Leadership Step By Step – Exercise #16: The Method, More Challenging
Exercise 16 of Leadership Step By Step was probably the most challenging one I’ve had so far. For this exercise, I had to do the exact same thing as in exercise 15, but now with something more difficult. Going through The Model and The Method itself was easy enough, but I found the actual new behaviors to be really difficult, and as such I didn’t feel like I accomplished as much or as big of an impact as I felt compared to last week.
There were some ways in which the second time was better. Doing The Model and The Method part was easier than the first time: I met with a group and after explaining my situation, environment, beliefs, emotions, and behaviors, we brainstormed some new ones. We’d all done it once already, so we all felt more comfortable doing it. Like last week, doing this part in a group was very helpful. The group came up with so many more ideas than I could have on my own and I really liked the new behavior that we came up with.
Here’s the situation I tried to improve using The Model:
- Situation I’d Like to Improve: Be more assertive at home (Saying somethings wrong when somethings wrong, open with feelings, speaking up)
- Environment: At home
- Belief: it’s going to become an argument, a fight, creating conflict unnecessarily. If I swallow it, it’s done.
- Emotion: disrespected, anger, frustration
- Behavior: avoid difficult/confrontational conversations, silent treatment
And the brainstorming notes from The Method:
- New Emotion: trust, empathy, compassion (for me and family), pride, assertive, open, respected
- New Environment: at home, with family
- New Beliefs: If I can be assertive with friends, I can be assertive with family. If they take it personally, I can handle the outcome. If I swallow it, it makes me sick. I am open to new ways of being assertive. My family can help me learn to be more assertive. They will benefit from me being assertive. Being more assertive will help prevent more problems in the future.
- New Behavior: How can I be a better dad/husband? Have a discussion with wife and daughter. Ask them for advice.
After completing The Model and The Method, I really felt like I had a solid set of emotions, beliefs, and behaviors that made me feel confident I could start to implement them. And I was able to have a discussion with my family and we had some open discussions about what assertiveness is, how to be more assertive in general, and I asked for advice on how they think I can be more assertive at home. The discussions themselves were great, and I feel like I’ve opened the door to talking about assertiveness more, which I think will help benefit not just me but my wife and daughter as well.
However, as I’ve learned, with a more challenging belief and behavior comes a higher level of difficulty of changing yourself, especially when you have to do it within just one week.
Overall, I think my biggest takeaway from this is that I should probably get more practice implementing The Method on easier behaviors first. I think I will continue to chip away at this particular challenge and try to keep the assertiveness discussion going with my family, but I should probably try to adopt a few more easier behaviors too.
