Mind Runs

This might just be the most important leadership skill you may ever learn.

Leadership takes practice.

All the new and aspiring leaders know this. You might be struggling, frustrated, and alone. Your making the shift to leadership and it’s a whole new world. New skills, new responsibilities, and new pressures.

Veteran leaders may have forgotten what it’s like to be a rookie, but that doesn’t stop you from continuing to practice, learn, and adapt.

Leadership takes practice, and it always will.
But, how do you practice leadership?

You read books, sign up for a newsletter or two, and you watch a ton of videos, right?

Well, that’s learning. That’s not practicing.
Learning is important. You need to fill in your skill gaps. There’s a lot of good material out there, and it’s always good to keep improving and have an open mind.

But, are you able to apply the tips and techniques that you learned?

This is where practice comes in. Practicing what you’ve learned improves the way you implement what you’ve learned. Without practice you’re just winging it and hoping for the best.

And, practicing this leadership stuff can be tough. Most of the time, things are going just fine. Everyone is working on their projects, they mostly get along, and the team is happy with the results.

It’s when things go downhill that you need these leadership skills you’re learning, but that occurs infrequently and randomly. So, when you do need to inspire and push your folks, when you do need to resolve a conflict, or when you do need to hold someone accountable, are you ready?

Are you confident you can do it? Are you going to apply all your learnings successfully? Or, are you going to flounder and fumble, make things worse, and leave everyone confused?

This is why we all need to practice: so we can execute those leadership skills with precision and accuracy.

Practice is easier then you might think. You don’t need to wait for the next fight or failure. You can practice any time of day, any day of the week.

All you need is a Mind Run.

Mind Runs are mental practice sessions. You mentally envision a leadership scenario you want to work on, you enter in the people, situation, and skills you want to improve and prepare, and you run the scenario, over and over, until you’re comfortable and confident you can execute in real life.

You can use past or future scenarios.
Maybe you messed up in the past; how can you do better next time?
Or maybe you have a 1-on-1 coming up, and you want to be ready for a difficult conversation.

Run these scenarios through your mind.
What might you say?
What might the other person say and do?
Make tiny adjustments to the conversation and situation and run through it, again and again, until you have covered all the bases, all the twists and turns, and everything you can predict or guess might come your way.

You can do these at any time, anywhere. Plus you can run through many repetitions fast. Your brain is fast, much faster than people physically talking and interacting, so use this speed to your advantage and practice over and over.

Take five minutes in the morning and afternoon to get two sessions in each day. Take ten minutes at lunch. Go for a walk, midday, and practice outside.

This is a powerful tool because your brain treats the visions the same as if they were actually happening. The brain does not differentiate. There’s a lot of research on this topic to back that up, but you know it to be true when you wake up from a nightmare dripping in sweat.

Still don’t believe me? Ask an Olympic athlete. Think about pretty much every interview with an Olympic athlete. They get asked what they do to prepare for their event or what’s going through their mind leading up to it.

What’s everyone’s response? The event!

They talk about visualizing their performance, their routine, the track, or their moves. They’re mentally practicing what they’re about to do so that they’re ready to go out and give their best performance.

Using Mind Runs as practice, you’ll begin to seat that information into your memory. The visualizations will help you remember the information when you need it, and it’ll be much easier to recall and access at a moment’s notice.

Turn the knowledge you gain into a sort of ‘muscle memory’ or a ‘reflex’ for when you need it the most.

Practice!
Seriously, it’s crazy when people don’t practice, and the vast majority of people don’t.

How do you expect to remember and use what you’ve just learned?
Use the knowledge you just acquired. Don’t just waste your time listening to a podcast for no good reason.

Improve your leadership, quickly.
Don’t expect to use the skills the moment they’re needed, either, because everything will go horribly wrong and get even worse.

Practice the skills and knowledge you just received so you’re ready for that next moment. Use your mind runs.

Be a little selfish and show off your great leadership skills. Get the eye of decision makers, and boost your career.

Now, if you’re looking for training on one of the most important leaderships skills and you want to test out this new practicing technique, check out the next lesson on my Free Training page. It’s right next to where you found this one.

Return to Free Training