One of the most difficult aspects of business development coaching is building good habits in others. The challenges are many. In addition to the fact that a habit is uniquely individual and personal, the coach must overcome daily distractions their charge’s face such as low motivation to change, lack of applicable skills or training in business development techniques and myriad of other challenges. Even the most simple and worthwhile habit- one for which motivation to adapt is already high for the person- can be a habit difficult to enforce in others. So, business development coaches must find ways to lower the obstacles to change and increase their motivation.
One way to do this is by practicing gratitude as part of the
business development coaching process. Practicing gratitude has been shown to
have numerous benefits. According to researchers at Harvard Medical School, “gratitude
helps people feel more positive emotions, relish good experiences, improve
their health, deal with adversity, and build strong relationships,”
A psychologist from the University of Birmingham noted in 2013
that the “list of potential benefits is almost endless: fewer intellectual
biases, more effective learning strategies, more helpfulness towards others,
raised self-confidence, better work attitude, strengthened resiliency, less
physical pain, improved health, and longevity.”
An attitude of gratitude is career changing.
One of the more difficult habits to instill, but easily one
of the most critical habits to develop, is the habit of reaching out to others.
This process requires the lawyer to identify prospects, research the target,
develop an outreach strategy, make the call and manage the conversation. To the
introverted among us, this can be difficult.
A proven way to reap the benefits of gratitude therapy is through 'journaling'. In clinical settings, patients are asked to write down three things
that happened that day for which the patient is grateful. The significance of
the event is not important. It is only important that the patient spends the
time thinking through their day to identify specific events, activities, or
interactions for which they feel some degree of gratitude. Finding three points
of gratitude each day can quickly build momentum for a process and with it the
habits of the process. Plus, after consistently doing this exercise for 30
days, patients report all the various and significant benefits of an attitude
of gratitude.
Developing new business development habits also benefit from
practicing gratitude. Forcing oneself to find meaningful developments in the
process changes the mind’s perspective on the process. Lawyers are trained and
educated to find the problems and loop holes in situations and that mindset is
rarely constrained to their legal work. The approach to new business processes is
often to litigate the efficacy of the process using a Socratic inquiry to help
them more fully understand the issue or process. This can create an adversarial,
pessimistic mindset for the lawyer, especially in situations in which their
comfort level was low to begin with.
For those struggling to develop good business development
habits, gratitude can be an important tool to address the mental and emotional
obstacles some lawyers face. To reap the technique’s effectiveness, however, it
must be practiced consistently as part of business development skills
development process. By infusing positives into a process where negatives are
typically cataloged, the mind begins to rewire itself and changes the mindset
allowing better conditions for habits to develop.
Appreciation for an activity can be simple, discrete and
insignificant, depending upon the lawyer’s experience. They need only be
recognition that is positive. The point is that actively thinking through each
specific step of the process to identify the specific aspects for which the
lawyer can be grateful, builds a positive and optimistic perspective of that
activity and contributes to establishing it as a habit.
No comments:
Post a Comment