Keep Practising and Improving (WT783)

Keep Practising and Improving (WT783)

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WT 783 Keep practising and improving

I don’t know about you, but this week I’ve been resitting a training course I attended about 12 months ago and it’s like I never attended.

As we went through the exercises, I kept thinking, “I don’t remember this. I can’t recall doing that before.”

I’m guessing this has happened to you. How come?

Because this week I presented the final session for a 6 month internal customised training program for a client and as we revised what we had learned over the period, it was clear that some of the participants, like me with my course, hadn’t fully taken in the information when first presented.

As I reflect on this, I’m reminded of past participants of the Leading Yourself and Leading Others experience who have attended more than once. Their feedback has been similar to my experience.

“I’ve picked up so much more this time around.  I’m getting more and more distinctions.”

So, if you’ve already graduated from our LSLO experience, it might be time to consider attending again.

The real lesson here is to keep practising and improving.

My favourite quote in the whole world is by English Philosopher, Herbert Spencer, who said, “The Great Aim of Education Is Not Knowledge but Action”.

It’s not enough for us to attend training and pay attention and learn and then think we “know it”. 

We only know it when we embody it.

We demonstrate that we have embodied the knowledge when we actually use it, ie. we do the thing we have learned. We take the action.

For example, you can read a book on how to swim. You can watch a video on how to ride a bike. You can watch a live demonstration of both of these things, however you will not be able to swim or ride a bike until you get in the pool or on the bike and start swimming or riding.

It’s not rocket science.

Do the thing. Keep practising and improving.

 

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You Can Be Too Pigheaded (WT781)

You Can Be Too Pigheaded (WT781)

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WT 781 You can be too pig headed

My 87 year old uncle lives alone.

A few years back he was diagnosed with Guillain-Barre syndrome in which he experienced muscle weakness of the legs.

Over time, his legs became more painful and his mobility was severely restricted.

Unsteady on his feet, when he fell, he was unable to get himself up.

Despite having a special alarm that would summon the ambulance or other help within an hour if he fell, he refused to carry it.

Hence the “pigheaded” description.

No amount of pleading, arguing, bribing etc. would get him to use the alarm.

And this week he ended up in the hospital after having fallen through the night in the bathroom. There he lay for approximately 17 hours in nothing but a pair of pyjamas on the cold tiles.

If only he had agreed to wear the alarm, he could have been quickly helped.

So what has this got to do with you?

Well, according to Google AI review, “Pigheadedness refers to the quality of being stubbornly unyielding in one’s opinions or plans, often to the point of being unreasonable or annoying. It’s a characteristic of someone who resists change and is unwilling to consider different perspectives.”

If you’re honest with yourself, are there times when you are pigheaded?

Do you resist change at work or at home?

Are you willing or unwilling to consider different perspectives?

Are there times when you are unyielding in your opinion or plans?

If so, please reconsider.

Please take my uncle’s experience as a warning.

You can be too pigheaded.

And one last point, being pigheaded doesn’t only affect you. It affects those around you, who often have to clean up your mess or spend time supporting you being inconvenienced for something that could have been prevented.

As they say in America, “I’m just sayin’”

Let’s all take a look at ourselves and our attitudes and behaviours and ask ourselves, am I being too pigheaded?

If so, you know what to do.

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Just Do Your Job (WT779)

Just Do Your Job (WT779)

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WT 779 Just do your job

Every now and again we have a conversation with someone and something they say gives us goosebumps and chills all over.

I call these “truth bumps” because they indicate to us that what we are hearing is the truth.

This week my body tingled with truth bumps.

I was talking with a colleague about making sales calls.

Prospecting is something that a lot of people resist.

We were discussing how important it is to include a request for introductions or referrals.

My colleague even encouraged me to reach out to past Leading Yourself and Leading Others Graduates to check in with them and also invite them to pass on any referrals, which I did.

As were discussing the various scripts, he gave an example from real estate.

“If I was speaking to Joe Blow, who moved away from the area 10 years ago, I would still end the call by asking Joe if he knew anyone locally who might be looking at selling their home.”

And then came the truth bump moment, he continued, “I’m just doing my job”.

Of course he’s doing his job. He is a real estate agent. Real estate agents have to find their own stock before they can sell it.  It’s not like selling computers where you can simply order more when you sell all your stock.

So, how about you? What’s your job and are you doing it?

Do you need a shift in mindset to get yourself to do it?

As I contacted previous graduates of the Leadership experience, it would have been easy for me to cherry pick and to decide who might want to hear from me and whom I thought might not.

Instead, I shifted my mindset and thought, if I delegated this job to an admin assistant, they would  simply send the message to the phone number and not even think about it. And so I did, I didn’t enter into Automatic Listening and make up stories.  In fact, quite the opposite, I did think of all the wonderful leaders I have met and trained and I got a warm fuzzy feeling.

It was wonderful to be back in touch with so many people.

Just do your job, whatever your job is.

Afterall, you signed up for it.

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The Cycle of Change (WT778)

The Cycle of Change (WT778)

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WT 778 Stages of Change Diagram

Are you thinking about changing something or are you wanting prospective clients to purchase a product of service?

If so, you might be interested to know a little bit about the process we go through when we want to change something in our lives.

In the late 1970s, James Prochaska, a psychologist interested in psychotherapy outcomes, noticed a disconnect in treatment approaches—particularly around behaviour change (e.g., quitting smoking, substance use). Traditional models assumed that people were ready to change, and that all they needed was the right intervention.

But many clients weren’t ready, and even effective therapies failed if used at the wrong time. So Prochaska posed a deeper question:

“What actually happens when people change on their own, without therapy?”

He & DiClemente discovered that people don’t change all at once—they go through a predictable, cyclical process of readiness. And importantly, each stage of change requires different support and messaging.

By studying how people prepare for and attempt change (especially self-changers), they mapped out a non-linear, six-stage process:

  1. Precontemplation – No intention to change
  2. Contemplation – Considering change
  3. Preparation – Planning to act soon
  4. Action – Actively making change
  5. Maintenance – Sustaining change
  6. (Later added) Termination – Complete transformation (for some behaviours)

They published this in their 1983 paper, integrating insights from clinical psychology, behavioural science, and public health, hence it was known as The Transtheoretical Model. (Cycle or Stages of Change is much easier.)

Knowing this can help you identify where you’re at with your own readiness to change as well as where your prospective clients might be. It’s also useful for Organisational Change, Coaching and Personal Development and Education and Public Policy because it helps us meet people where they are, not where we assume they should be.

Obviously someone who is at the first stage, “Pre-Contemplation” is not going to rush to buy your service, so they need education and awareness.

Someone who is contemplating change needs to be informed. You could share stories or data or case studies.

When someone is getting ready, they want you to be available, responsive and solution-oriented.

If they’re ready to buy, it’s time to ask for their commitment.

Next maintain the change through an ongoing relationship – follow up, upsell and support their success.

And if they happen to relapse, they may be experiencing doubt, so reconnect and re-engage to rebuild trust.

You can think of your marketing as meeting prospects where they are, not where you want them to be. A pushy sales pitch in the Pre-Contemplation stage won’t work, whereas a warm, helpful message in Contemplation can help move them forward.

Marketing Mentor, Cham Tang, says, “Marketing is developing relationships with people until they are ready to buy”.

Even if you’re not in sales, think about yourself and your team. In relation to change of any kind, where are you at? Reply and let me know.

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Into The Label Maker We Go (WT777)

Into The Label Maker We Go (WT777)

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WT 777 Into the label maker we go

This week I’m sharing a conversation I had with a good friend and colleague.

We’ll call him Andrew.

Andrew was telling me about one of his team members.

The team member was bemoaning his clients.

“Rather than being grateful for the work or understanding of the needs of his clients”, Andrew said, “Into The Label Maker We Go”.

He went on to explain.

The team member would mention the client’s name, throw them in the label maker and then spit out any number of disparaging judgements and labels to describe his clients.

Now, this shouldn’t be funny and yet I found myself laughing heartily at the metaphor.

I imagined the team member’s head shaped like a label maker, similar to the old fashioned “Dyno” label makers, which we would use to make sticky labels of our names etc. for school books, cases and the like.

Sadly, I think, to some extent, we are all label makers.

Recall one of your own recent conversations and notice if you threw people into your label maker, and spat out judgements and criticisms.

When we label and judge others:

  1. We ignore the fact that we don’t know all the facts. We don’t know what’s going on for the other to cause them to behave the way they do.
  2. We often project onto others, unresolved issues of our own. “She’s ignorant. She doesn’t listen. She interrupts”, complains your friend who does all of that and more.
  3. It limits their growth and yours. Labels can box people in. If they accept the label, they can become the label and therefore not grow and develop.
  4. If we normalse this behaviour, we create environments where negativity, comparison, and gossip thrive—rather than support, acceptance, and mutual respect.
  5. We let ourselves off the hook for having the conversation and giving the feedback about the behaviour we’d like to see changed.

So, as funny as the metaphor is, on a serious note, I encourage you to expel your label maker.

This doesn’t mean people won’t do things that upset you. Rather it encourages you to find out what’s going on, to have a look at yourself, to be open to growth and development and to create a culture of acceptance and mutual respect and hold yourself accountable for having the conversation in a positive and assertive way.

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The Law of Commitment (WT776)

The Law of Commitment (WT776)

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WT 776 Commitment

When you say you’re committed to (fill in the blank), have you ever wondered how your body knows you are committed?

This week I’ve been studying with Benjamin J. Harvey and he gave a mind-blowing explanation of the Law of Commitment.

In fact, we are biologically designed to succeed if we follow the Law of Commitment.

In your body, you have cells called Astrocytes.

Astrocytes respond to two things. They respond to what’s called increased impulse traffic where the impulses are travelling down the same neural networks over and over again as well as taking urgent action.

With a couple of coaching processes we can trick the astrocytes by combining increased traffic with urgent action.

Say you have a habit that you want to accelerate. If you did the same thing every day, once a day for a year, you would have “zapped” your neurons (electrical chemical impulse travelling down the axons) just 365 times. But if you sit down and do 1000 zaps in a sitting, this is the equivalent of taking 3 years to form the habit. So you are accelerating the number of times the neural network fires, causing the astrocytes to wake up and ask, “What’s going on?”

The astrocytes then wake up your glial cells called Oligodendrocytes which wrap your axons with myelin.  It’s the myelin that is responsible for your ability to learn and retain the habit. The myelin insulates your neurons so the impulses can travel faster, in fact, up to 100x faster through a neuron that’s wrapped with myelin compared to one that isn’t.

With a little bit of habit hacking, you can actually achieve your results 5x faster.

Think about it this way. The only way to know that you’re committed is by your speed of response.

If you have kids you’ll see this by how quickly they put on their shoes to go to a friend’s party compared to how long it takes to put on school shoes. They’re committed to going to the party.

For yourself, notice how quickly you get into action to respond to an SMS to a person you’re committed to vs someone you’re not committed to. The same goes for your work. You speed up your response to the tasks you’re committed to vs those that you aren’t.

This is absolutely fascinating.

We can say we are committed, however now we know how to tell if we’re really committed and we also know how we can hack the system to accelerate our results.

Let me know what you’re committed to and how quickly you’re getting your results. Reach out if you’d like to accelerate your results.

 

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Go to https://shirleydalton.com/Weekly-Thoughts.

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