Jul 12

Targeted Behavior Change

Over the past year I have shifted the focus of my executive coaching work to targeted behavior change - helping successful executives be more effective, and even more successful.

It sounds simple. I mean, what can be challenging about helping people who have already established themselves as successes in their fields, companies and careers to be even more successful? The simple answer: What gets a man to a place does not necessarily keep him there. Put another way: The way I did it yesterday may not be what is needed today. I may need to learn, grow and act differently.

The choice for these up-and-coming-senior executives is between behavior that is comfortable and behavior that is effective.

Notice I’m not making any statement about the ends someone is trying to achieve. While I do hope that money and power are not the primary goals of the people I serve, I am not saying to the man who wants to have the biggest toys that he shouldn’t them. It’s not my job to level moralistic judgments. Don’t get me wrong; I do not take clients whose ends or means to them are what is normally called immoral, or is illegal. It is just that I do not see it as my role on the planet to tell another man what he should do.

I let the people around him do that - and then help him choose what he will do. For instance, by asking the people he identifies as most central to his success what he’s doing that causes problems, and inadvertently undercuts his success, we get a very short list of behaviors they think need to improve for him to be more effective, and hence, successful. He gets evidence from his natural environment, in flashing yellow lights, of what he can do to continue his history of success.

The trick is to recognize that by choosing to pay attention to what people are telling him, he cannot be tomorrow how he was yesterday. If he wants to reach his goals, he’s going to have to improve the means he uses to get them. So, logically, that implies he will need to learn new skills - skills that allow him to act differently than he used to act. By acting differently, he will be more effective.

During the past year I have been challenged the same way. During the early weeks of my masters program, I thought I was coming across one way, offering information and ideas for the benefit of everyone involved in the conversation. I quickly learned that I was being received in a totally different way. In fact, because of how people were reading me, the information I was offering, the ideas I was sharing, were not getting through. My good intentions were not picked up on my classmates’ intention-meters. In fact, quite the opposite. I was quickly outside the inner circle, dubbed a know-it-all more interested in his own aims than being a good classmate.

Hearing that feedback was like getting punched in the gut - hard. One of the main reasons I decided to pursue a masters was to be in a learning environment with professionals of similar values and interests. To end up outside that group, even while physically inside it, felt awful. If I didn’t address the situation directly, it would lead to me getting a very different result than intended. Sure, I’d still get a masters degree. I would still achieve an important end goal. But, I would have done it with a lot less support from others, with no greater number of meaningful relationships in my professional (or platonic) life than before I began, and quite possibly no more professional options than when I began.

While I may have ended up with the degree, I would not have ended up with the other important outcomes I valued. So, my choice was simple: Change or stay the same. Use the same behaviors that led to the problem during the entire program (this option usually involves pushing the problem off on other people rather than being self-responsible for my effectiveness), or learn how to be more effective in the classroom with my professional peers.

You see where I’m heading with this, right? My options were to keep doing what I was going and getting sub-optimal results or change what I was doing to get better results.

Pick an example from your own world. Do you know a successful or up-n-coming executive whose behaviors are increasingly problematic? He (or she, by the way) will eventually be presented with the same dilemma: improve and continue his/her trajectory in the current company, change trajectories (a.k.a. stop moving up), or be invited to continue his/her career with another organization.

The consequences may be more extreme than those, too, if he/she considers the other people in his life, such as children, and a partner.

So, the trick is to make the best decision. And, I argue that the best decision is the one that increases interpersonal effectiveness. The optimal decision is the one that has us operating in alignment with what our better judgment thinks we should do and is well-received by others. The best decision is the one that uses short-term maturity to achieve long-term prosperity.

I’m not asking people to roll-over and just be how others want them to be. This is not about selling out or living by someone else’s code. It is about deciding to use behavior that is more acceptable to the people you work with so that you get your goals achieved. It’s about choosing the best means to the ends you want. After all, you wouldn’t stay on a road that won’t get you where you want to go, would you?

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