Seeing It…Before It’s Too Late
One of my clients told me today that she now sees when things are going badly, and knows when to ask for help. What a gift for a leader! Seeing that there is a problem and unilaterally changing perspective or behavior is so critical for effective leadership (and unfortunately a bit too rare). At least the combination of seeing it and acting on it is rare. I worked with a senior management team recently, and based on my individual conversations with people, they were definitely seeing their pattern (confronting each other up to a point—and then backing away and changing the subject), but despite seeing it and identifying it as not productive, they did not change their behavior.
I wish there were a simple answer to the problem, but obviously the situation will vary from system to system. It seems so frustratingly irrational to see a problem and then refuse to act on it, but I know from my own experience that in those situations, there is always a rational explanation for doing nothing (I tried this before and it didn’t work…The others won’t go along with me…The timing is not right…). If anyone out there has some antidotes for refusing to take that first step, let me know.
2 Comments
Azi
yeah … sometimes I think my grandparents were correct in afflicting pain to acheive behavioral change or give rewards to sustain the good behavior.
with all the diversity work we have done and many participants awareness being raised the actual behavioral change is very hard for us to measure…and in fact many would say I am now better aware of this or that but when asked if it actually impacted them enough to change behavior the answer is “I don’t think so…” …maybe there is a cultural stigma attach to admitting the fact that ‘my behavior is changed’…shame?
Jamie Notter
Hi Azi!
I think reluctance to admit that your past behavior was not right is a part of it. it’s a psychological trap that keeps us in “irrational” behavior sometimes. In order to avoid the psychological discomfort of admitting we were wrong, we continue with behavior that we, in fact, know is not working.
Personally, i think it all comes down to fear. People are not changing their behavior because they are afraid. This is particularly true in diversity situations. Even with good awareness work, people (particularly white people, in my opnion) are afraid to actually change their behavior, because they are very unsure of what will happen when they do. Beyond awareness, we need to give them a safe space to try out the new behaviors, so they can see that the world won’t end when they do.