One of our leadership principles is “Practice, don’t Preach”.
So, in other words, we’re trying to make the point that it’s not about giving your people a lecture, or even internalizing it in our head: “This is what I need to do.” It’s about actually practicing it.
So, the activity that we did at this conference that I just came from was what we called “Left Hand Day”.
We said, “Ok”, at the beginning of the day, “All day we are going to shake hands with our left hand.”
I raise my left hand, I pointed to it and said “Is anyone confused about what the left hand is?”
Everyone was of course shaking their heads, “No, of course we know what the left hand is.”
It was hard! Even at the end of the day, I forgot and when I was shaking hands with the conference organizer, we both reached out with our right hands!
Fortunately, we caught ourselves, but it makes the point: it’s about practice, not preaching.
So, if you want to try that with your team, have “Left Hand Day” and spend the day shaking hands with your left hand.
Let me know how it goes!
