Self-Leadership, Does your thinking have you or do you have your thinking?

Food for Thought from Mike Schwarzer’s Pearls of Wisdom, September 2013

A few years ago I was working with coaching client who was a department head in a 5 star hotel. He was regarded as difficult to work with, very reactive and a bit of a rebel by other department heads and senior managers. He often clashed with his general manager in executive meetings having heated discussions over issues that dragged out to an hour. During one of our coaching sessions he had an insight. He said “I thought that what we think is a given, all we can do is to manage what we think”. ‘His thinking had him’ and at the mercy of his circumstances. And because he was caught in that mindset he had only limited flexibility in responding to his circumstances. He suddenly realised that he could actually change what he was thinking. Now ‘he had his thinking’ and choice about how to respond to his circumstances. As a result, the discussions with his general manager were now more civilised and the issues resolved in ten minutes.

People and organisations are not random in the way they think, feel, speak and perform. They operate in accordance to a map, their inner map of reality, the way they see world. Within that map lies limitation, potential and possibility … failure and success. 

The map is always right! 

Did you know that the map is always right? Your inner map is about what you hold to be true about your world, about yourself and others. From that perspective you cannot not act out your map, it is your servant. It shows up in your way of thinking, feeling, behaving and speaking as an expression of what is going on in your map. 

The question is … does the map serve you or limit you? What is the magic key? 

Learning how the map works, how we create it, the dynamics it generates and how to change it so that it serves us gives you the magic key. The key in ‘having your thinking’, generating and accessing your best states and presence of mind! When we operate from our best states we tend to

• have a higher quality of mind
• have greater awareness and resourcefulness
• think and act with clarity, focus and flexibility
• feel in charge of our feelings, thoughts and behaviours
• see possibilities and come up with ideas and solutions to problems
• relate and engage well with others
• bring the best out of others
• make good decisions
• stretch our abilities
• etc

Self-Leadership is an Inside Game!

Self-Leadership is an Inside Game, the Inner Game of Leadership and it starts with enriching and stretching your map with quality meanings. The more useful meanings you can give to your life’s events and circumstances the more choice and flexibility you have in your ability to respond, to perform and to serve.

This works for you as an individual or as an organisation. It affects the quality of how you lead yourself and your life, the difference you make to the lives of others, how you bring out the best in yourself and in others, how you contribute to the success of your business or your organisation and the community. It affects how an organisation operates in complex and ambiguous environments. It affects its culture, how it works as a unit and how it interacts with its customers. How it maintains its ability to learn, to be creative and innovative and experiences greater levels of resilience, optimism and motivation. 

What quality meanings do you want to hold to be true and embody so that they serve you and others? 

Curious to learn more how to enrich your map with quality meanings? Then contact Mike at mike@mikeschwarzer.com or check out the details for our Self-Leadership – Accessing Personal Genius / Coaching Genius training at www.thoughtleadingpeople.com.au/.

to your highest learning and growth

Mike

About Mike Schwarzer

Mike is a Performance Strategist & Modeler and an Internationally Certified Trainer in Neuro-Semantic NLP with the International Society of Neuro-Sematics ISNS. The ISNS is a global NLP community, operating in over 40 countries, dedicated to helping people actualise excellence by transforming Meaning into Performance. He is also a leadership team member of the Institute of Neuro-Semantics Australia the Australian branch of ISNS.

An experienced facilitator and coach, with an ability to connect and align people and organisations, he helps them to fine tune their performance wizardry to bridge the gap between where they are and where they want to go!

For more information about Mike visit www.mikeschwarzer.com and  

www.thoughtleadingpeople.com.au.