#181 The 2-Week Summer Holiday Protocol: How I Prepare My Leadership Team and Clients Before Unplugging (So I Return to Zero Emergencies, Not Chaos!)

Lucy Gernon (00:02)

Are you heading off on your summer holidays soon? And are you worrying about what you’re going to come back to when you get back to work? If that sounds like you, today’s episode of the 360 Leadership podcast is one you are absolutely not going to miss because I am going to give you a complete two-week summer holiday protocol checklist that you can literally start eight weeks in advance. even if you’re going on holiday sooner, it doesn’t matter.

 

I am literally giving you the step by step of exactly how you can set yourself up for success so that you can truly disconnect and come back and everything is going to be under control. Hope you enjoy.

 

Hi there and welcome back to another episode of the 360 Leadership Podcast. I’m really excited because I’m just back from LA as I’m recording this. And before I was leaving for my trip, I went over for a business retreat, which was just amazing.

 

realized that I’m really, really good at preparing before I go on holidays to set my team up for success so that everything runs smoothly when I’m away. And I’m…

 

very, very pleased to share that while I was away, I literally the business ran like clockwork. There were no issues. Obviously, I’m CEO of my company, so I do not disconnect fully when I’m on holidays because I am the CEO of my company. It means I just have to check in my boundaries with my team, which I’ll explain in a second a little bit throughout the throughout the holiday. But I certainly was not firefighting or anything like that. And I got to really, really switch off.

 

when I was in LA and really focus on growing my business as opposed to working in the business. I’ll be doing the same when I go to Malta later this year and when I go to Portugal for my retreat. So I wanted to share with you today this summer holiday protocol checklist. And if you’re not already on my newsletter, please go over there because I’m going to be given this as a free checklist in this week’s newsletter. OK, so all you’ve got to do is go to lucygarden.com forward slash newsletter.

 

When you sign up, keep an eye out for the email that you’re going to get and we will happily give you the checklist. If you don’t see the checklist, feel free to send my team an email. Hello at lucygarin.com. I’m always happy to give it to you. And then you can just check, check, check, check, check off the list. OK, so I’ve broken out into phases, this checklist, and it’s what you need to do eight weeks before, four weeks before, three weeks, two weeks, one week, three days, your last working day and then

 

the first day back, where do you focus? So let’s get into the good stuff. No fluff today, all strategy, all action. Okay, so what I would love you to do right now, if it’s safe to do so, if you can access your calendar and have your emails, I love to try and take action while you can, while you’re listening to the podcast, or at the very least, go back and listen to the podcast when you’re at your computer so you can actually get some of these steps done, right?

 

So rather than just passively listening, I would love to invite you to actually take action on this if you’ve got some time off planned in July or August or September or whenever it is. Okay? Right, let’s go. The first thing is eight weeks prior to departure, and again, if you haven’t done this yet, you can do it now, is to block your holiday dates and your calendar as a non-negotiable. Now, I know this might seem basic, okay, but you wouldn’t believe the amount of women I speak to that actually don’t put their holiday dates in their calendar or…

 

They’re waiting to see when they’ll take their two week holidays based on business needs. Please don’t do that. Take your fucking time off. The second thing is, is to communicate your dates to your leadership team and any key stakeholders well in advance. Okay? So you can see I’m talking about doing this eight weeks in advance. Do you do this? Because you want to prime them that you’re not going to be available. They can’t say they didn’t know you’re going to prime them. The next thing is to begin identifying projects that need to be completed prior to departure.

 

Now be careful with this one because if you’re anything like me, I want everything done yesterday and that’s not possible. So identify your non-negotiables. Then what I invite you to do is to review your annual and quarterly goals that you will have hopefully set for yourself and for your business area and adjust any timelines if needed. This is all about you being strategic and intentional and setting yourself up for success.

 

that’s like two months prior to departure. So if you haven’t done those things, I would invite you to start there immediately because they’re the things that are going to bite you in the ass and make you have to log on when you’re away or take calls or basically come back to, excuse my French, an absolute shit show. Okay. So then we’re down to four weeks prior to departure. I invite you to send a preparation sprint email to your team members with these specific questions. So this is…

 

literally trying to get your team to be more proactive. OK, so this is like a sprint to get as much information as possible. And the questions are number one, what deliverables or decisions might need my input before I leave? And you’re you’re actually trying to force them to be accountable and get strategic themselves and look ahead. Number two, what client or customer situations do you anticipate rising during my absence and

 

What’s your plan to mitigate that? Again, these are open ended coaching style questions to get them to problem solve. The third one is what resources or authority would you need to handle these situations? Again, you’re trying to get them to think about how they’re going to handle it. So if you’re frantically writing these down, please don’t worry. Just go over to lucigaran.com forward slash newsletter and we’ll be able to send you the checklist. OK.

 

The next thing you want to do, again, this is four weeks before, is to create a backward working timeline of tasks that must be completed. So look at your goals, look at your priorities, and really get super strategic here about the tasks that you need to actually complete and when they need to be done by. And you’d be so surprised when you actually step off the hamster wheel and do this. You’re either A, going to see that you’ve set yourself up for failure already because there isn’t enough time available.

 

or B, you’re gonna see that actually, do you know what? Everything is all cool. So whichever way it is, awareness is the first step. The next thing then is to identify and prioritize client or customer work that needs to be finished before departure. So before you leave, like what are the, who are your customers? And that could be internal customers, by the way, or it could be external customers or clients. What really is needed to be done?

 

You can then, just do one of two things. You can either schedule a small group team meeting based on the goal of what you’re trying to achieve as a collective or schedule any one-to-ones with key team members and really drill into them. Listen, I’m going to be away in a month’s time. I need you to get strategic and intentional about what you’re going to need from me and hold them accountable. Help them through coaching questions as well to

 

help them to figure out what they’re going to need from you as well. And side note, I’m so excited because this is like a little sneak peek, but in 360, we are in the process of going through CPD accreditation for some of our leadership training. And one of them is something I’m so excited to bring to our members, which is coaching training. So a lot of leaders don’t have coaching skills. And when you master coaching skills, oh my goodness, it changes everything with your team.

 

with your stakeholders and even with your kids, your family, it’s just such a powerful tool. So side note, I’m excited for that. And then we’re down to like three weeks before, okay? So we’ve done our like our eight weeks, we have basically communicated, we’ve blocked out the calendar, we start to get intentional about what the results are that we wanna create before we leave.

 

A month before, really going to start to hold our teams accountable. We’re going to have conversations, get them thinking about what they may need and what may go wrong, et cetera, et cetera. And now we’re down to like three weeks before. Okay. So this is something, and again, if you’re multitasking, I recommend you do this like wholeheartedly. It has saved my ass more than I can, I can ever tell you, but it’s to begin creating email templates your team can use in your absence to answer any common client or customer questions.

 

So if it’s status updates or problems. And the beauty of this, guys, is you can use AI to help you to do this. I mean, I’m going to do an episode, I think, on custom GPTs that I’ve created in my business. Would you like that? Let me know on Instagram or LinkedIn. Send me a message because I could not run my business without custom GPTs. AI has been transformative for me.

 

I’ve trained AI to know my tone of voice. It knows my rules around what I’d say, what I wouldn’t say. And I’m in the process of developing a GPT called Think Like Lucy, which I’m in the middle of developing. And then I’ll test and I’ll validate to make sure I have a list of like common scenarios that my clients might face and how I would answer them, because I don’t want them to wait. OK, I don’t want them to wait. And you can always caveat these templates with, you know, something like Lucy is out of the office.

 

Um, you know, before she left, agreed this would be the approach. However, I’ll ensure that she follows up with you when, when she gets back or you follow up with her would be better because then you’re giving them a response, but then you’re also allowing for it to be wrong. So you can actually collect it. So don’t be that like, like control freaky about the whole correspondence thing. Like sometimes you’ve got to kind of be able to trust your team. Okay.

 

Draft your out of office next message is next. And for the love of God, if you are giving out your mobile number for emergencies or something very wrong with your system, okay. Now, unless you’re a CEO, I will caveat that with unless you are a CEO, because obviously the CEO has full accountability, right? Even though it wouldn’t be nice to be able to switch off fully. But you, I really don’t think you need to give out your mobile number. There should be somebody else in your organization.

 

that you can trust. Maybe it’s your COO could step up for you. Maybe it’s somebody who really knows you inside out. It just depends on your organization and your relationship and who you’ve got to support you at the time. But it’s really important that you’re out of office is not apologetic or is not like, you know, just just be clear on your boundaries. And if you can, please don’t give your your mobile number. Please don’t like the amount of people I’ve worked with over the last year who joined 360 leaders club.

 

And then, boom, they’re landed with redundancy out of nowhere or something happens and there’s hate or drama, even though they’re the most committed leaders I have ever met. So please just allow yourself to enjoy your holidays. The next one then is to update any project management systems that you use with clear responsibilities and deadlines. I’ve spoken about this on the show before. I could not run my business without Asana.

 

There is other tools like Notion and Monday and Trello that are out there as well for task management. I know a lot of corporates favor the Microsoft software, is a bit of a mid, it’s a bit of a limiter in terms of productivity and flow in your team. So if you have any questions about systems I use in my business to make it more efficient, please do reach out to me, because I’m all about efficiency and structure. It’s very, important to me because my work life balance is important to me.

 

And the next thing then is to ensure all recurring meetings have assigned facilitators. So it’s just like taking the time to go through your calendar when you’re away, decline, delete, delegate, let the people know. And yeah, that’s it. Then we’re back to two weeks before departure. This is where you’re going to be checking in with your team members again, either one to one or in a small group meeting. Really identify and delegate any high impact activities that need your attention while you’re gone. Okay.

 

And you can give them authority transfer language with like specific phrases. And here’s a couple of good ones. And again, they’re in the checklist. So again, head over to lucygarden.com forward slash newsletter. And we will happily send this to you is you want to say something like, I’m empowering you to make decisions about X without checking with me. I trust your judgment on this. You have full authority to proceed.

 

And what that does is it just gives them the authority, which actually gives them extra responsibility, which actually holds them accountable. Okay. So I’m empowering you to make decisions about X without checking with me, assuming they’re set up for success and they have the knowledge and the skill and the will to perform that task. Set clear decision-making parameters for your team. So again, this is strategic leadership guys at its finest. It requires you to do a bit of work.

 

which is annoying, I know, because we like the reactivity and the hamster wheel. But if you do this, like you’re going to log off feeling so ready for a break and knowing that you’ve set your team up for success. So give them clear decision-making parameters. What can they make decisions on? What can’t they make decisions on based on what’s coming up? And I would challenge you respectfully for the ones you’re saying they can’t make a decision on, get really curious with yourself and ask yourself, if I was in a coma right now,

 

or I was to fall off the face of the earth, who else would make this decision and then talk to that person? You’re welcome. The last one then is in the two weeks before is to create a solutions based communication protocol for your single point of contact. So this essentially means coming up with like your years of expertise. What are the solutions that you want them to focus on? And again, guys, AI is your best friend here. You could even get like

 

my checklist when you download it, you could go to chat GPT or chat GPT is probably the best one. And ask it to say like, want to action this checklist. Can you help me to go through this step by step and set my team up for success? And then you can give it specific information. Always remember side note with AI is if you are using chat GPT in your organization, I know a lot of you are using co-pilot, but to be honest, it’s really crap.

 

Sorry, I was talking to a few AI experts. It’s not great. But make sure that number one, you’re complying with your organization’s policies around this because I know companies are freaking out. And the second thing is make sure you’re going into your settings and you are turning off improve the model for everyone. Because what that’s doing is it’s sharing data freely. If you select that, it’s basically you don’t want to train the model and improve it for everybody. Your data is going to be safe.

 

But I would never ever, ever give any proprietary or confidential sensitive information to AI ever. I just wouldn’t trust it. So make sure whatever information you’re giving it, you’re redacting any sensitive information that could lead to you leaking trade secrets or something for your company. And you would be in a lot of hot water. Okay. But definitely you can use it for this. A week before then is

 

Send a pre-departure email. for example, before I left for my holidays, I had calls to my clients. I told them I wouldn’t be available. And I told them, know, Katie would be there, my community manager to support them and just made sure they were set up for success. The next thing you want to do is implement a single point of contact. make basically if there are issues, who is the one person who can contact you with genuine emergencies, right? You don’t want everybody contacting you.

 

It’s a single point of contact. So again, before I left for LA, I had that point of contact. I told the team to filter to her. And then, you know, I had equipped her with the do’s and don’ts of decision making. thankfully, she didn’t need to contact me, which was amazing. You want to finalize all documentation for your projects and then conduct a final team meeting a week before to really make sure your team know the priorities, the goals are set up for success and answer any questions they have and really use this as an opportunity to double down on

 

you’re empowering them and saying how much you trust them and instill confidence in their abilities because they’ll want to please you, right? They’ll want to please you. All right. So then three days before departure, you’re going to complete all your urgent deliverables. You’re going to send a final reminder to your team with the reiteration of who the point of contact is, encourage them to solve problems independently and remind them that this is their opportunity to shine.

 

Clean up your inbox, set up any filtering rules, and then tidy up your desk area as well so that when you are coming back, you’re gonna come back to a nice, clean space. Last day before you go, activate your out of office. Send a positive reinforcement message to your team. Delete your work email from your phone if you can, or just move it to the last screen if you’ve got an iPhone. And just complete a mental close down ritual. So that might be something like.

 

This checklist would be amazing for that. OK, amazing for that to make sure you’ve done everything and then give yourself permission to switch off. now on the checklist, I also tell you exactly where you’re supposed to focus on the first day back. OK, and I’m giving you a bonus trust mindset reminders. There’s five little steps in here that will really, really help you with the mindset required to switch off.

 

So please go and download the checklist. It works if you have a team of one or 500 and you can adjust it as needed for your specific situation. And that’s the beauty about these things. You take what works, you tweak it and you make it your own and then go enjoy yourself a holiday because you deserve it. So head over to lucygarnon.com forward slash newsletter, sign up for my email list. We will make sure you get it. If you don’t get the checklist, please email my team hello at lucygarnon.com.

 

Sometimes it goes to junk or something like that. And we will have it on standby to give to you. All right. So that is it for this week’s episode of the 360 Leadership Podcast. I know that was valuable for you. I can’t wait to hear how you use the checklist. I always love hearing from you in DMs and Instagram and LinkedIn. Please know that I’m in my DMs all the time, but sometimes my team are as well. So please don’t ever share anything like too sensitive in case, you know, I just want you to be aware.

 

full transparency, my team managed my inbox for me as well, because I cannot do it all. And yeah, go and have a good holiday because you absolutely deserve it. So that’s it guys, until next week. Same time, same place. Bye for now.