Souravi Paul_HRLP016_Self Leadership 11th September

Self-leadership is the practice of intentionally influencing your thinking, feeling and behaviours to achieve your objective.

The day started with discussions about goals and stress that face in our life. Snehal Ma’am elaborated upon various symptoms of stress categorized commonly into Cognitive, Emotional, Physical and Behavioural. Susie Ma’am taught how to de-stress by practicing various pattern of laughter integrating with Yoga.

Then Anil Sir introduced us to the concept of IMMUNITY TO CHANGE. He asked us to ponder upon the following questions:

•         i.            Is there a need for change?
•       ii.            What is the change I need to bring about?
•     iii.            Am I PREPARED to change?
•      iv.            Can I act to bring about a change?
•        v.            Am I going to be able to sustain this change?

The answer to these questions is Immunity to change. Before I discuss upon it, let me explain the meaning of change- “to make the form, nature, content, future course, etc., of (something) different from what it is or from what it would be if left alone”. Most of us found it difficult to make quick moves towards our goals because human mind cannot accept change within fraction of time. However we must first analyse whether do we need change or not, must not confuse our thoughts with want. 

Now Change can be categorized into the following-

·         Need to change: Realizing that there is something which you want to change

·         Want to change: After realizing, whether there is willingness to change. The individual takes a responsibility to change.

·         Actual change: Practice and getting comfortable with the change, bringing it into practice. Be it in behaviour or habits. The difference will be made in this part; here the individual successfully makes the change.

 The root cause of all personal resistance is change. Our inherent quality is what it does not make us go beyond our comfort zone; we struggle to choose a new path thinking of failure or criticism. To get what we want we must start looking beyond the perceptual boundaries or hidden competing commitments. The hidden commitments are most often of physical, emotional, and psychological nature which we tend to give more priority. Most often we feel that these commitments are more important than our endeavours towards bringing about a change and hence it becomes one of the most important factors of immunity towards change. The single most important factor is our mental assumptions or the pre conceived notions.

Immunity to change is a "hidden commitment", with an underlying root cause, that competes and conflicts with a stated commitment to change. It these hidden commitments that cause people to not change and to fail to realise their best intentions. Put simply, it is these hidden commitments that cause us to not keep New Year resolutions, to fail with diets, to not stop smoking etc. It can be summarised as:

·         We all develop our own inner map of reality

·         We interpret the world through this inner map

·         We have different levels of capacity to be conscious or aware of our own inner map and especially how we create our experience of life through it (most of us, most of the time, are completely unaware of this)

·         In accordance with this inner map we have our own inner commitments to our own personal priorities

·         These inner hidden commitments have a high priority and will over-ride any counter intentions that conflict with them

·         The high priority is assigned because the hidden commitment is inextricably linked to an inner hidden perception of our own physical, psychological, social or emotional safety

·         This hidden commitment is (nearly always) outside of our conscious awareness

 Then Anil sir discussed the Immunity map conceptualized by Robert Kegan which talked about Immunity to change and how important it is for transforming one to be a true inspired leader and how can one overcome his resistance to change. The immunity map consists of 4 stages which are as follows. It is a 4 step process which should take place in the following order.

•         Stage 1: A person identifies what he wants to achieve in life and what his purpose is.

•         Stage 2: Identify the things that stop you from achieving your goals. This is critical since the achievement of your ultimate goal requires overcoming the hurdles.

•         Stage 3: Understand the reasons behind the behaviour/things that prevent him from achieving his goal.

•         Stage 4: A person removes any assumptions he might be making that prevent him from achieving his goal.

The session ended with discussion upon Immunity X-Ray which helped me to correlate sir teachings with my pattern of thoughts. How every time I resist changing, how my inner fear, assumptions, inhibitions prevent me from change but overall I understood for need for change to be a true leader.