Blog / Leadership
Finding the leverage for change Bill Mcleod
with Bill Mcleod - Global Consultant
THERE CAN BE a large crevasse between where we are and the life we want. We can get stuck on one side, unable to take the leap to the other side. Something stops us. Surprisingly, what tends of stop us is ourselves. Noone can block yourself like the person staring back at you in the mirror.
Bill McLeod, internationally renowned mentor, facilitator, and motivational speaker says, for people who are blocked, “There’s something in them that’s stopping them changing. There’s something in them which actually has reached a level. It’s like there’s a lid on them. There’s a lid on their life. There’s a lid on their achievement. There’s a lid on their earning potential.” Bill believes if you are blocked, what you need is leverage and a catalyst to help you change.
Bill says, “Leverage for me is when you can start to understand the cost of the current situation. When you can understand the cost of not achieving. When you can understand the cost in terms of your own health and the cost in terms of the relationship be it with a significant other, whatever it may be, or family. When you start to understand the cost of how you’re currently operating and the cost of having a lid on your life and a lid on your achievement, that’s when you’ve got leverage on yourself.”
Of course, even if we may theoretically want to change, we may not actually want to leave our comfort zone - we may in fact actively resist change. What we have to do is recognise the blocks that we create ourselves, remove them and leap over them to get to where we want to go. So for example, seeking out more education may in fact bring about the change that we desire, but you may say to yourself, ‘No - I don’t need that’.” You may try to sabotage or resist your own growth.
Bill says, that in his experience, he has found that, “The resistance I think has a lot to do with (the fact that) we don’t like to be told what to do. We’re afraid of feeling incompetent. We’re afraid of not knowing.” He says that once we become aware of our inner critic or negative self-talk and resistance, it’s an opportunity for leverage, an opportunity for change.
He says, “That’s why I love to work with people. Let’s find what that block is about because if you can find what that block is about, then it’s going to open up a whole new opportunity for you. If any time, let’s say, some learning is presented to you and you find that you shut down or you withdraw or you go, ‘You know what? I know all this’, become aware of your strategy of engagement in the learning process.”
Resistance to education or change can manifest in many ways. You may tell yourself ‘I don’t need to waste my time, I know it all’ or that you are too busy. Bill says that when we tell ourselves this sometimes, “What happens is we’re not able to be present. The mind is actually elsewhere. That is actually an avoidance of actually being present. It’s an avoidance of actually immersing yourself in something.”
Further, we may not want to feel vulnerable. Bill says that some people, “may not want to appear stupid so they don’t actually engage in the learning process. They don’t put their hand up. They don’t actively engage because they’re afraid of being made to look stupid. Maybe they asked a question when they were a kid in class and everybody laughed. From then on, they’ve learned ‘don’t ask questions’. They sort of disengage. We’ve all heard this analogy. It’s almost like in life when we talk about education, when we talk about learning. Are you in the game or are you sitting on the sideline in the grandstand watching it? When you’re in a training seminar, what’s your relationship? Are you actively engaged or are you sitting as an observer? A lot of people sit as an observer because they’re afraid to be actively engaged.”
Engagement however, means taking a risk and moving out of our comfort zones and changing. Engagement is critical because once you overcome the blocks and find your leverage then your world opens up. You take the leap into the life you want.
Bill says that when people overcome their own fears, they allow people to come into their organisation and start to do things. He explains, “They allow themselves to be a part of the bigger picture. I think that’s an exciting time for them. What I then encourage them to do is to keep growing. Keep allowing themselves to expand because what they may find is they get to a point where that’s almost a level of competence. They think this is about it. If they stop and look it’s, ‘Have you discovered some sort of ceiling?’; you hit some ceiling. If you have, here’s an opportunity for you to go again.”
Bill believes that collaboration is a central key to success. While ever we think that we can only achieve our goals on our own, we will never meet them and thinking like that is another block. Bill says, “The sum of the parts is greater than the individuals. I think we all see that. We can at times go ‘that’s a cliché’ but there’s so much truth in that. What I find is that people are again afraid of being vulnerable, allowing themselves to be vulnerable, because when they’re self-managed and in their own domain, no one can find fault with them. No-one can make any criticism or whatever. You can just be self-serving in your own domain. When you step into more of a collaborative context, you have to put aside your own individual needs for the greater good. A lot of people go ‘that’s all and well but I need to survive. I need my income. I need’. It’s almost like their basic needs will drive this.Over time, even when things are going well, they’ll still avoid collaboration because there’s this fear of exposure, fear of not being seen as good enough, or fear of not being in control. So much fear drives our actions or inactions.”
Bill will be appearing at the Complete Leader Conference in Noosa. For more details or to register, call Real Estate Academy on 1300 367 412
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