While working as an Internal Auditor in various international organisations, I had the great opportunity to be in contact with many different people with various cultural backgrounds. Although I might have audited the same IT processes across Europe, when presented with the audit results and improvement points my auditees reacted differently, which maybe is no surprise as we are all different human beings; however at times I was left wondering if the difference in behaviours was down to the country I was in and its cultural context, the teams, my words, their perceptions?  

Of course, it was all the above and more. In the last years I took a deeper look into what impacts on our results, and the first obvious answer was our behaviours and the actions we take or do not take. Great, and now what impacts those behaviours?

The answer here is much more complex, and this short article does not aim to explain it all, but only to raise awareness on some of the important aspects which is worth considering when we want to change our behaviours so that we transform our results.

• Our neurodiversity, the way our brain is wired is impacted by every experience in our life and the context we grow up in.
• Culture: the context we are born in, and we grow up in, with its norms and rules, stories, and heroes’ narratives, impact on our values and beliefs, our self-stories, and our emotions (feelings and needs) which will lead us to make certain choice instead of others.
• Emotions: Fulfilling our needs, some of the most basic ones: food, shelter, clothing safety, connection, education, and health; impact on our feelings. When our needs are not fulfilled, we will most of the time experience negative feelings, which will impact on our self-stories. On the other hand, when our needs are fulfilled, we are more inclined to feel positive feelings, and develop empowering self-stories.
• Our values and beliefs are determined by our culture, experiences, emotions, and self-stories.
• Our Inner Drive, the motivation and determination we have in taking actions and showing up when we want to achieve certain results.

All the above directly impact on how we choose to behave. However, these elements are the less obvious and less known to the outside world, and at times even to  ourselves; as we might not be aware of what really drives our behaviours, why do we make certain decisions and not others.

If we want to change our results, we often think about changing habits, or behaviours; which is only the top of the iceberg; we rarely think about what drives behaviours, the elements under the surface.

Behaviours and results are what I call the top of the elevate impact iceberg, and all the rest is beneath water (like in the picture above); and as always with every iceberg, to see the base and heavy part we need to dig deeper. We need to:

• understand our neuro-power and neuro-uniqueness
• become aware of our cultural lens
• challenge our self-stories, beliefs and values (those which do not serve us well)
• understand our needs and feelings (our emotions)
• become aware of our inner drive

We will never want to change everything under the surface, because it is part of our diverse identity, which makes us the unique individuals we are, with our unique qualities and perspectives. We only want to challenge and change those elements that do not serve us well, and do not allow us to make the best behaviours’ choices that lead us to achieve the results we want.

Watch this space for more neuroscience and positive psychology insights on how to transform your results and get from where you are now to where you want to be, or get in touch to discuss how I can support you.

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