2016 - Page 2 of 7 - Optimus Performance

The Most Effective Leadership Style

Oct 25, 2016 Comments

Effective leadership styles vary from a control style to a participative style. The right leadership style should depend on the situation and the leaders’ objective.

At times a control style of leadership is appropriate. Think of a fire brigade that is called into action to fight a blaze. The fire chief must assume a control style of leadership since it is an emergency and tight control is required from the commander.

However, when there is no fire the chief takes a participative leadership style and engages in activities such as debriefing, problem solving, training, coaching, rewarding etc. Training as a fire fighter is crucial for proper decision making and execution of tasks when there is a real fire to fight.

The same is true for leaders and managers in organizations. They need to vary their style according to the situation so that their employees are fully capable to perform at the levels expected.

Leaders and managers often spend too much time fighting their own organizational fires, rather than engaging their staff in discussion, problem solving, training and coaching.

It’s quite easy for a leader or manager to think they are doing their job well when in fact they might be taking a control style of leadership too often by solving problems for their employees and telling them what to do.

By adapting a coaching and participative style of leadership, the leader recognizes and understands the importance of setting aside time to provide training and coaching, and engaging employees in continuous improvement initiatives.

A participative leadership style results from a decision that a leader or manager makes to make this their preferred style of leadership. It also requires that the leader or manager develops the skills to be this type of leader.

Leadership Skills

Some of the skills that a leader or manager needs to learn and practice to master a participative leadership style is listening, visioning, sharing thoughts and feelings, goal setting, empowering, recognizing, giving feedback, training and coaching.

The leader who wants to adapt a participative leadership style must also develop good self-knowledge. Different types of people have different strengths and challenges when it comes to the aforementioned leadership skills.

A leader who is an assertive action type might be too controlling with people and find it hard to listen and empathize with others.

A leader who is good in strategy and logistics might tend to over analyze things and be afraid to share decision making with his team, thus also be too controlling but in a different way than the action type leader.

In conclusion the leader or manager that wants to develop high performance empowered employees and teams needs to learn how to adapt a participative leadership style most of the time. This is a process that unfolds over time and does not happen overnight. On-going skills development congruent with self-knowledge is crucial for this to be fully realized.

Visualize a Change in Behaviour Goal

Oct 11, 2016 Comments

Use all effective and proven methods you can to achieve a change in behaviour. Visualization helps to program the mind to act in a way contrary to your habitual behaviour.

In recent series of articles and videos I have explained a detailed process for using goal setting, including affirmations to modify a behaviour contrary to your type. This also includes tracking yourself daily to measure your progress.

I know this is hard work as I have been using myself as an example and some days I forget to track myself or just don’t feel like doing it. But slowly I am increasing my self-awareness and seeing progress.

When I speak about changing a behaviour relative to a tendency of our type, I am referring to a deeply engrained habitual behaviour that is not merely learned, but something we are born with. To understand this further look into the book CrazYZoo Know Thyself Made Easy by Fritz Glaus.

Visualization

To practice visualization, you must bring up an image of yourself or something that makes you instantly recall the change you want to have. You also need to associate a positive emotion with this image. To do that, think of a time or event when you felt the way you want to from achieving your behavioural change. This must be a pleasant emotion.

Example

My goal is to be more patient and diplomatic with people and my image is of this bird flying high above it all. It reminds me of the importance of being detached and calm. The image of the bird brings me back to where I was when I took the picture, on a quiet beach on a hot summer day. I felt free and relaxed and had plenty of patience at that moment.

Technique

Combining affirmation with visualization is very effective to affirm the new behavioural goal. This can be done throughout your day when you recall your affirmation and visualize your image at the same time. However, the best approach is to find time to relax and close your eyes to bring up your visualization image and feel the associated emotion. This should be done everyday, preferably three times a day.

Repetition

It takes awareness and conscious effort to change a habit, especially one that is deeply engrained. Repetition is the key and practicing affirmation and visualization will raise awareness and create a new way of thinking that will incite the desired change. The proof is in advertising. As we are repeatedly exposed to a message, we slowly begin to accept it and change our belief about the product or service. When we shop and come across the advertised product, we automatically have an awareness and greater acceptance of it than the brands we know less. There might be better products on the shelf but we have been conditioned to accept the brand name due to their repetitive messages.

How to Write an Affirmation

Sep 26, 2016 Comments

Affirmations are highly effective to support a goal to change a behaviour or to modify a negative self image. You must be clear on your goal or the change you want to have about yourself. My previous articles and videos on the behaviour change process is a great way to get started on clarifying your goal.

Characteristics of an Affirmation

Affirmations need to be written in the present tense as if the behaviour or change is reality. This works on changing your subconscious belief about yourself.
The affirmation should be congruent with your goal statement.
The affirmation should be positive

Example of an Affirmation

Using myself as an example for the personal behavioural change goal I am working on, this is my affirmation:

I am patient and diplomatic.

This supports my following goal statement:

When things are not going at the pace I like or being done the way I want, take a diplomatic and positive approach with the person or those responsible for the task and show patience and support

The above affirmation supports the following desired behavioural change:

Impatient and too controlling with people when things are not going fast enough or done the way I think they should be

How to use an Affirmation

An affirmation should be repeated frequently throughout the day in order for it to form a new belief in the subconscious mind. It will disrupt your current belief and cause you to respond differently in the present moment without having to think about it.

A good practice would be to take a few minutes to relax for a few minutes three times a day to repeat the affirmation to yourself. Sit in a comfortable chair or lay down, close your eyes and concentrate on taking a few deep breaths to relax. Repeat the affirmation several times and out loud if you can. Do this upon rising in the morning, after lunch and before bed.

Adding visualization techniques can make affirmations even more effective. I’ll cover this in my next article and video.

Overcoming Roadblocks & Challenges to Achieving Goals for Personal and Leadership Development

Sep 12, 2016 Comments

Goal achievement is like mountain climbing in that there are always obstacles on the path and should be expected. The key is to know how to overcome the obstacles and not just give up on the journey. That is why writing a goal is so important because it forces you to plan and think through the solutions to roadblocks and challenges.

In my last article and video, I explained the process of goal setting in detail to change a behaviour relative to your human type. You can also download my new goal planning worksheet and example and use that to follow along and set your own goal. If you have not done so already I highly recommend doing it now and coming back to this article later.

In the last article and video, I covered up to writing a S.M.A.R.T. goal and the outcome measure. The next step is to write down the benefits to you personally, your organization and your team. You should be able to list at least five key benefits.

The Follow-up step (how will I measure progress made?) is next and this is crucial to do daily in order to develop a new habit by making sure you are actually making the effort required. Many people fail in achieving their goals simply because they do not write them down and track their activities or actions. Tracking a behavioural change goal can be done using a spreadsheet or with an app on a smartphone. I like using a spreadsheet so I can write the number of opportunities I had to practice my new behaviour and the result. I also like to add a note. Some apps let you do this as well.

Next is to list any roadblocks and challenges that come to mind. These could be both external and internal obstacles. In the case of behaviour change most challenges are internal. For example, in my goal relative to my type the behaviour I want to change is becoming impatient and overly controlling if things are not moving fast enough or being done the way I think is best. My goal is to be patient and diplomatic with others when expressing myself.

My main challenge is habit and stress. My solutions are to track my progress daily, get reminders from my partner and assistant and plan my time better to reduce stress. Being conscious of myself is also crucial and applies to everyone working on a behaviour modification.

Once you work out the solutions they become actions. If you keep up this process daily, you will create the change you want.

In the next article and video, I will cover affirmations and visualisation to support achieving the goal and to help be aware and conscious.