Practice mindfulness here. Or else.
In an age that speaks positively about emotional intelligence and mindfulness, the word Habit has evolved to mostly represent a negative connotation. When we acknowledge our own Habits I suspect, like I do, you are inclined to want to break those Habits.
But not all Habits are bad for us to have. There are some well-ingrained autopilot thinking and doing patterns that free up time for our own individual CPUs to process new information. We couldn’t function at our peak without some quotient of Habit in regular operation. They were created in the past as a means to cope with certain life challenges, and some still serve quite well in that regard.
Leaders have Habits like everyone else. But they must be particularly wary of their potentially infelicitous effects — particularly those about which a leader may be unconscious. As has been said, the Habits we have that we are not aware of, in fact have us. A leader with an unconscious Habit may do far worse than commit a knee-jerk emotional outburst that erodes respect among followers. They may allow the well worn grooves of their habitual thinking to become deep ruts in their decision-making – that suspend progress on the path to the future outcome that is sought.
To be effective a leader must not only be aware of any habitually unexamined perspectives, he or she must also regulate the auto-response that has become wired from coping with life’s experience. And since Habits are automatic emotional responses to events, leaders have to anticipate events that are likely to occur in pursuit of the objective. And get a handle on their personal trigger mechanisms.
It is well nigh impossible to do that on your own. Enlisting followers who also have their eyes fixed on the same horizon that you are approaching can give an organization the edge it needs. Imagine: self-awareness, self-regulation and wary anticipation — by leaders and followers alike – operating in an integrated support network behind the shared aims of the organization. A Habit like that is not one we’d want to break.
