.787)
Yeah.
Meghan Slaughter (19:27.518)
as well in that process.
Jody Holland (19:29.454)
So I want to ask you a follow-up question, Meg. so what do you say to the person that's listening right now that knows that they're the bottleneck, but they're afraid to let go because it might not be as good if you know they let somebody else do the work?
Meghan Slaughter (19:44.416)
I would ask them why do they feel like they need to be the person to do that? Because I've been that person and I felt that and you know, I've joked about being a control freak in the past and I've come to realize it's not that I need control, but it's that I want quality. But can you get somebody else to provide that quality outcome as well? How can you be the connector, as Malia was saying, rather than the endpoint? Because y
If you keep yourself in that position forever, then we've talked about it. You're going to start resenting the people who come to you with that. So if you're finding yourself in that position, what can you do to let go of the control and allow somebody else to step into their potential? Because it's not just saying no to things, but it's allowing somebody else to become better and realize that they can do that thing as well.
Mike Grigsby (20:42.653)
Malia, you've used that Socratic Jedi mind trick before on people. How did you recognize it one and then how did you play it back to them?
Jody Holland (20:42.67)
You're gonna ask.
Maleah Grigsby (20:47.512)
Mm.
Maleah Grigsby (20:52.622)
Well, I was actually I was gonna make the comment. I think that it's a deeper as someone who's been the go to person and s as someone who's gone to the go to person, I think it's a deeper thing of needing to recognize for that go to person what are the things that they're the subject matter expert of. What are the like if you dwindle it all the way down, what is it that they're really, really good at? And then if you're the the person needing their their advice or whatever.
How can you grow in those areas so that you don't need to go to them as much? And then if you are the go to person, if let's say you have three three things that you're really, really good at for your organization, and then picking three different people that are on your team that are just below you and then kind of assigning those
topics to those people and kind of creating them as the new go-to or or instilling your your advice and and knowledge into those three people. So it's delegating, yes, you might be the the end all be all of certain information and you might have to help those those three people out and whatever. but it's also helping to kind of alleviate that it's like if you can't go to these three people that you've already tried, they don't have the answer, then you can come to me.
Jody Holland (22:05.036)
Yeah. So you're you're kind of spreading out you have more people that become the flow of information rather than just that single point. And that's to me, that's where the bottleneck actually comes from that Megan brought up is that we become the bottleneck when we hoard information. If you're the hoarder of how, that could go into a Dr. Seuss book right there. If you're the hoarder of how, you need to change now.
Mike Grigsby (22:30.866)
Okay, bye.
Maleah Grigsby (22:31.5)
Hehehe
Jody Holland (22:33.356)
So what advice then, Mike, would you give if somebody says, Okay, I know kind of the same question as Megan, I know I've been the hoarder of how. I know I've been the bottleneck in my organization. I don't want to do that anymore because I'm stressed and I'm burned out and I'm exhausted. How do I change?
Mike Grigsby (22:51.679)
I think, well, I mean, there's so many different thoughts to this. When Megan was talking about it, here's the thought that I had is that if you are the one that's holding onto it because you fear the lack of quality that's going to be there by the person you're delegating to, I think you should just own it and just acknowledge it's not going to be as good as you could do for the person doing it on day one. You weren't even as good as you are now on day one, right? Betty or Frank were back to them.
Jody Holland (23:19.694)
That's a good point.
Mike Grigsby (23:21.637)
They weren't as good as they are on day one. They've had 30 years to get really, really good at that. So first of all, just back off a little bit of the expectations for the person to deliver it. If it's their first time handling that task, give them some space, man. Let them breathe, let them learn. The reality would be take, you know, if you've got that kind of two by two matrix, right? Take the thing that's low frequency, low risk.
let them handle that task, right? Because if the blast radius is small, they'll get back on the horse, right? The other thing too is that the house doesn't burn down. So find those tasks that will build the confidence in somebody learning and allow them to grow up into it. You can't just set it and forget it. You've got to give them the runway and create the safety for them to be able to learn.
without being traumatized by it.
Jody Holland (24:20.174)
Yeah, and essentially like creating that growth mindset where it is okay to fail as long as you grow. I mean, that yeah it's truly the only way to grow is to get knocked down a few times. All right. So Malia, what are your what are your final thoughts on this that you want to share with people?
Mike Grigsby (24:26.111)
It's the only way you grow.
Maleah Grigsby (24:36.303)
I would say play the It's a Wonderful Life scenario. If you never were born and this whole process had to be ironed out before or without you ever existing, what would that look like? and then help other people react to that.
Jody Holland (24:52.184)
Megan, final thoughts?
Meghan Slaughter (24:54.185)
I would just say it's uncomfortable to learn new things. It's uncomfortable to let go of old things. But the only way that we can grow as individuals is by stepping into that uncomfortability, accepting it, and then growing through it. Because the brain is a muscle. So the more that you practice letting things go mentally, the easier it will become. And the more that you learn how to delegate, the easier that will become for everybody involved.
Jody Holland (25:24.79)
Excellent. Mike, last thoughts.
Mike Grigsby (25:26.911)
Yeah, you can't move up if you're tied down, right? If you are the thing that is tied to this or that is the thing that is tied to you, you won't be able to move and you certainly won't be able to move freely. you got to learn how to hold it like this, not hold it like this.
Jody Holland (25:42.979)
Yeah, open handed, not closed fist. And I I would just say from that movie Pure Country, there was a scene in there where the guy is talking to Dusty, who's George Strait, and he goes, Hey, you remember we went to the fair and you put a quarter in and you could watch this chicken dance. And I just love that dancing chicken. I just fed quarter after quarter in there. He said, What I didn't realize is every time he dropped a quarter in there.
The guy would reach around the back and turn the little knob and he turned up a hot plate under the stage and that chicken would just start dancing. I think what we don't realize a lot of times is we're the ones controlling the hot plate. And we keep turning up the hot plate on ourselves and we're just dancing chickens out there going, Why is it so hot out here? Why is there so much work to do? And so my challenge to you guys as we end this podcast is number one, don't be a dancing chicken, especially when you're the one that's controlling the knob.
Mike Grigsby (26:24.543)
yourselves, yeah.
Mike Grigsby (26:36.703)
All right.
Jody Holland (26:39.404)
And number two, if you are that one fail point in the organization, that single point of failure, like we talked about with the helicopter story, you need to build in some redundancies. It's not fair to you, and it's not fair to the organization to know that everything could fall out of the sky with one person leaving the organization. So prepare your organization, build your leadership potential, learn to delegate effectively, keep your perspective with the stress.
And understand just because somebody else did it different doesn't mean it wasn't as good. It's still a wonderful life and it's still going to end up okay. So I'm Jody Holland with Megan Slaughter, Mike Grigsby, and Malia Grigsby. Thank you guys for being a part of this. If you enjoyed this, make sure you share the podcast with your friends, your family, maybe some people you've never met before. It'd be fine to send it to strangers. But also give us your comments and your ideas. We we love your ideas on what we can do for shows. We will see you next time.
