Speaker 1: Helping leaders motivate their people to a higher level of
Speaker 1: performance through strong human relations, team building, and Goala giving.
Speaker 1: This is the seven Minute Leadership Podcast with your host
Speaker 1: Paul Fellovaledo.
Speaker 2: Hello everyone, and welcome to the seven Minute Leadership Podcast.
Speaker 2: It's episode three twenty five, and let's talk about cheat sheets.
Speaker 2: Not the kind that you used in high school when
Speaker 2: you forgot to study. I'm talking about the kind that
Speaker 2: high performers use every day to eliminate guestwork, reduce errors,
Speaker 2: and stay consistent. As a leader, you're surrounded by recurring tasks.
Speaker 2: The daily grind of leadership often includes a lot of
Speaker 2: rinse and repeat type of work. Whether it's onboarding new
Speaker 2: team members, running a morning huddle, checking vehicles, or doing
Speaker 2: a pre shift report. These things pop up again and again,
Speaker 2: and if you're like me, you've probably realized there's no
Speaker 2: honor in winging it. There's only chaos. And that's why
Speaker 2: I create cheat sheets for my staff. Let me give
Speaker 2: you a few examples. At my ambulance service, I've built
Speaker 2: cheat sheets for my EMTs and paramedics. We've got one
Speaker 2: for medication calculations. Because the last thing you want in
Speaker 2: a high stress situation is to stop and do long
Speaker 2: division in your head. We've got another one for truck
Speaker 2: checks so our crews never miss a piece of equipment
Speaker 2: before a shift. And we even have a cheat sheet
Speaker 2: with all of the hospital er door codes on them
Speaker 2: so that our teams aren't fumbling with locked doors while
Speaker 2: trying to deliver a patient to the emergency room. In
Speaker 2: those little sheets, they've saved us time, prevented mistakes, and
Speaker 2: made our people a little more confident. And this doesn't
Speaker 2: just apply to ems, it's everywhere. I am also a pilot.
Speaker 2: When I fly, I have cheat sheets for glide distance
Speaker 2: based on my altitude and air speed in case I
Speaker 2: have an engine failure, one for a pre flight inspection,
Speaker 2: and several others for aeronautical rules and emergency procedures. These
Speaker 2: aren't optional for me, they're mandatory because in the air,
Speaker 2: clarity keeps you alive. Leadership is the same way you
Speaker 2: can't afford to guess your way through key decisions, and
Speaker 2: your team shouldn't be relying on memory or experience alone
Speaker 2: for important, repeatable tasks. That's not scalable, it's not sustainable,
Speaker 2: and it's just not smart. So here's why cheat sheets matter.
Speaker 2: Number one, they create consistency. No matter who's doing the job,
Speaker 2: the outcome stays the same. They reduce cognitive load. Your
Speaker 2: brain only has so much bandwidth, save it for bigger problems,
Speaker 2: and they improve on board. New employees get up to
Speaker 2: speed faster when they have something clearer to follow, and
Speaker 2: they eliminate gaps in performance. Ever had someone say, oh,
Speaker 2: I didn't know I was supposed to do that. A
Speaker 2: cheat sheet makes that excuse impossible. So what kind of
Speaker 2: cheat sheets should you be creating in your world? Well,
Speaker 2: if you're in public safety, maybe, like I said, it's
Speaker 2: an ambulance checklist, call out procedures, or post incident debrief
Speaker 2: types of templates. If you're in business, it could be
Speaker 2: sales calls, client onboarding, project handoff procedures, or quarterly report preparation.
Speaker 2: Even in personal leadership, you can cheat sheet your morning routine,
Speaker 2: your weekly goal review, or your monthly budget breakdown. So
Speaker 2: let's be clear, creating a cheat sheet doesn't mean you're
Speaker 2: lazy or that your people can't think. It means you
Speaker 2: care about precision, you care about quality, and you understand
Speaker 2: that even the best athletes still use a playbook. So
Speaker 2: here's your challenge for this week, Take fifteen minutes and
Speaker 2: build one cheat sheet for a task that you or
Speaker 2: your team do more than once a week. Keep it simple,
Speaker 2: make it easy to follow and share it. Leadership isn't
Speaker 2: about remembering everything. It's about building systems that work even
Speaker 2: when you're tired, distracted, or even out of the office.
Speaker 2: If it matters, cheat sheet it. This has been a
Speaker 2: seven minute leadership podcast and I thank you for listening.
Speaker 1: For more, Paul Fell of Alito Podcasts, visit paulfellowalito dot com.