As a leader, coach, or mentor in your industry, you’re likely looking to create one thing- lasting change in yourself and those you’re working with. 

In truth, we ALL want change. Think about it, every day we all talk about… finally losing the weight, sticking to the budget, being more patient with the kids, meeting your career goals that seem to be just out of reach. 

Leaders can cultivate lasting change

As a leader, you have a unique opportunity to be the person to cultivate and lead people in implementing the change that they desperately need, but are unable to do on their own.  Stephen Covey said it best, “Leadership is communicating to people their worth and potential so clearly that they are inspired to see it in themselves.” 

In this post you’ll learn why lasting change matters for you and your business, why people fail to create those changes, and what you can start to do to cultivate lasting change.

Why does lasting change matter to you as a leader?

As a high-level leader or a coach with a solo-preneur business, lasting change is everything.  In leadership, how much time do you spend having the same conversations, watching your team fail to meet the same goals, or coming up with new plans to ensure that attitudes and culture will change (and yet they don’t)?  

The power of cultivating lasting change in those you’re working with is the difference between leading to meet goals vs. leading to build upon goals regularly.  What does this mean exactly?  Imagine if those repetitive conversations were instead building upon significant progress since the last one.  Or if conversations about goals or attitude changes weren’t about “fixing” or solving, but instead about exceeding, expanding and creating results that seemed out of reach in the past.  

This might seem like pie in the sky thinking, but in truth - lasting change is in fact possible.  Especially when you can understand what the “change center” of the brain is and how to leverage it. For those of you that are coaches with a 1:1 business- creating lasting change is the bread and butter of your business.  Results get referrals. Give your clients what they want, and they can’t help but refer to you.

 

Why do people fail to create lasting change?

The answer is simple: You have 2 parts of your brain that are fighting against each other.  You may have heard about the “survival” brain, the “lizard brain,” or the “old brain.”  This is referring to the part of your brain that keeps you alive.  

The main functions of this part of the brain are identified in the motivational triad: 

• Seek pleasure 
• Avoid pain 
• Conserve energy.  

What does this mean in practical terms?  Repeating old patterns (in contrast to cultivating lasting  change) will always be the easy way out in the moment. Dopamine from oreos will feel good. Avoiding looking at unmet goals will avoid the negative emotions (pain) that may come up.  Repeating old familiar (ineffective patterns) will always require less energy.  This is the part of your brain that keeps you (and those you’re working with from creating lasting change.  The good news?  You have another part of your brain that is very much on board with the changes you want to make!  The key - getting to know both parts of your brain so you can leverage how both benefit you.

What can you do now to take steps to cultivate lasting change. 

The “change center” of your brain is found in your prefrontal cortex.  This is the part of your brain that supports you making changes as it is responsible for planning and strategy, focus, problem solving, and even delaying gratification for the sake of future benefits.  

As you can see, this is very different from that “old brain” that just wants to make sure you feel good and stay alive.  (A pretty low bar, right?).  So, with these 2 parts of your brain competing, what is the solution?  Get to know your entire brain and work with yourself, instead of against yourself.

1. Learn about your nervous system and the survival part of your brain.  In Coach Certification and Leadership Training this is one of the fundamental things we’ll make sure you understand.  If your survival brain is in the driver’s seat, change cannot happen. The same goes for those you’re mentoring or coaching- you’ve got to understand how to help them access the prefrontal cortex more often. 

2. Have action-focused strategies to leverage when you have the most possible access to your prefrontal cortex.  One of the things I train my coaches and leaders to do is fine-tune action strategies that work.  An action plan that is set up to fail is worse than no plan at all.  It will only reinforce to you (or your team) that change isn’t possible and that you’ll never “follow through.” 

3. Increase your emotional capacity and intelligence - the way our world is evolving we can no longer rely on intellectual intelligence alone.  As a society people are becoming more aware of emotions and how our past experiences shape us every single day.  As a leader or coach, you’ve got to be on the cutting edge of emotional intelligence.  You need to learn how emotions affect you and how they impact every single person you are leading to create change. As Jonice Webb, PhD said, “[Feelings] ... are a physiological part of our bodies like fingernails or knees.  Our emotions cannot be erased and will not be denied, anymore than we can erase or deny our hunger or thirst, our elbows or our earlobes.” 

Lasting change is what we all want. 

As a leader, coach or mentor, you are uniquely positioned to lead this type of change in yourself and every person you come in contact with.  In addition to the 3 steps above, one of the most vital skills that my coaches and leaders learn in Coach Certification and Leadership Training is how to understand what “mindset” really means.  The type of thought patterns we have affect us every single day and yet most people are totally unaware of what’s going on under the hood.  It matters - especially for you as an agent of change who wants to cultivate lasting change for more success.  

As a natural born leader, helper and agent of change for others, you’ve already got the innate abilities to make an impact.  Continue to invest in educating yourself on how the brain works, human psychology, and what actually works when it comes to creating a plan that leads to lasting change.