Manila, 25 April 2024 — Why leaders value structure in their life.

Story

It happened last week. Picture a special forces military veteran speaking to a room full of business leaders. The topic? How change starts with your mindset. Not just goal setting and positive thoughts, but a mindset to embrace the gritty practice of seeing things through until the desired result is achieved. The strong mindset you would need for a successful military operation. 

That challenge is no different from what we see in our coaching work for leadership development. After experiencing an Aha moment for change, it’s time for every leader to engage in the gritty practice of making the change happen. That’s when the going gets tough, and the tough get going. It’s the leader’s consistent actions that count, one after another, like the chain you see in the picture.

While people with different personality types may find it easier or more difficult to get organized for consistency, there is no doubt that all leaders need to master gritty mindset practice. In our experience, learning and growing in a structure of deliberate systematic practice is a must for leaders. It comes down to ‘reps every day’ to strengthen your mindset, just as you would do reps in the gym when working on your body. 

Challenge 

Having a goal is not enough, according to Simon Jeffries, the military veteran. The biggest shortfall he saw in the arena of the mindset was that “nobody treats it like a skill set.” While everyone would understand that you have to put in the reps when you want physical change in your body, people wrongly expect leadership mindset results to come from what he called a “passive consumption of information, listening to podcasts, and reading blogs.”

To build our leadership mindset and successfully make a change happen through a transition, we need a systematic and practical approach where we ‘put in the reps every day.’ Without that, Jeffries reminded his audience, “You are not going to change the behavior patterns, the thought patterns that have been around for years and years.“ So true. We see in our leadership coaching that it takes a sustained effort of practice—reps every day—to build new habits and replace outdated mental programming.

There is more to learn from taking a military perspective on leadership development. In several countries, defense authorities have recently observed that introducing a voluntary ‘year of service’ in the military helped all kinds of professionals who had experienced a lack of structure in their lives. Especially when they had grown up in families where mom and dad both worked, leaving them to figure life out by themselves. Taking a year of military service and regularly training as a reservist helped these professionals develop a positive self-image by building structure in their lives. 

Question 

In leadership development, we see the benefits of introducing a structured and practical approach that has us doing ‘reps every day’ to build effective leadership behaviors. A structure of gritty practice helps to replace outdated mental programming with a confident and positive self-image. This is amply documented in the research of Angela Duckworth Lee, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and author of Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance.

So what does ‘reps every day’ mean to you? That’s my question for you this week. You have read this far so you are keen to develop your leadership. Congrats! And you may still be caught up in a pattern of “passive consumption of information, listening to podcasts, and reading blogs.” That will only give you 10% of what you need to grow and keep growing as a leader. 

Trusted leaders are professionals who have built a consistent practice to keep growing their leadership. So can you when you take up a leadership challenge that lets you put in reps every day, supported by coaching and collaboration with peer professionals. You can experience this for yourself in our Leader in Transition coaching program for professionals and in our Grow3Leaders community of practice. You will get the best results when you bring your team. See you there.