Resourceful states

Be in charge of your inner states. Respond with purposeful consideration.

Author Maria Noone.

In leadership, it is essential to possess the confidence and ability to collaborate with others in productive resourceful emotional, mental, and physical states. This enables us to communicate our needs and desires effectively, ensuring that others understand them. However, reality is much more diverse, as are our personal states. We can manage and adapt our states to be more resourceful. Leaders who demonstrate resourcefulness can adapt their behaviour in response to changes in their environment. This means they consciously modify their actions to suit their context rather than reacting automatically (Tate, 2000).

Choosing to behave in a certain way while leading others helps us concentrate on the current task or relationship. It allows us to clear our minds of unrelated matters and create the focus needed to achieve our goals. This approach also provides a reserve of strength to draw on. The interactions led by those in charge such as leaders, therapists, helpers can significantly influence outcomes for better or worse. When leaders act with awareness and intent, they can positively impact those around them. Effective leaders who possess self-awareness and the ability to adapt can shift into resourceful states. In leadership, this means conveying consistent messages to others and modelling the flexibility that can be achieved. For example, if a manager has had a hectic week and needs to meet with a nurse to conduct a performance review, being adaptable and focused can greatly enhance the interaction.

• Unresourceful approach: A manager arrives tired and rushed. Their exhaustion overshadows their intention to foster a positive, engaged discussion, evident in their sighing, flat tone of voice, and autocratic behaviour during the meeting, of which they may or may not be aware.

• Resourceful approach: A manager recognises that they feel tired and rushed. Understanding that an engaged discussion is crucial for making team members feel valued, they take a few minutes to pause, gather themselves, and shift their mindset and physical state to align with their intentions.

Recognising the elements that lead to individual behaviour and the outcomes we get means with consideration, we can better manage our own states to be better understood, as well to better understand.

Communication Process

The following communication model is adapted from the NLP Communication model created by John Grinder and Richard Bandler. It explains how we process information received from the outside world and how we internalise and respond to it.

1. External Situations: At any given moment, people absorb a vast amount of information through their many many senses. Commonly known senses include sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell. The sheer volume of this information is so substantial that most of it is processed subconsciously. It gets filtered to understand and make sense of this information for various situations.
   

2. Three Information Filters are:

   Generalisations: The process of drawing conclusions to apply information to achieve any task. For example, on two occasions with different nurses, a patient has had blood samples taken. Both nurses missed the vein, which hurt. Therefore, the patient generalises that all nurses will cause pain. Another example, a person goes for three job interviews and is not selected. They assume they will fail to get any job. In both examples, generalisations are made that the situations in each event will occur in any or all events. Deletion: What occurs when we selectively pay attention to certain aspects of our experiences and exclude the remainder. For example a physio feels anxious at a meeting because of needing to raise a contentious issue. Then a colleague introduces to the team a procedure change, which the physio does not hear because their thoughts are elsewhere.     Distortion: Misrepresenting reality by altering the perceptions of what occurred. For example, believing a person doesn’t like us because of the way they looked at us, or misinterpreting the meaning of what someone has said due to the volume and tone they spoke in. Another example is getting a high grade on an exam and thinking it was a fluke, dismissing the study effort that was made.
   

   What we experience is also determined by our perceptions of what is going on around us, including:

   • Space, time, matter and energy.

   • What is understood of language, words and gestures and how we interpret their meaning.

   • How memories can affect decision-making. Memories are past experiences that influence our current perception. These influence behaviours. Decisions are conclusions made about who we are and what we are capable of.

   • Values which are personal conditions and benchmarks we have to measure what is important to us; the criteria we use to decide what we will do and evaluate what we have done. Beliefs which are views and opinions we hold to be true, about ourselves, others and the world, with or without evidence. Attitudes which are how we express our thoughts and beliefs.

   • Meta-programmes are unconscious filters that underpin our personality types, which help us to understand why people respond differently in similar situations.
     

3. Sensemaking: During this process, thoughts and ideas shape our map of reality helping us make sense and meaning of our experiences and the world around us. These manifest as images in our mind, sounds and internal dialogue, internal feelings and sensations, tastes and smells. This triggers related mental, emotional and physiological states, that motivate behaviour.
   

4. Behaviour and action: Our sensemaking influences our actions, behaviours, and responses to the world. Decisions and choices get made about what to do and how and where.
   

5. Results occur: The behaviours and actions influence how the results and outcomes that are achieved in the external world.  

Creating a resourceful state

At any given moment in healthcare, there can be moments requiring leaders to be resourceful. In the context of the situation where resourcefulness is required:  

1.       Decide what outcome (results) are wanted.

2.       Identify what core behaviours and actions will support the achievement of desired results.

3.       Identify the right mindset for the situation (useful thinking, empowering internal dialogue, visualisation).

4.       Identify the emotional (feeling, sensing) states that best promote that outcome.

5.       Identify the physiological states that support the results being achieved. Replicate these.    

6.       Be aware of filters that cause limitations, obstacles and un-useful perceptions. Learn and grow from these.

Coaching Self or Coaching Others to be Resourceful

Use the following coaching questions to help yourself or others achieve a resourceful state. When coaching, focus on asking questions and reflecting on the responses, allowing the other person to explore solutions for their goals. 

1. Reflect on an area in your leadership/work/life where you want to have a resourceful state. Positively state this as a goal or outcome you want to achieve.

2. Briefly (less than 2 minutes) describe what is occurring in the current context that you would like changed, i.e., what’s happening that is working and not working for you? Keep to the facts.

3. Is there meaning-making, narratives or internal dialogue you are applying to this situation that is not serving you? If so, what?

4. What would be a useful reframe (in your thinking) that would support you being fully resourceful instead, and that is also true?

5. Through achieving the desired resourceful state, what is your highest positive intention?

6. Name six leadership qualities you have that you could utilise?

7. Name three important values that could be applied to creating this resourceful state. 

8. Finally, name three alternate ways to achieve the resourceful state?