This month I’m doing a meditation challenge…each week during April I am doing a long sit with my meditation group.
Week 1 – 1 hour
Week 2 – 2 hours
Week 3 – 3 hours
Week 4 – 4 hours
I’ve been meditating every day for three years but only for 20 – 30 minutes once or twice a day so this challenge is a stretch for me.
Week 1 my one hour sit went well. I found it relatively easy to complete a comfortable and focused meditation. Hoorah!
Week 2 was a very different experience.
2 hours seemed to go on forever. I felt lost in time…how much time had gone by?…how much time was left?…have I done more than there is left to do? When is this going to end?????
What has this to do with Sales Leadership?
Whilst I definitely did a 2 hour sit, the quality of my meditation was questionable. I was so distracted. The brief was to pick one form of meditation practice and stick with it. As hard as I tried I couldn’t. In the end I surrendered to a kind of free style, free floating meditation where I swapped techniques as soon as I got bored or agitated. I also spent loads of time thinking and praying for the calmness and presence required to get through this.
It was during my thinking periods that I realised I’ve observed this very behaviour in Sales Leaders. They are physically there but are not focused and often mentally jumping around. Whilst they appear very busy they are not doing the right and most effective things to lead and develop their team and grow their sales.
Could that be you?
Do you let your agitation, frustrations and discomfort cause you to become distracted and bounce around?
You may not even know that you’re doing it.
When I shared my meditation experience with one of my meditation buddies, she observed that it showed a lot of self-awareness to even realise I was doing that. Most people don’t have the self-awareness to know what’s happening.
This is my experience too when working with clients…most people when experiencing frustration, annoyance or other negative emotions become self-focused rather than self-aware.
What’s the difference?
Self-focus is all about you and how people and situations are negatively impacting your life. It often partners with the blame game…or The Valley as I call it. It’s not your fault…it’s everyone else!
This position is firmly rooted in your ego, image and how others might perceive you.
When you go down this route you give your power away to the situations and people that you perceive are negatively impacting on you.
This is not a good leadership style!
Self-awareness on the other hand is all about how you are impacting the situation and people involved and what you can change to improve things. This keeps you rooted in reality, maintains your power and gives you the control you need to move things from stuck to unstuck!
This is a great approach to leadership and keeps you constantly developing as a Sales Leader.
Increasing your self-awareness
There’s a very simple thing you can do to increase your self-awareness.
At the end of each day ask yourself this question…
Based on everything that has happened today, what will I do differently tomorrow to achieve a better result?
Slowly reflect on every aspect of your day from start to finish and write down the key learnings you want to act on.
It takes time initially, but the rewards are huge and if done every day you’ll keep getting faster.
Eventually, you’ll develop the skill to do this in the moment after each event that you know didn’t go as well as you would have liked.
A bit like my meditation…based on my observations I have a new strategy for my 3 hour sit this week. I’ll let you know how I get on 😉
Until next time
Leigh 😊
PS Get in touch if you want to increase self-awareness in yourself and your sales team!
Thanks Andrea Piacquadio for the great image 😊
