Thank you for the great article Alyssa Satara !

Would like to present one more habit that was a real game-changer for me.

Develop an Internal Locus of Control

What’s this about?

If I have an external locus of control, I blame the world, my Co-workers, my boss, my ‘difficult’ client and others for the unfavourable events that happen in my life. I, in a way, refuse the responsibility associated and engage in a blame game (as if that helps!).

A person with an internal locus on control takes complete accountability of the events in his life. I can actually influence the events better for getting favourable results. I can take the steps required to ensure I get a favourable result.

Let’s see an example of this playing out in the workplace.

I drive Digital Transformations at work. Suppose mid-way I realise that a very important requirement has been left out. This will have an impact on the customer’s marketing and eCommerce efforts and will also result in additional effort, thus possibly delaying the program.

With a high External Locus of Control, I would think:

“They should have told me about this long ago – I had even provided them with a questionnaire for logging all their requirements. They did not bring this up in the status reports as well.”

With Internal Locus of Control, I would think:

“Have I missed a stakeholder whom I shouldn’t have? I should probably get this done using a workshop so that I also check for any more instances. Doing a workshop should be the ideal way forward along with a established sign-off process”

Picture credit: Adam Sinicki

Another example:

The presentation that you gave sucked. You were given quite an earful by the boss who left in the middle of the presentation itself

External Locus of Control:

“It is not fair , I worked so hard for this. When he knew I am working on this, why did he not let me know about what his expectations on the message were? I had mailed him the agenda almost a week ago!”

Internal Locus of Control:

“Now I have the idea of what he really wants to see. I should schedule demo sessions beforehand so that the final presentation goes well. I should make it a point for the future to sit with him and describe the flow and the elements – this will ensure his buy-in early”

So, if there is an internal Locus of Control, most of the adverse situations would cease to exist as you would have done your homework and also taken steps to reduce the dependencies on others.

Background:

Locus of control is the framework of Julian Rotter’s (1954) social-learning theory of personality.

More information here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locus_of_control?wprov=sfti1