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Everybody needs a system to work to.

Well, you don't need a system to work to, but if you don't have a system, it becomes much less effective, much less directive, and much less likely to be successful over the longer term in achieving the things you want to achieve.

I'm not talking about the creative things.

I'm not talking about trying to schedule in time to have ‘ideas’, or to ‘paint a picture’ in or ‘write a book’, but there is evidence to suggest that it might be worthwhile if you want to be a writer, to just write every single day.

What I'm talking about is a system of behaviours of self-awareness and understanding in order to make you better at the things you want to do.

There has been a tonne of work done on this in a million different ways to break it down and to advise people how best to behave and cope and manage in situations of leading and leadership, and running a business, etc. etc.

One of the best pieces of writing on this that I have seen (and I've seen quite a lot) was an article produced by the Harvard Business Review that we use on our business courses, talking about the four key behaviours for leadership.

One of the reasons this is such a good article is that it involved interviewing and assessing a large number of leaders in different organisations and in different situations to see what type of behaviours they exhibited, which seemingly made them successful.

Perhaps one of the most important things, though, is the self-awareness of understanding that you will not be good at everything (or anything ), and then having the ability to fill in the gaps either with people who are better than you or by learning how to do the things that you're not very good at.

A long time ago, before COVID in the clinic, Professor John Gibson (one of my great friends and mentors) provided an extraordinary day of leadership called ‘Know Yourself to Lead Yourself to Lead Others’.

The key part of this was the know yourself part and understanding where your deficiencies lie.

So, in terms of the behaviours that are key and important based on the writing that I'm talking about, they have become extremely important to me in framing how I do my job moving forward.

There are 4 key points.

Behaviour number 1 - Speed of decision-making.

Behaviour number 2 -Adapting proactively.

Behaviour number 3 - engaging for impact

Behaviour number 4 - delivering the lot reliably.

In these 4 blogs, moving forward on a Sunday night, I'm going to explore each one of these, and what I've learned from this that helps other people on our business courses and on our coaching schemes and in our conversations to try to be better versions of themselves, and to try to lead the group, the team, the charity, the family, the football team or whatever it is that they do in a better way.

It definitely helped me, and I really hope it will help you.

Behaviour number one - speed of decision making.

So, this is the first one of the behaviours that are listed in the Harvard Business Review article (if you want a copy of the article, message me).

And basically, the ability to make decisions quickly and confidently is something that gives your team the confidence and the security and the safety to move forward.

This is not to say that great leaders always make the right decisions (they definitely don't), and that's why the second behaviour in this series is so important, but the ability to decide yes or no and move is absolutely critical.

This is the mindset of the surgeon (not the restorative dentist). This is the mindset of the surgeon (not the physician)

This is to be confronted by a situation to gain as much information as is reasonable and possible at the time (70% is suggested by HBR), and then using instinct, experience, and the information available to decide and go.

This allows you to have a competitive advantage in terms of speed, this allows you to act in a leadership position in terms, in a frame of confidence and directness that encourages your team to go with you.

As I said above, it doesn't always mean that you're right, but the opposite is to try to wait for perfect conditions and 100% of information.

By the time you do that, almost all of the advantage, almost all of the opportunity, almost the whole aspect of the positive nature of the situation is likely to have passed.

Consider the people that were successful through COVID. Most of them didn't sit back and wait to see what happened; most of them decided to take a route through one way or another, and to adapt as they went. This is the key to the second part of the behaviour scheme, which is adapting proactively (learning from mistakes), but in this instance, fostering the ability to move quickly (even if it seems at odds with your character) is likely to help you build a dynamic, engaged, enthusiastic and innovative team.

Think about it, think about the situations that you've encountered. Where do you get the information from to make the decision, and how quickly can you do it?

Key to this is the network that you have around you of people that you can turn to for help. How fast will they answer, and how quickly will you get the information that you need to have the confidence to lead your team to a better place?

Behaviour number one - Speed of decision-making, fundamental and critical, more and more in a world that changes ever more rapidly.