#155 How My Global Director Client Transformed Her Work-Life Balance in Just One Week

Lucy Gernon (00:01.026)
Hello there, lovely lady, and welcome back to another episode of the 360 Leadership podcast. I hope your week is going well. Have you got your Christmas shopping done yet is the question. I am almost sorted. I have three children in case you’re new here. My eldest is 17. I have a 12 year old and an eight year old. So let me just tell you as they get older, it gets a lot more expensive, right? my goodness, like they want iPhones and PlayStations and

all of this, but I don’t know about you, but financial security and being able to take care of my family is such an important thing for me. And I feel really proud as a woman to be able to be independent financially. Obviously we have our husbands, right? Well, I have a husband and of course we’re equals, but there’s something very empowering knowing that you can provide for your family. I just love that. I think a lot of you do as well.

Anyway, if you are new here, I am Lucy Gurnon, your host for today. I am an award winning executive coach. I specialize in leadership, confidence, work life balance, positive psychology, all of the things to try to make your life 100 times easier than it is right now. And in this episode of the show, I’m going to be sharing a super inspiring story because I feel like I don’t tell you enough about the incredible results that my clients get.

because I want you to know what’s possible for you, because I know that when you work in the corporate world, I have been there. worked in pharma for almost like 20 years, very, very fast pace, you know, dealing with stakeholders all over the world, dealing with different time zones, dealing with different products, different complexities. Like there’s a lot that goes into being a leader in a corporation. And in my case, was a multinational. I know that you juggle so many balls.

I know that you put work first, you put family first and often you don’t get the recognition or maybe you are getting the recognition but at what cost? Like what’s the cost? Usually when women join 360Liters Club and come work with me, they’re feeling overwhelmed, they’re feeling overworked, they’re feeling overlooked, they’re feeling stuck, they are not sure.

Lucy Gernon (02:22.796)
how to get off the hamster wheel because I think the culture that you surround yourself in makes you think that this is the only way. And what I love is seeing the breakthroughs when my clients come to work with me and they realize that actually they held all the power all along to make changes and they realize, hang on a minute, I am in reactive mode. I want to be more strategic. It’s like, help me, how do I do this?

Today, I want to share a story with you of one of my clients who joined 360 Leaders Club and she joined and we had a one-to-one session to start with because she did a hybrid approach. So when you join 360, you get obviously all the group coaching, all the training and sometimes people will opt for private coaching as well, which we can always talk about. And in our in our first private session, we were looking at her goals.

Because I’m very results focused. I want to make sure if you’re investing in yourself, and again, it is a big investment to join 360 right now as I record this, it’s 4,995 euros. So it’s absolutely not for everybody. It’s only for people who really get the value of professional development. And even at that, it’s, it’s scary, right? Sometimes people find it really scary. So I take that very seriously. I want to make sure that, you know, as much as I can as a coach, I’m setting everybody up for success.

So we were in our session and we were looking at, right. Well, what were her goals? And she was just saying it’s all about time. So I was able to give her my we we did a work life balance challenge back in November where we looked at the 10 golden rules for work life balance. And we looked at I’m going to share actually a couple of them with you today. Those rules just because I want to be generous as Christmas time.

And you get all of the tools and support you need to for your unique situation. So, you know, I love this podcast. I know a lot of you find it super valuable. Thank you so much for coming here and showing up every week. The podcast advice is very generic, obviously. I don’t know your specific situation, but what I love about when I get to work with you personally is I get to give you like tailored strategies, tailored tools, everything from.

Lucy Gernon (04:43.296)
you know, leadership to time management, to mindset. And as an experienced coach and somebody who’s highly empathetic, very intuitive. I intuitively know usually what people need very quickly. So this particular lady, I won’t say her name because I don’t have permission and I would never, ever share anyone’s name without getting permission. But she had said that she wanted to set aside time to, you know, really create the structure for her global team.

She wanted to give the team clarity on their roles because she had been putting off doing this for ages and it was causing her stress, was causing her team stress. She really wanted to have a three to five year plan. So I told her, explained to her how to really optimize it and create a strategy. I gave her a hack actually, and she was like, my God, I never would have even thought of that. And she ended up having an amazing strategy document at the end of it.

She wanted to set boundaries. And then at the end, she was like, you know what? She’s like, I really want to go back to yoga. I want to go for meet one of my friends. I want to have a drink. So I have a drink. Go for a walk. Sorry, that’s just me. Probably wanting wine right now. Coming up to Christmas. But so we did the session. She started to see what was possible for her. And I gave her a personalized road map to start off her journey. So I gave her my more time and five strategy. I gave her my tools on setting boundaries.

We talked about strategic planning. gave her a tool, really, really simple tool that I use for strategic planning as well. And that was in our one-to-one session. And I think it was only, I’m going to say like four or five days later, she came in for our regular group coaching sessions. So we have group coaching sessions twice or three times a month. Like there’s lots of opportunities. I try to really make it as supportive as possible.

to make sure people have options to come to different sessions. I think it was like four or five days later, she came. She was like, yeah, got that strategy document done. I have set up a meeting with my boss tomorrow to communicate the new strategy. I’ve told the team, I’ve given them an idea. I’ve signed up for yoga class and like I cannot tell you how rewarding it was for me to just see this girl take action and

Lucy Gernon (07:07.2)
That all happened because of this session that I did with her, because she committed and she was ready to rock. And just to see her take action, she didn’t think she could. She had procrastinated. She just was at a stage where she was done and she is so excited to keep going. And what I love is that she’s literally only at the start of her journey. She’s taken massive action at the start. And I look forward to continuing to support this particular lady over the next weeks and months, because

all the challenges, the leadership challenges that you guys are faced with, like they’re hard and they can literally mess with your head. They can affect your sleep. They can affect your mental wellbeing. They can affect your appetite. They can affect everything. So I just love being there in the moment with the rest of the community to provide the support, tailored personalized support that’s needed, the tools, the training to be able to navigate the situations literally like that.

so that you’re not on your own, right? But what I wanted to do is to share some of the tools so that you can begin to put some of them into action today. So I’m excited to give you this. And we are obviously accepting applications to work with me now in 2025. So if you’ve been listening to this podcast for a while and you’re thinking, I’d love private one-to-one coaching, but then the 360 leaders club, the group sounds really good. I don’t know which one it is.

All you need to do is head over to lucygarnon.com forward slash apply, submit an application to work with me. I will review your goals. I will review your application. And if you qualify, you know, if you’re at the right level, if I feel like I’m the right coach for you, we will have a call and we can have a chat really and just see, am I the right coach for you and is 360 right for you or whatever it is. And if it’s not, I can always recommend somebody else. There’s never ever any pressure.

So yeah, 2025 applications open, head over to lucygurland.com forward slash apply. All right. So I’m going to tell you now, last month on 360, I gave the girls a, it was a work life balance challenge. And it was so cool because we have our dedicated app with our community where we hold each other accountable and we do challenges every month. And this month was all on balance. So we were.

Lucy Gernon (09:27.874)
putting in prompts into the group around setting boundaries, around logging off on time. And it was really, cool to see the girls, you know, just taking these seemingly small actions of saying no or seemingly small actions of delegating something. But actually by the end of the week, they realized that they have began to change behaviors. And then, you know, obviously they can continue that. And as part of that challenge, we gave them a, I love creating new tools, by the way. I’m such a creative person.

If I even get a sniff that somebody has a problem and I don’t have a tool or a training, I’ll be gone to create it. So I created this guide on work-life balance and there’s 10 rules that I live and die by. And it’s just a nice little document that you’re going to get. Even if you join now, you’re going to get access to that straight away. And one of the rules, rule number one is what I call results-focused thinking. I’ve spoken about it before, but I’m going to tell you about it again. So if you’re multitasking, please come back to me.

Results focused thinking is so important for work life balance, because when you know the results you are trying to create or the tangible specific outcomes that are aligned to the business strategic direction or the operational business goals or the revenue goals, then you can get super clear on what meetings you go to and what meetings you don’t. OK, the biggest problem you face, my lovely lady, if you’re like any of my clients is your triple booked half of the time, you don’t.

have any white space, you don’t know where you’re going to get your work done. And that’s just totally inefficient. OK. And it doesn’t mean that you’re a bad leader or that you’re not committed. If you’re not at every meeting, it means you’re actually doing the work that’s going to grow the business, which is why you’re being employed. All right. You’re going to be doing the work that’s going to grow the business, which is why you’re employed. So you’ve got to get into results. Focus thinking is rule number one. All right.

I want to give you another one of the rules. There’s 10 of them. I’m to give you rule number six, which is boundaries against something that is very, very difficult for a lot of people to actually set and implement boundaries. And the reason is there’s a whole human psychology behind this. It all goes back to your ego state. It goes back to your childhood. And we had a really good guest expert in 360 earlier this year called John Fleming.

Lucy Gernon (11:53.6)
And he did a training for everybody on transactional analysis and communication and ego states. And it was really, really good to see the mindset shifts and 360 ladies. If you’re some of you are listening and you’re like, I wasn’t there for that training. Don’t worry. If you go into the community, the podcast, the private members only podcast, you can catch the audio replay or if you want to see the video training, all you need to do is to go into our tools tab and you’ll see it under the leadership module. I’m pretty sure.

And if you can’t find it, just reach out to the community manager and we will be able to get you sorted. Okay. But it’s really, really important that you set boundaries. And the first step in setting boundaries is about pausing. How often do you pause and ask yourself, how do I want people to treat me? What are my non-negotiables? Even have you ever really thought about that?

We’re not even at the stage of telling them. We’re only at the stage of what do I actually want? I want to be heard. I want to be seen. I want to have space. Get super clear on what you want. OK, get super clear on what you want. And back in episode number three, I believe, when it was called the Powerhouse Revolution podcast, which was the old name. I did an episode on setting boundaries, so please go and listen to that episode because I walk you through my three step methods that I give my clients and it’s in there for you for free. So go back and listen to that.

got to set boundaries. I’m to give you a rule number eight as well before I let you go, which is delegate with confidence. Delegate with confidence. And again, I have a free guide. I do, guys, I do try to give you so much free value in this podcast. I think you appreciate it. But I’m literally I do give you quite a lot. It is generic. And I know, you know, the reason people work with me is for the personal support and the real time, like actually being able to connect.

But there’s a lot of gold in this podcast. So go back and I’m sorry, go and download my work life balance guide. If you want my prioritization tool, it’s called the more more time prioritization matrix. And it literally tells you what to delegate, like tells you what to delegate. So go grab that at lucygarden.com forward slash balance. But you’ve got to get good at delegation. And one of the biggest mindset shifts, I think a lot of us need to make when it comes to delegation is

Lucy Gernon (14:22.38)
dropping our standards a little bit and taking the time to explain, over communicate the ask, get clear yourself on what the ask is. I remember so many times my boss like sending me off, telling me to do something. And I’m the questions person, like I’m that person that needs to understand. I’m really, really annoying. And I remember he’d be like, just go try it yourself. And I’d like, yeah, but what are your expectations? Like what’s your vision?

And he used to get frustrated with me and I get he was trying to develop me and trying to push me and get me to think. And I’m all for you doing that for your team, but you’ve got to tell them your vision. You’ve got to tell them what’s the expected result. If you want them to prepare a slide deck, for example, massive thing. see so many women like terrified to go in and present to senior leaders in case they’re asked something. Don’t say come present to me on the, on the Q4.

financials, get specific. Do you want graphs? Do you want the top three gaps? Do you want the top three things that are working really well? Like give people direction when you delegate because it makes the whole process so much easier, right? So, so much easier, but go grab that Work-Life Balance Guide, get the tool and it should help. lucygarnon.com forward slash balance.

The other thing then is, you know, I think what’s really, really important and going back to my client who joined 360 and is now in the process of, you know, it’s a process, right? This professional development stuff, we do a lot of, try to give everybody a lot of quick wins at the start because it’s really important that you get momentum and that you’re excited because it’s the excitement and the energy that carries you through to do more. But you’ve got to be willing to kind of do the work for yourself as well. You’ve got to be willing to.

step off the hamster wheel and remind yourself how short life is guys. Like you deserve to be able to take care of your health. You deserve to have time in the evenings to do something other than work. Monday to Friday does not have to be all work because that means like what 80 % of your life you’re like working. Come on now, right? We know if you’re anything like my age or.

Lucy Gernon (16:40.002)
40s, 50s, and not 50 yet, but some of you are who listen. Like you can honestly have it all. I promise you, can, but it just requires big mindset shifts, big mindset shifts, big strategy changes, but you can do it. Okay. You can absolutely do it. And if you are ready to do more in 2025, if you’re ready to prioritize your development, become the best leader you can be, be more effective, reclaim your time, be more strategic.

360 leaders club might just be perfect for you. All right. It’s for corporate women and leadership. It is specifically designed for women in the business world. everything that I have designed is what you in mind. I know you manage some of you manage time zones. Some of you manage site teams. Some of you are on like site leadership teams. You’re some of you are on global teams. Some of you are operations. Some of you are finance. I have women, guys from, you know, pharma, financial services, consumer goods, tech.

like retail, like all of the industries and everything that I have designed in 360 when you work with me is designed with you in mind. So if you want any more information on it, just always feel free to reach out because I would hate for you to think that your organization’s culture is the only way that it has to be. If you want to make changes, you’ve got to do something different. So please just make sure that you are taking good, good care of yourself. Good care of yourself. All right.

So that is it for this week’s episode of the show. I hope you enjoyed that little story showing you what’s possible. And again, we are accepting applications for 2025. So just head over to lucigaron.com forward slash apply if you want to work with me or if you know you want to join 360Liters Club and you’re not interested in one to one at all, you can go to 360LitersClub.com forward slash apply and always feel free to reach out any questions or feel free to DM me on anything. Really, I love hearing from you. All right.

I’m talking gibberish now. If you’re still here at the end, I appreciate you. I hope that you have a great rest of your week and I’ll see you again. Same time, same place next week. Bye for now.