Behaviour change – Page 4 – Working with ACT

Find Your Passion At Work! (Just Don’t Expect to Feel Passionate About It When You Do)

Posted on December 1, 2012December 1, 2012 by Dr Rob Archer

One of the reasons I left consultancy is because I felt that the work was meaningless. In meetings I would try not to fall asleep as people droned on about project dependencies and stakeholder management and at the weekend all I did was dread Mondays.

It wasn’t unpleasant exactly, it was the lack of something that bothered me. I wanted to feel passion and meaning at work, instead I experienced a sense that I did not care about the low hanging fruit as much as other people seemed to.

Now, many years later, I have created a working life which I do feel passionate about. Some nights I have to force myself to go to bed – like a child on Christmas day – because that will make the next day come faster. Some days I work with a client and it will hit me: I love this.

So for all the people who write about finding your passion at work: good for you. It is possible. It is necessary. Well done!

But your books are still at best horribly misleading and at worst, dangerous…

The thing about passion at work is that it is rarely characterised by feelings of passion. It is, if anything, characterised by feelings of anxiety and doubt, particularly in the early days. For me those years were filled with thoughts about whether this was really the right thing, whether I could do it, whether I was falling behind my peers.

Even today those moments where I feel passionate about what I do are rare and fleeting. Working with people who are stuck can be draining and usually I am assailed by doubts about my own ability to help, my mind telling me what a terrible psychologist I am. Plus it can be very painful working with people who are themselves in pain.

Is this what I left consultancy to find? Is this really passion at work?

Well, yes. I am truly passionate about what I do and I am so thankful that I get to do it (well, most days).

But if I had not been show how to grow more willing to respond flexibly to painful thoughts and emotions, then I would have never have reached where I am now.

In short, if I had defined passion as feelings of passion then the journey would have stopped long, long ago.

Psychological Flexibility in Difficult Conversations

Posted on November 18, 2012 by Dr Rob Archer

It struck me that psychological flexibility is very powerful in relationships, and particularly in having difficult conversations. However, this is something I rarely talk about on this blog (Rachel maybe more so). So I thought sharing a personal example of how psychological flexibility has helped me could be useful.

Earlier this year my Grandfather died and I wrote a bit about that at the time. Having dreaded his death for much of my adult life I am grateful for the skills that psychological flexibility gave me because they helped shape my response to his decline.

In May 2011 I went home to Liverpool to visit my Grandfather, who was then aged 92. He had been moved to a home, much to his disgust. He was grumpy because he felt he’d been locked in there against his will. He was surrounded by old women, many of them even grumpier, so we went outside for a cup of tea.

It was cold outside and windy. For some reason, we got onto talking about the gloomiest of subjects – unusual because we usually kept things light and jovial. But that day we both felt low. We talked about how he missed his daughter, Rowena, who died before I was born. It felt uncomfortable and sad.

It was sad. I felt like crying.

Some years ago I would have taken this discomfort as a sign to run away. I may have cracked a joke, or left a bit earlier, or hurriedly changed subjects.

But this time I sighed and stopped and just sat there. In the middle of the day, sitting with my Grandfather, sharing time, sharing life. I gave up the struggle with it, and just shared what was.

I look back now and am proud of what we did that day. Above all, I’m so glad I didn’t just run away.

Psychological flexibility has not saved me from difficult conversations. But it has lessened the struggle I have with my own thoughts and emotions during them. That has given me more energy to focus on what matters and I have been more willing to ‘show up’ to what matters to me in everyday life.

Doesn’t the workplace need more of this?

About the same time as seeing my Grandfather I went to a workshop run by another hero of mine, Kelly Wilson. He showed me this poem, and it means a lot. But not as much as the difficult moments I shared with my Grandfather last year, drinking lukewarm tea in the cold.

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Naomi Shahib Nye, “Kindness”

Why Happiness Makes Me Grumpy (aka: The Limitations of Aiming for a Happy Workplace)

Posted on November 8, 2012May 19, 2021 by Dr Rob Archer

Most serious positive psychology researchers would agree with the idea that happiness should not be an objective. But in my experience the message gets lost in translation, certainly among the many life coaches and pop psychologists who advocate the implementation of happiness strategies.

Even with heavyweight researchers the message gets blurred, for example:

Organisations like Livehappier.com and Action for Happiness argue that happiness is “the eternal quest of every generation since the first human beings” and argue that we should therefore try to create happy workplaces.
On Barbara Fredrickson’s website she writes: “experiencing positive emotions in a 3-to-1 ratio with negative ones leads people to a tipping point beyond which they naturally become more resilient to adversity and effortlessly achieve what they once could only imagine“.
Professor Tim Sharp relentlessly tweets about happiness, for example: “Stop; slow down; reflect; just be…happy” and “Live longer with happiness!”

The message is that happiness is correlated with all sorts of benefits – from health to productivity – so we should logically seek to attain happiness, right?

Well, no.

Happiness as an objective (whether individual or organisational) is hugely problematic for a number of reasons:

If we have happiness as our goal, then unhappiness has to be avoided. In this way individuals are encouraged to ignore, change or avoid negative emotions rather than accepting them as normal. This can lead to experiential avoidance – a psychological phenomena which has been linked to a huge number of mental health problems (Hayes and Masuda, 2004).
Thoughts and emotions are not within our control. As natural responses to the environment, there is very little evidence to suggest that negative thoughts can be avoided. We also have an ability to manufacture great unhappiness from pleasant events, and happiness from disaster (Gilbert, 2006).
Trying to be happier can backfire. A study by Ng and Diener found that those high in neuroticism did not benefit from cognitive reappraisal strategies and Woods (2009) found that positive self-statements provoke contradictory thoughts in those with low self-esteem.
Trying to be happy ignores context. I am motivated more often by fear, anger, jealousy and even desperation than I am by happiness. Is happiness the ‘right’ response to inequality or corruption? I would argue that the world needs a focus on happiness no more than it does on anger.
What drives happiness is often short term. For example, my mind will be unhappy at the prospect of going for a run, or of receiving negative feedback. Yet these are precisely the actions which drive longer term wellbeing, performance and meaning.
Happiness only drives some aspects of performance. Linking happiness with performance is like saying extraversion is good because it is associated with success in sales. Happiness is indeed useful for creative tasks (Fredrickson, 2005) but it is less useful for tasks like risk management (García, Sabaté, Puente, 2010).
Lack of theory. There is no theoretical reason why happiness should be exalted above other emotions. It does not tap into any theory of language or cognition which can explain how human minds work, and so no model can be empirically tested.

However, happiness sounds good and it correlates with some nice outcomes. So let’s pump it out there and hope for the best! I get grumpy about this for two reasons:

By focusing on happiness we fail to equip people with the tools to live more vital, fulfilling lives in practice. Plus we risk adding a second source of stress when people fail to feel happy.
It means the people I compete with get an easier sell than I do. And that makes me grumpy!

By focusing on happiness, Positive Psychology reinforces (whether overtly or not) the idea that we must change something within ourselves before we can be successful, productive, and healthy.

If we buy that idea we set ourselves up for a battle we cannot win – and risk creating enemies of our own minds.

What it Feels Like to Make a Mistake

Posted on October 1, 2012May 19, 2021 by Dr Rob Archer

I don’t like making mistakes. In fact most of my professional life has been spent in the service of not making a mistake, or being seen not to.

I am not alone; in fact a lot of the practical difficulty in culture change projects is created by people being (understandably) unwilling to move away from a no mistakes / ‘safety first’ style of thinking.

Whilst there’s nothing wrong with safety first, it is not always the most helpful approach to problem solving. Sometimes we need to think creatively, try something new…and risk making a mistake.

Yet so much of the language in organisations is about not making a mistake. Small mistakes are often cited in appraisals as evidence that someone did not have an outstanding year. And in comparison to creative thinking, ‘risk management’ sounds sensible, grown up and professional. It is easy to pick holes in new ideas.

So a ‘safety first’ culture often prevails where creativity is seen as a luxury and mistakes are punished. This is fine for some kind of problems, but not those which require more than past experience to solve them (what Ron Heifetz calls ‘adaptive change‘).

Therefore, when attempting to help organisations deal with adaptive change, we need to pay attention to how mistakes are treated. Clearly in this respect senior managers set the tone.

Yet so ingrained is our fear of making a mistake, the main barrier is how we ourselves feel when we make a mistake. If making a mistake is the admission price for creativity:

What does it feel like to make a mistake?

I have made a number of mistakes recently, so I thought this would be an interesting experiment. After all, if we are to encourage people to take risks and accept their feelings about making a mistake, what exactly are those feelings?

In this case the mistake I made was sending an e-mail which contained factual errors. Here’s what happened next:

The first experience was a nasty, crackling sensation deep inside my stomach, which had a kind of shockwave effect, culminating most noticeably in a sort of pins and needles feeling in my hands, lasting about 5 seconds.
The next moment brought a slight shortness of breath combined with a leaping heart and a racing mind to create a momentary sense of panic.
The next feeling was a realisation that the mistake is real and this came (for me) with feelings of slight nausea lasting about a minute.
Interestingly, my mind then immediately raced into self preservation (i.e. excuses) mode. Can I shift the blame? Can I make an excuse? I was almost overwhelmed by these thoughts over the next 30 minutes – being aware of them did not seem to matter.
The most noticeable feature was then my mind’s ongoing attempts to try and fix the problem. Again these thoughts were almost overwhelming and impossible to stop. (Incidentally this is where I often compound the initial mistake, so overpowering is the desire to fix it immediately). This is also the period where my mind suggests a number of different lies which might get me off the hook.
Finally I noticed how the mistake had a peculiar ability to haunt me. For example, I can think about it and right now – sitting here at my comfortable desk – I can experience a kind of ‘after shock’ all over again, with a heart leap thrown in. It is as if my mind is saying ‘you need to remember this because we are not going to do that again!’

If we are to encourage new ways of thinking it seems to me that we need to help people recognise and accept what it feels like to actually make a mistake. Though this won’t be easy, the alternative is a life lived in the service of not getting things wrong.

10 Factors to Consider When Rewarding Staff

Posted on August 4, 2012August 2, 2012 by Rachel Collis

David has been working hard to deliver exceptional service. His manager, Sarah, is pleased and wants to recognise his efforts, so she nominates him for an ‘Employee of the Month’ award. David then starts to slack off. He puts in less effort and seems less engaged by the work. Sarah feels frustrated. What did she do wrong?

It seems to be a good idea to reward people when they do a good job. But it can often decrease motivation. Rewarding people is more complicated than you might think. Here are 10 factors to consider when giving a reward:

Are rewards allocated in a way that seems fair to recipients?
Do they occur soon after the desired behaviour?
Do they tend to focus on clear performance standards. i.e Do I know what to do to get the reward?
Are the rewards matched to the individual? Different people find different things rewarding. Extroverts love a public announcement at a meeting, introverts don’t.
Most people find the following experiences rewarding: autonomy, respect, connection & belonging.
Do the rewards feel controlling? This is subtle. For rewards to feel fair, I need clear performance standards but if I feel like I am being rewarded for complying with instructions I will tend to be de-motivated. We value freedom and autonomy highly. A ‘reward’ that is about compliance can make me feel less autonomous. For example, ‘Thank you so much for getting that board paper to me today, I appreciate that you had to stay back last night to get it done‘ is probably rewarding unless the evening before you told me, ‘You have to stay back tonight to finish that board paper’.
Don’t use extra money to reward behaviours that the person would do anyway because they find the activity enjoyable or because doing it is in some way linked to their values.
Do help people to make the link between what they need to do and who they want to be i.e. their values.
Do reward behaviours that will help the person to learn something challenging. When we are just starting to gain a complex skill it is often hard and we need some external encouragement. Once we can do it well then we start to enjoy it for it’s own sake and we no longer need the rewards (in fact they can be counter-productive).
The best rewards are ‘natural’ – a smile; a thank you; an authentic expression of the impact of what the person did. (Again think: autonomy, respect, belonging and connection).

So what went wrong with David? He had been giving excellent customer service for the joy of it. The award changed that for him. He felt controlled by it. Sarah presented the award at the monthly team meeting and David is an introvert and felt embarrassed. David knew that Connie had been giving a similar level of service but she didn’t get a mention. He didn’t feel that Sarah had been fair and he now felt awkward around Connie. It had decreased his respect for Sarah and his feelings of connection to the rest of the team.

So, give others lots of respect and as much autonomy as you can. Build feelings of connection and belonging. But think carefully when you use bonuses and awards – they are risky!

Sources for this post:

Judy Cameron, Katherine M. Banko, and W; David Pierce Pervasive Negative Effects of Rewards on Intrinsic Motivation: The Myth Continues. The Behavior Analyst 2001, 24, 1-44 No. 1 (Spring)

Edward L. Deci, Richard Koestner, Richard M. Ryan A Meta-Analytic Review of Experiments Examining the Effects of Extrinsic Rewards on Intrinsic Motivation. Psychological Bulletin 1999, Vol. 125, No. 6, 627-6

and a thought provoking post to the ACT listserv by Dr Paul Atkins

What Leading A Cardiac Arrest Team Taught Me About Team Work

Posted on July 5, 2012July 5, 2012 by Rachel Collis

Ventricular Fibrillation (VF) (Photo credit: Popfossa)

As a very young doctor, fresh out of medical school, I led the hospital cardiac arrest team. Yep, that is right. I made life or death decisions; treating patients whose hearts had effectively stopped. It was utterly terrifying, and when we saved a life, wonderful and miraculous.

The really cool thing about cardiac arrest teams is that they function as an effective team from the moment that team members arrive in the room; even though they often have never worked together before.

Decisions get made quickly and are acted on immediately. And sometimes, as a result of those decisions, people are brought back from the dead. It is wonderful.

Why do cardiac arrest teams work so well together?

Because they are well set up.

The purpose of the team is very clear and everyone agrees what that purpose is.

Everyone in the team understands who is responsible for what. They know who will do which action. They know which decisions each team members makes individually; which they will make in consultation with others and which decisions the whole team will make by consensus.

If one member of the team is unable to respond to the ‘Cardiac Arrest on Ward A1‘ call, there is a clear agreed way of sharing out the work, so that it all gets done. Team members don’t have to waste time renegotiating responsibilities.

The situation itself also helps the team to work well together. There is immediate feedback. The doctor takes an action and can see the result within seconds. Either the patient’s heart rhythm improves or it doesn’t.

These characteristics are important in building effective cooperative effort:

Clear agreed purpose
Clear decision-making processes
Clarity about roles and responsibilities
Immediate and accurate feedback

If you want your team to be more effective, pause for a moment. Have you set your team up to work well together? How is the situation influencing their behaviour?

How to Build A Cooperative Team

Posted on June 19, 2012June 19, 2012 by Rachel Collis

Whenever we work in a team there is a tension between getting the outcomes we want and contributing to the outcomes that others need.

If I spend time giving John the information he needs to get his board paper written, then I might have to delay my meeting with my direct report, Sarah, and as a result she doesn’t meet her deadline. I will need to trust that, at some point in the future, John will return the favour.

Humans are incredibly good at quickly recognising whether to cooperate with others or whether to just look out for ourselves. Within minutes of joining a group we size up the situation and adjust our level of contribution accordingly. We have learnt this skill because being cooperative in a competitive environment is a really bad idea.

David Sloan Wilson has been doing some cool research on this in his home town of Binghamton. He has found that the culture of the suburb where teenagers live determines to a large extent how prosocial they are (i.e. how readily they will take voluntary actions to benefit others, such as sharing, comforting, helping, rescuing). If teenagers move from a harsh suburb to a more nurturing environment, they often become more prosocial.

It looks like certain environments encourage people to be cooperative, trusting and kind and other environments don’t.

So what does this mean for you and your team? If your team aren’t very cooperative; it may not be because they are selfish or difficult; it may be because the environment isn’t set up to encourage prosocial behaviours. How do we create those environments?

In his work with groups at Binghamton, Sloan Wilson uses Elinor Ostrom‘s design principles, which are:

Strong group identity and purpose
Clearly defined boundaries
Getting rewarded for contribution. Members of the group agree a system that rewards people for their contribution to group outcomes
Group members create their own ground rules and make group decisions by consensus
Monitoring – a process to check for free-riding or active exploitation by individual group members
Graduated consequences for inconsiderate or selfish behaviour
Mechanisms for fast and fair conflict resolution which are cheap and easy to access
Local Autonomy – The group (and subgroups within the larger team) have some authority to manage their own affairs
Where the group is part of a larger system, they are organized as multilayered nested enterprises. Each group has its own governance that fits within the larger group. Local efforts are linked together.

Ostrom found that groups that have these principles in place are more likely to work together to look after group resources rather than compete for and ultimately deplete them.

Sloan Wilson has been applying these principles to create changes in schools and neighbourhoods with surprisingly good effect.

My experience is suggesting they are helpful for workplace teams too.

Sadly Elinor Ostrom passed away on June 12th. My hope is that her contribution will live on, helping us to improve the way we interact with each other and the world.

How To Super Charge Your Leadership Training

Posted on May 10, 2012June 16, 2012 by Rachel Collis

I recently heard of a leadership programme where it is expected that half way through the programme participants will contact the CEO of their large organisation to complain. They are doubtful about the usefulness of the programme and feel overwhelmed, stressed and angry. The CEO apparently responds by telling them to ‘suck it up’. Why does he tell them this? Because he sees that, in the long run, the programme works – the majority of participants do become better leaders after the programme. They are wiser, more courageous and demonstrate more integrity.

Although the programme apparently ‘works’ it sounds to me like it is causing unnecessary suffering to participants. Let me explain what I mean.

When I was a junior doctor, all gall bladder operations involved a long incision, a 2 hour operation, 5 days in hospital and 4-6 weeks recovery time. Fast forward 15 years and most gall bladder operations are now done laparoscopically, via small incisions in the abdomen. The patient only needs to stay in hospital overnight and returns to normal activities within a week.

I think that some leadership trainers are doing the equivalent of an open cholecystectomy. They are inflicting unnecessary trauma on participants in order to achieve the required changes when they could be using newer, more effective and less damaging behaviour change technology.

Contextual behavioural science has the clues to these more effective and less traumatic ways of achieving the same important outcomes.

Contextual behavioural science (CBS) aims to ‘predict and influence behavior, with precision, scope, and depth.’ What this means is that CBS is using scientific inquiry to work out exactly what works in helping human beings to develop and grow.

So what does a leadership course based on these principles look like?

It understands that most of us become inflexible when we feel threatened. If the learning environment is safe, secure and playful we are more likely to learn new behaviours that we will then apply in the real world.
At the start of the programme participants choose the values they want to express through their work. What they want to stand for. How they want others to experience them. This is important as this links the leadership programme to their own internal motivation (‘What is important to me’) which is much more powerful than external motivation ( e.g.’My CEO says I have to suck it up’).
A combination of 360 feedback and reflection (supported by coaching) helps participants to identify the behaviours that they need to Keep, Start and Stop doing. Participants learn research findings about which leadership behaviours are effective in which settings; so that they can make wise choices about what behaviours to focus on.
Participants explore the function of any behaviours that they find both problematic and resistant to change. They then use this information to develop a plan for change. This is because behaviours that look the same can actually have completely different underlying aims. If the plan for change doesn’t take this into account it is likely to be ineffective. For example: participants who complain to the CEO could either be trying to avoid something difficult or they could be asking for a more effective leadership programme. In the first case, some work around becoming better at handling uncomfortable emotions might be warranted, whereas in the second, it might be helpful to learn how to manage upwards more skilfully.
Facilitators in a programme based on contextual behavioural science understand that problematic thoughts and feelings are often what hold people back from expressing courageous, caring and inspiring behaviours. The programme therefore includes evidence based methods to handle painful thoughts and feelings more effectively.
Participants learn to become more mindful. They become good at observing their own behaviour and it’s impact. Noticing when their behaviour aligns with their own deeply held values and when they are off course…and then self correcting.
Relational Frame Theory is used to improve the design of activities and metaphors. Why relational frame theory? Because it is a theory of language, cognition and learning that has more than 60 studies to support it.
During workshops, the behaviours that participants have identified as needing to change are likely to occur. These events are seen as opportunities for authentic and thoughtful conversations where the effects of these behaviours on both the particular participant and on other participants is explored. The outcomes of the behaviour in the session are then linked to their possible outcomes in the ‘real’ world.
Facilitators and other participants also look for and encourage positive changes in behaviour. Participants make plans for how to try out these new behaviours in their work and then observe the effect.
Participant’s managers are seen as an important part of the programme. It is much easier to change when people around you are supportive of the change.

A leadership course run this way would still be challenging for participants but it would be less likely to overwhelm them. Even better, early research is suggesting it might even be more effective than standard leadership training. (Professor Frank Bond has some research in press showing just this).

The Risks of ‘Knowing’ The Rules

Posted on April 26, 2012May 19, 2021 by Rachel Collis

All through our lives we learn ‘rules’. Anything from ‘Wash your hands before dinner’ to ‘Good goals are SMART goals’ and even ‘All men are #%s*#%^*’.

Is it a good idea to ‘know’ the rules? Well, it depends.

Robert Sternberg and Peter Frensch (1989) were interested in exploring this. They pitted expert and novice Bridge players against a computer. Of course, the experts understood the rules of Bridge more fully than the novices. So, when the computer played according to the usual rules of Bridge, the expert players did well (no surprises there!). But then the researchers fundamentally altered the rules of the game and the novices then outperformed the experts. The novices adjusted to the change more quickly whereas the experts kept following the rules of Bridge even when they weren’t playing Bridge anymore.

Other psychology studies have come up with similar results. When we think we know the rules, we can be slow to notice when things have changed and we can tend to persist in behaviour that often doesn’t work.

When you find yourself doing the same thing over and over, even when you aren’t getting the outcomes that you want. When you notice that your behaviour has a driven, inflexible quality … pause…breathe…notice what is actually happening in the world (rather than what your mind is telling you is happening) and then consider choosing a different action that is more likely to work in that moment.

What Facebook Can Teach Managers About Building Engagement

Posted on April 11, 2012May 19, 2021 by Rachel Collis

Facebook is amazing at building and maintaining engagement. From a behavioural science perspective, Facebook is set up in a way that encourages engagement. How does it do it and what can it teach us?

1. Facebook makes it very, very easy to give positive feedback. In fact, it isn’t just easy, it is actually feels good to click the ‘like’ button (or is that just me?).

Research suggests that team members need around 3 pieces of positive feedback for every piece of negative feedback. Not many employees are getting even close to that. So when you are reviewing a piece of work, find some way to communicate all the things you like about what has been done rather than just focussing on what needs to be changed.

2. On Facebook (and in life), feedback shapes behaviour. We notice what behaviour seems to get a lot of positive feedback and what gets ignored and over time we change our behaviour. At work, desired behaviour is often ignored, apart from occasional larger gestures – an employee of the month award; a bonus at performance review time; an acknowledgement in the team meeting. In terms of behavioural psychology, what happens on Facebook is much more powerful. Aim to give positive feedback, frequently and real-time, don’t worry if it is just small. Think of the ‘like’ button!

3. Facebook understands that people crave connection and that connection is important in building engagement. Gallup found something similar in the workplace, they found that ‘having a best friend at work‘ is associated with improved performance. We also know that leaders who focus too much on getting the task done and ignore the importance of encouraging team members to build relationships tend to have dissatisfied and disengaged teams. So what can Facebook teach us about how to build connection?

4. Facebook understands that what actually builds connection is lots of little interactions about ordinary things. Sharing a joke. Saying how tired you feel because the kids have been up in the night. Sharing something you find interesting. So, those chats in the office kitchen aren’t time wasting (unless they go on for hours!) – they are building connection and engagement.

So, to get Facebook-like engagement, managers might want to build some habits around giving frequent positive feedback, encouraging people to create connections with each other and valuing those chats in the staff kitchen.