If you are "searching for a rhyme scheme in a cookbook, you won’t find it, and you will bugger up your soufflé."

A Case for getting the Prompt, Context, and Opportunity Right for behavior change

It was 6.30 PM, the end of a long day. I logged into an MSTeam call and a slide showing key trends in the coaching clients’ focus areas for a year-long coaching intervention. The intervention was for leaders with 18-25 years of experience in a large global organization. The clients managed large businesses,  projects, or deals across the continents.

It was a call between the Org HR team and a group of seven coaches to wrap up the intervention, catch up on trends, what went well, inputs for the next year, etc. All videos were on, and we were trying to read through the busy slides. Some of us also exchanged WhatsApp messages in the Coaches’ group as the call was on. The group brainstormed to understand what to do with the clients long-term to bridge the gap, suggesting longer developmental interventions, internal mentoring, etc.  

I was wondering, ‘Are we missing something? ' The clients are from the top few three-lettered management institutes, intelligent, experienced, and quick learners, and then why do they have these challenges? The one circle that caught my eye was strategic/long-term thinking! Hasn’t it been taught in the best management schools? Of course. They have stalwarts and best-selling authors teaching them this. 

I keep hearing this across organizations of all types and sizes as an area of development. I hear them as developmental needs from L&D and during pre-coaching tripartite chats with the clients and their managers. Companies even run interventions on these topics. Yet, the exact developmental needs came up again the following year. 

I have also heard about year-end performance discussions like this - “You are doing well, BUT I think you need to improve your strategic thinking/networking skills.” Here comes the surprise- throughout the year, during the reviews or chats, you asked three questions- 

1. How is the project, deal, and business going for the last week/ month?

2. What did not work and why?

3. What will you do next week/month? 

And yet, at the end of the year, you expect the halo effect of strategic thinking or networking skills to come from your leader! It is like feeding your kids fast food and expecting them to be healthy! 

“No one asked me about strategic thinking or networking skills throughout the year.” “I can” and “I want to” are not enough to do something regularly. 

For the last 7 years, I have tried this with multiple groups, three questions- 

1. How many of you like to walk every day and believe it will benefit you?  90 percent of participants raise their hands 

2. How many of you can walk? There is laughter, and everyone raises their hands. 

3. How many of you go for a walk every day? 30 percent of people raise their hands

Therefore

I can + I want to - I do = 60 percent (this is an approximate equation)

I call this the Prompt/ Opportunity or Context gap. (POC)

Most organizations or leaders view desired behavior change as an ability or motivation challenge, but POC is missing. How can we act on it? 

If you are a leader who is trying to focus on a particular behavior change, you can consider these- 

1. Do I have the opportunity to practice this? How can you get to do this?

2. Do you get reviewed by someone on the progress of this? If not, find someone working on the same or a group working on the same who can hold you accountable. Or get a coach or a mentor who will support or challenge you. Running groups or cycling groups work like this. Change is often a group sport. Driving change alone requires disproportionate motivation and energy. Being surrounded by people of a particular type makes it easy for you. If you are brought up in a house where everyone listens to or sings Indian classical music, probably the house cat will be able to sing a raga or two :-) 

3. Make it easy or fun for you. Life is difficult anyway, so why make learning or behavior change complicated? For example, if you and your accountability partner want to meet weekly for an hour to discuss your progress on “how to manage difficult client conversations,” meet in a place that serves food you like. Do it after the common weekly meeting you attend because it is easy. This will ensure the change is more effortless, part of your work, and fun. 

4. Celebrate progress, and you may even laugh about failures. This is the hidden ROI that we often miss. Celebrate small successes. The post-wrestling chats and laughter make the pain a little more bearable. 

Look beyond ability and motivation. Working with context and designing the context are more significant leadership challenges. Take them.

If you are the manager of the leader or HR leader who focuses on the team member(s) or the organization to change. This is for you- 

1. Don’t just coach on ability or motivation; check whether they have enough opportunity to practice the behaviors. If you think strategic thinking is your team member’s area of improvement, give her a project where she will have to apply that. If she needs to improve her networking skills, explore how you can help her connect with people. Is there a way to cheerlead her?

2. How many meetings will you miss if I delete the calendar app from your mobile? You may already be nervous about this possibility. So, without a prompt at the right time, you may miss doing things even when you can and want to. So ask your team member, “When will you do it?” How will you remind yourself? Do they need a check-in or a reminder from you?

3. Make the behavior change easy for them. Make her work on a strategy project. Pair her up with someone good at that. If team engagement is a challenge for your team members, start the review meeting with a discussion on team climate. Create enough occasions to talk about or work with it.

4. Appreciate and recognize small changes. Go beyond “Good job” and share how it made you feel. I wrote about the power of appreciation; here is the link. (1)

5. Spend time bridging ability gaps, if any. Here, you can use your experience, structure, details, etc.  

Gallup runs the world’s most industry-leading engagement survey. The 13 questions (Q12) tell us what employees need most to perform their best. Here are the questions-

0. How satisfied are you with your company as a place to work?

1. I know what is expected of me at work.

2. I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right.

3. At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day.

4. In the last seven days, I have received recognition or praise for doing good work.

5. My supervisor, or someone at work, seems to care about me as a person.

6. There is someone at work who encourages my development.

7. At work, my opinions seem to count.

8. The mission or purpose of my company makes me feel my job is important.

9. My associates or fellow employees are committed to doing quality work.

10. I have a best friend at work.

11. In the last six months, someone at work has talked to me about my progress.

12. This last year, I have had opportunities at work to learn and grow.

Look at the question numbers- 2,3,4,5,6,10,11, all are context-dependent.

So get your POC (Prompt- Opportunity- Context) right. Whenever I think of the power of context, I remember the comedian, songwriter, composer, actor and musician Tim Minchin’s quote-

“Searching for meaning is like searching for a rhyme scheme in a cookbook. You won’t find it, and you will bugger up your soufflé.”

Even to search for meaning, you need to search it in the right place. Your motivation or ability alone won’t help.

Women’s Day

I can’t not write about Women’s Day in March. Here is an incident-

I was in a learning session, and it’s a long-term course where we meet 16 days a year. I have kept a full-fledged coffee brewing kit there, carry coffee powder every time we meet, and make coffee for everyone there. I was making coffee, pouring hot water in a French Press, trying to “bloom coffee”; we were literally smelling coffee. Someone introduced herself, and when I enquired, she mentioned that she works in the area of Women’s leadership development. A few of us were standing together as I made coffee, and someone brought up the topic of coffee tasting. I mentioned that you need to slurp while tasting coffee, and I slurped my coffee. Here is how the conversation went with my new friend - 

The new friend-“Oh my god, this is what I always tell my women leaders not to do during my programs.”

Me- “So you mean to say men can slurp, but women can’t? “

She- “No one should but women! Strict No No.”

It is time to create more mature Yes and No lists this Women’s Day month—for women… and everyone.

Coming back to POC, one of the reasons behind finally writing this is also because of my friend Ajay Kelkar’s gentle nudge- a couple of messages and a phone call -” I am wondering when is your next Substack coming?”. Here it is. And BTW, Ajay has a great substack, too (2)