Lessons - Understanding the Habits of Highly Effective People | Jennifer Colosimo - President at FranklinCovey

In this lessons episode, you will learn how to apply the habits of highly effective people to drive lasting behavior change across organizations, discover key principles like empathy, accountability, and reinforcement, and how they foster a resilient, high-performing culture. You'll also gain insights into leading effectively in remote work and navigating today's evolving challenges. So now you have the ability to go on an impact in influence organizations, but I would assume that as you do that, there is of course a lot more nuances than just somebody who is internally motivated wants to pick up the book and change. Now you have an organization you're trying to, invoke change across a business unit because a certain leader wants that change to happen, they respect what you do. So what or how do you best take the works of Dr. Kavi as well as all the other individuals who you've partnered with in the years of experience? And what is the best practice to actually, across a business unit, change the behaviors and habits and perhaps unlock leadership across an entire team and make sure that those changes stick and are permanent and are long lasting? And for all of your listeners who think about behavior change, this is a field that is known and one of the things that we say in behavior change and behavior change experts is, and you can just apply this to yourself, you can read about what you should do to manage your blood sugar. You can read about it. Now if someone is really managing their blood sugar, they often have regular check-ins, the check-in holding themselves accountable maybe with, in this case, a physician, but as you think of behavior change in your organization, a coach, you have to learn a lot. So you learned, you work on mindset, you have a reinforcement pass to keep that going. All of those components have to come together for behavior change to happen in an organization. And when you're talking about one in one person, you also have to have that cultural support. So leaders have to bring it into their language. It has to be recognized. Oh, I'll use them seven habits language. That clearly with someone going for a win-win, right? I can see how we came together to creative collaborate. We came up with something better than any of this could have come up with our own things that come out of that. So people see this is what's culturally acceptable. And frankly, you have to see improved results. Is it that you want more resilience to change? Is it that, frankly, the seven habits have been used significantly lately to help people in a virtual working environment? Are you seeing improved collaboration, retention, results? People have things they want to achieve. I'm making sure that you've got that measurement component in addition to the sustainability path. And I think that all those lessons, like you mentioned, even like the, especially the measurability and accountability and culture, there's probably a similar word that can be used to describe something that is encapsulating your own life. But all those things that you use for success at an organizational level, that's, I think that's what psychologically goes through somebody who actually doesn't implement positive change on themselves as they sort of go through these steps just in a different, in a different, at a different scale, of course. Every scale, yeah, agree. But I want to, and the reason why I bring that up, every time I speak to somebody who, who I feel is a strong, a strong leader, the word you mentioned was, I think, professional, I can't remember what it was, professional, what you, what you describe, what you do as an organization. It was, there was a work for it. Oh, wow. We, we in do, the behavior change is personal and professional development. I think yeah, it was, it was something, it was, yeah, that, that is what it is. There was, I thought you had a really good work for it, but it doesn't really matter. I think the, the point I'm trying to get across is when organizations hire somebody to come in for a day, and they do like an eight hour day, and they try and fix the entire organization or they try and fix an entire thing, and I just come from like a sales background. And I remember the amount of times, both as an individual contributor or the higher up as director or VP, when you'd have like a CEO coming in and saying, I want to hire a sales coach for a day or something like that. And you know, it, it's a waste of money. It's a, it's a 100% of waste of money because there's psychological drivers, there's cultural drivers, there's all these things you have to have in line for that effective long-term behavioral training, positive behavioral change. I mean, you're so right. We, when you think of Franklin Covey clients, folks that work with us organizations, we really know that there are three kinds of buyers that will come and approach it. One is an event. And if I'm clear and you were saying, I want you, Jen, to speak at this keynote, I would just want to manage expectations to the conversation we're having. What do you want them to know, feel anything you might want them to do out of this 90-minute speech, then there's some better capability. You know, we've promoted all of these highly technical people into a first level leader role. And I just need a few days so they even have a picture of what that looked like. And then there's some that if you truly want to behavior change, there has to be some level of sustainability. Even if it, we invest some time with you, live online or live, they have some on-demand elements that they take, they have coaching, they have manager accountability. There's lots of ways that behavior change can be implemented, but you, and sometimes, and you know this, I bet you were one of these people. You can find people who will see a speech and think, okay, I'm going to do that, right? You know, it's like someone hearing a runner and their plan for how they got to be able to do a hat marathon and you're thinking, I'm going to do that. I'm going to figure it out. I'm going to do that. But that is just so that is not going to move an organization. You'll get individuals. I want to, I want to also understand, I also, I do want to speak a little bit about seven habits, like we can, because it's not like going deeper into the book itself is going to be anything outside of what I really want to cover in the interview anyways, but just in terms of, you know, you've, you've worked a whole bunch of organizations. There's a lot of leadership lessons that you've implemented over the years. What is an organizational issue? And I think, you know, if anyone's listening to this, it's going to be quite obvious. But COVID worked from home, remote. What are some things that you're seeing with organizations, things that they're struggling with? How are you solving those through these habits or other lessons that you teach them? It's relevant right now. You know, there's a couple of things. If you think about adapting to our current environment, let's put aside the virtual work, which is a big piece and just start with where people are in the challenging environment. And of course, we've had a minute to adjust, but now we have maybe your children are going back to school, maybe they're not. Maybe you think they're going to go and they'll be home in a couple of weeks. There's the constant blocks of change, huge. And unfortunately, and I know some on my own, in fact, my husband's uncle passed from COVID, is even life threatening, right? There is a real lie, challenges, and then day-to-day, I'm only living day-to-day because I have to adapt. The key piece there that comes out of the seven habits or other content that we utilize is having, and it's a skill set, but it's also a mindset. None of our skills matter if you don't have the right mindset, is do you have empathy? And when I say empathy, of course, if you work in an organization, things have to get done. But can you stop the train that says these three tasks need to be done, and this is what an aptly listen to people in a way that you've taken off, I mean, the best way to say it, you take up your hat and you put on there. You're not trying to respond, you're not trying to solve, you're not trying to judge, but you're truly getting the feeling that they are feeling about what, because I think our deepest human need, it could be understood. And right now, people are really stressed out. I think some of the reactions that we're seeing are normal reactions to an abnormal situation. So that balance, especially if you're a leader of relationship and empathy and results, of course, if your organization is still, whether it's going to pivot mode or a thriving mode, if you're still a viable concern, you'll need to get things done. But do you have empathy? Can you slow down in this situation? And then of course, and get to the actual productivity for those of us who are lucky enough to have jobs, but doing them on a screen like this all day every day. There's a whole different piece of skill set there that are critical. I mean, from the very technical, does your microphone work? Do you have a good lighting? What's your background? Yeah, I'm good at that, right? There's all of the components as well as dwelling in a virtual environment. Very different. How you make a contrast between you, as possible, other providers, how you're clear in concise, selling in another environment, getting work done, holding yourself accountable. If you think of first-level leaders, I personally think one-on-ones, and that ability to make sure that you do your one-on-ones are more critical than ever, so people don't get disconnected, more team communications, and frankly, one of the things that I often say is the number of one career advice I give people when they say give me career advice, do you? Are you helping people build emotional resilience? And I'm not talking about true clinical anxiety. That's outside of my scope of expertise, but on knowing low-grade anxiety, are you helping them recognize what they can influence when not everything is in our control or influence? Here's what we can influence. Let's focus on what we can do in a really abnormal situation. Thanks for tuning in. 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