NLP Weekly: Consistency, Being a Leader, Seeing Through the Fog

NLP Weekly: Making achieving your goals & being a great leader second nature.

March 8, 2024

Performance: Consistency Isn't Sexy. 

The results definitely are though. Many of the things we want to achieve, change, improve, or create require consistent effort and habits.

This consistency can seem monotonous. It can feel boring. Motivation doesn't come easily, if it even comes at all. Worse, it may never seem like you're making progress.

Cultivate consistency by:

• protecting the time needed to being consistent; block off and prioritize the time necessary to take meaningful action towards your goal
• taking consistent action leads to seeing progress; communicate your goal to others that will support your consistency or will be impacted by your dedicating time to something important to you
• establish recognition benchmarks; acknowledge and reward yourself for the consistency of the behaviour on your way to the overall goal.

In general, it takes 66 days for a new habit or behaviour to become automatic (variation based on scope & complexity).

This doesn't necessarily mean you'll achieve your desired end result in 66 days, however, you will have made the actions necessary to achieve your goal automatic.

How would it feel to know you are confidently on your way to achieving a major goal two months from now?

Leadership: Management or Leadership?

A recurring theme you'll here from me is that there is a distinct difference between being a manager and being a leader.

Warren Bennis offers some great distinctions between the two:

• a manager does things right >> a leader does the right thing
• a manager administers >> a leader innovates
• a manager maintains >> a leader develops
• a manager relies on control >> a leader inspires trust
• a manager focuses on systems & structure >> a leader focuses on people 

A manager is often a title someone achieves. A leader is a set of behaviours, a practice, a lifestyle, a pursuit. You do not need to have a title to be a leader, you just need to be willing to show up as one.

Nature: Visibility: Starting When You Can't See 

One of the challenges with many projects or pursuits we have is that we know where we want to go, we know where we currently are, we might know one or two of the steps, but we don't know every single step we need to take to get to the goal.

So, most of us, don't even start. We don't begin with the parts we already know how to do because we lack the visibility to see what we should after the first one, two, or three steps.

Earlier this week, the was significant fog one morning when I went to walk my dog off-leash. Visibility was maybe 5m - 10m. I knew that I would have to be extremely mindful of coyotes (read last week's post if you missed it).

For the first 20 - 30 minutes, I couldn't see beyond that 10 meters. Still, I knew I had to start. I didn't know if I would encounter any obstacles or what they might be. 

After about 30 minutes, the rising run began to burn off the fog. I still had to be mindful of potential obstacles but now I would be able to see them from much further away.  

I didn't know what the morning would hold. It ended up being a beautiful, warm sunny day. Much better than expected.

So, that thing you want to do but you're not sure of everything you need to do or don't know everything you think you need to... start. It'll become clearer as you go. You'll become more aware. Resources will show up to help you. 

I'm glad you're here,

Graham Snowfield