FIND THE BEHAVIORS THAT MATTER (Influence and Change 2 of 10)
Posted by Tim on April 28, 2011
(1 of 10) Decrypting the “Impact Gene”
Which Behaviors Matter?
Why do over 80% of New Year’s resolutions fail by Valentine’s Day?
Why do so many people talk about losing weight, but so few make any significant progress?
Why do organizational change initiatives so often fail, leaving frustrated employees and wasted resources in their wake?
The first step to influencing a change is surprisingly simple, but often overlooked. People dismiss this step as “intuitive,” or “common sense,” and in doing so they inherently reduce their chances for a sustained change.
This oft-overlooked step is identifying and communicating the key critical behaviors that will enable the change to take place. Key critical behaviors direct our actions to the things that matter most. For example, if my goal is to improve my fitness, I might identify a key behavior as exercising for at least 30 minutes, four times a week. If my goal is to create a more performance-driven culture in my organization, a key behavior might be for every manager to give each of his or her direct reports two performance-related feedback comments each week.
People frequently confuse vaguely worded goals with critical behaviors, and it’s important to identify the distinction. While these goals for improvement can help us shape a plan, they do not direct our behavior. It’s vital to also identify the specific behaviors that will lead us to that goal.
Many of us have heard action plans for improvement that include steps like “exercise more,” “improve my relationship with Sue,” or “get better at communicating.” Larger scale change efforts often include talk about “improving teamwork,” or “following the new process.” These goals may be important to achieve, but by themselves they don’t direct us or instruct what we do – they are outcomes, not actions. Influence masters know that they must clarify the exact actions that will make the desired change happen.
When we identify these key behaviors, we are able to focus our efforts on the things that really matter to the change we’re trying to make.
Identifying Key Behaviors
Can I watch someone do it?
If you think you’ve identified a key behavior, ask yourself, “can I watch a person do this and know whether or not it’s been done?” If the answer is yes, you are on the right track. If the answer is no, you may want to continue to clarify exactly what the key behavior is. One way to do this is to ask “how?” or “what would that look like?” a few times.
Does it really make a difference?
It’s important to target the right key behaviors – you can do a great job of defining key behaviors, but if they aren’t the right ones, your influence efforts will be futile. One way to target the right key behaviors is to find examples where the right things are already occurring, compare these situations to those in which the right things are not taking place, and find out what is happening differently in the positive situations. Going back to the performance-driven organizational culture example, imagine we found one department that had an excellent record of performance. If we can identify what the managers in that department are doing differently than managers who are suffering more performance problems, we can uncover the key behaviors that can help us create a stronger performance-driven culture in our organization.
