Leadership Nudge® 404 – Get better!
October 19, 2022
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September 6, 2023 Leadership Nudge® 434- Giving up control has surprising benefitsPractice Intent-Based Leadership by giving up control when ordering at restaurants. Here, David shares a great story with a surprising result. My favorite activity for practicing what it feels like to be an Intent-Based leader...
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August 30, 2023 Leadership Nudge® 433- How do you make it easy?The key is to make it easy for people to come up with suggestions for improvement. Here’s Peter with an example from Electrolux in the Netherlands. So if you've had a new kitchen fitted recently,...
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August 9, 2023 Leadership Nudge® 432- Are you Learning?Embed learning as a day-to-day activity and develop others to become future leaders. Here’s Peter with more. I'm at Doune Castle in Scotland, a place of myth and legend, dating back to the 14th century....
Intent-Based Leaders follow the principle “Don’t be good, get better.” Moving from where we are today to where we want to be involves mental contrasting. Here’s Jenni with more information.
“Don’t be good, get better” is one of my favorite Intent-Based Leadership principles. We can get better at things we don’t think we’re very good at yet. And we can get even better at things we’re already good at.
How can we take advantage of our brains to jumpstart the get better process?
Moving from where we are today to where we want to be involves mental contrasting. It’s the strategy of comparing and contrasting positive and negative aspects of our future. Essentially, it’s the process our brains use to make the steps for getting better tangible. Mental contrasting enables us to look at where we are now. And where we want to be in the future – going from here to there – and how.
So instead of just daydreaming about becoming a better listener, for example (or “even” better listener) instead, I think about, “Okay, what’s working, what’s not working? What’s my desired outcome if I become an even better listener? And then what steps will it take? Who can I talk to, to get ideas and inspiration around things so that I can try? What obstacles might get in my way? And how can I remove them?” This is Mental contrasting.
When we make our improvement process more tangible, we increase the likelihood of actually reaching our “get better” goals.
So the next time you find yourself thinking about how you might become even better, get better. Make the steps that it takes to go from where you are now to where you want to be concrete.
I’m Jenni Jepson with your Leadership Nudge. Let us know how it goes.