Ep 152: Helping your members take action - part 2

00:51 Welcome to Unfrazzle, a podcast for solo business owners with a big vision who are ready for a kinder more sustainable approach to productivity. I'm Louise Miller and each week i share bite-sized insights to help you step away from the hustle stop faffing and stay focused so you can make your brilliant ideas happen and make a bigger impact in the world Before we dive into today's episode, if you enjoy what I'm sharing here on Unfrazzle and you'd like to support the podcast. You can buy me a cuppa by going to BuyMeACoffee.com slash Louise Miller and making a one-off donation. I'll pop a link to that in the show notes Okay grab yourself a cuppa and let's get started

01:30 In part one of this three-part series I talked about why your members might be struggling to take action on all of the brilliant things that you're teaching them and how giving them space to pause, reflect and choose is key to helping them move forward. So you might already have planning calls or some kind of accountability built into your membership So why isn't that always doing the job? First of all, if your planning sessions are focused solely on your membership they are unlikely to work and that is because these sorts of plans don't factor in all of the other things that your members are dealing with. All the other life stuff that it's easy to forget about when you're feeling awe-inspired and excited but that will trip people up and prevent them from doing the things they say they'll do And another thing I see quite often um you know in my experience and the experience of my clients

02:14 The planning sessions offered as part of a membership don't allow for people's differences. So I had a client once who was told to break projects down into tasks and then decide when she was going to do those task using a very rigid spreadsheet, and she spent hours doing that and then never looked at that spreadsheet again! And the membership owner who suggested that to her had very good intentions – they thought they'd done their job in helping her take action but all they actually did was give more to-do that didn't help her in the slightest. So much of the conversation around productivity, and I see this particularly inside memberships. So much of the conversation focuses on accountability

03:07 But accountability doesn't work for everyone. So if you're one of the people for whom that approach doesn't work, if you are a rebel for example no amount of accountability is going to work for you and if you are a rebel your natural instinct is going to be to fight back against it so actually that accountability might end up being counterproductive I ask all of my one-to-one clients to take Gretchen Rubin's four tendencies quiz when we start working together. It is a framework that shows how different people respond to inner and outer expectations, and it is fascinating! I have got a whole podcast episode about that which I will include the link in the show notes. My clients are often questioners and rebels in Gretchen Rubin's framework, and they require a whole different approach than obliges. And obliges are the only people who need accountability in order to meet expectations So that well-intentioned membership owner who asked my client to break things down into a spreadsheet... In Gretchen Rubin's framework they were an upholder meaning that if something is written down or on their calendar they will do it no matter what. That person didn't understand that just because that's what works for them

04:13 That doesn't mean it's going to work for everyone and in fact upholders make up a very small percentage of the population. Another person I once worked with couldn't understand why, no matter how hard he tried to get organized and create a structure for himself. He was never able to follow through or stick with it long term and when we realized that he's a rebel in Gretchen Rubin's framework suddenly it all made sense of course he's not going to follow through with the structure that he set for himself The motto of the rebel is you can't make me and neither can I so once we've figured that out We could try some different approaches to help him get the important stuff done So Obviously, I know you can't provide bespoke one-on-one productivity support in your membership. That's not the point of running a membership so that's not why i'm suggesting all i'm saying is if you are offering Support with implementation in your membership But it isn't flexible enough to cater for all four tendencies and to allow people to find what works for them within that There will always be some people for whom those things don't work and as if that wasn't complicated enough

05:16 We've got some neuroscience that we need to talk about here as well. So, most productivity tools and planning sessions are designed to engage your cold executive function which is the part of your brain that plans and prioritises and stays focused so in theory if you're talking about productivity that sounds ideal doesn't it but in practice it's only half the picture Because it completely ignores your hot executive function. Your hot executive function responds to emotion, responds to stakes not the sort of steaks you eat kind of high-stakes situations! It responds to motivation and it can quietly sabotage your best intentions pulling you towards easier tasks more interesting distractions or just straight into procrastination so

06:00 So most standard planning sessions are built entirely around cold executive function systems, which is precisely why your members may make a plan but not act on it. What your members actually need is a plan that speaks to both systems. To the cold executive function that gives them the structure, the priorities and consistency and the hot executive function that gives them emotional connection to why their work matters And when their plan integrates both of those things your members won't just be organised they will also be motivated to follow through So although it's easy to think all you need to do is include a quarterly planning session and offer some sort accountability in order for your members to take action

06:39 As you can see, it's not quite that straightforward. And in the final installment of this three-part series I'm going to walk you through what actually does work and share a simple framework that you can use with your own members whatever their tendency that will integrate that hot and cold executive function for them so subscribe to Unfrazzle wherever you get your podcasts just to make sure you don't miss it and I'll see you again soon Thank you for listening to Unfrazzle. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and share it with a friend who needs a dose of calm productivity in their life and I'd love it if you could leave me a rating or review as that will help more people discover the podcast And if you're struggling with productivity right now, take my free assessment to find out what's really getting in the way of you getting things done. It takes less than three minutes to complete and I'll send you tailored resources and insights that will help based on your score You'll find that at louisemiller.uk slash quiz and there's a link for that in the show notes So thank you so much for being here and I look forward to seeing you next time