A new study suggests that several minutes of morning visualisation performing as a leader makes you more effective at being one.

Leadership can be visualised

According to ScienceDaily, you can basically imagine yourself into being a better leader. All you need to do is to spend a few minutes in the morning seeing yourself in your mind’s eye doing things that leaders do.

It doesn’t take much time to reflect in the morning. You can even do this exercise whilst sipping on your morning coffee.

Most of the participants in the study reported significant increase in their leadership skills compared to the days when they did not reflect before work. Participants were feeling more confident in leading others, provided support to colleagues.

The authors state that morning reflection helps to overcome challenges of reality of leading others.

Moreover, while reflecting the employee holds the control on his own. There is no supervisor that needs to be appointed by the company to oversee the process. The person just behaves in such a way.

If you wish to try this technique, here are some steps as suggested by the researchers:

• Reflect on some of the moments when you were proud of your leadership.
• Define the qualities that you think make (or will make) you a good leader.
• Imagine yourself in details as a successful leader. What do you see and feel?
• Imagine the effect you wish to have on your employees motivating them, inspiring them or recognising their talents. What result do you want your employees to achieve? Do you want to motivate them? Do you have the necessary skills to accomplish those goals?

The authors are convinced that this technique will assist bosses and those making first steps to become leaders. What is the most important, these few minutes reflection can change the efficiency of your entire day?

You can even do this exercise whilst sipping on your morning coffee.

Your mind doesn’t know the difference

The fact that your mind cannot differentiate between a memory and an imagined scene had been known for a long time and used by therapists and psychologists in treating patients. Creating a memory from something a person imagined is an effective way to improve performance.

Even athletes do better when visualising themselves lifting weights or doing certain activities. This had been proven experimentally previously.

This time the effects of visualisation are confirmed in developing leadership qualities for current and aspiring bosses.

“If you can imagine yourself doing it, you can do it”, we could say.

So, next time you want to develop a quality or achieve certain results, just imagine it. Scientists say it works.

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