Tag Archives: imagination

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3 Steps to Harness the Power of the Mind for Organisational Transformation

  By Christina Lattimer • February 20, 2014 - 2:31 pm
163145340 (1)In my article about the Hidden Power for Leadership and Life, I wrote about how beliefs, attitudes and expectations drive the outcomes within teams.  In today’s blog I am expanding on those ideas and identifying how the power of the mind can be harnessed to lead your team.

The conscious mind is selective.  If we don’t like something about ourselves or others, or we just don’t want to think about it, we can bury beliefs, ideas, thoughts and paradigms into our unconscious minds.

This could sound very efficient on a level, but in fact it isn’t really because we can still be unknowingly driven by the information stored in our unconscious which can if left undiscovered,  cause all kinds of mischief.

As individuals, developing self-awareness can identify those unhelpful buried beliefs, ideas and attitudes which can help us to become more conscious of why we might do things, and help us to better understand ourselves.

Organisational culture can equally be created by unconscious or long-forgotten beliefs and ideas about the organisation, and the most common approach, i.e. training or developing behavioural competencies are fine, but it’s like trying to get an addict to stop their addictive behaviour by giving them a set a standards to adhere to.  It’s often unsuccessful, or takes years.

Using the creativity of our mind through vision or imagination is the most powerful way to overcome those unconscious beliefs, although visionary thinking is often down to individual personality.  If you are a visionary, or an intuitive, you are more likely to tap into the power of the imagination to create your story, or future,  than someone who may be logical and deal in facts and evidence.

It is the same in an organisation. Organisations which might need lots of attention to detail and factual information to get the work done for example, are likely to attract people who are good at, and enjoy using their minds in that way.

The good news is, you don’t need to be a psychologist to take some simple actions to harness the power of the mind in a positive and affirming way to get better results. The next three steps describe a process which can help to transform the mindset of an organisation, if everyone is involved.

1.       Discover the current organisational story

What is the history? What does the team believe about the organisation?  Does the organisation have any defining stories which have helped shape the culture of today? Use focus groups, staff surveys and inquiry to piece together the collective view of the organisation by employees, customer’s, stakeholders, and anyone important in the making of that story.  Ask people to describe the organisation to you, what critical events, changes or decisions have made them draw those conclusions.  Ask them to describe successful characteristics and not so successful characteristics or decisions.  Once you have this information, you can  determine how far away the perception of employees, or customers is from where you would like it to be.

2.       Raise self-awareness by shining a light on any part of the story which might be holding the team back

A particular HR team I worked with, had their role in the organisation changed from a regulatory, decision making entity, to giving advice and options to help managers to make decisions.  A couple of years after this change, the team simply weren’t working well.  In a reflective focus group, it became apparent that even though the team were paying lip service to the new role, deep down the new role was resented and resisted.  Once this was unearthed, and people were allowed to talk about the difference in status in a way they couldn’t at the time, changes for the better came about quickly.  Determine what decisions or stories are holding your organisation back from embracing a brighter future.

3.       Change the Story

Harnessing the power of imagination, develop a vision for the future.  Tell the story of the vision.  What will it look like, feel like, and sound like.  What will people be saying about the organisation in this imagined future and how will employees feel about working for the organisation?  These are just some of the questions you can use to describe the future you want to create.  Use feedback mechanisms to bring out doubts, limiting beliefs and different ideas, about the vision,  to the surface, then find ways to strengthen belief, faith and patience about achieving the outcome.

What I have described is a simple methodology, using consciousness, self-awareness and imagination to change the culture of your team or organisation.  Can you think of any other ways the power of the mind can be used to get better results?

 

 

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The Hidden Power For Leadership and Life

  By Christina Lattimer • October 24, 2013 - 1:12 pm
mindEveryone has this power, some of us just don’t realise it.

When I first began leading and managing teams, I would be irritated by negative and “play it safe” people.  My desire to get on and create great outcomes meant anyone or anything which appeared to block the team power  or create resistance was simply just a nuisance.  That was just one of the many immature attitudes I began my leadership career with.

Many years of experience later, I realised  my irritation was more to do with the fact  I wasn’t actually looking in the mirror at my own resistance and negativity and loss of power.   I’ve always seen the world as a giant classroom and what I didn’t learn via Leadership Development, I learned through reflecting on my experiences.

One of the biggest AHA moments in my life and a huge turning point for me was discovering the power of the mind. Quantum science has been showing us for some time that    “by the very act of watching, the observer affects the observed reality”.  This startling discovery profoundly changes the world that we live in, and I am not sure yet we have fully grasped the concept.  Research such as Emoto’s Water Experiment which shows how water structure changed when exposed to different thought patterns is amazing. In essence what these factors meant for me and certainly what I have experienced is this.

  • What I believed about my team was crucial to their success and secondly
  • My team always lived up to my expectations.
  • Quite often I projected the traits I did not like in myself onto my team and instead of dealing with the unwanted trait myself, I blamed others for it.

This is not a flight of fancy.  When the penny dropped and I believed my team could be dynamic, enthusiastic and creative, I focused on those aspects and not only did I encourage those behaviours, when I saw contrary behaviours; instead of getting hung up about them, I practically helped my team find solutions and develop ways to get different outcomes.

Instead of projecting negativity on them, I started to project positive and affirming traits. The fact is our minds are creatively powerful.  Imagination is the creative force of the universe.  Anything which has been created was first envisaged and imagined.  When we experience outcomes we don’t want then we have mis-created, because we have focused on what we don’t want instead of what we do; it is as simple as that.   Mother Therese fully understood this phenomenon when she said, “I will never attend an anti-war rally; if you have a peace rally, invite me”.

Instead of anti-war; focus on peace.  Instead of diversity; focus on inclusion.  The unconscious mind doesn’t understand filler words, so if you say: I don’t want to go bankrupt, guess what you have set in motion? If you say, I am becoming successful and my business is abundant, and believe it, then that is what you will set in motion. This simple fact is hard to believe because much of our mindfulness is unconscious and it is our unconscious beliefs and tapes which are often creating our world.  Our job is to become aware of our unconscious faulty beliefs and change them with life-affirming and sustaining beliefs.

Every single one of us is creating, we just aren’t aware of it, or we have disconnected from our awareness of it, and so quite often we mis-create.  Much of leadership is about facilitating different mind-sets in order to consciously create rather than unconsciously mis-create. The mind is our creative force, and how we use it is extremely important.  Most commonly because we don’t realise or understand the creative power of the mind, we are constantly in Groundhog Day.  Our script is set, our beliefs are set in stone, our thinking patterns are habitual, we doubt our actions and our days and lives will trundle along.

Many of you will be familiar with the famous quote from Marianne Williamson “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us” The truth is whenever we are judging or blaming or denying responsibility we are in fact running from the astonishing power of our creative mind.

 

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What If Everything Was OK?

  By Christina Lattimer • February 8, 2013 - 6:05 pm

blog pic 2What if things were really ok?

Two nights ago, I went swimming.  It was an activity I had been looking forward to all day.  I usually go quite late because it tends to be more peaceful and as I swim I can ruminate and contemplate.

Tired and tense for the first 10 lengths or so, instead or relaxing, I found my mind worrying about a number of pieces of work I had still to complete. The anticipated peaceful relaxing swim was eluding me

As I carried on, I remembered a technique I use quite frequently with clients.  It is the “What if” frame.  It’s a well-known Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) technique used to help people tap into their imagination and explore situations they otherwise might consider being impossible.   It is usually used to break down limiting beliefs.

For example, a friend of mine loves his sales job, but confessed once he sometimes felt frustrated because never seemed to earn more than £50k annually.  He had never exceeded this figure and was convinced it wouldn’t get any better.  When I asked why he thought that was, he explained he didn’t think the number of customers were available to exceed that limit.

I recognised his frustration because he had simply hit a limiting belief.  I asked “What If you wereable to find ways to exceed earnings of 50k?”  What would you have done differently, and what else could you do?  He furrowed his brow and started thinking.  What this technique does, is lift a person over the “I can’t” barrier, and helps open up possibilities, to incorporate ideas and suggestions, to achieve a different outcome.

Asking “what if” can be a powerful way to get your creative juices flowing.  So when my daughter’s friend was planning her wedding, she floundered about the kind of venue she wanted and the colour of the bridesmaid’s dresses etc.   So I asked her “what if, you had the wedding of your dreams, what would the surroundings look like?”  This and questions like it helped her to begin to describe her highest desires.  From there, she was able to begin to imagine and thus describe what would work for her.

When swimming, two nights ago, I didn’t need to use my imagination, or break down my limiting beliefs.  On the contrary, my imagination was working overtime, and it was my lack of limiting beliefs, (I know only too well the possibilities open to me!), that were actually overwhelming me and making me feel stressed.  So when the “ What if ” came to my mind it was in a different context again.

As I swam, I recalled the final way I use “What if” exercises with clients, which helps them to get in touch with feelings.  Used in this way asking “what if ” is used to switch feelings.  If you are feeling low because you are scared something isn’t going to happen, or things haven’t worked out in the first place, the state you are creating can become like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

For example, you’ve applied for a job, but you didn’t get through the last job interview, and your confidence took a dent.  Your anxiety about failing and the pressure you feel to be successful this time round simply intensifies.   You worry about it for days beforehand, and by the time you get in front of the interview panel, you are so nervous, they can’t help but wonder if actually you are up to the job because you have been wringing your hands, and stammered your way all through the interview, simply because your anxiety took over.

If, before the interview, you had asked yourself the question, “What if I were successful at getting this job?”  You imagine what it would feel like and get in touch with the joy, excitement, gratitude and enthusiasm you would experience.  If you took that experience/state into the interview room, believe me, your interviewers would also have a completely different experience of interviewing you.

Ten minutes into my swimming session, I simply asked myself.  “What if everything was OK?”  I immediately stopped worrying, the knots in my back started to relax, and suddenly my state felt peaceful.  As I swam on, I realised the worst thing I can do is not take my own advice.  What was almost certainly going to turn out a most stressful hour of battling against feeling overwhelmed and anxious, completely switched.  I realised if everything was OK, I could enjoy this hour, and simply unwind and relax.   So I transformed the next fifty minutes.

Why not transform your next hour and imagine “What if, everything was OK?”

 

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This great article is from the our 6 months themed series based on the Centre for Creative Leaderships Report of 2013, in which they identified the 6 top challenges for leaders across the globe:   Don't Miss Out! Sign up here to be notified of subsequent issues and posts

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If you are a leader, you are continually developing and "Sharpening the Saw".  If you lead and manage teams, then you must read about our Inspirational New Leadership Programme.  Sign up now to find out more details when we launch in July 2014.  There is no obligation to undertake the programme, if you sign up today, you will simply be sent more information about the programme.  You can unsubscribe at any time!  Click below to register for further information.