My weekly blogs are focused on highlighting a range of “soft skills” that serve to make hard skilled professionals more relatable to a broad cross section of people.
However, I would like to start this journey by sharing in the coming weeks a number of “self leadership concepts” that really form a pre-requisite to adopting strong soft skills. I believe it is much easier to positively influence situations and other people when we understand and can “assure” our own attitude and behaviour. Fundamental to this is what I also call this my “11th commandment” which says: “thou shalt not kid thyself”.
The first of these concepts is the subject question of whether you make, watch or wonder what happened. In coaching jargon we speak of differentiating “at cause” from “at effect” attitudes and behaviours. It is the first of many choices that I believe we need to make in “self leadership”.
Let me explain. Being at cause is being decisive in creating what you want and to take responsibility for what you achieve. It implies taking action & exploring possibilities and realising you have choices, realising you have power over your life and that you take action to live your life the way you want to. People behaving at cause usually make things happen, often pro-actively. Remember the “Life – be in it” campaign?
Conversely, being at effect blames everyone & everything else for where you are in life. It feels like being powerless, dependent on others, a victim of circumstance, believing others are responsible for your happiness. You adopt a passive position towards life, usually re-actively.
People at effect more often watch what happens or wonder what happened.
Most people don’t realise they are at effect until someone calls them on it. Deep down most people at effect know this, but aren’t willing to do what it takes to choose to make the transition. Unfortunately many of these will look back on their lives in regret.
The first suggestion I’d like to make is that you:
• “Watch and listen” to your behaviour and language (including your self-talk) over the coming week.
• Remembering the “11th commandment”, notice your attitude and response to things that you encounter. You might also want to ask someone close to you to give you some feedback.
• Try to recognise at cause attitudes or behaviour and praise yourself for it when you do.
• Do the same when you catch yourself “at effect” however think about how this might be affecting how you feel about yourself and your interaction with others.
• You might want to write these down somewhere for yourself, so you become aware of them.
• Next you might consciously choose to”practise” replacing some them by some more “at cause” responses by pausing to think about a response for a few seconds before you make it. (One of my next concepts is that of “the gap” which expands on that.)
So, to wrap up, I hope you are more aware of having a choice of whether to live and work your life at cause or effect. I look forward to your comments. Next week we will talk about “the gap”.
Tags: Cause and effect,
