Leaders' Don't Have a Choice in how they Behave

Richard is a manager of a critical department in his company.

His senior executive wants him to delegate more of the operational and tactical work to his assistant managers.

His senior executive has asked him to focus on coaching his assistant managers, increase department efficiency by doing business process reengineering and participate more at a strategic level.

Richard went on leadership and management training and he got all the best practices on what he should be doing, how to do it, tools, frameworks etc.

Yet after extensive training Richard still was not delegating and continued to do things as he always did.

His senior executive and HR was baffled as to why there was no change in Richard's behaviour although he has been on extensive training with very clear ideas on how he should delegate and other leadership behaivours.

As I indicated, Richard headed a very critical department in the company so the company was determined to find a solution.

I was called in for an exploratory meeting to see if it was possible for me to get Richard to delegate and display other useful leadership behaviours.

When I looked at the training Richard would have received, it had really good information, best practices, useful frameworks and practical suggestions.

His Senior Executive and HR were baffled as to why Richard was not implementing the best practices and suggestions from the program since they to thought they were 'good' programs.

They thought he had clear alternatives and choices in how he did things.

The reality was that did not have a choice although he had the information.

Richard understood the material intellectually.

But not viscerally.

Having choices in how we behave is great but when I talk about choice, I don't talk about it intellectually. 

One needs to experience neurologically what the options are before one can exercise voluntary choice.

We accomplished this quickly with Richard.

In one session, I got Richard to get very relaxed and run him through a process where switched out holding on to the tasks with delegating them and FEELING the safety of doing the action. 

I then took him through some visualisations where he can see himself delegating.

Then I got him to imagine that floated into that version of himself and got him to see through the eyes of the Richard that delegates, hear through the ears of the Richard who delegates and Feel how that Richard who delegates FEELS.

The now had a visceral experience and he experienced delegation neurologically.

He finally got a full experience of what it is like to really delegate.

He now has a choice in how he behaves.

Millions perhaps Billions are spent every year on leadership development with little or no change in behaviour.

The challenge is that new behaviours are not formed from new knowledge and information. 

New behaviours are formed when new cortical pathways are created there are techniques that can make that happen quick