Beliefs that Bind
Committing to a leadership growth path involves not only developing technical and management skills, but also evolving our inner belief system. How we make sense of the world drives our choices, our behaviors, and eventually our effectiveness. Or, as Bob Anderson and Bill Adams, the founders of the Leadership Circle, explain it, “The inner game runs the outer game.”
Often, as leaders – and as humans – we can get caught in belief systems that may no longer be serving us as our businesses grow and our contexts begin to change.
Consider the entrepreneur who bootstraps her business from her basement. Toiling long hours on her own she carries the weight and burden of every decision and action. Like a lone hiker trekking through the wilderness she relies on her own wit, will, and endurance to navigate her business. Over time she makes progress, has success, and grows her company. Soon she has a dozen or two employees… enough that she can begin to layer in a management team. And that’s when things start to go awry.
There’s something about how she’s wired, or maybe wired in this moment, that makes it hard for her to let go. She takes management classes, reads a few books, learns the “Five Steps to Delegation.” Yet, she’s still stuck. In this stuck-ness she starts to absorb not just her tasks as the budding CEO of a growing company, but also bits of everyone else’s. She starts to feel like she’s drowning.
Maybe she’s having a hard time trusting because she’s been burned by employees in the past. Maybe fear of conflict keeps her from clarifying expectations. Perhaps she’s locked in an assumption that if it’s going to be done right, then she must do it herself. After all, it’s her business and reputation on the line.
Whatever belief system is gripping her – it’s in conflict with her desire to truly engage her team, grow her business in a manageable way, and, perhaps, enjoy a better work-life balance.
When it comes to exposing limiting belief systems, our businesses can be a crucible for professional development, personal growth, and even healing. Healing is exactly what happens when we begin to internally dismantle what bind us whether it’s issues of trust, fear of conflict, or the exhausted isolation that comes from feeling we are the only capable one in the room.
Standing at the chasm between our current reality and what we long for can be overwhelming. Especially when there’s something in our internal wiring that seems to be short-circuiting our attempts to move forward. Most often this is something hard for us to see, and much harder to change, on our own.
What internal belief system might be short-circuiting your attempts to move forward?
