Impact of the Why

The last post was a challenge to focus on the “why”.  Leadership is about creating experiences that develop the “why” into strong beliefs resulting in the needed actions for success.  Our teams can perform even better when we intentionally plan experiences, beliefs, and actions.

Experiences drive the beliefs.  Our teams need to experience an event or environment strong enough to frame the belief necessary to commit them to the outcome you need.  We need to intentionally plan and create experiences with a desired belief in mind.

Beliefs drive the behavior.  Think about the things you volunteer your time.  We act because we believe what we are doing will make a difference in some sort of outcome – for the person we are helping, for the cause we are serving, or (selfishly) how we are seen.  Our beliefs drive our behavior.  Strong belief will create committed actions.  Connecting the “why” through experiences for our team will shape the beliefs to help our team move from involved to committed and strengthen consistent action.

What next?  There are three things to review: 

• Leaders need to review and select the critical beliefs to ensure that they have identified the correct ones to strengthen the behavior needed.
• Leaders need to review the current environment to see if there is something missing that would result in stronger beliefs connected to the “why”. Some experiences or events may need formal scripting because without the script, they will not occur consistently enough.  Scripting will help create habits.
• Leaders need to ensure their behavior is in alignment with the beliefs and environment they expect.  The Apostle Paul challenged his readers in the New Testament to follow his example and to practice what they learned from him.  That raises the bar high – can you issue that challenge?

There will be times when the wrong people are in the wrong seat (and maybe even on the wrong bus!).  But if we start by looking at the environment/experiences we are creating and the beliefs that are resulting from those experiences we can increase the opportunity for a culture to evolve with internalized behavior instead of one that is dependent on consequences.