I listened to Mel Robbins on a TEDtalk the other day. She's the author of “Stop Saying You’re Fine” and I am blown away at her style and her message. 

When you have a thought, what do you do with it?
Ok, that one.  What happened?  Did you think about it?  What did you do? 

Take a minute and let’s go through that exercise again.  This time, go through the steps of your thought process to get to the conclusion that you just came up when I asked the question.

You might have to really look for the conclusion and trace back your steps very carefully, because what happened happens so fast, that it’s easy to miss.  So here we go, one more time.

When you have a thought, what do you do with it? 

Take a minute and write down your conclusion to that question.  Did you respond with “I don’t know” or “What are you talking about” or “I guess I think about it.”

Whatever the conclusion, did you think about it or did the conclusion just come to you.  What you just experienced, whether you were aware of it or not, was your brain on auto-pilot.  Your brain processed the question, considered the outcomes and came to a conclusion so fast you might have only noticed the conclusion, if you noticed it at all.

You could have had a different reaction.  Your brain could have rejected the question.  If that happened, then consider that your auto-pilot response was to stop.  Maybe the stop was in the form of an internal dialogue.  Maybe you didn’t come to a conclusion, but were in a debate on the meaning of the question. That’s a stop.

Either way, did you notice your conscious involvement?  I don’t think so, at least not at first.  You have a mental reaction to every stimulus in your life.  You may or may not pay attention to it on a regular basis, but it is there. 

Advertisers know this all too well.  Notice the messages that they send on every conceivable airway.  They create words, sounds and images to have your brain come to a conclusion on auto-pilot.  And what’s that conclusion?  Buy this, that or the other. 

We are constantly bombarded with messages from various sources and as a result we are constantly making decisions on a daily basis that we may or may not be aware of why we are making that decision.

“Seven Bad Habits of Highly Ineffective Leaders, That Suck.”

After training thousands of managers and executives on how to coach and communicate more effectively, one theme persists – frustration. There are a lot of managers who believe their lives would be much easier if their people “sucked less.” My job is to challenge the leader to see how their own performance impacts that of their employees. 

Performance problems require leadership solutions

Chances are that your employees do not lack the knowledge, skills or attitude to be successful performers; they need more leadership and mentoring. 

One of my mentors shared many lessons on effective leadership.  Like most people, I associated “lessons” with the difficult task of learning something new.  But the easiest and most effective lesson was learning to stop unproductive behaviors.

Even if you don’t exhibit all of these behaviors, it may be useful to see if they exist in the smallest way.  So, here are seven things to stop doing.  I call them the “Seven Bad Habits of Highly Ineffective Leaders.”