Over years of coaching and counseling people I have realised how much of what we take as random behaviour is actually the result of logical patterns. Over time we develop preferred ways of behaviour, preferred ways of assessing situations and preferred ways of making decisions. After a while these learned preferences become so entrenched that we are not even aware of them. And yet, even though we are not aware of them they continue to influence and even control our behaviour.
In life our focus is mostly on the surface, on the things we can see, touch, smell, taste and feel. We are aware of our environment, the work we are doing, the people we are interacting with. Yet there is a vast amount going on under the surface of which we are completely unaware.
It is very difficult to change our behaviour and to embrace more effective and productive habits when we are controlled by factors we don’t know about. By the same token, once we are aware of those influences, we are able to control them and use that knowledge to change and adapt our behaviour and to increase our overall effectiveness, productivity, self understanding and enjoyment of life.
“The environment in which we work has a huge impact on how productive and satisfying our work will be,” says Tim Gallwey in his book, The Inner Game of Work. “Traditionally people have thought of work environments merely in terms of physical surroundings … Would changes in lighting, architecture, or ambient music improve the quality of the work? The external environment certainly does matter, but … there is an even more important environment in which we work – the environment between our own ears. Our thoughts, feelings, values, assumptions, definitions, attitudes, desires and emotions all contribute to this internal environment.”
A significant obstacle to performance is a lack of self understanding. When machines are involved in production, much time and effort is invested in understanding the machines, their capacity, their preferred operating environment and conditions, what they are built to do and what their limitations are, and how to gain optimal use from them. Surprisingly little time is invested in understanding the people who are responsible for productivity, their capacity, their preferred operating environment and conditions, what they are able to do and what their limitations are, what motivates them, how they relate as a team, what energizes or de-energizes them and how to gain optimal performance from them.
Self understanding is the process of allowing the individuals to come to an awareness of those issues. Without it, all skills training builds on a cracked foundation. The person knows what to do and how to do it, but is not able to do it for reasons they do not fully understand. This leads to frustration, decreased motivation and deficient performance.
So I’m looking forward spending time helping people find out what’s happening under the surface of their lives so that they can be in control and not be controlled by things they are not aware of.