In a working environment too many bad habits and blind spots can seriously hinder your success. You don’t need a whole list of these as it only takes a few left unchecked and allowed to accumulate to really annoy your colleagues. To succeed you need to recognise your faults and practice corrective behaviour. With focus and dedication the corrective behaviour will become second nature and ultimately replace the instinctive bad habit or blind spot.
There is a difference between a bad habit and blind spot. A bad habit is a conscious decision to handle a given situation in a certain way. The application of this course of action is predictable, consistent and driven by a predetermined attitude that has a negative component. A blind spot is an automatic reaction to a given situation that is also predictable and consistent. The main difference is that the bad habit is recognised and acknowledged whereas the blind spot remains hidden.
We are aware of other people’s responses to situations and from our 3rd party perspective the error of their actions are blatantly obvious, but the person appears to be oblivious of the negative results. Likewise your peers will observe your similar faulty behaviour and wonder how you don’t see that what you are doing is creating problems and potentially fatal to your career.
Blind spots are like the invisible cracks in your armour that weaken the structural integrity.
Avoidance behaviour – Avoiding tackling the important tasks by finding distractions that waste your time. These distractions can be inventive, elaborate and even seem essential to work performance. The reality is that all jobs have their drawbacks and require tough or unpleasant actions. While it is natural to want to avoid uncomfortable situations the problem will generally escalate through neglecting to take action.
Team exclusion – A tendency to exclude others from your decision making processes and task handling can make you feel like you are in control and dynamic. For others in your team however, you will appear weak, untrusting and isolated. The lack of interaction and peer to peer communication in your team will undermine their enthusiasm, performance and support.
Venting or bottling – External stressors such as family issues, debt, legal problems and internal work related conflicts can create unnatural reactions in a pressured situation. In the case of venting the unrelated stress issues will cause an acute reaction that the present situation did not require. Bottling will create avoidance behaviour until the pressure cannot be contained and then the response will be an extreme over reaction.
Inward focussed – Some leadership styles and personality types are insensitive to the effect that their behaviour has on others. Persistent insensitivity will drain trust, cause people to feel unappreciated and reduce the team potential and contributions.
Bad habits are like the unsightly spot on your nose that constantly draws your attention.
Bad habits are not necessarily caused by an attitude problem they can also be a result of poor role models, tuition or leadership. The key to discerning the cause of the bad habit is the body language and willingness to relearn the faulty behaviour.
Bad work habits are tardiness, inefficiency, surliness, time wasting, negativity, calling in sick when you are not, poor response to customers or superiors, bad communication skills, resistance to change, foot in mouth syndrome, lack of proper attention, etc.
No one likes to have their bad habits pointed out to them but to survive and improve we need to adapt. In the case of blind spots recognising that we actually have them is the first step of a long process of correction.
Team Building exercises are excellent way to help individuals discover their blind spots and bad habits. With the support of the team and a facilitator to introduce corrective actions the bad habits and blind spots can be overcome.
Talk to us to find out more about our Team Building options
