Commonsense Leadership

Chapter 8Leading Your Team from Habitual to Perceptual Behaviors

Leaders help the workforce to replace habitual behaviors with perceptual behaviors. It's not a topic that's often discussed in leadership books but it's very important. This is not an easy task but it is critical to recovering from adversity more quickly. At a very early age, individuals learn basic habits that are necessary to move through life's challenges. A complete list of habits is, of course, beyond the scope of this chapter.

Habitual behavior is using conditioned responses without regard to environmental factors that we consider psychological noise. In children, habits begin as basic reflexes and progress to conditioned reflexes such as walking, running, throwing, and catching. Extracurricular activities provide an environment for refining these particular habits. Classrooms enable students to develop good study habits. Cultural surroundings provide learning opportunities for behavioral and social habits.

People are constantly bombarded with talk about the need to have good habits. Every time you go to a corporate meeting, there's at least one session on executing habits, which is a good topic but can be overemphasized. There have been a number of programs on the habits of successful people, the most famous example coming from Stephen Covey's book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. I know there are many more habits than that, and as people progress in the corporate world they begin to analyze ...