CHANGING HABITS, TOUCHING HEARTS AND WINNING MINDS

“Lead with a Heart”.

In order for a leader to motivate his/her people towards achieving a goal and driving them towards excellence, he/she has to hurdle a lot of challenges. Diverse people make up an organization, with different habits, attitudes and mindset, so the best way to win them is always to lead with a heart.

A person’s habit is most of the time difficult to change and this affects ones attitude towards work. There are many tools to change habits like face to face conversations, introducing new ideas , team building and job rotation. These are good techniques if a leader would like to improve their work performance, but as a leader, one must be very careful in applying these. Be sensitive and know your people first so as not to experience pitfalls. They say, there is no perfect strategy and there is no such thing as one size fits all, thus one of the best tools in winning and leading people is to being emphatic with them. Put yourself in their shoes to understand what they are going through and try to find ways on how to start helping them.

Listening is a very important tool. It is a starting point on how to touch hearts that will help create new emotional bonds--- covenants with one another and with the organization. Develop powerful new relationships among groups of employees based on truth, collaboration and taking shared responsibility of producing results. If an employee would feel that his/her works are appreciated, his her achievements are celebrated and most of all, if he/she feels that there is someone who has a helping hand during her lowest moments surely, a leader can win people that will be with him/her in achieving the organization’s goals.

It's not easy to win people, it’s not easy to step out on one’s comfort zone, but if a leader able to improve the habits of his/her employees and touch their hearts, success will then follow.

--oOo— The author is Principal I of San Roque Elementary School, Sta.Ana District