Drift toward growth by learning how to lead your team’s behaviors, because behaviors trigger almost all outcomes. Behavior is all about how you behave in a situation, what you do, what you think, how you react, or how you don’t react. The truth is we drift from one behavior to another unless otherwise asked. If you look back in your life, you realize that every major behavioral shift, a new method of operation, a new method of thinking, a new discipline of time didn’t come from just praying or reciting a mantra. It came because someone suggested it. The centerpiece or the core of leadership is how you can lead behaviors. You don’t lead people, but what you actually lead are behaviors and habits.
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Drift Toward Growth: Leading Behaviors And Habits
This one is more like growing people now. It’s so subtle and so small, what I’m about to cover, that I almost didn’t cover this. For the small percentage of people that this one little nugget is about to explode your division, your business, maybe even a relationship, your family, I have to cover it. Here’s a shorty but a goodie. This one is about behaviors. I’m in the middle of a lesson by Bill Hybels, considered by many to be one of the greatest leadership coaches. He’s right up there with John Maxwell. One of the things he just keeps going back to in this lesson is that behaviors trigger almost all outcomes. Everything rises and falls on leadership. However, you need people to lead and leaders need to lead themselves and the reality is behavior. If you just think of the root word behavior, how you behave in a situation, what you do, what you think, how you react, how you don’t react.
I’m going to get right to it. There is a phrase right in the middle of this lesson and it goes like this, “We drift from one behavior to another unless otherwise asked.” Let’s just look at my 25 years in business, every major behavioral shift, a new method of operation, a new method of thinking, a new discipline of time I wake up, time I go to bed. Every major behavioral change I’ve made, it didn’t come of my just praying, thinking, mantra-ing. It honestly came because someone suggested it. I was in a group or a one-on-one counseling session with a mentor and they said, “Have you ever considered changing this behavior? Have you ever considered doing this?” I did a literal mind map of our last 25 years of growth, the five or six major points of change and what led every single change was a behavioral shift. It was literally a changing of a habit, a thought, a discipline. Here’s the key of it. How many people to some degree report to you? How many people in the future do you want to report to you? How many people do you want to lead or impact?
The centerpiece or the core of leadership is how you can lead behaviors. You don’t lead people, but what you actually lead are behaviors and habits. Behaviors are the front end of habits. Habits done regularly turn into characteristics and traits and then a discipline and then a result. Here’s the question. If the people you’re leading are drifting from one behavior to another, unless asked, what person are you leading where you know you spot a behavioral deficiency and you can approach them and say, “I noticed this. Have you ever considered this?” Or “I was reading an article. I was looking at this and I noticed that one of the top traits of all successful people is such and such a behavior.” You can dig into the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey and just drill down into that one. Who can you ask to change? Although it’s very difficult to change yourself, could you come up with a series of questions where you could ask yourself such as, “Why do I behave this way? Why do I do this on Monday mornings? Why do I finish my week like this? Why do I do this and this and this on weekends?”
Think of the behavioral questions you could ask yourself and then see if you can guesstimate and measure yourself against people three to ten to twenty times more successful, whether it be financial, spiritual, relationship-wise than you are currently. I know this one is definitely for people that have ears to hear but if the people you are leading, i.e. your family, your business associates, your peers, your employees, your independent contractors, your VAs, your interns, your banker, your mortgage person, you lead them. What question could you ask to possibly shift their behavior because they’re only going to drift from behavior to behavior unless asked? I hope this helps. Take care.
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