Do management practices have anything to do with weight loss?

Who would you rather work for:

Someone who micro-manages you, rarely if every thanks you or praises you, is quick to find fault, concentrates only on what you haven’t done, can’t for the life of them understand why you couldn’t get it done yesterday and lays on the judgement the moment you express a need for help or support.

OR

Someone who spells out clear objectives and guidelines, recognizes your strengths, is grateful for your contributions, gives constructive feedback (not the sandwich kind (good-bad-good)!) so both of you can get more of what you want and is completely aware of where you are on a project: the successes and obstacles and provides you the support you need to go around, over, or under the obstacles.

I’m guessing most of us would prefer the second person. No, you haven’t stumbled on Management 101, this really has a lot to do with weight loss and health.

Yesterday my business coach helped me have a big ‘aha’ (actually ‘AHA’) moment when she pointed out how I have consistently omitted reporting my successes and have concentrated instead on listing all my “haven’t dones.”

As the awareness came over me and the implications of my behavior sank in, I also realized that this racing past and ignoring my successes is exactly what I see my weight loss clients doing and it affects them just as it has been affecting me.

My experience with clients is they are forever concentrating on the pounds that didn’t come off, the “bad” food they ate, or the excuses why they ate poorly, instead of any success they had. If I ask a client “so how is the eating coming?”, I hear a litany of all the “wrong” things they did in the past 24-48 hours.

Even when I pointedly asked for what they thought they did well, I can feel the struggle in their heads, frantically searching for something they did well and then ZINGGGGGGG! their minds have snapped back just like a rubber band to the confession of their food-encounter sins.

I liken this focus on ‘wrong doing’ to the manager who comes to your office, after you’ve just completed a major project that significantly effects the company’s bottom line and without a word about your success asks when can he expect the figures for the XYZ project (even when he knows XYZ was put on hold so you could complete the project you just finished!). Does that rile you even the teensy-ist bit? Well, when you do it to yourself you get the very same effect. In fact it the result is worse.

So how do you counteract the bad manager syndrome? Since you can’t switch jobs and leave this manager behind you must start a conversation and help your manager learn and practice new behaviors (by the way, she doesn’t like being badly managed any more than you do, so treat her with respect).

The place to start is with noticing. Pay attention to all your successes in eating, exercising and self care. Celebrate what you are doing that is moving you in the direction you want to go. Write your successes down, say them out loud (with a smile), share them with friends, family, colleagues. If you get any push back explain the bad manager syndrome, you’ll be explaining it to them and to yourself and the more you hear it the more you’ll be able to act on it.

Gold Star Action:

1) Pick a time frame you want to work with: day, week, month, year, 5 years and write down all the successes you can think of (brushing your teeth, having a fruit or vegetable, getting up from your computer to take a break, going to bed early when you are tired, all count). Remember no success is too small to notice. Maybe you’ve noticed your thinking or feelings are changing write that down, too.

2) As you write down your success, smile and say “Thank you, your name, for taking care of me.”

3) As you look at your whole list, mentally and emotionally embrace what you are doing to take care of yourself.

4) Now, as you go about your life, notice what you are doing with your successes. Keep calling your mind to notice and celebrate your successes in the moment. The more you acknowledge what you are doing to move yourself in the direction you want to go, the more powerfully you will move in that direction.

I use to discount what I do. Now I have a new way, I celebrate what I do.

How about you?

Marena