When you know better, you do better.

Except maybe you don't.

Last week I sat down to plan marketing collateral to promote some of the programmes we have coming up. I fell back on my default setting- finding data or research to drive home the point. After going through several documents, articles, opinion pieces etc., I found myself shaking my head and muttering, “Aaargh, but we know all this”, and we do. The problem is not that we don’t know, the problem is that we do not do. ?

When we step back and look at our professional (and personal lives) we see the chasm very clearly.

• I know it’s beneficial to give colleagues the benefit of the doubt in situations where there is a chance of misunderstanding (spoiler alert… that’s pretty much everything). What I do is I interpret the behaviour through my interpretation and respond as if my interpretations/ understanding is TRUTH. ?
• I know it serves the team when as the leader I encourage everyone to share their ideas and feel heard. What I do is I quickly rush through the request for input from the team, hardly wait for anyone to take me up on the offer, and then dive in with my idea and move on to implementation.
• I know that as a leader, when I speak last in meetings it increases the chance of new ideas being uncovered because the people in the group haven’t just aligned themselves with my idea (because it seems emotionally safer to do so). What I do is I tell everyone that I’m happy to have a discussion or have my ideas challenged, and then explain why their ideas won’t work and move on to putting my idea into practice.
• I know that when I am in a conflict situation, or even a highly emotionally charged situation, that taking a moment to listen and ask questions guided by curiosity and a desire for connection, the chances of successfully navigating that conflict is much higher. What I do is, I use my “gut-feel” and gently steamroll over them, focusing on how I can win and get the interaction over with.

What if for the next week we committed to doing what we know is better. Why don’t we give our knowledge the opportunity to show up in real life and impress us and everybody else with our doing. ?

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