Why are we waiting for the New Year?

With the festive period upon us and end of year leadership responsibilities stacking up life could feel stressful both in and out of work and, as you head towards the end of the year, simply surviving the social and financial strain can feel like a victory.  Our waistline, budget and patience may be stretched but we can always start afresh along with other desired achievements or resolutions in 2016 – right?

But it doesn’t have to feel this way.  If we carefully introduce one or two simple changes in to our day to day routine we could at the least prevent some of the detrimental impact, if not give ourselves the chance of a head start in making and achieving changes we desire.
So how would you do that along with your daily responsibilities and make it stick?

It can be easy to fall into the trap of wanting to change overnight, believing that we get the change right from that point on and that we have failed if we fashould ll back into old habits, even for one instance. For example: you feel you should be more prepared for meetings, spend more time coaching your team or it may be get to bed earlier, eat healthily or exercise more; rationally it seems we could ‘just do it’ and if necessary, draw on a little willpower and determination to make it happen, however, when we explore how we form habits and behaviours it’s easy to see why simply deciding we want to change is not enough.

Our current way of operating has been etched into our way of being as our brain is a master at embedding routines into our autopilot; there are differing opinions on how long it takes to make or break a habit but what is certain is that:  to change we need to invest time getting into the granularity and detail of both current and, more importantly the desired behaviour and we need to allow ourselves the opportunity to adapt, modify and learn from our attempts to ingrain the new approach.

Below are 6 tips to help:

Identify – what you would like to change?

Focus – on your reason and benefit for change: What you value about your current approach?  What gain does it provide? And how important is this gain to you on a scale of 1 to 10? This is important so we understand what has kept us using this approach. What’s the benefit when you’ve made the change? How important is achieving this change on a scale of 1 to 10? To make a change we need to be clear of our reason to want to do this and be clear that it is really something we desire.

Be Forensic about your current situation:
Location, time of day, your emotional state and other people can all be triggers which generate the unwanted behaviour or automatic action.   What do you currently believe about yourself in relation to the change? This can play a hugely important role in helping or hindering progress.

Create – your new world in detail by describing what it will be like when you’ve made the change:
What will it feel like? What will you see yourself doing? What will you tell yourself? And what will you believe about yourself in relation to this change? For the triggers identified in point 3 find a replacement action which you will focus on.

MOST IMPORTANTLY

Start Small – like a project break your change down into small incremental steps to progress towards the change (e.g. drinking more water:  1 small glass a day not a 2 litre bottle overnight).

Celebrate what you have achieved not what you haven’t – it’s important to recognise progress and not focus solely on the times or areas you haven’t succeeded (e.g. 3 days drinking 1 glass of water is better than none).

Here’s how this might work:

Having practiced change and started achieving your goal you are in a great place to build on this in 2016 and you could also help your team consider how they tackle their desired goals.

Jane Buxton, Leadership development specialist, motivated by helping others: develop greater awareness, change habits and achieve greater fulfilment and impact in work or life; I work with teams and individuals at all levels to maximise business performance through development, bringing to my work my experience in managing multiple teams and providing resource globally for large scale projects.

Gain clarity about your stakeholders and devise the most appropriate engagement plan. Download your free  4-step template to plan engagement for your change project: Click Here for Your Template