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As leaders, when we know what someone already believes then it is easier to influence them to achieve the desired outcome for the team.
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Quick reference
Beliefs
Once you understand your team, it is easier to lead them and get them to a high-performance level. Understand their beliefs to make changes with how they feel or behave.
When to use
To be an effective leader you should always work to understand the beliefs of your team members. Look at how they feel and how they behave.
Instructions
The most powerful way to influence your team as a leader is to understand your team. You need to understand your team’s beliefs and your team member’s beliefs. What do they believe about themselves? What do they believe about others? What do they believe about your industry? Gain an understanding of their model of the world.
Global Beliefs – What do your team members believe in general? Do they believe they are smart or not so smart? Do they believe people are kind or people are always out to get them?
As leaders, when evaluating a team members beliefs, you need to look at two things:
- Feelings - How do your team members feel? Are they confident? Are they happy? Do they feel supported? Do they feel productive?
- Behaviour - How does your team behave? Are they checking work for accuracy? Are they communicating?
Once you know how they feel and how they behave, you can determine the things you need to work on with the team or with individual team members.
Stories help shape what we believe. These are the excuses that you will get and they can be true or false. These stories can prevent a team member’s success or perpetuate their success. Listen to the stories and use them to help understand how your team members feel.
Login to download- 00:04 Next, you really wanna find out what your team believes, their beliefs.
- 00:10 What do they believe about themselves?
- 00:14 What do they believe about others?
- 00:16 What do they believe about your industry and what's possible or impossible for
- 00:20 them, and your company?
- 00:22 You wanna gain an understanding of their model of the world,
- 00:27 because beliefs are so big.
- 00:29 When we talked about different cultures in the last video, we talked about
- 00:34 personal hobbies or different things that already motivate them.
- 00:38 So for example, we have something that we all do and we all have them.
- 00:43 They're called global beliefs.
- 00:45 So, what do we believe in general?
- 00:46 So for example, life is X.
- 00:50 Do we believe life is hard or believe life is easy?
- 00:55 Do we believe, I am smart or I am not so smart?
- 01:02 Is that gonna affect how I do my job and how I show up every day?
- 01:07 You bet.
- 01:09 Another global belief would be people are.
- 01:11 People are kind.
- 01:12 People are generous or people are always out to get me.
- 01:16 That's gonna make a difference.
- 01:17 And you as a leader, you wanna know where your team falls within these
- 01:22 global beliefs, because within those beliefs are a set of rules.
- 01:26 We all have our own set of rules.
- 01:29 So, what has to happen for
- 01:31 your team members to feel a certain way or for them to behave a certain way?
- 01:37 As leaders, when we need to make changes to our team,
- 01:41 we only wanna change two things.
- 01:43 We either wanna change how our team behaves or how they feel.
- 01:47 That's it.
- 01:48 As leaders, those are the only two things.
- 01:50 When you break it down to that, it really makes it simple.
- 01:52 So the first thing, how do our team members feel?
- 01:56 Do they feel confident?
- 01:59 Are they happy?
- 02:00 Do they feel supported?
- 02:03 Do they feel significant like they're somebody, like they're important?
- 02:08 Do they feel productive, like they're getting things done?
- 02:11 And the second thing is how does your team behave?
- 02:15 So their behavior, some things that you may wanna change is their decision-making
- 02:19 skills or are they working overtime?
- 02:22 Are they checking their work for accuracy?
- 02:25 Are they communicating?
- 02:26 So these are the different things that you get to decide, okay, well,
- 02:30 we need to work on this, this, this and this with this person or this, this,
- 02:34 this and this with this department or this team.
- 02:37 Make sense?
- 02:38 All right, good.
- 02:39 So, next are the stories.
- 02:42 The stories are gonna help shape what we believe and stories can be true or false
- 02:47 and these are the excuses, or the reasons for behavior in situations that you hear.
- 02:52 Well, I'm sorry, I couldn't get this done because i was so swamped and
- 02:55 the phone wouldn't stop ringing and blah, blah, blah and blah, blah, blah.
- 02:59 That's a story and these stories can either prevent your team or
- 03:04 this individual from having success, or the stories can perpetuate their success.
- 03:10 It just depends on what story they're telling.
- 03:13 Cuz if they tell a story like, hey, I knew I had to get this done,
- 03:16 because the deadline's coming.
- 03:18 It's end of month and I knew I was going to push through to the end, and
- 03:21 I was gonna get this thing finished right.
- 03:24 That's a great story.
- 03:25 That's a story that you wanna hear from your team.
- 03:29 So, you need to know this to start building that foundation with everybody.
- 03:33 Next, you wanna look at the perceptions of your team and your staff,
- 03:37 cuz that's going to greatly affect what they believe.
- 03:41 So your perceptions, how someone perceives the situation an act or
- 03:47 a circumstance will determine their behaviors and the decisions they make.
- 03:53 So, what does that mean?
- 03:54 So if somebody perceives your actions as a company or your actions as a leader
- 03:59 one way, those same actions, somebody can look at completely different.
- 04:05 So, are they for the people or are they against the people?
- 04:08 Are they good perception or a bad perception?
- 04:12 Positive perception, negative perception?
- 04:15 We need to know what their perception is, so we can change it if we need to.
- 04:21 So, you wanna really start building that foundation about your team believes.
- 04:25 So, here's an example.
- 04:27 Steven Cubby tells this story, it's fantastic.
- 04:29 He was on a subway or a train.
- 04:32 I don't remember exactly the details of the story, but he's on the subway or
- 04:37 the train and this guy gets on with his two kids and he sits down and
- 04:41 the two kids start running around.
- 04:43 And they're disturbing everybody, they're running around loose.
- 04:47 And Stephen Cubby is sitting there and he's thinking to himself, wow,
- 04:51 these kids are just running around and the father is just sitting here doing nothing.
- 04:55 But still, the kids are running around.
- 04:56 They're running around.
- 04:57 And finally, Steven's just fed up.
- 04:59 And he says, he looks at the guy and he says, hey,
- 05:03 you know your kids are running around crazy here disturbing people and
- 05:08 the guy looks up and he says, I'm so sorry.
- 05:12 Their mother just died and I don't know how to tell them.
- 05:14 Wow, same situation,
- 05:18 totally different perception.
- 05:24 That's how powerful it is.
- 05:26 The perception is going to change the meaning, is going to change how you feel
- 05:29 and is going to change your behavior and the decisions that you make.
- 05:34 So, you really want to get a good grip on what the perceptions are of your team.
- 05:39 Let's do a quick recap.
- 05:41 So the first thing is the beliefs,
- 05:43 you wanna find out what their global beliefs are.
- 05:46 You wanna know their stories.
- 05:48 Their stories can be true or their stories can be false.
- 05:50 They can be excuses.
- 05:51 You wanna know their perceptions.
- 05:55 How somebody perceives a situation, an act or circumstance will determine their
- 06:00 behaviors and the decisions that they make and the final piece that I want you to
- 06:04 really listen for with your team are the metaphors that they use.
- 06:08 The metaphor.
- 06:09 The metaphor's people used will determine how they feel about the subject
- 06:14 toward event and the effect the action they take or do not take on regular basis.
- 06:20 So for example, if you here somebody tell you that hey, you know what?
- 06:24 Life is hard and then you die.
- 06:26 That is a very particular metaphor and that's gonna affect the perceptions,
- 06:30 the stories, their global beliefs and what they believe.
- 06:33 And eventually, how they feel and how they act.
- 06:36 Another example is the opposite.
- 06:39 Hey, any day above ground is a good day.
- 06:43 So that positivity, that's going to affect their perceptions,
- 06:47 their stories, their global beliefs and all of this comes together.
- 06:52 As your team, you need to know this if you guys are going and moving together
- 06:57 to achieve a goal and we're gonna talk about that in some upcoming videos.
- 07:01 You guys got this, we'll see you in the next video.
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