Welcome to the Monthly Newsletter by Amer Kaissi 

Edition #12, October 2020

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The book for this edition is Atomic Habits by James Clear (2018).
A crucial aspect of behavioral change for leaders is developing new good habits and eliminating bad ones. I know that from my coaching work: every leader who is serious about improvement and growth has to evaluate her habits. To better express emotions, to listen better, to ask more questions, or to build time to reflect, it’s essential to better understand how habits are formed.

Atomic Habits was published a couple of years but I only got to it recently after I heard so many people mention it. Boy do I wish I didn’t wait that long! The main message from the book is that  the effects of small habits compound overtime. If you can improve by 1% each day, you’ll end up with results that are nearly 37 times better after one year. Clear explains the science of how habits work by breaking them into four fundamental steps: cue, craving, response and reward. To create a good new habit, you need to address all four steps by making it obvious, make it attractive, make it easy and make it satisfying.

The most insightful analogy from the book is that of an ice cube sitting on the table in a cold room. The current temperature of the room is 25 degrees. You start increasing the temperature one degree at a time. 26, 27, 28. The ice cube is still there. 29, 30, 31. Still nothing. Then, at 32, the ice cube begins to melt. Only a one-degree shift, very similar to the previous shifts, unlocks a huge change. Similarly, new habits that we develop first appear to be making no difference (for example working out/eating healthy or rounding on staff for two weeks). And then, when we cross a certain threshold, we start seeing changes and the ice cube begins to melt. At the beginning there is inevitable disappointment. But if we stick with it, we can eventually unlock a new level of performance and start growing as intentional leaders.

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Dr. Amer Kaissi is a Leadership Keynote Speaker and a workplace culture and high-performance teams’ expert.