Improve Team Development – Part 2 Why don't they do what we ask

Whether we want towels folded a certain way, the phone answered a certain way, taking pictures for social media, you name it! We can feel like a parrot saying the same instructions over and over. But why?

Lets start with Habits, if we've been in the industry for years we will have developed habits.

A habit is ANYTHING we can do without thinking, an automatic behavior. From being able to walk, drink from a cup, drive a car, speak, write and of course professional habits like cutting hair or waxing eye brows, anything you and I can do that is EASY is a habit.

We repeat the action, pattern or behavior over a period of time and the brain will program into our subconscious. This is how we do it!

Habits are SO important that our online course has a whole lesson and action plan on how to build habits FAST. We need Client habits, Team habits, how we must work together, with no drama or conflict and then business habits.

So, we have habits of how we work that are automatic to us, make perfect sense to us, are easy to do and of course are the RIGHT WAY which is MY WAY.

But that means we will have train in detail every single habit we have formed over many years or except that teams can build their own habits, with support and I may need to remember 

MY WAY ISN'T THE ONLY WAY

AND I CAN LET GO

This is important, because when we have habits, let use folding towels as a silly example, when someone doesn't fold them how our brain (the habit) has been programmed, the brain can response as if stressed, agitated and frustrated.  

We don't even need to see someone folding the towels to get frustrated! Now I use towels as an example because, yes, I have a specific way I LIKED them to be rolled and stored. And yes, I got frustrated when I saw the towels not folded MY WAY, but  I use a technique to get commitment from teams, so I LET IT GO! More on that in the article and video in this series on commitment! 

But just as we MAY need to change some of our habits, so may the team.

Every person we hire will have habits either as a young person from their teenage years or from previous employment. Employees will have established habits that we don't like or want in our business.

That's why we can feel like a parrot having to repeat the same message again and again, its hard work for the brain to build new habits and we can NEVER remove old habits!

Research has shown by leading universities it can take between 18 - 254 DAYS to build an automatic behavior, a habit. 

So, train, repeat, eat and sleep! But there is something we can do with our communication to help ourselves when giving out jobs and tasks that we want done a certain way.