What's driving your people's behaviour?

In this new Leadership and Innovation series I'm focusing on how leaders can maximise their effectiveness in a healthy way. If you understand how people tick, you can quite naturally increase your influence. This is one of the most important skills a leader can develop. These posts will give you some of the tools to make this possible.

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Just about everyone I know has at one time or another engaged in some behaviour which they wished they didn’t do. Whether it’s overeating, smoking, or some emotional over-reaction the person in question is frustrated by their own behaviour. 

At first glance there’s a mystery here. If I don’t like what I’m doing then I should, presumably, just stop doing it. Simple, right? However, from our own experience we know it’s not that easy.  Sometimes the language we use can give us a clue as to why. We’ll say things like “there’s a part of me that really enjoys...” or “a bit of me just doesn’t want to stop.” Other times we may say, “I don’t know what came over me.” These expressions point to a profound truth about the human psyche - it is made up of many different elements.

While it is true that each person has a personality it might be more accurate to say that each of us has many sub-personalities. No, that doesn’t mean your nuts. It just means different parts of us sometimes want different things. This after all is what you are hearing when somebody says, “there’s a part of me that would love to start an exercise regime, but there’s another bit of me that just wants to chill out and take a break.” 

It is from these different – and sometimes competing – wants that inner turmoil can arise. It’s just part of being human. Teams and organisations, being composed of human beings, are no different. So what to do?

Suppose you – or those in your charge - want to commit to some course of action but you just don’t seem to get round to it, or when you do it’s kind of half-hearted and then you don’t follow through. The way to address this apparent lack of motivation is to recognize that it has nothing to do with a lack of commitment or will power. It has much more to do with different parts of you wanting different – and sometimes conflicting - things. It’s no different with organisations.

Ever seen people, teams, organisations have an issue which they sought expert input on and then failed to follow through with the recommendations? And this even when you knew those recommendations would alleviate the issue that caused them to seek help in the first place?

This is a very common phenomena and it doesn’t just occur at work or with minor matters. Take health. Our health is probably one of the things we most value, especially when it’s threatened in some way. Nevertheless, pretty much every doctor I’ve met can give examples of people who have serious health challenges that could be eliminated but who won’t change their behaviour to do what it would take to make the change happen. Put yourself in the doctor’s shoes for a moment. Think of the doctor as a leader. Don’t you think you’d find this pretty frustrating and dispiriting? How does a leader cope with such ambivalent behaviour? 

It is much, much easier to successfully resolve such conflicts if you have some understanding of how human beings tick. This does not require a degree in psychology. But it does mean we need to get curious about human behaviour. This is particularly the case if that behaviour seems self-destructive or self-defeating.

I would argue this is something every leader needs to know. To show you how to address this paradox of human behaviour I want to take a specific example. I’ve chosen a behaviour which people not only say they want to change but which they know is potentially fatal. I choose this because I want to explore how you deal with something that is really deep seated. It’s a good test: if you can get a change here you know you’ve got a robust approach which can be applied in lots of other situations. The behaviour? Smoking.

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Start as an advocate for the status quo

I was once working with a senior executive in Denmark who really wanted to give up smoking. I began by asking her what she actually got out of smoking and to her surprise I began writing all the benefits down as she said them. This was a woman who had tried to give up on countless occasions. She was highly critical of herself and felt that she lacked the self-discipline that other people who had given up smoking clearly must have. 

As I kept asking “and what else do you get out of smoking” the list began to grow. By the time we finished she had a list of 32 different benefits she derived from smoking! (She currently holds the international record). At one point she said, very quietly, “It’s the one thing I do for me.” Once she was able to look at the list and see how many things smoking was doing for her she could understand why she had found it so difficult to give up. The price would have been just too high

Now that we knew what she got out of smoking, what we needed to do next was look at how else she could get these good things and so better care for herself. But we would never have got to this point if I hadn’t started out by being the advocate for the status quo and saying let’s hear it for smoking! And yes, in case you’re wondering, she did give up smoking – permanently.

Human behaviour is always a means to an end

I think the lesson here is that human behaviour – even if apparently self-destructive - is purposeful. Our behaviour is just the visible tip of the iceberg. Our behaviour is always a means to an end.

The question every leader needs to address is what is the purpose of any given behaviour? And this applies whether we’re talking about an individual, a team or an organization. When people engage in action they are always trying to achieve something. This is true even when the behaviour seems pretty strange or even self-destructive to you. So get curious. Ask yourself, what are they trying to achieve?

I hear a lot of talk in boardrooms about winning hearts and minds but I don’t see too much evidence that people know how to do this. If you want to win hearts and minds you have to engage directly with people’s beliefs and values. To do this you have to know how to elicit them.

Too often leaders try to get people to change their behaviour without knowing what the old behaviour has been doing either for the team or the person. That means they don’t understand what those people get out of what they’re doing or the beliefs and values driving it. As people’s beliefs and values are what drives their behaviour it’s hardly surprising that management can find it hard to motivate people sufficiently. Instead they encounter apathy and resistance to change.

If you really want to make a change, try being an advocate for the status quo first! Ask yourself and others, what do we/they get out of the present way of doing things? Once you know this the challenge is to see how you can take that good stuff with you even as you innovate for the future.

As a senior advisor my experience is that business can benefit from some of the work being done in neuroscience but it needs to be applied neuroscience. That’s why I enjoy working with my colleague Professor of Applied Neuroscience Patricia Riddell. When we advise on how individuals, teams and organisations can best apply current research there is one question we will always ask. It’s a really simple question but it always guides us toward best practice. The question is this:

Is this way of doing things neuro-effective??

Or to put it another way, are you, your team and the organization working with the way the brain works – or not?

We want to share the fruits of this way of thinking and to this end we have designed a set of 4 interactive workshops, which address specific leadership challenges. In these we focus on leadership and decision making in VUCA environments, how to refresh and revitalise your workforce, how to manage change neuro-effectively and how to use (mental!) time travel to improve business strategy.

These masterclasses are designed as stand-alone offerings which cumulatively combine to provide practical ways to become more neuro-effective in your chosen field.

Interested?

Just click on the link - we would be delighted to see you there

Practical Neuroscience: Business Masterclasses