Getting Strong For Leadership - Change A Habit, Improve A Skill

Leading people to higher levels of productivity is not for the weak at heart. To get strong for leadership, you'll need to take a hard look at some of your work habits. And you'll probably need to improve some of your people skills.

Change a habit? You know how hard this is, but sometimes your effectiveness, your happiness - and even your life - may depend on doing so. Improve a skill? There's nothing easy about that either, especially if you already have a habitual way of doing something. But your success as a leader may depend on changing your behavior.

So what's involved? How does this kind of learning happen?

The first thing you need to know is that all behavior is triggered by thought processes, which happen in the brain. Not in the skin. Not in the muscles. Not in the bones. In the brain. We use different words to describe patterns of behavior, such as traits, habits, routines, skills and strengths. But in the brain, a skill or a habit pattern is the same thing - a behavior pattern - a sequence of perceptions, thoughts, feelings and behaviors efficiently enabled by a web of interconnected brain cells. So unless you consciously decide to do something else, the neural network for a specific skill or habit will automatically be engaged to deal with the situation at hand.

Where do these neural pathways come from?

You aren't born with them. You grow them. Each brain cell has hundreds of tiny filaments called dendrites that are stimulated to grow and connect to the other brain cells that are involved in the behavior.

What stimulates the growth? Repetitions of the behavior. Practice, practice and more practice. 2,500 years ago, Aristotle said this: "Whatever we learn to do, we learn by actually doing it: men come to be builders, for instance, by building, and harp players by playing the harp. In the same way, by doing just acts, we come to be just; by doing self-controlled acts, we come to be self-controlled; and by doing brave acts, we become brave." He was right about this. This really is how we learn behavior patterns.

Hit a thousand tennis balls, swim a thousand laps, shoot a thousand free throws. Do anything the same way over and over again, and eventually the brain cells involved in the activity will be stimulated to grow and connect into a hard-wired neural network.

The good news:

#1 - When this happens, you can perform the new habit or skill without concentrating on doing it. You just do what you usually do, comfortably and automatically.

#2 - The behavior pattern is permanently ingrained in the brain, because the neural pathway is physically interconnected.

#3 - Anyone can do this.

The bad news:

#1 - There's no magic bullet, no quick fix. The only thing that works is a lot of repetition and practice.

#2 - This usually equates to months of consistent application. Even Tiger Woods has to hit thousands of golf balls to change something in his swing.

#3 - If you learn the skill incorrectly, or if the habit you learn is a bad habit, you own it.

The bottom line for managers who want to be strong for leadership:

#1 - The only way to correct a dysfunctional habit or undesired behavior pattern is to go against the grain of your learned behavior long enough to do enough repetition and reinforcement to rewire your brain.

#2 - Instruction, reading a book or watching a video isn't enough to master a new way of doing something. You have to follow through with a considerable period of consistent practical application.

#3 - This means that 99% of the learning has to take place not in a classroom, but in the real world of work and life.

So you can be strong for leadership. But if you want to change a habit or improve a skill, you have to do the work. And if you follow through, what happens in your brain when you master the new skill or habit will seem magical, even though there's no magic in it at all.