If you work with people on a regular basis, you know that producing long-lasting behaviour change can be difficult.
Whether you are a manager, leader, team member or parent, understanding how people change is essential to developing people. All of our training programs are aimed at doing just this – providing participants with the tools to develop new skills, changing their behaviour in an ongoing and consistent way. We are all about training that sticks, training that changes people’s behaviour during and after the end of our programs.
I am going to walk you through each of the four steps needed to help you understand what is needed to produce lasting change, and use the example of interpersonal conflict to illustrate the change process.
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Awareness
The first step is awareness. Ask yourself the questions:
- What is the issue you are addressing; or the behaviour change you want to produce?
- Why is this issue important?
- What will happen if this issue is unaddressed?
- What positive impact will addressing a certain issue create?
This is the informative part of any presentation, facilitated session or coaching conversation.
For example: Interpersonal conflict has been voted as the number one issue that senior executives want additional training and development in. Those that handle interpersonal conflict well are seen as better leaders, are more likely to get promoted and more likely to enjoy their work. Interpersonal conflict is universal when people work together, and even essential for healthy organisations and teams.
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Insight
The second step helps people apply the information they have just learned to themselves; to see how they relate to the particular subject. This is designed to help individuals or teams gain personal insight into their current behaviours. This is crucial to help build motivation to change.
It is not enough for people to understand a subject, they MUST be able to apply it personally to themselves, and this is the job of the curriculum designer and facilitator.
For example: Other than healthy conflict, there are two unhealthy choices people can make regarding conflict situations: avoidance or attack. People may either avoid conflict by changing the subject, making jokes, avoiding the subject all together, saying “yes” when you want to say “no,” or visa versa. Or, if they have to do conflict, people can attack others, shout, belittle, tease or threaten people. Which do you tend towards?
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Willingness
Having gained personal insight, we have to start building motivation to change. I often say that half of my job as a training facilitator is motivating people. Unless you help people answer their own WHY questions, building willingness, all the awareness and insights in the world won’t produce change.
For example:
- What would happen if you learnt to have healthy conflict?
- What would happen if you could discover a way to consistently have positive, difficult conversations with the people closest to you and your colleagues?
- What prevents you from doing this?
- What could you do to overcome these hurdles?
- Do you believe that you are capable of healthy conflict? Why? Or why not?
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Action
All of this builds towards the final phase – action! While the first three steps are around mindset, the last is about what you practically do. This is why we give people role-play exercises, coaching moments and feedback. And why we always try to have an aspect of accountability in our programs.
So, next time you want someone to change someone’s behaviour in your role as a leader, manager, trainer or parent, think through the four steps. And if you are inclined to get frustrated because you have told someone what to do and they aren’t doing it, maybe you should shift your expectations? Investing a little more thought and time in the change process IS the shortest way to produce lasting change.