Eleanor Roosevelt is quoted as saying, “Nothing has ever been achieved by the person who says, `It can’t be done.’ I think this is true.
Another expression along these same lines that I like is, “If you believe you can, you can. If you believe you can’t, you can’t.”
This is the power of beliefs. If you believe you can, then you can! And if you believe you can’t then you can’t.
Last week I spoke with you about the power of beliefs
I spoke about the difference between our actual beliefs – those that are revealed by our decisions and behaviors – and our preferred beliefs, those that are spoken.
I’m a huge fan of the expression, “I can’t hear what you’re saying because your actions speak too loud.” As such, great leaders work hard to ensure what they say aligns with what they do.
Great leaders have learned what their real beliefs are and have come to integrate their real beliefs and preferred beliefs so their actions match their words.
I know of three simple but difficult things that you can do to pursue this integration.
First, be brutally honest with yourself about what you really believe is true;
Second, get feedback from people that know you well;
And third, close any gaps you discovered between your actual beliefs and your preferred beliefs.
Allow me to spend a bit of time on each of these.
The first thing you can do is to be brutally honest with yourself. Again this is a simple thing, but for many of us it is difficult because honesty with ones self often leads to painful realizations about ourselves.
And most of us work pretty hard to avoid pain rather than take on exercises that will thrust us into it. But even though the truth is often painful, the truth DOES set us free.
Ask yourself what things you find yourself telling others that you believe – AND by the way, I’m sure you do believe that you believe these things – but your actions might say otherwise.
Here’s an example – do you say that that the Lord is with you at all times but act like a scared child at times… as if you’re all alone? So what do you really believe about God’s presence with you.
The first step of integrating your preferred beliefs is to be honest with yourself. The truth you uncover may be painful, but the truth does set you free!
The second thing you can do to integrate your beliefs is to be on the lookout for trustworthy feedback.
Very often leaders are blind to any disconnect between their words and their actions. When this is the case, even brutal honesty won’t help them make the changes desired because they won’t see what the issue is.
However, others that know them well often do see the disconnect. This is why honest feedback is so important in the development of any leader.
What I am blind to in me, many others see. Their feedback helps me to see my actual beliefs so I can determine if they align with my preferred beliefs.
The best feedback will come from people that know you well and also care for you. These are people whose intentions and perspectives you trust.
You can also gather unsolicited feedback just by paying attention to how people respond to your comments and actions. These natural responses can tell you a lot if you are paying attention to them.
But make sure to consider the source. Some people only project what is going on inside themselves and not what is a legitimate response to an interaction with you.
If I tell Tina a fact and she rolls her eyes as if to say, “yea, right… a fact” – this is feedback. This might be a clue that I tend to exaggerate or am often creative with my facts. Maybe these are even “facts” I believe… but nobody else does.
If someone’s response confuses you – especially someone you respect – you might ask them about what they experienced in the interaction. You might ask Tina what caused her to roll her eyes.
Often this act of gathering real feedback is a little too awkward for leaders to do on their own so they hire someone like me to help them find out how others view them.
There are many ways to gather this feedback. I can talk face to face with people that know you well to find out how they experience you – all the way down to simple online feedback tool that people can fill out anonymously.
Either way, the gathering of this kind of feedback is something I highly recommend leaders do at some point in their career – if not several times in their career.
So the first two things you can do to integrate your actual and preferred beliefs is to be brutally honest with yourself and to gather feedback from those that know you well.
The third and final thing you can do to become an integrated leader is to close any gaps you discover between what you say you believe and what your actions say you believe.
Again, this is a pretty simple step, but so hard for most of us.
Let’s say you have come to realize that your preferred belief of trusting those that work for you isn’t an actual believe. Feedback and brutal honesty with yourself have led you to realize you don’t really trust them very much even though you thought you did. Maybe you’ve learned that you don’t really trust anybody that much.
It turns out, you’re a micro-managing control freak! Of course this may have served you well throughout much of your life because you’re smart and highly committed… more so than others.
Now is the decision. Do you stop saying you trust your team, which would close the preferred vs actual gap, OR do you start learning to trust them and find out if they really are trustworthy?
I suspect, you would want to do the latter – to start to really trust them. But maybe you just really can’t trust them. In this case I would be coaching you to STOP saying how much you trust your team. I would encourage you to look at why you can’t trust them and we would explore together what could be done so you could.
Maybe they just aren’t trustworthy. This could be for several different reasons which we could unpack and seek to fix.
Maybe they are trustworthy but you have an issue with trusting anybody. This also could be for several reasons which we might work on fixing.
Either way, my point in this segment is that great leaders say what they mean and mean what they say. They know their actual beliefs and they only profess beliefs that align with them.
So where are you? Do your actual beliefs and preferred beliefs match up?
You might think and pray about this in the coming days. Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal truths to you that you have been keeping at bay.
You might ask some people that know you and love you if you say that you believe certain things that your actions would suggest you don’t
If you want to hear this segment again, go to MissionMagazineRadio.org. If you have any comments or questions for me, you can write me at cornerthecoach@gmail.com.
Next week I’ll talk about another topic that will challenge all of us to be better Christian leaders.
I hope you’ll join me.
Until then I pray that you experience God’s amazing grace and rich blessings.