Recognizing Involuntary Activities:

Overcoming the Main Barrier to Managed Performance

Sirens scream and clarions blast trying to alert leaders that they miss too many important aspects of human performance, but most leaders are so focused on executing short-term activities as they struggle to meet increasing global competition and stay afloat in the worst recession in seventy years that they fail to heed the warnings or the calls to change.

Do you realize how many aspects of human performance occur automatically, outside of our awareness, and independent of our intentions? For example, do you understand why people procrastinate or managers avoid giving honest performance reviews? Do you have systematic processes to overcome those and similar deficiencies? Do you understand the root cause of what drives people to micromanage, intimidate, or display other behaviors that sap the energy and blunt the creativity of those around them? Do you know how to change these dysfunctional behaviors? Do you know why so many people tenaciously avoid 360° surveys that will provide candid feedback on their leadership strengths and limitations to enable them to improve their performance? Do you understand why business and professional cultures are so notoriously difficult to change? Do you know when and how to change them to sustain success? Do you know why some people interview well and then perform poorly on the job? Are too many valued employees leaving and you don't understand the root cause? Some executives dismiss the so-called "soft" success factors as unimportant. Other leaders take them seriously but don't understand them well or manage them effectively. Organization leaders manage the "objects" of a business and lead the people side of the business. How can they adequately lead in these challenging times if they don't explicitly understand and systematically manage the mysterious "soft" mode of human performance?

Leaders unintentionally accept unnecessary risks and leave too many opportunities untapped. If you struggled to come up with satisfactory answers to most of the questions above, you are not alone. These issues repeatedly confound leaders who do most things very well and methodically but struggle with the so-called "soft" success factors. We now realize that the reason so many issues have remained elusive is because they are executed by an automatic, unintentional part of human nature. We now understand the automatic side of human performance and know how to manage it systematically and reliably. Complete Leadership transforms dysfunctional behaviors and reconstructs counterproductive hidden contexts, such as inaccurate self-images, obsolete business and professional cultures, negative attitudes, and an inadequate vision of the root mechanisms of human performance. We do it through personal coaching to transform undesired individual behaviors and through experiential workshops to change culturally-embedded thought patterns and behaviors.

Failure to understand and manage the automatic mode of human performance is the leading cause of blindsided career derailments, the inability to maximize each individual's performance potential, and the failure of businesses to sustain success. If you absorb the material at this website, you will take a giant step toward understanding the automatic side of human performance that eludes most leaders. Peak individual performance and sustainable business success awaits those leaders and organizations that learn to optimize involuntary human activities.

This website addresses the needs of people who must improve the performance of other people to sustain success, including managers, internal HR professionals, and external performance specialists (including leadership developers, culture change consultants, transformational coaches, university business schools, and HR associations) and people who seek reliable ways to improve their own performance. If you want to find out immediately what Complete Leadership can do to help you improve performance systematically to sustain success, please go directly to the "About Us" page. If you wish to learn more about how automatic human activities impact success and how to maximize your control over these involuntary activities, travel with me now on a pragmatic journey to discover what can be. Your tour starts here: The Next Wave: Admitting We Have an Automatic Mode and Managing It.

Barry Borgerson, Ph.D.

Founder and President, Complete Leadership, Inc.