What one change, if you made it and were able to stick to it long term, would have the greatest potential to positively impact your professional success?
Having asked this question of thousands of senior-level leaders, I know the answer is often a personal one: eat better, walk more, stop watching late night TV, turn off the phone on weekends. For you, perhaps it would be to better manage your time or focus your mind.
Most of us know we could be better listeners, clearer communicators, less distracted and more productive professionals (or parents, spouses or friends) and more effective in working with and through others (aka leadership). However, getting ourselves to change in even the one area we know would contribute most to our happiness and effectiveness is often nearly impossible. We make excuses, complain, point fingers or wait and expect others to do what we ourselves cannot: change.
My job is to make organizations more successful by helping their top leaders become more effective. This is a tall order, as I frequently work with some of the world’s best and brightest. However, over the last 16 years, I’ve had the good fortune to listen to the concerns, frustrations and challenges of senior-level leaders, and I’ve learned that most of our larger challenges are rooted in the personal.
The only instrument of leadership is one’s self. It follows, then, that learning how to manage, motivate, and lead ourselves is critical for the successful leadership of others. This makes sense. It even sounds easy. It isn’t.
As Marshall Goldsmith asks in his latest book Triggers: Creating Behavior That Lasts — Becoming the Person You Want to Be, “Why don’t we become the person we want to be?” His answer: We significantly underestimate how difficult change is. Adult behavior change is really, really hard.
It is hard to change ourselves. I know this intimately as I’m in the business of behavior change and I struggle myself. Making a change in my youth was easy because I could often focus on it entirely — I wasn’t yet so set in my ways. Now I have a spouse, two children, two homes, a dog, and a business to manage. Trying to deliver on this alone is often all I can muster. So, when I seek to change myself or help my clients change, two elements are needed: compassion and focus.
Compassion
We can never beat ourselves up enough to feel good. After all, the reason we want a change in the first place is to feel better about ourselves! Feeling good is critical to being better for others, as what occurs on the inside always manifests on the outside. We will not give attention, encouragement and coaching to another if we do not first give these things to ourselves. Thus, change starts by disciplining our minds toward loving, supporting and encouraging ourselves.
Change starts when our thoughts cheerlead for us: “You’ve got this. Go for it! Just try a little more today.” When we fall short of our ideal behaviors or the results we were aiming for, our thoughts should sound like a great coach: “What did you learn? What action could make this better now? What will you recommit to tomorrow?” Through inner compassion, we have the greatest potential to sustain ourselves long term. I don’t know a single successful person who isn’t kind to themselves. It’s hard to be human and exceptionally hard to be a good human. Kind thoughts are the foundation of a happier, more peaceful and loving you — a person who can then be an effective leader for the many lives you touch. Please do not underestimate the power of your inner dialogue.
Focus
We are most effective when we focus on making one change at a time. Take one behavior you wish to change and focus on it until it becomes a habit, something you do automatically. I did this when I transitioned to a vegan diet. I started by changing only one thing: replacing cow’s milk. I tried a host of plant-based milks until I found one I liked, and now I buy and consume unsweetened almond milk without thinking about it. Once this became a habit, I was motivated to tackle the next change. A year later, I was fully vegan. Similarly, if you want to become a more effective listener, focus solely on that.
Once you feel that you have really advanced your listening skills, choose another area to focus on — perhaps clear communication or time management. You will probably discover that even though you’re focusing on and improving in one area, other skills naturally fall into place. Better listening, for example, will almost certainly make you a better communicator.
If you are a senior-level leader, you are already doing so many things well. Feel good about this and encourage others. As Sir Richard Branson said over a dinner I was blessed to attend, “No one needs criticism. People need praise, praise and more praise. They might also need some feedback on how they can be more successful, but mostly just praise.” You need this too. It would be wonderful if the world would give it to you. But more often than not, as an adult and senior-level leader, you will need to give this to yourself.
By Susanne Biro
Source: Forbes
If you were to ask a random person on the street what an HR professional does, their answer would probably be conflict resolution, or that HR folks deal with employee salaries and benefits. And while that is part of an HR professional’s responsibilities — to ensure employee safety, respect and accountability — that doesn’t even scratch the surface.
With remote work destined for good to be a fixture of the modern workplace, almost half of companies are monitoring remote employees’ online activities. Monitored activity can include active work hours, websites visited, chats, and messaging logs. Almost a third (31%) of respondents said their employers are monitoring their computer screens in real-time.
Whatever the reason, people seem to be strongly craving a connection with their true selves and to bring more authenticity into their lives. There’s just one problem. There is no true self, at least not in any sense of the self that we can understand through science. We should seriously question the idea of authenticity as a meaningful construct in our lives.
