It's a fair cop and time for my mental training
Lots of professionals use mental training – athletes, surgeons, military personnel, and so on. The idea is to put you in control of your thoughts and feelings. From there, you manage your behaviors – and eventually your destiny.
Mental control requires self-awareness and a whole lot of introversion: You have to know and understand your thoughts and feelings on the inside so you can align them with your behaviors on the outside.
No-one considers this inside/out approach to be odd and no-one doubts that it is effective. And yet nothing of the sort exists amongst business professionals.
The Average Manager runs a mile from introversion but it means he’s working at a massive disadvantage. Any individual in a high performance environment will benefit from good mental habits. But my recent work with CEOs and leaders made clear to me that most of them lack such habits and struggle chronically with the psychological challenges of leading.
It explains why most failures in leadership can be traced back to poor self-knowledge rather than poor subject-matter knowledge.
Ken Carroll