More productivity, creativity and innovation

The Leadership Programme Newsletter.

If you want to be a better leader you’re in the right place, welcome!

This newsletter is delivered every Friday and is a minestrone soup of tips, techniques, learnings and thoughts, & the odd disaster, based on my 25+ years of managing teams.

Read time: 3.897352679 minutes

You need to increase your team’s motivation and productivity, but can’t give extra money.

What do you do?

This insight makes it 5% easier (at east!).

When things don’t change, our brains don’t respond; we literally don’t see it. We become blind to inefficiency.

And we get bored.

Even if you’re in a good place, comfortable becomes not enough.

There’s a whole bunch of science behind it.

This means you can use it, and improve your team's motivation and performance, increase creativity and spark innovation.

Why do we stop ‘seeing’?

We feel our best when we’re learning something new.

It feels like we’re going forward.

And we progress.

We need to see progress, or we get bored. Even the comfortable becomes not enough.

But when we do see progress, it’s extremely motivating.

Humans strive for progress.

So when things don’t change, we switch off. We stop seeing what’s in front of us, good or bad.

It’s called Habituation .

Habituation is a phenomenon where we don’t respond to things that don’t change.

And the good thing is we can do something about it:

When things change, we respond again.

What is habituation and how does it work?

Habituation is a decrease in response to stimuli after repeated exposure. Otherwise known as "growing accustomed to a situation" which diminishes it’s effectiveness.

How many do you think apply in the workplace?

Apply these principles to tasks, or your work environment and you can see how over time what’s in front of us every day, suddenly becomes invisible.

Or at home: the minor fix that NEVER gets done: the finished paintwork, the broken door handle…

Here’s a quick test that illustrates ( I love a test!), give it a go.

Stare at the cross in the middle, without moving your eyes ( the bigger the image, the better). Keep staring.

The colours disappear and the background becomes grey. Keep staring long enough, it turns white.

That’s because our neurons aren’t detecting any changes.

As soon as you move your eyes, the colours return.

This failure to respond to things we see all the time happens at work, at home, and in relationships.

It can affect relationships in several ways, such as :

• We get used to the good and the bad: As we grow to know people better, we stop noticing every little thing and become increasingly habituated to both their good and bad qualities.
  

• We overlook some things (and get irritated by others): You might grow accustomed to habits that you initially found irritating, or even become increasingly annoyed by things that you overlooked initially.
  

• Novelty increases attention in the beginning: In the beginning stages of any relationship, people tend to respond more readily. Every sensation is thrilling because it is new and unfamiliar.
  

• Novelty eventually wears off: Unfortunately, this is not a state that can last forever. Eventually, habituation sets in and people stop noticing every little thing.

Any sound familiar?

It impacts creativity, our relationships, mental health, and ability to innovate.

This is true for a good job, comfy home, and a great relationship - they don’t bring us joy they bring.

We get used to the negative too: sexism, racism, and inefficiency at work. We don’t notice them, so don’t try to change them.

Think about how this may impact you.

How about every day smells such as perfume? You suddenly stop smelling the perfume when you put it on. Ever walked into a dog owner’s house, and it has that ‘dog‘ smell? They don’t notice it anymore.

That favourite food? Have it every day, and you’ll soon get tired of it.

How do we get over it at work?

Introduce initiatives that break the cycle. They can be small, simple, and free!:

1. Some Companies rotate employees through different departments or different roles within a department. You can add new elements to a job, or delegate new tasks or goals: create variety.
   

2. You can learn something new. New learnings break the cycle and show us we are moving forward.

   
   Forward = progress.

   
   Progress makes us happy.

   
   This is one of the reasons it’s so important to celebrate the small wins.
   

3. Create new connections with people. This could be as part of a new working group, or taking up a new responsibility.
   

4. Introduce new goals. Change enhances creativity.
   

5. Provide people with choice. Choice is important to people’s sense of control. When they choose it, they enjoy it better than if someone chooses for you. No choice causes anxiety.

   
   If there’s too many choices, we get overwhelmed, and make no choice

   (you’ve heard of the Jam experiment? its here).
   

6. Recognise that repetitive work will lead to Habituation. Which in turn will lead to ‘blindness’ over problems and inefficiencies’

Remember you need to have tine to adapt and get used to a new routine. (This is particularly the case for new employees: new routines are daunting initially.)

What about your Home life?

Mid-life crisis is a real thing: Generally, we’re in that comfy place, there tends to be more routine things and fewer new things.

For relationships, periodic distance helps. (This happens if you travel for work, for example.)

Learn something new, learn a new skill or sport, go to new places, create new connections

Mix-up the routine, stop comfort habits, and start spontaneity.

Give it a go, see what happens.

Please don’t hesitate to forward this, to help others learn.

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Action for the week!

Want to have a practice?
So this is a good one. Think of areas at work where Habituation may have set in.
Are you a victim of it too?

Extra resources

Additional resources you may want to check out.

No book this week, , but some interesting pieces that have helped me with this. It’s such an interesting topic.

Research. Why we get used to repetition here. More of the science behind it

Diary of a CEO podcast. Got me into this whole thing in the first place. Here

Super geeky science research on odour habituation. (Why you stop smelling your perfume!) here.

Music to get you ready for the weekend!

A mega playlist of supersonic tracks, to get you in the mood for the weekend,

Fabulous Old Skool dance classic here. Wave those arms! But hope you have a good night’s sleep!

Other ways I can help:

1. 1:1 coaching to help you develop the leadership skills you need to take your career to the next level. Let’s have a chat. Calendly link here.
   

2. Micro-coaching : a single coaching session to help you overcome that one blocker or key issue you're facing. Details in the link here.
   

3. FREE RESOURCES Interview Mastery training: to master confidence at that BIG event. It could be an interview, public speaking, or that pitch. Make sure that the very best version of you shows up to that interview. Link here.