MCC ICF coach helping clients leverage their talents and expertise to become effective leaders in a fast-changing and uncertain world.
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I have bad news: You won’t be inspired or highly motivated every day to carry out things you promised yourself you'd do. That is why automatic habits are so important. If something becomes a routine, you won't have to make a decision every time to behave differently.
Making a new habit routine is time-consuming. In your way is a very rigid behavior that seems to be your "nature" and that clearly contradicts your new aspirational habit. For example, you want to take less space during team meetings so your employees feel empowered to express their opinions and ideas. However, you are naturally talkative and, as you love to highlight, very creative. You can’t change your nature, can you?
Yes, you can, and you have to stop calling it "nature." There are innovative extroverts among us who are able to listen to others. Nature has nothing to do with it. You need to master unlearning old, unhealthy habits to make room for a new routine that will help you achieve what you truly want.
Luckily, there is a process to unlearning that you can follow in four steps:
Step 1: Self-Examination
Since growth often requires unlearning ideas, tools, habits or mindsets that used to serve you, becoming a professional detective is a must. Your first task is to observe yourself with curiosity to evaluate and identify the routines that stop you from being successful.
Being honest with yourself during this step is crucial. For instance, change is only possible when you admit that you like being the smartest person in the room or that you get annoyed if your employees share poor ideas. Limiting beliefs, behaviors and mental models will be impossible to say goodbye to unless you acknowledge and understand that they may not be right. It requires a shift in your thinking.
Step 2: Confirmation
Check with others to determine if you are on the right track with your observation. Ask trusted friends, colleagues or mentors whether they see similar things that stop you from owning your growth. It's possible that a mentor will say that sharing your ideas with a team is not a problem, however, you do it too soon or it's ideal for very junior team members who need more instruction than coaching. In short, learn more about situational management and adjust your leadership style depending on the maturity of your employees.
Step 3: Experimentation
Now comes the time to experiment a little. Instead of setting your heart on a new way of behaving, give yourself time to try out some concepts. For example, our talkative manager might focus on:
• Writing down their ideas and sharing them after everybody else had an opportunity to speak up
• Learning more about situational management and adopting different behaviors toward more mature team members
• Summarizing what others said
• Using the "yes, and" pattern ("yes" is the positive affirmation, "and" is the transition) when they want to contribute a new idea
This trial-and-error phase is crucial to finding a new habit that can replace an old unhealthy one. If a person wants to experiment with a single idea and it will not stick, there is a greater probability of returning to old behaviors.
Experimenting with new habits is a balance between expectation and acceptance. On the one hand, you want to push yourself to do new, sometimes uncomfortable things. On the other, maybe you're OK with this part of yourself and you choose to live with it. This is why small, sustainable experiments are better than huge, revolutionary changes. They are safer and easier to follow up on.
Step 4: Acceptance
Plan for failure. This is an indispensable element of the entire process. It is to be expected that your "nature" will show up again, especially when you are under a lot of stress. Write down all of the things that might make you go back to your old ways. In the case of our chatty manager, maybe it's that the team is silent, they're pressured by the higher-ups to deliver great ideas, the team isn't as experienced or they simply forget or get overexcited.
Then, explore what you can do in each situation to dust yourself off and try again. You might be open with your team about it and ask them to stop you, for example. The more contingency plans you have, the better. Don’t be afraid to ask for help if an accountability buddy is your best option. Only you know the answer to this challenge.
Adopting the rule of unlearning in your professional and personal life is the fast track to eliminating all the bad habits holding you back from becoming the person you want to be.
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