How To Help Employees Change Ingrained Habits!

Gurus and coaches often tell people to ‘visualise success,’ but that’s not enough. To really achieve your goals, don’t stop there. Think through what will get in your way, and make a plan for overcoming it.

- Joel Constable

I first met Eric (not his real name) during new manager training I was facilitating. He had recently become a manager after several successful years as an individual contributor and was excited to learn more about his new role.

Throughout the next two days Eric fully immersed himself, engaging with other participants and actively practising new concepts. At the end of the training, Eric committed to let go of more of the tactical work he was doing to empower his team and open up his time to think strategically.

Months later I talked with Eric about how things were going. He acknowledged that after a few weeks of creating space for big picture work, he’d gotten buried with a new project and jumped back into the details. Some members of his team had begun to feel like he was micro-managing them and his boss had recently given him feedback that he needed to have a clearer vision for the future.

Eric’s situation certainly isn’t unique. In my experience developing leaders at Intuit, Pinterest, and Google, just about everyone I’ve ever worked with is capable of and interested in getting better. And yet time and again many of these individuals struggle to improve despite their best intentions. I believe one reason for this is that in learning and development programs, far too little time and focus is devoted to how to change existing habits and behaviours, which are often the greatest barriers to personal growth.