I’m going to Andrew Embry this email and connect some dots, because this will be the last email in this recent series.  We started this series by asking what our name would mean as a verb and trying to decide where we would need to grow.  What our name means is a culmination of the habits we demonstrate on a daily basis.  If we want to grow we need to identify what habits we want to change.

If you read about habit formation it goes like this.  Trigger->Assigned Meaning->Action=Habit.  For example, I feel tired (trigger), which means I need an energy boost (assigned meaning) so I drink a soda (action).  If this habit becomes too prevalent it leads to me being unhealthy.  If I wanted to change, I would either have to remove the trigger by finding a way to keep my energy level up or I would need to change what the trigger means.  Taking time to learn from each other (Rogue) and how everyone views the world (tinted images) helps us identify how other people might identify and assign meaning to different triggers.  This understanding gives us new options for how we can view triggers, what they mean, and how we can change our response to triggers to develop better habits.

Work example->Andrew Embry Leadership Failure Story.  I ticked off and alienated an entire group I was working with because of habits I had developed.  A problem popped up on a project, and I thought the project was supposed to be going one way and lots of the project team members were going in a different way.  There was some disconnect and I got really frustrated and in an intense way I basically told the entire project team, “You all are making this too dang complicated!  Just do it like this and let’s move on!”  (My EQ meter must have been broken that day).

I did this because of the habits I had formed.  In my old way of doing things, a problem would appear (trigger), which meant that I needed to solve it as fast as possible (meaning) so I would take immediate action and demand that people fix it my way.  Not cool.  My actions in this case basically told people I didn’t care about them or value their opinions and struggles.  I’ve learned that the best leaders spend time understanding the problem from multiple angles, especially the people dynamics that are associated with a given challenge.  In this particular instance the other folks on the project team were receiving guidance from multiple people at higher levels that was conflicting, so they were stuck between a rock and a hard place.  If I would have taken the time to understand those dynamics first, we could have figured that out before me Hulking out.  Now a problem appears (trigger), which means I need to spend time understanding the problem from all angles (meaning), so I seek to understand the technical as well as the emotional dynamics of the situation.  Thinking like Rogue and viewing the world from different perspectives has helped me change the trigger meaning and gave me a new way to act.

What habits do you want to change?  What are your triggers?  What do those triggers mean?  What actions do they lead you to take?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry