How to get the change in behavior you need

Re-post from James Brava of Frontline Leadership

In order to get the change in behavior you need from your team members (or child, spouse, partner or friend) you need to guide their thinking.

The key tool you have to guiding their thinking are the words you choose to use, the questions you choose to ask and the conversations you choose to have. Today we’re going to focus on the questions that you choose to ask.

Last week, I recommended that you do yourself a favor. When you’re correcting behavior, or seeking behavioral change, I recommended that you ask open-ended questions to get your team member talking; to get the words coming out of their mouth rather than yours.

I’m hoping that you tried this out and received the benefits of taking this approach. But there is one trap you need to side-step when confronting any sort of performance problem or issue with behavior. And that trap is asking ‘why?’

Let’s put this in context. Let’s imagine a very simple situation to illustrate the problem this causes. Imagine that it’s important for your team members to arrive at work on time, and one of them has just arrived almost 10 minutes late for the second day in a row.

If you ask them why they are late, what will you get? Excuses – yes? I suggest that this approach will create a defensive mind-set rather than a problem-solving mind-set. A defensive mind-set is not the sort of thinking pattern you want to encourage when you’re seeking behavior change.

So, what do you do? Well, the past is just a memory. It is the person’s future behavior you want to change, because you sure can’t change their past behavior.

So, you want to create buy-in for future change from the person involved. To do so, you need to ask questions that encourage them to talk. Asking questions that focus on the consequences of their actions and their future behavior tends to be much more productive.

Rather than asking ‘why?’ (as in “Why are you late?”), you could ask questions such as:

“How do you think your team mates feel when you arrive late?”

“Why is it important for you to be at work on time?”

“What can you do differently from now on to ensure that you’re at work on time?”

“Tell me about what might prevent you from getting to work on time in the future?”

“When will you make that change?”

Notice the mind-set these sorts of questions encourage. Much more of a reflective and problem-solving thinking pattern. When you’re on the receiving end of this it feels more like you’re being treated fairly and receiving good coaching rather than being reprimanded and told what to do. And you’re being treated much more like an adult who has their own solutions to the problems they face.

The end result is much higher buy-in to change. You get it by using open-ended questions focused around how the other person could improve their future behavior.

About James

James Brava is the on-line pseudonym for James Blair Stevenson, the Chief Executive of Brava Limited.

Brava is a company specializing in Frontline Leadership. Its mission is to create significant and sustainable performance improvement for organizations by enhancing the leadership practices of their frontline managers. Brava is based in Auckland, New Zealand with clients throughout the Asia-Pacific region.

James is the founder of Brava and is the co-developer of Brava’s Frontline Leadership system. He has been at the forefront of the development of Frontline Leadership practices and has extensive experience creating productivity and performance improvement for a wide range of clients across New Zealand, Australia and the Asia-Pacific region. This hands-on experience spans sectors such as telecommunications, airline, retail, financial services, automotive parts and service, security, petroleum, charity fundraising and engineering services and distribution.

Prior to founding Brava in 1997, James held national management roles in various corporate organizations, where he enjoyed developing several high-performing teams.

James is highly rated by senior management clients as a Principal Consultant who customizes Brava’s Frontline Leadership system to seamlessly integrate with their organization’s existing management processes. This ensures that his clients experience immediate and sustainable performance improvement.

Further to this, James’ considerable knowledge of up-to-the-minute leadership research and practices, particularly in the area of frontline leadership, ensures that peers and clients alike place high value on his insights. In addition, James is well regarded as a keynote speaker on the topic of managing people for high performance.