These days, many issues overwhelm you before you even enter the work environment. This daily tsunami of issues distracts you, constantly demanding your attention. As a result, your professional state of mind gets set for the day with less than 100% capacity. Why? Consider that before you begin, you give others permission to hijack your mindset.
Rather than ignoring these professional environmental factors, acknowledge them. Then, consider how resisting and persevering to survive holds you back from getting to where you really need to go. Ask yourself whether you realistically are thriving professionally? Or are you intentionally only in survival mode? Alternatively, do you hide out, either avoiding meetings or remaining silent? Either way, your own choices dismiss you from having an impact on today, tomorrow, and the future.
If your goal is thriving professionally, take an inventory. First, how well can you flow between outside issues and inside professional environments? Second, acknowledge the steady state you professionally navigate each day. Then, admit that no two days are alike. Consequently, some days your 100% seems like 50% of what you are capable of, and you are right. However, understanding how well you will flow that day, before you start to work, allows you to be grateful for how you show up, instead of disappointed.
So, give yourself a self-performance review which includes your mindset, values, skills, output, and goals. Yes, what factors are firmly in your control, moving forward? Which factors are like wild cards each day? Most importantly, how comfortable, confident, and safe to you feel, regardless of how well you are compensated? Because if you do not feel comfortable, confident, or safe, you will remain in survival or hide-out mode.
Consider that this question is the exact question everyone else asks themselves before they even make the first work-like motion of the day. Are you aware of how the external-internal flow impacts everyone you work with? Self-awareness is a first step towards getting to where you really need to go, together. Mutual, intentional self-awareness by individuals working together, truly moves input, throughput, and output. Isn’t it time for you all to get to where you need to go, together, one millimeter at a time?
Catalyzing you to be prepared for what is new, next, and continuously changing. | Professional Innovation | Cross Functional Leadership | Complex Problem Solving | Speaker, Consultant, Mentor |
How do you become more professionally visible, cross-functionally relevant, and strategically valuable throughout your career trajectory as the problems you solve become more complex? Babette Ten Haken’s One Millimeter Mindset ™ speaking, consulting, and mentoring programs catalyze people who solve problems differently to collaborate more innovatively as they create and implement innovative and robust business outcomes together. Regardless of whether you are a traditional thinker or a more creative one, use her 3 Core Questions, 4 Change Agreements, and 5 Professional Whys so everyone gets to where they really need to go, together.
Babette is a business-oriented STEM professional, qualitative Voice of the Customer facilitator, PMI-certified Wicked Problem Solver, Duke Corporate Education licensed Strategic Agility practitioner, and Six Sigma Green Belt (Quality). She is a member of SHRM, PMI, the National Speakers Association (NSA). Delivered virtually or in-person. Her playbook of cross-functional collaboration, Do YOU Mean Business? is available in digital format on Amazon.com. Contact Babette here. Image source: Adobe Stock.
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