Leading for mastery not perfectionism

We’ve all faced new challenges, a rollercoaster of emotions and moods, and a frustration at strategies and plans that have had to be abandoned or ‘pivoted’. I am sure most of you will have experienced firefighting, caring for the wellbeing of those around you, whilst being focused on the details of running a business, family, and friendships.

The good news is that as leaders, managers, and professionals your skills repertoire and resilience will have been challenged to make new connections!

Over the past year we all have been continuously learning consciously and unconsciously, positively, and unhelpfully. Your brain will have been doing some re-networking.

So, what does this mean and why does it matter?

Meaning that if you been making positive connections, you will have become better at regulating your emotions, making decisions under pressure, and redirecting your stress impulses from ‘Distress (bad stress) to Eustress (useful stress)’.  This will have resulted in creating stronger neuronal connections between your pre-frontal cortex, or as the Neuroscientist Mark Solmas calls it ‘the head office of your mind’ along with your mammalian feeling brain, (Our ‘Mind Your Brain(c)’ masterclasses can teach you more).

In the process because of the emotional meaning created in your brain from your experiences, new memories will have become part of your brain repertoire for you to draw on in the future.

Our brain prunes those connections that are not used or used infrequently in our brains, and tunes-up those connections that are frequently used, synaptic plasticity. So, as we move forward away from C19, our brains and those of everyone we come into contact with, will still be on high alert to enable survival. The chances are they like you, are unaware of it. The altered C19 pathways will still be being ignited, whilst active pathways created from experiences and actions pre C19 are not so active.

This can mean that the behaviours and mindsets we have developed over the past year, especially those linked to our survival, will remain. Hence more negative experiences will have made stronger connections.

Why it matters is that you may be oversensitive to certain thoughts and emotions such as the need to do everything perfectly. This could have been useful during the crisis as doing something really well or repetitively gave you a form of certainty and control in an uncertain world. Now it can get in the way of developing new innovative ideas and solutions.

Alternatively, because you were operating within a very different system you may, like so many, have been more open to doing things differently. Agile working may have meant leading with a flatter more transparent structure or finding reasons to laugh and spread a little much needed joy.

At Springboard Tribe we guide our clients by adapting evidenced science and how to make sense of and use insights from our brains. Our Coaching Conversations, NeuroLeadership Development and Resilience and Wellbeing programmes all provide answers and techniques to use the diversity of your brain whilst supporting you to prune back those behaviours that could limit your future success and wellbeing.

No matter what plans you are discussing for work life over the next few months, as a starting point we would recommend that you and your team carefully consider:

• Do you have a new way of working, a hybrid, or a return to pre C19?
• Does this have implications for your culture and strategy?

As a starter this will help you to begin to focus on the future, answer some questions and raise more new ones!

To add the cutting edge advantage of working to people’s natural brain needs, patterns, coupled with insights that can add further value, we would love to talk to you, Our popular ‘Say Hello To Your Brain’ (c) interactive talks are a great starting point for teams.

We are also happy to facilitate a ‘What’s Next Lab'(c) workshop with you and your team to give you the space and structure to explore those questions.

You can reach us at Hello@springboardtribe.com

In closing – you are masters of your own destiny and you also will also in turn influence others. So, when you come back with you tribe be that at work, socially or in your family remember that as you share your story this will evoke and release different neurochemicals and emotions in others. What are you going to share and why?