Leadership isn't just about knowing what to do. It's about having the courage to act.

In this throwback episode of The Made For More Podcast, Ally Nitschke explores one of the biggest challenges leaders face: procrastination. Not the kind that shows up on your to-do list, but the leadership stalls that quietly delay decisions, slow momentum, and prevent teams from reaching their potential.

From purpose and team alignment to communication, change leadership, authority, focus, and leadership development, Ally breaks down the common areas where leaders get stuck and the real cost of waiting for the "perfect" moment.

As organisations continue to navigate change and increasing complexity, leaders who can move through uncertainty with clarity and courage will be better positioned to create momentum, build engaged teams, and drive meaningful results.

Timestamps

[00:02:36] The cost of procrastination.

[00:04:54] Courage in leadership.

[00:09:12] Purpose as a leader.

[00:12:21] Leadership challenges and procrastination.

[00:15:10] Leading change and authority.

[00:22:04] Lack of career opportunities.

[00:25:37] Executive presence and confidence.

[00:26:32] Executive presence masterclass.

Connect with Ally Nitschke

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Subscribe to my YouTube channel.

Welcome to the Made For More podcast. I'll

be sharing my experiences along with some actionable advice to

take your leadership to the next level. Introducing your host. It's

me, Ali Nitchke. I'm a leadership and courageous conversations expert

and a teller lover, a mother of four young boys, a wife, and

a dance floor junkie. I'm here to give you the motivation you need to

level up, lead yourself, lead your team, and your business. Let's

go. Hello,

and welcome to the Made for

More show. It's me, your host, Ali Nidjiki. I'm

thrilled to be here with you. Today, I'm recording on

a Friday, which is not normally my recording day. But you

know what I think about Fridays is it's always a good day

to have a Friday. And the reason I'm recording outside of

our regular schedule is I ran our leadership

Executive Summit yesterday. It's a program that goes for four

weeks, bringing women from different industries, different

organizations together and I love it. It's such a transformational program

and it's wonderful having women in

a room. There's always a different conversation. In contrast to

that, last week I was in Perth speaking at an event that was all

men and one woman and it was quite different energy.

wise, different conversations. So I think there's a place for all

leadership development, but being really aware of the different conversations that

happen depending on who's in the room. And

the reason I'm recording today instead of how I normally would

is because I got on my soapbox a little bit yesterday. If

you've heard me speak before, sometimes that happens when

I get deeply passionate about something. And yesterday's was

around stop apologizing. I've recorded a podcast on

that previously. You can check it out in the show notes or, you

know, scroll up. And I was

thinking about, you know, how often I get on my soapbox and don't really

share it with the broader audience. So today I've been thinking about

something. I'm still forming my thoughts around it. I'm still kind of pulling

it together. So excuse the jumping around. But

I thought it would be beneficial to get it hot off the press, hot

out of my mind. And what I wanted to talk about today is

the cost of procrastination or rather stalling in

leadership. So the last couple of months, in fact, probably 2024, has

been a year. It's the year of make or break for leadership

development. There's been a hold on all sort of professional development

for a number of years. And this year is really really

the year to put down the roots, to put down the foundations, to

set leaders up for success, for all the change, all

of the growth that is coming. Because we know when there's a downturn, after

that, there is a spike. And I think if leaders aren't

getting on board and getting themselves prepared right now, a

bit like a prepper, but not exactly, if they're not getting on board right

now, then they're going to be scrambling for the years to come. Organizations

are going to be scrambling for years to come. Businesses are going to

be scrambling to get their people up to speed

as well as keep up with the pace of change that's happening. So

today's topic is all around the cost of procrastination or

the cost of stalling and by now you know you've

listened to me enough to know that the landscape of leadership, it

is constantly shifting. There is no one size fits

all, there is no one and done and we've got it, yahtzee. It

is constantly changing and continual iterations, continual

self-development, continual professional development is absolutely paramount.

And I think for so many leaders, the skills that propelled them to their

current position is not gonna be enough. to ensure

their future success. And I think for a long time now, and I'm saying

a long time, I'm not talking decades, I'm talking a number of

years, but because change is happening so quickly, things

become irrelevant quite quickly. But for many leaders,

for many businesses, what propelled them to their current position, it's

not going to be enough to get them and set them up for their

future success. And for leaders to stay relevant and

effective now and into the future, they

need to be willing to reinvent themselves. They need to be willing to develop. their

leadership capabilities, they need to be courageous and

lean into that discomfort. And I think that's going

to be a key skill is how comfortable can you be with discomfort?

For those of you who have seen me talk, courage

is my jam. I love it. Ironically, when you talk about courage

for a living, it means that you need to lean into courage and put some

money where your mouth is. So I'm constantly having

to flex my courage muscle and sometimes it sucks. Sometimes

it's great and every single time it is absolutely worth

it. But when we're talking about leadership procrastination,

when we're talking about leadership stalls, I think there's a few

things that I want to share with you and I am still pulling through, pulling

through, pulling together my thoughts on this. So I'll do a much more

succinct version later down the track or perhaps through

an email or article or something like that. But most

recently I've been talking to leaders. 2024 Flavour has

been around executive skills, executive presence or

sophistication and the eloquence of leadership. leadership. And

I think that's really the key to continued growth. So if

we're talking about sophistication skills, or perhaps executive showcasing

skills that might resonate with you more, we need to delve much

deeper, focusing on individual behavior, focusing

on team behavior, focusing on your own mindset, focusing on teams mindset,

and really making sure that leaders are understanding the

bigger picture. There's a communication report that

came out last year around the cost of

poor communication, and it was something ridiculous, and I will quote this

in the show notes for those of you who need the detail, but 75% of

projects' failure was directly linked to leaders,

executives' inability to be able to describe

the big picture, so describe the vision, but then actually chunk that down so

that it made sense for their managers, their direct reports

right through to their frontline staff to go, okay, this

is how my piece of the puzzle fits into the

larger picture. And I think when we're sitting on procrastination and not

going, okay, I need to get ahead on this. I need to

really grab the bull by the horns and say, how

do I get better at communicating these

things. And a lot of that takes practice. You

can get there much quicker by working with a communication expert. If

you're looking for one, hit me up. I happen to know a very

good communication expert. But one of the quotes that

I've heard years ago from one of my coaches, Samantha Riley,

she said, you can't see the label from inside the jar. And

I love it. And still to this day, I'm like, oh, it gets me right

in the feels. And I think for so many leaders, we're so insular,

whether you're insular because you've been in the business for a long time, or

perhaps you've been in the industry for a long time, perhaps you've been struggling

a little bit with the status quo, that you forget that actually there's so

much more out there. And over the last couple of years, over the

last nearly six years now, I've had the privilege to

work with over 34 different industries and holy smokes,

it is amazing the shared wisdom, you know, very similar to

what happened yesterday in this Women's Summit of bringing people

together that aren't in the same think-stuck tank

that you are in. And it's not a criticism, I think it's just an

awareness that we need to keep in the forefront to go, Where

am I not demonstrating my executive showcase skills? Where am

I not demonstrating my sophistication as

a leader? And am I getting stuck focusing

on complexity skills rather than focusing

on the crucial development of that sophistication and

that eloquence? So I've got a few things that I think stop

leaders in their tracks. And this happens to leaders across all levels. So

I've been speaking with some CEs this week that have been demonstrating

some of these stalls. I've been speaking to some team leaders this week. So it happens

at all levels of leadership. There is no, we've passed

that level and now we've unlocked stalling. No,

you may have heard the saying of new level, new devil. Yes, you

may have also heard the saying of new level, Same devil, it just

comes in a different shape or form. So one

of them, and I think there's maybe 6 or 7, I'll count as we go. One

of them is around like Purpose still. So what is your purpose as

a leader? What is your leader's purpose? And yesterday, we did

a deep dive on this. You may or may not have attended. one of my

leadership blueprints workshops in the past, but

essentially like who are you right into your core?

Who are you as a leader and what does that actually mean?

But also how do you create meaningful and inspiring organizational

stories and business stories that have purpose so

that everyone in the business can get behind it and say, yeah, Hand

on heart, this is what I'm about. And I think when leaders

fail to make that connection, when leaders procrastinate on,

oh my goodness, air quotes, what is the right thing to do as

opposed to going for it? And we can spend a long time

in perfectionism. I am luckily someone that does not suffer from

perfectionism. I'm not even a recovering perfectionist. I just don't

like wasting time. So get on with things fairly quickly. But

how can you as a leader, how can your leaders really

start to tap into who they are, what they're about and create that

meaningful and inspiring organizational story, business

story that is filled with purpose. Stop

sitting on the fence and just do it. The next one I think is

all around teamwork makes the dream work,

but leaders inability to Get teams to

align for high performance. I love working with high-performing teams. I

got my leadership stripes with incredibly high-performing individuals and

as a collective made a high-performing team and got

to lead that, which was wonderful and also a very easy

introduction to leadership when, you know, people are already doing

the right thing. But something that I've noticed most recently is

around decision-making stalls. So most

of the CEs that I speak to, they know that their teams need some kind

of professional development, they need some help, they are well and

truly stuck. But

it tends to take a long time for them to make a decision to

engage somebody to help them get into it, actually set the standard for

what high performance is. And I know that certainly

for some of the leaders I speak to is we're always waiting. We're always waiting for

something to happen. But the thing about waiting is there's always

going to be something going on, right? You know, whether

they're waiting for an organizational structure change, to

come into play and then they'll be able to make the decision around how to develop

their staff or whether they're waiting to recruit some new

talent on the team and we better wait for them to come on board before we do it

next. Or perhaps there's some new legislation and policies coming into

play. Oh, we'll wait for that to happen and then we'll do X, Y, and Z. Oh,

we're really busy, busy, busy. We'll

wait until we've finished being busy before we focus

on bringing the team together for high performance. And I see this as

a real stumbling block. Because I think there's

such an opportunity to get some really quick wins on the board to remove

busy, for one, to help teams perform together early on.

But there's such a missed opportunity of, you know, 12 months down the track, there's so much

to fix up and mend that could have been done much quicker.

So I do see that as a problem. in leaders journey

is just taking too long to go, actually, we're going to

call out this problem and we need to fix it. Of course, if

you've got a new... Thank you so much for joining me today. If

you enjoyed this episode on the Made For More podcast, please make

sure you subscribe to receive future episodes. And

of course, five-star reviews are always welcome on the Apple podcast.

If you'd like a copy of the show notes or any of the links mentioned today,

check out madeformore.com.au forward

slash podcast. And of course, if we aren't connected already,

you can find me in all the usual places. Ali Nitschke on

LinkedIn, ali.madeformore on Facebook

and Instagram. I hope you have an awesome week and

I'll catch you again soon. Bye bye. person

starting next week, wait, wait a week. But

if it's, you know, an idea that's not

even really coming to fruition yet and there's some lag time, just

go, go for it. Dive in. We don't need to sit and wait for

things to be perfect because newsflash things will

not be perfect. However, you'll get closer to perfect by really

embracing the problems that you're experiencing and going, Hey, I need some

help. And can we get this done? fairly quickly. I

don't want it to, I don't want to put it in the calendar. I don't want to put it in

the diary. I don't want to put a placeholder for nine months down

the track because by then there's going to be even more to clean up.

So what I'd really encourage you to do is recognize perhaps you've

got a teamwork stall or some teamwork procrastination.

are happening? If so, that's OK. Awareness is the first step.

What can you do about it to remove the procrastination

barrier? Number 3, we're up to, and I think

this really affects leaders at an individual level rather than the team

that I talked about just before, but stakeholder or

influence stalls. So most recently, this year, it's

all around, How do I influence people? I had a really in-depth conversation

this week with a exec leader who

works in a male-dominated industry and is struggling to influence

the key stakeholders, some of the peers, to get the ball rolling,

to get sign-off on projects, to really get

their buy-in to help assist her and work with her

so that the teams can work together and the organisation can really meet some

of its key KPIs. And I think influence,

I mean, I'm a communication expert. I love communication. And

we forget how

easy influence can be just with a few little tweaks and understanding how

people work. But stakeholder influence stall.

is a problem that all leaders are going to face at some point in time.

I think a leader's greatest skill, greatest asset that they can have

is their ability to communicate well, whether it's communicating to

influence, whether it's communicating to engage, whether it's communicating to

inspire. How do you Get your message across.

How do you get seen? How do you get heard as a leader

so that people go, hey, I'm actually going to listen to her, him,

because what they're saying is going to help me and getting

that buy-in early on. Number

four, and this is going to be a problem for, I don't know, I think for

Evermore, is around leading change or the

stall. the procrastination on leading change. We

know that not everybody loves change. I am someone that

really likes change. We moved house recently and I did

not like that change. As someone who embraces change at

every opportunity, I am still not coping with

not knowing where my things are as we unpack in

our new home. So change affects people really

differently at different stages of life, but we also know that change

isn't going anywhere. It is, it's here to stay. It's happening

faster than ever before. And I think leaders need

to recognize that they need to get on board, get on the front foot

and actually lead the change. So lead the change, drive the

change, communicate the change. When you're sick of saying it, you're probably

finally getting some cut through. But how do you effectively lead

change? And are you procrastinating on sharing change because

you know that there's gonna be a negative response? Which

can happen, absolutely. And going, okay, I'm going to anticipate that.

I know what's happening. I know that whoever it happens to be is probably the

least likely person that wants to embrace change. How

can I get them on board really quickly? How can I navigate the change? How

can I lead the change? So that it doesn't become a procrastination

hurdle for you. Now, number five,

this one, this is probably gonna be a bit of a controversial opinion.

I will share it and let me know if you don't like

it. If you do like it, let me know about that as well. But

an authority stall. Now, I

think authority gets a bad rap. These days, I think we forget

that many of our leaders, particularly our

senior leaders, our execs, even our CEs, you are in a position

of authority, which means that at the end of the day, you ultimately

need to make a decision. And I think during

No, pre-COVID times, there was a high emphasis on

collaborative leadership, consultative leadership, and

yes, absolutely, there is a time and a place that is consultative

and collaborative leadership is incredibly important. What

I saw happen during the crises of COVID is

that leaders were there going, I'm gonna consult, I'm going to collaborate,

I'm gonna check in with everyone, whereas there actually needed to

be a decision that got made. They needed someone at the front I

called it lighthouse leadership. There's one of the really first episodes

of the Made for Morgue podcast actually was a panel on lighthouse leadership. So

leaders that made decisions really quickly to lead their

team. And I'm not saying this needs to happen all the time. Absolutely not.

But I do think that sometimes leaders shy

away and procrastinate on making a decision and saying, actually,

this is my authority. I need to pull the trigger on

this, so to speak, because they don't want to be seen

as authoritative. Let me know what

you think about that one. I think there's a place for decision making. I think

people need to be led sometimes. I think we absolutely need to

empower people to make decisions. But ultimately, as a leader, you

need to really own that responsibility, own the

gravity of that responsibility to make those decisions. So

do you have an authority stall or an

authority procrastination? Let me know. I

think we're up to number six now.

Yes, we are. A focus stall, or

perhaps it's a clarity stall. And we

know that multitasking is not very effective.

She says multiple tabs open right now. Do as

I say, not as I do. No, I'm joking. But having a lack

of clarity can really really

stole you from being able to make progress. You may have heard me say it

a thousand times before, if you don't know where the target is, how can

you possibly know where to point the arrow? Where do

you know, sorry, how do you know where to prioritize and allocate your

time and your energy so that you're getting maximum impact. And

I think for leaders who are unclear, and sometimes this shows

up as them being busy, if you're too busy to

make a plan to get clear, then that is a very good indication to me

that you need to pull the plug, hit pause, slow

down to speed up and go, what is it that I'm actually trying to

achieve here? I need to get clear. I need to get clear on

the goal. I need to get clear on the objective. I need to get clear on what my

week looks like or perhaps even your day if you've got a bit of a

runaway day. But, you know, perhaps you've got a focus or

a clarity stall or a bit of procrastination there. And I'm

wondering what does that actually cost you? Lucky

seven. I love sevens, groups of seven. I think Why?

Why do we love 7 so much? But the Lucky 7 is all around a

leadership development stall. Of course, I'm in the leadership development business.

I'm a leadership development junkie. I love it. I love

working with leaders. I love working with businesses to help their people be

better. I also invest a ridiculous amount

of money each and every year on my own development because I

need to. I love it. I've loved it since I had my very first

introduction to professional development, but it's so important because

when we are not growing, we're stalling. We are

staying stuck and we can't allow that to happen anymore.

In leadership, I was just reading through an article from People

to People that had pulled together some research. They're a recruitment company,

global recruitment company, that I did a roadshow with last

year. But some of the data that's coming out of there are

around trends for attrition and how are we losing people and

attracting people. And I think it was 76% of...

No, it wasn't, Ali. Let me just actually pull that up so that I don't tell you guys a

porcupine. on it. Oh

no, where'd it gone? This is why we should prepare

these things earlier so that it's

not a problem later on. I am actually going to bring this up. No,

I think it's 55. 55% of people are

leaving. So in 2024... Let me start it again. For those of

you who like to follow a beginning, a middle and an end, I did say it was going to jump around a

little bit. In 2024, the

leading reason for people leaving their jobs. So

whether that's you as a leader, whether you're responsible for making sure

that we've got some retention happening, But in 2024, the

leading reason that people are leaving their businesses, leaving

organisations, leaving their roles in Australia is around

lack of career opportunities. And

I was having a conversation just yesterday actually with someone, a HR professional

around reward and remuneration and going, what is it that people

actually want? And, you know, if we're having a look at the data and making

some data based decisions going, okay, what

are the career opportunities that are available to my people as

a non-negotiable? Because it may, it will, it always is.

a more economic and commercial decision to invest in their own

career development than it is to lose them, find another person,

recruit. train them up and get them up to speed. So it

could be biased. I am 100% committed to the

fact that I think it's so important to invest in your people.

They're your most valuable asset. But do you have a leadership development

stall similar to the examples I gave earlier? You know, are you waiting

for things to get perfect before you go, actually, it's

time to put in place a development program? We need to

bring our group together. We need to have a strategy day. People

are really struggling. I'm going to have a look at what development there is

available to them. So that's the seven. We've got purpose, purpose,

stall and procrastination, teamwork, influence, leading

change, authority. I'd love to know your thoughts on

that. Clarity. and then also leadership

development and failing to invest in the development of future

leaders, up and coming leaders, senior leaders, exec leaders

right through. It's such an important skill to have

now and absolutely necessary into the future. I'm

going to leave you with that thought. I would love to know if you

suffer from any of these procrastination stalls,

leadership stalls, and what is it actually costing you?

I do have some dollar figures behind it. So if you are interested in

the cost of procrastination, shoot me an

email, ali at madeformore.com.au. I'm

working with a number of execs at the moment and

what they have been looking for, what they have been asking for is

confidence. You know, I want a little bit more confidence. I want to appear more confident.

I want to be able to confidently walk into a room.

And I think confidence is the language that we've we've

acquired and we've learnt to use over time, but what they're really

looking for is to be noticed, to be

heard, to be recognised, because each of these people that I'm working

with are exceptional in their own right. They are highly qualified,

they're highly experienced, they know their shit. And

I think, yes, confidence, absolutely. Confidence is

the by-product though of what they actually need.

So I know that confidence is really courage compounding.

The more that we step into the scary moments, the more that we step

into the limelight, the more that we take risks and do things that are outside of

our comfort zone and really lean into this

muscle of courage, the more I see them really flourish

and their confidence builds. But I think it's even more than that. And

I think now more than ever, when people are wanting to be noticed

and recognized for their unique talents and

the brilliance that they already are is it's really around presence.

How do they get noticed when they walk into a room? How do they exude that

executive presence? How do they communicate eloquently and

clearly and with some passion and purpose? so

that they can be noticed and share their expertise, which

is why I've pulled together our Executive Presence Masterclass.

It's happening in Melbourne on the 12th

of June, and I cannot wait. There's a

couple of spots. left for some very exceptional

leaders who are really sick of being looked over,

sick of not being heard, sick of being a little bit nervous

when it comes to presenting to their team or presenting to

their cohort, presenting to the board. And how do they

get their swagger back? What's their style? What is

their cadence around how they build some of that executive

presence? So if that is on your to-do list or

your to-da list for this year in 2024, I

would love for you to join me on the 12th of June

in Melbourne for the Executive Presence Masterclass. All

of the details can be found on the website madeformore.com.au forward

slash events. If you have any questions, feel free

to flick me an email, give me a call and yeah, let's

talk about what your goals are for building your own

executive presence. I'll send

you my findings, but I'm not going to go through that right now. As

always, if you have enjoyed this session,

if you have enjoyed this show, feel free to subscribe, like, share

it to your friends, your colleagues. That helps us get

noticed more and more and helps other leaders on their own

leadership journey. I'll leave you with

this one thought. You do need to absolutely slow down

to speed up. So take a moment, take a deep breath, go outside, get

some fresh air so that you can have some clarity to figure out

what is next for you. Bye