As discussed in my recent blog series, all you really have to effect your leadership is your thinking, listening and speaking. An essential ingredient of growing yourself and your leadership is gaining self-awareness and the ability to self-observe and intervene while you are in the heat of the action. If you can’t self-observe, you can’t hear/see how you are thinking and communicating, and whether you are even connecting at all.If you can't self-observe, you will be unable to give yourself a new brain assignment that self-corrects your instant, automatic and largely unexamined reactions.
In our work, we invite clients to consider their brain as a “Mental File Cabinet”which stores every experience from every one of our five senses at every moment. The catch in that is that you have all sorts of filters, biases, and predispositions that severely limit what gets into your Mental File Cabinet. Further, your Mental File Cabinet has strange and unique filing procedures and cross-referencing.
When you encounter a new experience your senses provide a scan and the brain does a quick “Google Search”to find a match with what’s already in your Mental File Cabinet. For new information, the match may be rather sloppy and yet, the instant the match happens, learning stops. “I know what that is.”The trouble is, given your unique filters and the unreliability of the match of new things, you may be very disconnected from what is really being said and what’s going on, rendering you ineffective at best.
“The person who is most present to the way that it is and the way that it isn’t will emerge as the leader regardless of who is in charge.”- Unknown
Reframe your relationship with your “File Cabinet”from automatically reacting to thoughts arising from your past records to being in charge and managing your File Cabinet intentionally. In a recent article and YouTube video Deepak Chopra stated: “The truth is that each of us is the user of our brain, and as with any mechanism, the user's intention makes all the difference.”Applying our 2130 Partners Operating Principles also provides a basis for intentional mental re-framing.
Start listening to the thoughts that run through your head as you speak and especially as you listen to others. Notice what they say and even keep notes for a while until you get good at it. We call this self-observation. Begin to develop your ability to articulate what’s in your heart and soul about your world. What kind of relationships do you intend to have with your team? What are the desired qualities of your relationship with your significant other and other family members?
Now engage with others by starting with your intention. You may say it, particularly at first, or just think it to “set your mind straight”as my mom used to say. Notice when you start to veer off course, catch, and correct. Manage your brain with your declared intentions. With practice it will rewire and begin to reshape your words and actions. Enjoy how quickly your effectiveness grows.