#45: Knowing & doing isn't enough, it's something else that matters today

Today, I wanted to talk about a topic that is really dear to my heart. How can you stop working harder and reach even better results?

Because we know that knowing and doing isn’t enough, it’s something else that matters today…

Implementing empowerment in my organization

When I was CEO of an organization a few years ago, I saw the need of implementing empowerment in our teams. It cost us too much time to control everyone and I felt people could use the freedom and flexibility to do the job as they think is best. At first, many people were skeptical and thought they would take advantage of the flexibility and work less. But instead, the exact opposite happened. People started working more and more and some people couldn’t stop working anymore. We had to support these people in changing their habits, so they would not burnout. This trend has been reoccurring a lot in 2020 since the pandemic started. Working remotely has given you a sense of flexibility, but at what cost?

The cost of remote flexibility

Most of us tend to put a lot of pressure on ourselves. We see opportunities, we see problems, we have demands and we want to do it all. The chances are that you know how to act when you have these demands and problems. You should probably say no more, you should be more vulnerable and transparent, you should accept your failures and see them as feedback. But somehow, when you are under pressure, despite you know these things, your conditioned behaviors might take over, without you even being aware of it. And for most of us, that conditioned behavior is doing more! The problem nowadays, even more with the COVID-pandemic, is that doing more simply isn’t possible for most people if they want to have a good work-life balance. If you want to be successful, you shouldn’t focus on doing more, or knowing more, because you probably know a lot about the things you do. So what should you focus on?

Being more

Yep. Being more. It’s about being more and elevating your consciousness level. This sounds kind of vague and spiritual, but in simpler words, you have to become another leader and not simply know or do more things. You should become a leader with purpose, aware of your mindset, your beliefs, and your conditioned behaviors. You should become a focused leader with resilience, capable of saying no and managing chaos. You should become a leader capable of transcending your fears to create a meaningful, impactful, and agile organization. Transcending your fears is really important because you cannot let your fears take over when you are faced with a high-pressure situation.

“How though?”

I have told this many times, but one of the most important things is to pause. When things aren’t going as planned, step back, take a break and reconnect with yourself. Reconnect with what matters to you and what you want in your life. Only after you have done that, you can tackle the challenges in an appropriate way. The next thing you can do is observe yourself as much as possible. If you are aware of your actions and behaviors, you will probably adopt them by yourself, but most people are working so hard that they barely see who they are in high-pressure situations. Once you are aware of these behaviors, you can free yourself from your conditioned behaviors and you are free to do the things that will lead to your desired result. In order for you to become a better and more successful leader, there are many other habits you can adopt like saying no, pausing, focussing, listening instead of talking, trusting more, etc. I often say being successful in a transformation is not about the big strategy, it’s about changing the little things. These little things compound and will change the culture and habits within the organization. That will then make it possible to implement your strategy and achieve great results.

Becoming a more successful leader doesn’t require more knowledge or doing, but requires you to become a better version of yourself, in order to better do the things you already know. That is the message I wanted to share with you today.

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