Choose: Automatic Pilot or Conscious Leader?

Cast yourself back to a time when you were learning something new. For example, your first ever driving lesson. At the point where the instructor says “Please take the next turning on the right” how conscious were you of all the myriad of manoeuvres you needed to take to make that happen? If you were like me, you might have felt a slight panic as you meticulously checked the mirror, indicated, slowed down and positioned your car correctly to make your turn. Fast forward to today and consider how much attention you pay to safely drive your car? Those painful first steps have now become well worn habits that allow us to get in the driving seat and off we go without as much as a second thought. This illustrates how powerful our automatic pilot is. It’s incredibly valuable and helps us to go through our day tackling repetitive tasks with ease, but in some situations being constantly on automatic can be detrimental. That throwaway line could be a knock to someone else’s confidence, or covering up a feeling of irritation and it leaking unawares through our body language or voice tone. These and other examples can have a negative impact on how a leader impacts those around them.

 So how do you stop being on automatic pilot? Quite simply, it’s a choice and you can make it as easy or complicated as you like.

 There are various activities you can engage in that will support you to develop an increased level of consciousness around yourself and your impact. These include scheduling regular time to reflect, journaling, meditation or mindfulness, engaging with a thinking partner or learning group, being coached, reading relevant books and attending development programmes. All these things will support you to get to know yourself and be more present.

 Schedule short periods of time on a regular basis to allow yourself to step back from your busy workload to journal, reflect or meditate. As little as fifteen minutes a day can support you to become more conscious of yourself and what is going on around you, and the investment of that time reaps benefits through helping you step away from automatic pilot or reactive behaviour.

 Switching off automatic pilot can help you see things from a different perspective and develop insights you wouldn’t otherwise have. Frequently I’ve seen leaders act with all good intention, but their lack of insight around how they are impacting others, results in their influence and subsequently engagement being compromised.

 For example, a CEO I worked with, spent time to consult with their team about various important decisions, but repeatedly ignored their teams input and did what they wanted to do in the first place. Clearly there was an intention to engage with people here, but repeatedly ignoring their input resulted in a lack of trust, motivation and buy-in from their team. This was a blind spot for this particular CEO. Through engaging in coaching they were able to step back and exploring themselves their personal processes and see things they’d not seen before. In doing so they recognised what was at the root of this “automatic” behavior and started to trust the input and ideas their team were offering. 

Blind spots are part of the challenge for anyone in the position of leader.

As a leader, we sometimes think we need to be seen to do certain things – in the above case, for our CEO, it was consult with the team, but this lacked authenticity and undermined their good intention. Finding out how we impact others provides us with much-needed information, increasing our awareness, self-understanding and opening up options for how we interact and build our relationships. 

What is revealed in blind spots is something that lies in our unconscious domain of ‘I don’t know what I don’t know’. In uncovering them, we give ourselves the chance to develop and access potential we didn’t know we had, introducing ourselves to new ways of being that might not have been possible before. The result of our CEO developing trust in their team, not only meant trust began to build in the team, but also more innovative solutions were developed and increased momentum through greater levels of buy in from the team. Choosing to be more conscious in how you lead creates ripples that ensure improved results across more than just the relationships you are creating.

If you like this blog post, I’d really appreciate you sharing on social media or get in touch if you’ve like to have a conversation about how I can support you with your leadership.