MaximumPeople

Or indeed in any area of your life…..

Are you dissatisfied with the image you think you project? Do you feel you are not taken seriously? Are you disheartened by comments you receive at appraisals? Do you feel misunderstood?

It may be that the way you project yourself at work doesn’t represent the way you want to be perceived, or maybe you don’t feel able to be ‘authentic’ at work, and are striving to be someone you are not? Either way, a ‘redesign’ may be in order!

Whether you would like to be more the person you already are, or make some changes to the image you project, you need a clear idea of your goal.

I recently worked with someone (Let’s call her Jane – forgive my lack of imagination!). Jane is the youngest person in the office of a small company. She felt ‘babied’ by other members of staff that were both older and more senior to her. She felt she was not allowed to progress and develop, offer opinions or use her initiative. As a result she began to ‘go along with everything’, stopped speaking at meetings and offered no opinions. She simply
did what she was asked to do, in the way she was told to do it and went home at the end of the day. This was affecting her feeling of self-worth in some very negative ways.

We first worked on building an image of herself at work that she really liked. It included being extremely professional, lots of fun to have around, speaking her mind in an open and helpful fashion, offering opinions and putting herself forward to work on new projects. We built the image and discussed the behaviours she could use over a number of weeks, so that she had time to practice – and so she didn’t shock everyone at work by changing overnight!!

We worked on a strong visual image first. This included looking at her current body language (unsmiling, slumped over her work) and swapped this for a new more positive posture and expression. I also asked Jane to review her work wardrobe, and she subsequently introduced more colour and a slight move towards more formality – which she felt would both remind her of the new status she was choosing and also give others a better visual impression of her.

Once this was in place, we began to work on Jane’s unhelpful self-talk (the annoying voice inside that was telling her it wouldn’t make any difference what she did…), her values at work (identifying what was really important to her, and how she could give these things more attention and satisfy her ambitions), techniques for understanding other people better and being more influential at work, and her own daily ‘recipe for happiness’ (the things she needed to satisfy each day to know it had been a good one). Finally we created
a ‘future Jane’ and put in place SMART objectives and goals that she would work
to over the next 18 months.

More on some of the tecniques later….

If you’ve been following the posts, you may have some ideas for changes you’d like
to make to who you are and how you behave at work (or in area of your life). It
might be a short list, or maybe you have a page or two! However you want to
begin, my advice is start small with one thing you’d like to do differently. Not only will you practice and perfect that thing without worrying about the rest of the list, you’ll be practicing making changes in your life and reinforcing the fact this is something you can do.
Plenty of people become ‘stuck’ – you’ll hear them say “well that’s just how I
am” or “I’ve always been that way and it’s too late to change now”. Beliefs like these are what limit what people think is possible for them. The good news is that it’s perfectly possible to ‘break free’.
Pick your ‘one thing to start with today’ and practice doing it differently until it becomes your new habitual way of behaving.

Think of someone you know or work with who handles a particular situation in way that you admire – or even envy (for example, someone who stays calm and effective in a crisis). How do they do that? What is different about their attitude, actions or point of view? How does their ‘programme’ in a crisis differ from yours, and how can you begin to replicate it for yourself? Watch and listen next time and make a note of what you think they do, or, If you think they would be receptive, ask them a few questions, perhaps about how they feel when a crisis hits, what their immediate thoughts and reactions are, what’s important to them at that point and what isn’t. Explore their mindset and emotions and think about what you could practice changing in yourself to produce a similar outcome next time a crisis appears.
For instance: When I did this for myself, I discovered that I needed to change my unhelpful feeling that I was entirely responsible for sorting out the problem. Now I  simply move my chair close to as many other people as possible to remind myself that I am part of a team, I also flash up a colour picture of the word ‘WE’ in my brain! I find it calms me and allows me to think more rationally.
You may only need to make one small change, or you might want to work on a few things over a longer period of time.
I’d love to know how you get on!