Belief System
"The greatest discovery of all time is that a person can change his life
by changing his state of mind."
William James
Try harder!
Have you ever tried to push yourself harder, only to realize you were more unsuccessful? Well, I have and sometimes it still happens to me!
We can be so busy putting extra efforts, more pressure and a lot of control on projects or even people without taking the time to re-think our method or approach. We are so eager to make things more 'efficient' only to discover that our efforts are not producing the expected results.
Why is this?
"You cannot solve a problem with the same mind that created it," said Albert Einstein. It means that we do need a different approach and a new way of thinking to solve our deeper problems.
Stephen R. Covey promoted a similar concept when he talked about "The Third Alternative". He used this principle of re-thinking to solve challenges that initially seemed to have no solution.
Managers often ignore the concept of re-thinking
To look for alternative solutions, we normally need to access our right brain, where creativity, imagination and intuition are available, and ignore for a moment our logical capacity, our numbers and facts in our left brain. It makes working on our state of mind quite interesting, but also not very easy.
Both sides of the brain need to work together to make us complete and functional, but too much focus on the left logical hemisphere can prevent us from re-thinking certain important concepts. We have been so used to solve all our problems, mainly with our logical capacities as well as our well-developed affinity with numbers and facts.
Change your belief system
In my management training, I have discovered, that when challenging my participants to work on their creative right side of the brain, they often get stuck in the logical left side, and it becomes more difficult for them to have a fresh look at all their possibilities, including their leadership role.
When I meet the group again after a while, some of them will tell me that 'it's not working for me'. Which is a typical example of managers who have seriously tried to improve their leadership skills by using a few new tools, but without the opportunity to change their so-called state of mind, resulting in working from the inside out.
Summary
To lead others more effectively in these unprecedented times, we urgently need a new understanding of our leadership role. In relation to the current needs of our people and the next generation joining us, we need to update our leadership paradigm. As in the digital world, we want to inspire followers, rather than the old command-and-control approach that often results in some rather unmotivated and even frustrated employees.
Without re-thinking the leadership paradigm using our creativity, intuition and imagination, our understanding of leadership will be based on pure logic and dry facts.
We will miss out on the opportunity to create an emotionally safe environment in which we are able to build a culture to support our strategy, thereby positioning the organization for much further growth and expansion.
Your choice
Do you want to take just a few small steps by adding some tips and tricks to your current leadership repertoire, or do you want to take a giant leap forward by working on your leadership mindset?
Change your paradigm of leadership with our course Developing a Leadership Mindset
