People can overcome bad habits that prevent them from achieving their goals… habits that make them feel comfortable and safe in what they’re doing, but which sabotage their efforts to change when better ideas are right there in front of them.
It may be easy to identify bad personal habits that cause problems in behaviors like eating, lifestyle, and self-image. Unfortunately, we often hold onto what we already know as the only safe and comfortable standard. As business leaders, this can mean being blocked from clearly evaluating new ideas as they are developed. Like having a mantra of “we do things because we have been doing it this way for years!”
This session is about how our response to new ideas can change - whether the source is our own ideas or the ideas of others.
One Definition of a Good Business Leader
A good business leader has an open stance and belief that every idea coming to him or her is worthy of consideration. This kind of leader listens with an unbiased mind, recognizing that there may be value to discover and that there may be a seed of innovation that may come about as a result. This is a learned response.
Defining the Problem
The inability to look at change and appropriately respond to new ideas is the death knell to business and innovation.
Virtually all of us know of an idea being rejected before its completely heard or considered.
In this session we will explore the reason behind this tendency and a positive alternative.
To highlight this tendency and illustrate the alternative, we will look at two examples - a CEO from the book, Immunity to Change (Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey, Harvard Business Review Press) and a case study from my work.
With these as a backdrop, we will examine two paths that define a moment of truth and choice between the being open to new ideas path and the sabotage path - illustrating the difference of the paths with examples. As a result, with a better understanding of the chosen path, we can visualize how to change to get a different outcome.
The interactive activity for this session will be to explore known situations where an idea was presented but did not receive adequate attention or consideration (or an idea which was given active attention and consideration AND was a success). In groups of 4, the participants will determine the critical elements which derailed the idea (or created a success), and several groups will report their findings as time permits.
Defining the Solution
In conclusion, I will describe 5 Secrets to Stop The Sabotaging and Silencing – which offers clarity to what is possible when we open our mind beyond anything that doesn’t perfectly match the established mental picture.
