Ethika: Report

Welcome to your second EMP Report and congratulations on the work you’ve done so far.

Let’s briefly review your journey:

In Weeks 1-9, you:

1. learned what habits are, how they are formed, and how they influence our lives;

2. discovered your hidden potential;

3. discovered the dominant habits which had been preventing your hidden potential from flourishing (and keeping you from truly pursuing your career goals);

4. worked through exercises aimed at reducing your dominant habits, making room for your potential to grow;

5. received feedback that helped keep you on track throughout your journey.

For the past six months, you’ve:

1. continued the exercises you began in Weeks 1-9, especially in areas you felt challenged;

2. most likely experienced real progress, even if you still have work to do.

Now, a few words about the Executive Mirror Questionnaire (EMQ).

The first time you filled in the EMQ was in Week 2. In turn, you discovered:

1. your dominant management style;

2. its effects on how you manage;

3. habits typical of your dominant management style;

4. your own hidden potential that would allow you to pursue your career goals;

5. the two key dominant habits that needed to be reduced so as to provide room for your hidden potential to grow.

For this second time of filling in the EMQ, you’ll now receive feedback according to the PEC scale (potential, empowerment, change), emphasizing:

1. your hidden potential;

2. changes that have occurred;

3. overall improvement.

Here’s a detailed explanation of the PEC scale and feedback based on your response to this second EMQ.

P stands for potential, which describes the progress you’ve made in tapping into your potential management style in order to become a more well-rounded manager.
E stands for empowerment, which tells to what degree you have empowered yourself with the qualities needed to successfully move forward.
C stands for change, which helps you understand your own change and your preparedness for future changes.

Your questionnaire responses indicate that you haven’t reached a satisfactory point on the PEC scale. Below are details of each parameter:

Potential

At this point, you haven’t yet taken sufficient control of your dominant habits, meaning that your hidden potential has not had a chance to surface and develop.

Let’s consider why your hidden potential hasn’t developed. Recall that so far in your career, you have relied on some very positive behaviors. With each success, these behaviors have turned into your automatic dominant habits – serving you well. But unfortunately, as you’ve encountered more complex managerial situations, these once very helpful dominant habits have also stopped you in your tracks, resulting in what I call career stagnation.

Because you still have not allowed your untapped potential to develop and grow, you’re going to find it very difficult, if not impossible, to function in complex managerial situations requiring creativity and flexibility. To succeed, you still need to persist at developing your untapped potential.

As you know from the EMP, the only way to successfully do so is by reducing your dominant habits. The best path forward is to revisit the exercises you’ve done throughout the EMP and to redo them honestly and consistently.

As you uncover and develop your untapped potential, you will find yourself able to manage the complex professional situations required of more senior leaders. This rare, yet essential skill, will take you far in your management career.

Empowerment line

Your responses indicate a lack of self-empowerment, most likely due to insufficient levels of motivation, self-discipline, consistency, and determination.

Armed with this information, you now have the tools to really “move the needle” for yourself and your career. From the EMP, you already know that you have the untapped potential that can lead you to your next promotion. But without putting in the work, this potential stays untapped.

What you need is the sustained motivation, self-discipline, consistency, and determination required to successfully work through the course. I have no doubt that you began the course with more than a healthy dose of these qualities. But perhaps as the course became more challenging and other work assignments became urgent, your mindset might have shifted a bit, moving the course to the back burner. It was probably easier to stay focused for the first nine weeks, but then it became difficult during the following six months.

In fact, many participants mistakenly view the end of the nine weeks as having “reached the top,” whereas in reality, you’ve just begun uncovering your untapped potential. Much of the hard work comes in consistently revisiting and doing the EMP exercises – requiring a great deal of motivation, self-discipline, consistency, and determination. Of course, it takes tremendous amounts of energy to maintain high levels of these qualities.

Consider this assessment a reality check to help put you back on the right path. Now is the time to gather all of what you’ve got to empower yourself to get it right this time. I suggest you give yourself a firm timeline to revisit the exercises and really make a difference for yourself.

As you work on your motivation, self-discipline, consistency, and determination, you’ll not only succeed at completing your EMP but also develop the qualities you’ll need as you continue your climb up.

Change

In terms of change, your results show that you still have quite a lot of untapped potential for development and growth. While this is positive, it’s important to point out that some of this untapped potential should have emerged during the course. Throughout the course, you received the knowledge and tools to make a real change. Let’s talk a bit about what true change is.

Reaching true change means having the ability to plan, act, react, and think in a completely different way than before. Change doesn’t come easily. There’s always a gap between what you’d like to change and what you actually do change. And what can prevent you from bridging this gap is your habits. During the course, you learned some important things about changing habits:

It’s really hard to identify your habits because they are subconscious and therefore automatic. No doubt you’ve developed some awareness of your habits – and are sometimes able to identify your habits after certain behaviors – but seldom before.

Dominant habits can prevent your potential from emerging and developing. Really moving the needle requires giving room to your potential habits.

One of the dangers lurking behind change is that even when you think you’ve made significant changes, you can often slide back into your old habits. That’s why it’s important to work so hard at ingraining these new habits into your everyday behavior. At a certain stage, you’ll actually notice that your new habits have become dominant. I call this the “lock in stage”. Until this happens, though, you’ll want to watch out for reverting to your old dominant habits.

Now is the time to harness the knowledge and tools you’ve received from the course and to revisit the exercises. Knowing how to successfully negotiate change is a highly-valued management skill and once you achieve it, it will serve you well in the future as you advance in your career.

Recommendation

Your performance in the EMP shows that you have more work to do before you can begin achieving your career aspirations. You should review the EMP material to make yourself aware of what needs to be done.

At this point, it’s important to emphasize that the ball is in your court, so to speak. Now is the time to review the material from the EMP, especially the parts you felt were difficult to implement. I am sure that with hard work, you’ll find yourself achieving what you’d set out when you began your journey.

Good luck!