Want to make a change? Turn your thinking to your daily patterns

Everything you want to do or improve requires you to make a change.

You want to start giving more feedback, what are you going to change?

You want to create a more positive team culture, what are you going to change?

You want to stay in the moment and choose how you respond under pressure, what are you going to change?

You are not going to jump in and take over the job when you are frustrated, what are you going to change?

Whether it is finding more time in the day, increasing your impact, productivity, self-awareness or improving the outcomes from your conversations, every one of these requires you to take a step back and look at your daily habits.

What are your routines and daily patterns?  What conversations are you having every single day?  What language are you using?  What are the things you do and don’t talk about.

Making a change to one of these is your opportunity to find space to try doing something differently.

Tying it to a current pattern that is already embedded is one of the simplest ways to do that.

These changes reflect what some of the leaders in my current programs are working on.  They know what they want to do, the challenge is having the awareness in the moment to recognise the opportunity to do it and then adjusting your default behaviour.  Its also knowing that the impact of what you want to change far outweighs the time it will take at the start.  That’s why we start with small steps, to make it as easy as possible.

In order to be clear on the impact your change will have, you need to know why you are making that change.  And most of all you need to believe in what it will do for you and for others. 

You wont change something you don’t really believe in.

This is how you can get traction on the changes you want to make:

• Write down specifically how you want to be, for example I want to be a leader that gives regular feedback in day-to-day conversations,
• Then write down why you want to be that leader and what the impact of that will be,
• Identify how you can get started, for example in conversations ask more questions on how your team view their work and their own performance,
• Identify your patterns and routines now, where are you going to make a small change to create these conversations, this could be 15 minutes before or after a daily morning or weekly meeting, or when you have your first coffee of the day.
• If you don’t get into the routine ask whats getting in the way? Are you always rushing to or from the meeting?  Does it always run over time?  Are you not holding the space and booking yourself back-to-back appointments.  Identify the roadblock and how you are going to get around it.
• Keep at it!

Take the time to reflect on your daily habits, are they setting you up for where you want to go, or are they holding you back?