Tweaking Habits

Leadership Behaviour

Consider this: an average human being has 60,000 thoughts in a day. (This does vary by individual, yes.) Of those, 95% are habituated, repeated thoughts.?

The majority of your day is a habit, then — and, in fact, the more aspects you can habituate, some believe the more successful you will be. That’s the oft-cited reason why Steve Jobs wore essentially the same clothes every day; one more habit becomes less brainpower in the morning on that, and more towards something else (i.e. iTunes).

If you want to be a better leader, then, you need to think about what your leadership habits are both good and bad — and you need to find ways to tweak those to serve you better.?

Here's your leadership behaviour, action and coaching question ...?

Taking Action

To what extent do I: Know which of my habits are serving me > 1 --- 2 --- 3 --- 4 --- 5 < Great

You need to find a way to tweak and shift your habits from “A” (where you are) to “B” (where you could be more productive).

There are a number of different approaches to tweaking habits, including some work by Gretchen Rubin.?

Here's what she has to say:

“There is no one-size-fits-all solution.”

We’re constantly told, “If only you would do it this way or try this. This is the magic solution.”?

Some things work for some people, sometimes. But nothing works for everybody all the time. A lot of things that work very well for some people actually are counterproductive for some.?

You really have to think about yourself. Even things as simple as, “Are you a morning person or a night person?”, when you think about yourself, then you can shape the habit to suit you. That’s what allows people to succeed.?

We get discouraged because we try and fail.?

But often, we haven’t set ourselves up for success because we haven’t shaped it in a way that’s going to be in harmony with our nature, our values, our interests. When we do that, then there’s a lot more that we can do that’s going to allow us to succeed.

Coaching Question

What habits might be holding me back??

p.s. To learn more about how to tweak your habits, check out my blog post here. https://www.lisamartininternational.com/post/why-habits-are-the-building-blocks-of-powerful-leadership

p.s.s. If you or others in your organization want to benefit from becoming more coach-like, check out my asynchronous video course The Evolutionary Coach?.

If you found this of value, consider joining the thousands reading Lisa's Leadership Minute every second Monday. Subscribe Here ... and receive your free digital copy of Lisa's straight-shooting book for aspiring C-Suite leaders.