Sounds like an easy question to answer, doesn’t it? Yet we bet you know people who want others to take the decisions for them. Or you might even know those who expect different results despite not changing their approach.
As part of our Coaching Series about Mindset, red10 ‘s Hazel Howard explores the link between our mind and our results telling the true story of a frustrated leader who was overlooked for promotion so many times.
Part of Our Coaching Series on Mindset
Amongst the many advanced tools within the coaching approach called Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) are a list of Mindsets that the healthiest of leaders adopt. NLP call these ‘pre-suppositions’.
In this article we’re focusing on this Healthy Mindset:
You are in charge of your mind and therefore your results.
And I am in charge of my mind and therefore my results.
Let’s explore this…starting with a true story
Over Looked for Promotion
A client recently was stuck in a role at a level he was frustrated with. He had long service with the company and although he had vast experience in a number of roles, he was continually over-looked for promotion.
The story he was telling himself was that he wasn’t worthy of a promotion; his belief.
He stated that he didn’t have any higher academic qualifications, telling himself that others considered him not clever enough to move up the organisation.
To prove to others how ‘clever’ he was he would take every opportunity to critique any flaws in key decisions made by more senior leaders (often in public) using sarcasm, not exactly the leadership behaviours the organisation was looking for. The result was that this behaviour wasn’t seen as constructive (or helpful) and so he found himself constantly rejected for promotion.
We’ll come back to this story in a moment once we’ve explored healthy mindset a bit more…
Results come from Behaviours, that come from Beliefs
Results come from Behaviours, that come from Beliefs. The Henry Ford quote sums this up:
Do you have an inner dialogue?
For instance, are you like most people and tell yourself that you can or can’t do something?
As an example; where you believe you are no good at presentations, that you will forget something or will say the wrong thing. As you stand up to make your presentation your belief takes over and you find yourself stumbling through it, often vowing never to do it again. The result is that you don’t provide an engaging presentation, or that you lose the audience – who may have a degree of sympathy for you (which was not the level of engagement you were after!).
This usually stems from our early years where a parent or a teacher stated we were no good at x subject and guess what? We believed them so we stopped trying and convinced ourselves that we weren’t and never would be any good at it. Result! We also know of sportsmen/sportswomen who have had an inner dialogue stemming from a belief that will have an impact on their performance – which is probably why so many of them have psychologists!
Through Coaching, This Can Change
The good thing is that, through coaching, this can change. In challenging our belief, we can change our behaviour and in turn can improve our results. We usually phrase the belief as limiting us – it stops us doing things to our full potential; often resulting in us saying, “I’ll never be…”. Keep saying it and you won’t be. How about changing the phrase to something positive?
We need to want to change; we need leverage to accept that this belief is not working for us anymore. Until we have that, we can’t work on it and therefore will keep holding on to a belief that doesn’t serve us and continues to hold us back. With coaching we can start to focus on where the belief has come from, how we can connect with it, how it works (or doesn’t work for us) and (this is key) challenge the supporting evidence that holds up that belief so that we can start to change our behaviours and therefore our results.
Over Looked for Promotion
Going back to our story…
You’ll remember the client who was telling himself was that he wasn’t worthy of a promotion; his belief.
When challenged on this evidence, no one – but himself – had had that conversation with him.
With help, he changed his script. His behaviours changed; the all-important promotion followed.
Are you stuck in an unhealthy pattern? Let us know if you’d like to discuss coaching options.
