Your EMP Report

At this point, you haven’t yet taken sufficient control of your dominant habits: preventing others from expressing themselves and overusing informal communication channels. 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, especially those associated with getting things done efficiently. 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, in particular empowering your staff to work independently of you, you’re going to find it very difficult, if not impossible, to function in complex situations requiring that you concentrate more on strategy and less on the day-to-day. To succeed, you still need to persist at releasing more responsibility to your team.  

Remember that as you develop your team’s autonomy, you will find yourself freer to handle strategic matters effectively. This rare, yet essential skill, will take you far in your leadership career.

From here, the best path forward is to revisit the exercises you’ve done throughout the EMP and to redo them honestly and consistently.

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

Nevertheless, as a Producer, you have the tools to “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.

Now is the time to use the sustained motivation, self-discipline, consistency, and determination you have developed as a Producer over the years. One way Producers eventually succeed is by viewing the exercises in this course as mini-goals, similar to the ones set at work. In fact, I’m pretty sure that you might have begun the course in this way, but perhaps as the course became more challenging and other work assignments became urgent, your mindset might have shifted, 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. I suggest you dial things back and begin consistently revisiting and doing the EMP exercises.

Consider this assessment a reality check to help put you back on the right path. Now is the time to gather all of the positive Producer qualities you have 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 to develop into a senior leader.

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, especially regarding releasing responsibility to your staff. 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:

1. It’s really hard to identify your dominant habits because they are subconscious and therefore automatic. As a Producer, for example, you’ve learned over the years that the best way to get something done is to do it yourself – that’s your default setting. No doubt though, through the EMP, you’ve now developed an awareness of your dominant habits. You may even be able to identify them after certain behaviors – but seldom before.
2. Your dominant habits can prevent your potential from emerging and developing. To really “move the needle,” it’s essential to provide your team with more autonomy.

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. As a Producer, you are goal-oriented, and it might seem as if by working on the EMP so far, you’ve somehow reached your goal. However, at this point, this is far from true. That’s why it’s important to work so hard at ingraining your new habits into your everyday behavior. Eventually, you’ll actually notice that your new habits have become dominant. I call this the “lock in stage”.  

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 leadership skill and once you achieve it, it will serve you well in the future as you advance in your career.