Jerry Conner posted an interesting article on LinkedIn about how to overcome barriers to change. We know that many people fear change and the discomfort to having to change.
When you want to change something in your workplace, you need to adapt a growth mindset. No matter what position you have, you need to believe that you can acquire new abilities through learning and dedication.
For some people, change requires shedding self-judgemental self-talk and embracing a more balanced worldview. Achieving a mindset change means overcoming the following 4 common barriers to transformation:
1. Your Work Environment.
If you work in a fast-paced, high stress, high expectations environment, it may trigger your emotions and reinforce the feeling that you need to work harder, no matter the effect. If you want to uncover ways to make your team more efficient, use your team’s challenges as prompts for your investigative mindset by calling a 30 minute team brainstorm. Hearing your teammates’ perspective may reveal the source of inefficiency. You can discover what’s valuable and minimize those factors that hinder you.
2. Your Old (Bad) Habits.
To ensure that new mindsets and habits stick, commit to real situations where you can implement your learning. Create specific, tangible experiments within your action learning plan.
Create a clear accountability plan with a coach or mentor so that you’re more likely to succeed and reflect and review your progress after each experiment. Thus you are creating new neural pathways through experience.
3. Your Attachments to Mindsets & Worldviews.
All of us have mindsets and worldviews – each composed of thoughts, physiology, and feelings – that form our sense of self.
Some identities or mindsets are tricky to abandon and are challenging us to re-frame our self-perception. For example, an army veteran had a self-perception of being tough. When he was challenged to look at the cost versus the benefits of his world view, he noticed the benefit was that he was accomplishing tasks. However, the cost was upsetting his co-workers and stunting his long-term productivity.
The veteran began with an experiment of listening before offering directions. Listening before directing was difficult but eventually he saw the benefits.
4. Your Attitude Toward Learning.
Many people struggle developing a growth mindset due to the habit of having a fixed mindset or fear of failure.
We need to silence negative self-talk when we fail or prevent a lack of confidence from derailing us. We need to embrace the mindset that learning is an adventure.
Work with what’s happening in your head with what’s reality. Interrogate each assumption, reconnect to the feeling of competence and confidence. Ask yourself how you respond to circumstances resourcefully, or with an out-of-the box mindset. Such self-awareness and adventuresome thinking about learning works even better when you have a mentor or team that challenges each other to accept failure as an opportunity to learn. Of course, if you have a leader who role models the growth mindset, it helps the team tremendously.