Done with New Year’s resolutions?

It’s the baby steps that stick over time.

Are you tired of the “New Year, New You” pressure?

I love fresh starts but I think there’s a little too much emphasis on this idea that, come January, we should all be signing up for some huge personal transformation.

Studies show that two out of three people give up on New Year’s resolutions by the end of January.

I don’t believe this is because we are lazy or don’t have any discipline.

It’s usually because we are either pushing ourselves to do something we haven’t really bought into (it’s a “should do”) or we aren’t doing it in a way that is reasonable and achievable (like going from two glasses of wine a night to zero every night).

REAL TRANSFORMATION IS THE RESULT OF SMALL STEPS MADE CONSISTENTLY OVER TIME.

Let me give you an example of what I mean.

Several years back, one of my direct reports came to me frustrated that she was having trouble managing all the different partners and personalities that she had to deal with at work. She needed their engagement in various initiatives but wasn’t getting their buy-in as quickly as she wanted. She started to question her leadership skills and her overall effectiveness.

She saw this as a big problem that needed a big solution.

Instead, I encouraged her to think about one small step she could take to start building a better rapport with each of the partners she was working with – something that would make them more receptive to her requests.

She decided to change how she started her meetings. Instead of going right into the agenda, she took a few minutes to ask each partner about themselves, how their year was going and what they were most excited about and then she also shared with them what she was most excited about.

This simple shift led to a more genuine exchange and increased engagement which yielded better results for the company and increased her credibility as a leader.

WIN WIN WIN.

Another leader I worked with last year was struggling to balance his day-to-day responsibilities with managing a growing team and came to coaching wanting to improve his people management skills.

As we dug into where he was getting stuck, he started to see that the pace at which he was operating was resulting in a lot of micro-managing which was impeding his team’s growth and making it harder for him to manage his workload.

Together we explored ways to slow himself down and be more deliberate about his leadership.

He chose to add a new practice to his morning routine by spending 5-10 minutes in his car before going into his office doing breathing exercises and thinking about how he wanted to show up that day for himself, his customers and his team.

Over time, he found that this one little step, repeated daily, helped him to be more thoughtful about how he spent his time and it made it easier for him to catch himself when he felt he was overstepping with his team.

Why do baby steps work so well?

Think about it. Anytime we are trying to achieve a big goal – whether it’s to be a better people leader, win a promotion or run a 10k – the gap from where we are now to where we want to go can feel really big.

As a result, we freeze as we contemplate the sheer effort of the task at hand. Or we go for it and take a step so big that we can’t sustain it.

Small steps make it easier for us to get started and they also help us to keep going because they don’t burn us out.

The more small steps we take, the more we start to see that we are making progress towards our goal and our confidence grows.

I’m here to tell you that YOU CAN GET WHAT YOU WANT AND DO IT WITH EASE.