Performance lessons from the iceberg: pt I

I love diagrams. Diagrams help me to process information so I am often looking for an easy way explain something with a simple sketch. This diagram is one of my favourites and is worthy of much more detailed study than just these notes here. It has really impacted my business and how I deal with people generally. I highly recommend learning it’s principles.

Understanding the diagram.

Simply put: thinking drives emotions. Emotions drive behaviour. Behaviour drives results. The key to the diagram, and to change is therefore to change thinking.

Behaviour

With people – we see their behaviour. That then translates into obvious results. For a long time we thought that by changing the way people behave – we would get different results. It became a carrot and stick approach. Incentives were used to drive change in how people acted. It worked for a while but people quickly fell back to default. Change was short lived.

Then a few decades ago we realised that there are forces unseen that drive behaviour.

Emotions

So to change behaviour (and thereby changing results) we looked at emotional well being. How do people feel about life and themselves became important. Wellness became a buzz word as did things like emotional intelligence. These were all good and we started to realise that emotions were very important. But how do you change emotion?

Thinking

More recently* we have discovered that there is something that drives emotions – and that is thinking. It is right at the bottom of the iceberg. It is unseen. But if we work on how people think, their emotions change which means changed behaviour and improved results.

The role of the leader

So the role of a leader is no longer to tell people what to do but focus on how they think. Help people to think (that is, after all what they are paid for) and you’ll ultimately change the results.

I have spent the last year putting this simple diagram into practice within my own business and life as well as in the lives and businesses of those that I have the privilege of being involved in. I have to tell you that the results speak for themselves. I no longer get involved in unnecessary detail but spend more time on focusing on how people think instead.

The performance of the staff is up. I am much better at getting buy-in from the kids and helping them think through life rather than just telling them what to do.

In my next post I’ll share with you some of the ways you take this simple idea and turn it into an everyday reality. Stay tuned.

*I say “more recently” lightly. As with most business principles, it is Biblical. See Romans 12:2 (transformation comes from changing your thinking).