The heart of change: identifying key behaviours for success

Last week I was in Calgary speaking at the Women’s Leadership Forum . I was fortunate enough to also be a participant and hear what others were thinking and doing.

Here’s a quick overview of what I learned:
1. There is a whole lot of exciting stuff happening out there but you can’t do it all. Find your area of passion and focus;
2. The right-brain is stuff is very important for effective leadership and if you are not yet comfortable with it you need to begin;
3. Our behaviors as leaders are critical to our personal success and that of our organizations.

Let’s talk about behaviors because that is one area I am really passionate about. The first keynote address was delivered by Ron McMillan, co-author of the book Influencer: The Power to Change Anything. Ron and his co-authors studied successful influencers and documented what they did. The book is about the system they discovered through their research.

It’s a well-thought out approach beginning with clarity of vision/results and having really good plans that cover the personal, social and structural elements of change, so that it (the change) becomes inevitable.

Ron also talked about vital behaviors; those key behaviors you need to have in place for the change to take root. And that’s when I got excited. I firmly believe that every change initiative has its own set of associated behaviors. It is our job as change agents to identify those behaviors and build our programs around them.

I’m delighted to see more and more organizations taking the time to identify specific and desired behaviors. See the following article on Farm Credit Union. I’d like to hear about your success stories using behaviors to effect change.