It’s All About the Setup: How Leadership and Organizational Health Start With You and One Simple Habit
Organizational development, leadership, emotional intelligence, aligned companies, healthy culture, wellness. You’ve read about them and you know they’re important. Maybe you’ve even done some research or training in these areas, but how do you move from understanding the concepts to actually practicing them every day?
How can you use them to help you and your organization? What do all those books, conferences and workshops mean if you and your team don’t integrate the learnings into everyday life? Not much.
True growth only happens when you’re so inspired by something you are learning that you feel compelled to embrace the training and you have ways to practice what you are learning so that it becomes integrated into your thoughts, words and actions. I am willing to guess that at some point in your education, the thought went through your mind “What does this have to do with anything?” I know it did for me, many times. The same is true now.
There are so many training programs, including some powerful off-site training that brings renewed energy and a fresh idea for moving forward. And then what?
There needs to be a connection between the learning and your vision of where you’re going. The training needs to be integrated and you need to be in the right state of mind.
Maybe you’ve heard that knowledge is power and yes, there is an aspect of that that is true. Many of us can identify one thing we know would be important for us to do and yet we don’t do it. Or we know what we shouldn’t be doing...and we keep doing it. That’s the nature of human behavior. Habits are powerful and there is a comfort in doing things the way they've always been done. We might not even be aware that that’s what we’re doing until we pause long enough to pay attention.
So what needs to change? 1. Find training opportunities that can be integrated into day to day actions. 2. Stop looking outside ourselves and begin paying attention to how we show up… to meetings, in conversations, in all of our relationships. If we don’t do this, then nothing we learn will have an impact.
A McKinsey report on why so many leadership development programs fail underlies the importance of context, integration and and mind-set. Many providers and their programs ignore these important qualities and keep telling you and teaching you what you should be doing without connecting the learning to your actions and your mind-set.. In spite of a global spend of $366 billion on leadership development, much of this training just isn’t having the intended impact.
Whatever your current position, if you are looking for ways to improve your leadership or the cultural health of your team/organization in this new year, the first thing to focus on is how you show up.
Master “the setup” for yourself, then help your team/organization master the “setup”.
This is a simple idea, but is not always easy. The opportunity for you and your team is to challenge each person to show up as their best. At nineQ, we call it the “Green Zone” or “Living in Flow” and we have six High Performance Habits to help you get into and stay in this flow. And honestly, if you haven’t mastered this yet, you won’t be able to maximize any leadership development learning.
So what can you do now? Start this next quarter off by developing the habit of showing up as your best self. All of our training programs stress the importance of this step and help leaders and teams develop it as a habit, however, you can do this on your own by answering this question and then taking action on your answer, every day:
Answer this question: What actions can I take each morning that help me feel my very best?
List them, review them and identify the ones that leave you feeling really good. Get rid of any that leave you feeling stressed, overwhelmed, anxious or anything but your best. Review and revise every couple of days until you are consistently in the Green Zone every morning before you begin your day.
Caveat: Most clients, the first time they make a list, make a list of what they should do each morning or what they are doing each morning and the actions are not bringing them joy. Make sure you edit those actions out and stick only with the ones that make you feel good.
A few examples to get you started, cultivated from our clients:
Yoga
Breathing
Meditation
Light a candle
Read affirmations
Look at inspiring photos
Listen to inspiring music
Go for a hike, a walk or a run
Take a bath
Review vision for the year
Seem simple? Yes, but not always easy. However, If you want to improve your own leadership as well as support a healthier culture in your organization, this is where to start.
To learn more about training in our 9Q Leadership Essentials Certification Course, email us at contact@9qsolutions.com