This is an extract from a mini toolkit ‘Winning Personal Habits for the Millennial to Master’ (article +E-Templates) that can be source from this link.
From lessons gathered from forty years of observation, reading and discovery. I have broken the winning personal habits into the following categories.
Creating Behavioural Traits That Will Make You A Better Person and Leader |
Advanced self-awareness |
| Self-regulation | |
| Hostmanship | |
| Empathy | |
| Humility | |
| Improve your decision-making ability | |
| Proactive management of risk | |
| Seeing future opportunities | |
| Maintain your learning agility | |
Using Neuro Linguistic Programming to Achieve Greatness |
Neuro linguistic programming |
| Treasure mapping | |
| The Winner’s bible | |
Building a Safety Net |
Have a cluster of mentors |
| Having a safe haven – a second passion | |
| Do not run out of fuel | |
Maintaining Effective Relationships |
Giving recognition freely |
| One-minute manager reprimand | |
| Embrace dissidents | |
| Aim to have at least three breaks a week with colleagues, peers and dissidents | |
| Managing difficult relationships |
1. Advanced self-awareness
Daniel Goleman, a psychologist, was the first to emphasize the importance of emotional intelligence said
“The most effective leaders are alike in one crucial way: they all have a high degree of what has come to be known as emotional intelligence. It’s not that IQ and technical skills are irrelevant. They do matter, but…they are the entry-level requirements for executive positions. My research, along with other recent studies, clearly shows that emotional intelligence is the (essential condition) of leadership. Without it, a person can have the best training in the world, an incisive, analytical mind, and an endless supply of smart ideas, but they still won’t make a great leader”.
Many managers go through life unaware of their own personal baggage, with little or no understanding of psychology, the need to avoid emotional damage, the importance of managing one’s anger, and the importance of embracing those who see things differently.
Minimizing personal baggage
We inherit baggage from our ancestry, along with many great things. This baggage is added to by our parents, with too much smothering, too little attention, too much criticism, too little quality time—need I go on? I believe one important task in life is to lighten the load so that it is not crippling us when we decide to start “management summiting.”
It is important to understand that to be a leader today you do not have to have handled all your personal baggage; the key is the awareness of your weaknesses. There are plenty of “crippled” CEOs causing havoc in every organisation that they work for. Yet there are those iconic CEOs who are a pleasure to work with. My point is that you owe it to your colleagues, your staff, your suppliers, contractors, family, partner and offspring to do something about your own personal baggage.
We have a choice: to grow and challenge those behaviour traits that will create havoc in the workplace, or to ignore them and seek new jobs like we do new partners, hooked on the romance period and leaving when the going gets tough. To make a major contribution, you will need to achieve through the contribution of others. This means acquiring a new set of behavioural skills more suited to working with and leading others.
Five courses that I would recommend
Here are five courses that I would recommend that will help minimise the impact of your personal baggage.
Course 1: The Enneagram
The ENNEAGRAM (Any-a-gram) is a Greek name, Ennea means nine and gram means point . The word refers to a circle inscribed by nine points which is used as a symbol to arrange and depict nine personality styles. In its current formulations, the Enneagram brings together insights of perennial wisdom and findings of modern psychology. It is an ancient wisdom thought to hail from Persia.
The enneagram is a profound, elegant, and compassionate approach to people and their relationships. It describes nine basic world-views and nine different ways of doing business in the world. Each of the nine personality types is something of a pathway through life, with likely obstacles and pitfalls along the way.
Your principle motivation should be a better understanding of how you work and what will benefit your family, friends, and colleagues. A by-product will be that you will understand the likely worldview/personality type of your boss, and thus be in a better position to make the relationship work. (See www.enneagraminstitute.com.)
Course 2: Neuro-Linguistic Programming
Many readers will be aware of this term, even attended a course on it, and yet this concept is often left in the deep recesses of the brain, unused. At its basic level, it is the most effective form of behaviour alignment one can do. By using your five senses you create visions of achievement you have yet to attain. You smell, see, feel, hear, touch, all in your mind, the event you want to achieve. Your subconscious is now in a dilemma. It needs to close the gap between now and this future reality.
Because it knows no bounds, it will lift your performance, the only limiting factor being your consciousness, which, as always, will interfere and will sabotage progress, if allowed.
Neuro-Linguistic Programming will have a profound impact on your life. Go on the web and search “NLP+course +__________” (your location) to find a local course.
Course 3: Transactional Analysis
Transactional analysis is commonly used by marriage guidance counsellors. It states that each of us is made up of three egos parent, adult, child. When we communicate, as a manager to our staff, we need to understand that it will be more productive if we communicate as an “adult” rather than reverting to our parent or child egos. In addition, we need to be aware, when having a discussion with a staff member, what ego they are using. If a staff member is emotional they are using their child ego thus it is not productive to use one’s adult ego (structured reasoning) as the staff member needs your nurturing side (parent ego) for the communication to work effectively.
I hope I have said enough to encourage you to explore further in this area. For a practical explanation see www.businessballs.com/transact.htm
Attending a Transactional Analysis course will help you understand communication styles and why your communication sometimes does not work. It is particularly useful in improving relationship communication with our direct reports, our life partner and our family members.
Course 4: Hermann’s thinking preferences
Hermann’s thinking preferences is a system to measure and describe thinking preferences in people, developed by William Herrmann while leading management education at General Electric’s Crotonville training facility.
Hermann’s thinking preferences is broken into four types. It is important to understand the thinking preference of your boss, colleagues, and staff reporting to you, so you can communicate effectively with them. The benefits claimed include:
- Improved communication, problem-solving, and decision-making.
- Elevated performance and employee engagement.
- Increased thinking agility and diversity within your organisation
Attend a local course as soon as you can or visit www.hbdi.com/
Course 5: Intensive Life Skills Course
Life skills courses have various titles. I have attended courses called “Turning Point,” “Point of Choice,” and “Essentially Men”; there are many others, such as “Landmark”, and “Money and You”. Some of your friends and relatives will have attended a course. Go to one that is highly recommended and that has made a difference to that person. The personal development courses of longer duration have the most chance of changing your behaviours.
The experts in behavioural change say that it takes up to 12 to 16 weeks of weekly exercises to change behaviour. These courses help you to develop a decent toolkit to handle disappointment, anger and loss. If you do not learn to handle these events, there will be plenty of opportunities for them to screw up your life.
I went to one life skills course, as a sceptical accountant would, expecting to be mildly challenged. It turned out to be a vastly more challenging and rewarding experience. I soon realised the extent of my baggage. Part of the major load was that I had never grieved properly for the tragic death of my dear sister-in-law.
As Jack Welch says emotional maturity should be a given for a leader, it is a ticket to the game. Make sure you have invested time in this important area.
Self-regulation
Daniel Goleman has linked self-regulation to integrity. He points out that many of the bad things that happen in organisations are a function of impulsive behaviour. Employees with poor self-regulation should not be placed in positions of authority. At best, they will be nightmares to work for and, at worst, they are more likely to commit fraud, should an opportunity present itself. This explains how integrity is compromised in many organisations, Volkswagen, WorldCom, Enron etc. Access the mini-toolkit for more content