Have you ever felt frustrated when someone you know and care about cannot seem to start or stop doing something that would make a huge, positive difference in his life?

You have talked with him repeatedly about it and found him to be receptive to your thoughts and advice - but no real change has happened.

You feel like you have failed him, and there’s a part of you that’s mad at him because he is still struggling!

Unreasonable Expectations of Change

Learning requires change - thinking differently, behaving differently. If we are not ready to change, it probably will not happen. Readiness requires many elements, and here are three of them:

Foundation.

If a person does not understand mathematics, they are not ready to learn algebra.
Start with arithmetic and put algebra on hold until the foundation is there. Leaders often overestimate how much their people understand about the nature of their specific business, its marketplace, its strategy, and its business model.

This has implications for any organizational change initiative. We expect the entire population of the company to be ready to change over to a new software implementation, because we are going to put everyone through a common training.

Does it really make sense to assume that everyone starts from the same level of understanding?

Pain.

Often, readiness is inversely related to comfort - when our comfort level drops low enough, we begin to look for relief. Part of being ready for learning is having, at last, an awareness of the pain we are causing ourselves, or others, by resisting change.

Part of reaching a learning level of pain is to continue resisting the push for change!

Let’s say it will take a person TEN times of hearing a message in various forms before they are able to actually “get” what it means.

The implications for us as leaders is that today, in this conversation, we may be helping them get the message for the Second Time! Advice to the leader: be the best #2 you can be!

Personal Momentum.

We come to every learning opportunity with huge personal momentum. Said another way, we already are who we are. The way our brains are structured and operate, our personality (which is both genetic and learned from experiences starting from birth), and cultural norms imbedded in our operating stories, all come together to form each of us as individuals.

None of us moves off of this very quickly, we certainly do not do so in leaps and bounds, and we probably will not move at all without the “pain” element mentioned above.
       
We set ourselves up for disappointment because we forget what it takes to learn, grow, and change. Pain does not imply hurtful behavior. It does imply facing the brutal reality of your business, relentlessly.

What Can You Do?

Leaders who are teachers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, are in the catbird seat. With a teaching mindset, a leader is more likely to spot a learning window and seize the moment.

With this mindset, too, a leader can recognize that when the moment is not there, they don’t take it! Patience is a key characteristic of a great teacher, if not a great leader.

Here are some suggestions for improving your teaching/leading abilities immediately:

Avoid judging yourself or your employee on the impact of a single message.

“I told him already!” Really? So what! Just because you are ready to say it does not mean he is ready to hear it. Give both of you an equal place in the learning cycle.

Ask questions.
If someone must hear something 10 times, by asking questions you may be able to gauge their current position. Hearing what the person currently thinks helps you both move forward in one small step, not try to throw them across a chasm.

Avoid telling.

Telling someone something is potentially the worst thing you can do. “Telling” is not a great learning model and especially if you are telling someone what to think. You can tell me to do something and I may well do it. If you tell me what to think, I may well resent it.

Teaching is happening when learning is happening. The rest is blather. Set your sights higher than that!

By Diane Marentette and Richard Trafton, Ph.D., authors of “A New Brain for Business” and founders of The New Brain for Business Institute, www.newbrainforbusiness.com, where they translate good science into good business. For more information, please write to us at info@newbrainforbusiness.com.