Minding Your Mental Map
As leaders, we have to be mindful of the map that our brains make of ourselves, other people, and the world around us. The average person has between 12,000 and 60,000 thoughts per day with up to 95% of them repeating themselves. In other words, 95% of the thoughts we hold at any given moment are occupying space that they have already occupied in the past 24 hours. And, considering that 80% of our thoughts are negative, that’s a lot of unproductive time and energy. Negative thoughts are a liability for leaders. We call this “liability thinking” because the thoughts are burdensome, blur our thinking, and limit our ability to move ahead, forcing us into a recurring scenario. Negative and limiting thoughts are like Groundhog Day because when we live in their shadows, the future we predict is blurred by bad weather. We can get stuck in the same place, repeating our lives, through our thoughts and actions, in an unproductive way. But, that doesn’t have to be the case. We can learn to look at opportunities instead of obstacles. We can learn from what happened to Phil Connors.
#1. Flip Your Thinking
We have to remain sensitive to our own thoughts to make sure that they are not sabotaging our personal and professional success. How we think and see situations has consequences regarding our ability to successfully navigate through complex situations. The answer often runs counter to our innate ability to generate solutions to common problems. It means that we have to flip our thinking, taking the following approach to thoughts and ideas:
Focus on what you want, not what you don’t want.
This seems odd at first, but the language we use, out loud and in our minds, is powerful. As Judith Glaser says, “our words create worlds.” Next time you find yourself saying something like, “I don’t want to be overweight, I need to lose ten pounds.” Flip it and say, “I want to be fit and I’m going to lose ten pounds.” Loss aversion, according to psychologists, creates a strong response in our brains to avoid setbacks versus looking toward progress. It’s the negative “expression of fear” versus the positive outlook. Flip your thinking by flipping the language that you use.
Foresee opportunities, not challenges.
Our primal nature is designed to recognize potential threats and challenges. In many respects this is important, safety being the first, But, it also means that we can become mired in the obstacles in front of us instead of the possibilities that await us if we flip our thinking. In his book How Successful People Think, John Maxwell reminds us that our thinking is what makes for great leadership. How we think, what we think, when we think, where we think, and with whom we think are all important. Successful school leaders learn to explore “possibility thinking,” which changes the path of our energy toward “accomplishing tasks that seem impossible.” Possibility thinkers believe in solutions. One technical way in which this can be done is through the use of a SWOT analysis, focusing intently on opportunities, not threats, as we work to make big things happen.
Think with your team.
Too often, especially when challenges arise, school leaders turn inward and work to solve problems in isolation. Instead of saying more and explaining their thinking, they keep it to themselves. Flip your thinking from an internal monologue to an external dialogue. Use your team. Every thought that a school leader has doesn’t need to be a fully realized great idea. In fact, the best ideas come from gathering perspectives. Great teams don’t just work well together, they think well together too.