Behavior Change IRL: Focus on Both the Destination and the Journey

This is the third installment in my series on Behavior Change in Real Life.

Here are the other links:

Part 1: Behavior Change IRL: Introduction .

Part 2: Behavior Change IRL: Start Before You Start

This series is exploring all the approaches to behavior change I have leveraged in 50 years of studying the topic at both the individual and organizational levels. Here is the taxonomy I am using to organize the approaches:

?I. Start Before You Start

?II. Focus on Both the Destination and the Journey

III. Align the External Environment So It’s Right…for You

IV. Reduce Any Drag from your Inner Environment?

?V. Access the Deeper Pools of Motivation

VI. Change the Game

II. Focus on Both the Destination and the Journey

In my two-part definition of Behaviorism in the introduction, I felt the first element…getting crystal clear on the desired behavioral objective…did not get enough attention from either individuals or their coaches.?

Everything in this section is about getting clear on both the destination and the steps and adjustments along the way that bring you closer to that destination. That dual focus will help you avoid distractions and missteps.

Here are the approaches in this section:

• Visualize/Affirm
• Be More Stoic
• Define the Incremental Steps to the Outcome
• Skill-Build the Steps as Needed?

I mentioned in the introduction, that many coaching and behavior change approaches are not well researched.? Visualization is not one of those areas.?

Visualize | Affirm.?

The idea with visualizations and affirmations is, of course, to envision, write out, say…some even recommend shouting and acting out…the behavior you want to embody or the person you want to grow into.? Through repetition, you become what you envision, affirm, and enact.

I mentioned in the introduction, that many coaching and behavior change approaches are not well researched.? Visualization is not one of those areas.? Visualization’s impact on sports performance has been widely researched.? General results indicate that visualization alone (even without physical practice!) can improve a physical activity, such as shooting foul shots.? But visualization combined with physical practice produces an even larger effect , indicating that visualization is uniquely additive.

It is hard to say exactly how visualization and affirmation create change.? According to psychoneuromuscular theory, imagery rehearsal duplicates the actual motor pattern being rehearsed, though the neuromuscular innervations with imagery are of less magnitude than in physical practice.

Another potential pathway, especially for affirmation, is a tapping into the power of cognitive dissonance .? Cognitive dissonance is known to create a “pull” to close the gap between, in this case, what you are saying you are and how you actually are.??

Even without knowing the causal pathway, for our purposes here, visualization and affirmation have two other advantages.?

First, the act of visualizing or describing in words forces you to be very specific about the new world you are sailing towards.? In the world of behavior change, greater specificity is generally better.

Second, while it can certainly be combined with techniques from other sections, many use visualization?and affirmation almost as standalones.?You don’t need to fine-tune your environment.? No need for accountability partners.? You don’t need to give money to your least favorite cause if you fail.? No need for leaderboards.? None of that.? You just picture and affirm yourself into whatever new behavior or way of showing up you are trying to embody.

Many believe affirmation and visualization have been critical to their success.? It has clearly helped enrich an endless list of seminar leaders and authors who advocate it.?

I like the affirmation approach and use it myself.? But the addition of the shouting and theatrics that some seminar leaders recommend are not my cup of tea.??

But…and I am making this point early…who cares what I think about a particular approach?? In my view, individuals and their coaches should be looking for what works, not what the coach is predisposed to.

Given that I am publishing this series on LinkedIn, I would like to make one final point about visualization/affirmation in the context of personal and professional development.?

It is interesting to me how little I hear about or read about visualization in the workplace.? Moreover, few of the executive coaches I know or follow…people whose job it is to help their clients improve…talk about using visualization with their clients.? Affirmation, sometimes.? But not visualization.? It could just be my circle of colleagues, but no one I know is leveraging it.

Given the previously cited research on the positive and additive impact of visualization and given the fact that you cannot find a sports performance coach that does not have visualization and in-game affirmation as the centerpiece of their mental work with their athletes, the failure to leverage this approach with executives is a real head-scratcher.

I make this point here, but i will come back to it repeatedly in this series: in the game of behavior change, you should leverage every little bit of edge you can get your hands on.? And if you’re an executive trying to raise your game or a coach working with executives, visualization is not a little bit of edge.? It’s a lotta edge.

Be More Stoic

While Stoicism has been around since the 3rd century BCE, it seems to have suddenly been rediscovered.??

One key tenet of Stoicism related to behavior change is to put your attention on what you can control: your reactions, your interpretations, your emotional state, and your effort.? The corollary here is that you don’t worry about what is outside your control, especially the reactions/judgments of others.?

Believe it or not, you shouldn’t even worry about the outcomes of your efforts because you are rarely fully in control of outcomes. Even the Bhagavad Gita, perhaps the most important work in Hindu philosophy emphasizes the same point:? Do your duty but do not concern yourself with the results.

Stoicism encourages you to narrow the focus to where you do have agency, the next incremental steps, which can help you maintain some momentum.? That narrowing of focus also helps you not spend cycles and waste energy on what you don’t control.

In the world of behavior change, a kind of inertia or fear of change is a very common sticky wicket, especially at the very beginning.? That inertia can come from many sources: overwhelm about the size of the goal or behavior change being undertaken, past failures, fears about the judgments of others, and even worrying about the impact it will have on others as you get closer to your destination.

The Stoic focus on what you can control is pointed right at that inertia.? You see all your own judgements about the hole you’re in or the mountain you have to climb, and you turn your attention to what action you can take next.?

And you hear all the judgements from others about the fact that it is the wrong goal and not an accomplishment 'someone like you' could ever achieve.? Stoicism says to ignore that and focus your attention on the activities and people that are actually helpful.?

Finally, you find yourself in the difficult part of the change journey, the odds are long, and the recent returns have been meager, and Stoicism says forget all that and find the next step that you do control.?

Behavior change is hard.? It requires will, discipline, working through long plateaus and setbacks, and dealing with your own judgements and the judgements of others.?

Stoicism encourages you to narrow the focus to where you do have agency, the next incremental steps, which can help you maintain some momentum.?

As important as what it helps you do is what it helps you not do. Narrowing your focus also helps you not spend cycles and waste energy on what you don’t control.

Say what you will about those resurrecting concepts popular 23 centuries ago.? Vice Admiral James Stockdale credits stoicism with helping him and his men survive brutal prisoner of war conditions in Vietnam.

Your behavior change objective is unlikely to require you to keep you and your men alive, but maintaining momentum never hurts. Stoicism is a good way to get your head right to keep making those incremental forward steps on the journey.

Define the Incremental Steps to the Outcome

Skinner and his ilk would say that many involved in behavior change are too outcome focused.? They would say that the more productive course would be to break down the desired outcome into a series of closer and closer approximations and focus on each of them successively.

Want to be the CFO, or a loving husband, or dominate your pickleball league?? Think about breaking that outcome down into specific, actionable, measurable, and successive behaviors that, when practiced, accomplished, and strung together, lead to your desired outcome.?

Trainers in organizations have to do this to design their skill-building courses.? But many coaches and individuals are not thinking enough along these lines.?

This leads us to an acid test for your change objective: have you defined each of the steps you will have to make to achieve your behavior change objective?? If yes, you have a fighting chance.? If not, what you probably have is a bunch of velleities, vs objectives you really intend to achieve.

Once you have mapped the journey, there is a powerful next step you can immediately apply.?

The visualization lever I talked about at the beginning of this section, as practiced by many, is also too outcome focused.? A way to turbocharge your visualization and affirmation efforts is to apply the visualizations to the incremental steps, especially the next one you need to accomplish.?

Don’t just visualize being a VP.? Visualize and affirm aspects of developing your team, or resolving inter-department conflicts successfully, or presenting to the Operating Committee...steps you need to master to get promoted to VP.

Developing that split focus between where you want to end up and the next set of behaviors you need to master is helpful.?

A way to turbocharge your visualization and affirmation work is to apply the visualizations to the incremental steps, especially the next one you need to accomplish.?

Skill-Build the Steps as Needed??

When I trained that mouse to press a bar in High School, the mouse didn’t need to develop any new skills.? It was already physically capable of pressing the bar.? I just had to “nudge” it in the right direction with reinforcements.

In books like Switch and Atomic Habits, there seems to be a belief that if we make a step easy enough, salient enough, or rewarding enough, you will just do it.? But sometimes you are trying to do something that you are not yet capable of doing.??

You may want to be a better negotiator, but even if the need is there and the rewards are high, it is unlikely to happen unless you have a mental model of the key elements of effective negotiation and are skilled at each element or at least the most important ones.

In organizational change work, trainers and OD people often ask if a desired behavior change is a ‘will’ issue or a ‘skill’ issue.? As mentioned, the bulk of the popular books on behavior change focus on sustaining will/motivation or finding a way to not have to rely on it by making the desired behavior easy to do.

But with behavior change IRL, progress often derails due to a lack of a specific skill.? You really do want to change, but you get to a point where you don’t have the skills to accomplish the next step.?

So now, as you look at the steps of your journey, where will you need to build skill?? And how exactly will you do that??

In the corporate environment, more and more people are turning to coaches for help, which is wonderful.? But many of the coaches out there are of the “what-do-you-think,” “what’s-the-hardest-part-for-you,” and “where-do-you-feel-it-in-your-body” variety.?Coaches like that can be extremely valuable, depending on where you are in your journey.

But if you need to present better, negotiate better, facilitate better, build trust and momentum in a new job, or demonstrate more executive presence, you might need a coach who can 1) break that behavioral objective down into bite-sized pieces and 2) role model at least some of the skills.?

But with behavior change IRL, progress often derails due to a lack of specific skill.? You really do want to change, but you get to a point where you don’t have the skills to accomplish the next step.?

Having multiple coaches is normal. Athletes, for example, have "head" or mindset coaches (I like the term "approach coach" for this), nutrition coaches, strength and conditioning coaches, position coaches and even more.

So, if you are taking on a complex behavior change, when you screen potential coaches, ask if they have ever helped someone develop the specific skills you are trying to develop.? If they say they have, keep pressing them: ask what they specifically did to help their client acquire the new skills and make sure that approach will work for you.?

A failure to 1) understand the key skills you need to master on the road to your objective and 2) do whatever it takes to develop them are common behavioral change derailers.??

Conclusion: Focus on the Destination and the Journey??

In summary:? 1) Visualize and affirm the end goal and the incremental steps.? 2) Focus on what you can control and try to minimize the mental cycles spent worrying about the rest.? 3) Skill-build where needed.?4) If you know you will run into skill-related bottlenecks, think about getting a coach.? But make sure your coach has helped others develop the specific skills you need to master.

The next section will focus on how to Align the External Environment, not so that it is generally optimal, but so that it works/supports you. Here is the link to Part IV: Behavior Change IRL: Align the Environment So It's Right...for You.

Dennis Adsit, Ph.D. is the President of Adsum Insights and designer of The First 100 Days and Beyond , a consulting service for leaders in transition who need to get off to the best possible start in their new job.