Leadership Best Practices to Manage Change in You and Others

As we know from our own experience it is quite challenging to change many years of ingrained habits.  Facilitating change in others is even harder. It takes many hours of deliberate practice to learn and implement a new habit with excellence. In his book “Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else ” Geoff Colvin says that many years of deliberate practice has the potential to make us a world champion. There is not a requirement to be born with a “success gene” to be a success.


The term deliberate practice needs to be defined. It is not just a mindless repetition, but more a specific practice that is designed to produce desired results and requires an extraordinary awareness and focus. This is why a mentor or coach can be an essential guide providing continuous feed back and significantly reducing the amount of errors, steps and time required to get there.


Our thoughts have so much power that they can shape our destiny. Awareness of our thoughts and attention to our state of mind is the first step to form a new habit of thinking effectively. By shifting our thoughts to what we want, this in turn produces new and positive results.   
 

Thinking --> Emotions --> Behaviors --> Results

Therefore we can say that our habits/behaviors produce results whether desired or not. If we want to change our results we need to change our thinking and thereby create new emotions, behaviors and thus results.


It is lot harder to unlearn what we have learned by doing things in a certain way through many years of repetition. The best way to change a habit is to learn a new way of doing things.


How do we best promote new habits and behaviors? As neuroscience says either use it or lose it!


Current research in neuroscience indicates that neuroplasticity is not only a phenomenon that exists in a child’s brain.  In fact the adult brain at any stage of life is continuously changing with every experience and new learning. In other words some parts of our brain are quite plastic, specifically the parts responsible for learning.


As I have described in my previous blog Learning and Memory is a part of a limbic system function of our brain.


When we learn something new we form new neural connections in our brain.


In adult human brain there are more than 100 billion neurons and more than 100 trillion synapses. So it is possible for us to make many new neural connections with each new learning experience and strengthen these connections with deliberate practice.


So what are some leadership best practices to facilitate change in others?


1. Establish a rapport


We are open and relaxed when we talk with someone we can identify with, and are more open to listen to what the other person has to say. We call this process establishing a rapport which is part of the communication step.


2. Verbal and Non-Verbal Communication

• Listen for clues of the other person’s need.

• Check in with the other person and establish rapport.

•  Remember the purpose of the meeting.

•  Observe the non-verbal communication to understand the process first before moving into content.

•  Observe the person’s body language first to determine how a person thinks and processes information.

•  Determining in what emotional state the person is, for example excited, energetic, focused, eager, angry, bewildered, overwhelmed, confused, friendly, anxious, analyzing, manipulating etc..

3. Validate any Assumptions

•  Asking appropriate questions within the context of the meeting to validate any assumptions.

4. Stay Solution Focused

•  Ask open ended questions to create new thinking towards solutions.

•  Facilitate and direct conversation towards solutions so that the person feels that it is his/her own idea and thus motivated to take immediate actions.

•  Keep the conversation within the scope of the purpose.

•  Decide what is the most meaningful thing to do at any moment of time.

•  Take actions based upon the current context and expected outcome.

•  Provide immediate feed back if requested for improvement.

Reference




1. Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else by Geoff Colvin
2. http://www.quietleadership.com/
3. http://www.harpercollins.com/book/index.aspx?isbn=9780060835903