In order to effectively manage your company and provide a positive example for your team members, it is critical for leaders to have strong habits in place. The world's most brilliant leaders frequently practice similar behaviors. The likelihood of long-term, sustainable success is increased by these behaviors.
Our habits can dictate the quality of our lives. Research shows that around half of our daily actions are driven by repetition. This is probably why many behavioral scientists and psychologists have spent so much time writing about how to establish and keep positive habits. Regular sleep and exercise, a balanced diet, a manageable schedule, and mindfulness are just a few examples of practices or habits that, if done regularly, can improve our work, relationships, and mental health. You can check out Keen Alignment's Programs that can help you build new habits that can positively affect the way you lead and perform as a leader.
What if those things don’t come naturally to you? What does it really take to build a new habit?
While there are plenty of hacks on the internet competing to solve the answer to these questions, the neuroscience behind habit formation doesn’t offer shortcuts. Experts advocate for the old-fashioned approach: incremental progress. We must make steady movements toward shaping our consistent behaviors or habits to serve our larger goals. Dedicated commitment to creating new habits is what, time and again, has proven to lead to sustainable change.
The first step towards creating long-term change involves building routines or systems, not just habits themselves.
James Clear, author of the best-selling book Atomic Habits has a useful opinion on this. Clear says, “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” Being that we have mountains of evidence in favor of this opinion, we need systems in place that support our best habits or we won’t be able to sustain them. Many of our current systems and habitual ways of operating within those systems are not serving our goals. You don’t have to look far to find work cultures where unexamined habits are creating systems and cultures riddled with toxicity, burnout, lack of trust, and loss of productivity.
These systems are not typically corrected and curated for success without assistance. Margaret Graziano, CEO of KeenAlignment, has decades of experience working with companies and successfully coaching the most senior executives in shifting their habits to create more productive and aligned systems and teams. She walks her talk and has demonstrated the ability to create spaces where teams see themselves, their habits, and their systems more clearly.
Ted Green, President of PACE Supply Corp. in regard to working with Margaret said, “As I am moving into retirement, we as a team have found Margaret to be extremely helpful as a consultant to us. She has challenged our thinking, helped us put into words our core values, and understand our culture as a company. All of these key areas have better positioned us as we look for a new President to take the company into the future. We have found Margaret to be insightful as to who we are as a team, our current habits, and who each individual on the Exec Team is as a contributing team member. This has helped us to have a more open dialogue with one another. I highly recommend KeenAlignment as a vital and professional consulting team.”
Creating new habits does not happen without putting in the work and partnering with people who know how to do the work in a way that is authentic, transformative, and invites dynamic culture can make all the difference. If you find that you are engaging in habits that are causing you to operate within a system that is not serving your purpose, then it is probably time to begin a partnership that will take you to the next level in a truly transformative way.
Visit keenalignment.com to see which of our programs can help you begin the process of creating new habits and living your best life today!
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