Evoking Personal Leadership in Day-to-day Life
How do our small decisions make a lasting impact
With all the crazy weather anomalies in NSW of late (you know, the repeated flooding and week-on-week-off torrential rain) I have been reflecting on my part in looking after our environment. I do perceive myself as someone who cares about and for the environment, I try to do my bit where I can, and yet there is so much more I could be doing.
How does weird weather teach us anything about personal leadership?
We talk about personal leadership a lot at Brave Insights. When we coach clients we talk about things like:
Being clear on who you are and want to be and taking action to ensure your mindset and behaviours align to that,
Encouraging each other and the people we work with to consider intent vs impact – what you intend to do or be and how you are actually being or the true impact you are having,
The key to personal leadership being reflection and honesty about the room for progress (and maybe having a friend or two to help hold you to account).
These day-to-day conversations at work easily get me thinking about personal leadership in my day-to-day life. There are several angles I could tackle this conversation from because there are a few I have been reflecting on myself, but today, the weather’s on my mind so I’ll pick personal leadership and the environment.
Intent vs impact: an example from day-to-day life
I perceive myself as someone who cares about the environment, and yet somehow in the past 12 months I have fallen into patterns that are certainly not aligned with that, some of which are completely new and the Bec from 2-years-ago would not have done.
For example:
I frequently use my clothes dryer rather than hanging out my washing – I didn’t own a clothes dryer until about 3 years ago, I certainly didn’t use it consistently, and this pattern of constant dryer use is very easy to blame on the crummy weather.
I rarely remember to bring my keep cup when buying coffee – and I already have a keep cup. Actually, I have a few. The coffee shop is at the end of my street and if we are being really honest here, I could just have a coffee at the café if I don’t want to bring a keep cup. There is no reason for me to be using disposable coffee cups, and yet here we are. Again, a convenient excuse in the COVID situation, many cafes stopped taking keep cups for a while, but that is no longer the case and there are other workarounds.
I could continue dobbing myself in for all the unenvironmentally friendly things I am doing, but hopefully, you get the point. Each of the patterns I have fallen into is out of convenience.
Each of them has a convenient and somewhat valid reason or excuse behind it.
Each of them seems like a small thing, right?
But… none of them really fit into my picture of the person who cares about the environment.
So, what’s the point here? The point is that COVID, the weather, a busy job, all of these things help create patterns that, if we aren’t paying attention, can create a disconnect between our intent and our impact. My intent is not to use resources unnecessarily when there are other alternatives, my intent is focused around efficiency. However, if I slow down and consider what I care about more – efficiency in this moment or the greater impact I am having on the environment –I really can spare a few more minutes to hang out that washing.
Small decisions make a lasting impact
Is my keep cup or clothes dryer going to radically change the outcome? Probably not (in the short term, at least). Over a longer period of time and combined a few other small changes from each of us, we’ll be more likely to see a big impact in the long run though.
With that in mind, I am evoking my personal leadership and committing to hanging out my washing and quitting the disposable coffee cups.
What small change can you make to better align with the person you want to be?
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