What Creates Believing?

What do you believe about yourself as an inside sales leader?

Not what your title says.

Not what your boss thinks.

Not what your latest performance review says.

What do YOU believe?

Years ago, my coach asked me a question that stuck with me: “What creates believing?”

After a lot of thinking, writing, dictionary searching, and more thinking, I landed on an idea that has stayed with me ever since:

Belief is a habit of thought.

That is where it got interesting (at least to me), because if belief is a habit of thought, we aren’t necessarily stuck with the beliefs we’ve accumulated about ourselves.

We can change them.

What Have You Accepted as True?

One definition of believe is to accept something as true, genuine, or real.

Think about that word: accept.

What have you accepted as true about yourself as a leader?

Perhaps:

I’m a good leader AND I’m still learning.
I’m great at selling, but I’m not naturally a leader.
I don’t have to know everything to be an effective leader.
I’m not good at difficult conversations.
My mistakes don’t define my leadership.
I have to have the answers.
My way isn’t the only way.
I’m terrible at motivating people.
I can hold people accountable AND care about them.

Or maybe your beliefs sound completely different.

Here’s the important part:

When did you decide these things were true?

Was there actually a moment when you consciously examined the evidence and decided, “Yup, this is what I believe about myself as a leader”?

Probably not.

Most beliefs don’t work that way.

We collect them.

From experiences. Former bosses. Successes. Failures. Company cultures. Families. Feedback we’ve received or didn’t receive.

Eventually, a thought gets repeated enough that we stop examining it. We accept it. It becomes a habit of thought.

Your Leadership Beliefs Matter

Habits of thought don’t stay quietly inside your head. They show up in how you lead.

If you believe

“I’m a good leader AND I’m still learning,” you’re more likely to stay curious when you don’t know the answer.
“I have to have the answers,” what happens when someone on your team knows something you don’t?
“My mistakes don’t define my leadership,” you’re probably more willing to admit when you got something wrong—and figure out what to do next.
“I’m not good at difficult conversations,” what happens when one needs to happen?
“My way isn’t the only way,” you’re more likely to let your salespeople figure out what works for them instead of expecting them to sell exactly the way you did.

The beliefs themselves aren’t all GOOD or all BAD.

The question is whether the beliefs you’ve accepted as true are helping you be the inside sales leader you want to be.

Your beliefs influence how you interpret what’s happening around you. That influences the choices you make and how you show up with your team every single day.

Which brings us back to look in your leadership mirror.

Before you decide what you need to DO differently as a leader, perhaps it’s worth examining what you BELIEVE.

Which of your leadership beliefs are worth keeping, strengthening, and practicing?

AND…

Which ones might be getting in your way?

Can You Design a Belief?

This was the part of my original exploration that still fascinates me.

Can we design belief?

I think we can.

Not by standing in front of the mirror every morning chanting something we don’t actually believe.

That’s not what I’m talking about.

I’m talking about deliberately examining the habits of thought we already have and deciding which ones we want to keep practicing.

One tool I’ve found useful for that closer look comes from Byron Katie’s The Work, a process of self-inquiry.

Katie’s four questions are:

Is it true?
Can you absolutely know that it’s true?
How do you react, what happens, when you believe that thought?
Who or what would you be without the thought?

The Work goes beyond these four questions to include what Katie calls the “turnaround.” For our purposes here, I want to stay with the questions and use them to examine what we believe about ourselves as leaders.

Pick ONE belief.

Maybe:

I’m not good at difficult conversations.

Now ask:

Is it true?

Don’t argue with yourself. Don’t defend the belief. Just examine it.

Then:

Can you absolutely know that it’s true?

That’s different, isn’t it?

How do you react, what happens, when you believe that thought?

If you believe you’re not good at difficult conversations, what do you DO?

Avoid them? Soften the message until no one knows what I’m actually saying? Wait until I’m frustrated and then come in too strong? Hope the problem fixes itself?

And finally:

Who or what would you be without the thought?

Not: What positive affirmation should I replace it with?

Without the thought.

Who would you be as a leader if I’m not good at difficult conversations wasn’t running through your head?

Perhaps you’d simply have the conversation.

The belief isn’t sitting quietly in your head; it is showing up in your leadership.

That’s why examining our beliefs matters. A belief influences how we interpret a situation and influences what we do next. Add on, what we repeatedly do becomes how our salespeople experience us as their leader.

Now we’re back to where I started:

Belief is a habit of thought.

Some of those habits are worth keeping. Other habits of thought may not be serving you nearly as well.

The tricky part is catching them.

Habits don’t typically announce themselves:

HELLO! I’m an ingrained belief you’ve been carrying around for 17 years and I’m about to influence your behavior!

Wouldn’t THAT be convenient? Instead, we need to notice what happens RIGHT BEFORE.

That moment RIGHT BEFORE.

You can’t examine a belief you haven’t noticed.

Becoming more mindful of that RIGHT BEFORE moment gives you the opportunity to notice the thought before automatically acting from it.

Then you can decide whether it’s a belief you want to continue practicing.

Practice Makes Permanent

When I took Taijiquan, my instructor used to say:

“Practice doesn’t make perfect. It makes permanent. Only perfect practice makes perfect.”

I’ve thought about that a lot over the years. Because some of our beliefs have had YEARS of practice, so of course they feel true.

They’re familiar. We’ve repeated them enough that they no longer feel like thoughts.

They feel like facts.

That applies to the beliefs that serve us AND the ones that don’t.

You are practicing your leadership beliefs every day, whether you’ve consciously chosen them or not.

You aren’t required to keep every belief you’ve collected along the way AND you don’t need to tear down every belief you already have.

Some deserve to be questioned. Some deserve to be strengthened. Perhaps the most important thing is to stop letting them all operate unnoticed. Because,

Belief is a habit of thought.