We coach leaders to the Pinnacle of performance
Transforming Automatic Behaviors:
Topic Highlights: ▪ Performance Improvement Principles ▪ The Counteracting Principle: Don't Attack, Counteract ▪ Techniques for Counteracting Comfort Priorities ○ The Path of Least Discomfort – Ouch! ▪ How to Induce Counteracting Feelings ○ Elicit Declarations (Commitments and Intentions) - Constructing Internal Motivation ○ Instill Virtual Consequences ▪ Recontextualizing Attitudes to Change Behaviors
Stop using and losing the unfair fight. Instead, fight
fire with fire. that drive undesired automatic behaviors.
Revealing Fundamental Performance Improvement Principles
The key to unlocking sustained success lies in using systematic, reliable performance-improvement techniques. Explicitly recognizing dual modes of human activities provides a new opening to improve performance. We already have excellent mechanisms to improve the thinking/knowledge aspects of success. The challenge is to use our explicit recognition and newly-created deeper understanding of the automatic side of human performance to provide reliable techniques to improve activities controlled by this hidden mode of the mind. We previously identified five ways the auto-self affects success:
Auto-Self Success Factors
Creating new auto-skills is a construction process as opposed to the erase-and-replace processes that auto-behaviors and auto-contexts require. As a result, although often tedious, auto-skill constructions do not require overcoming significant discomfort. Many organizations do a great job of helping people construct interpersonal skills, public speaking skills, motivational skills, and other types of leadership skills.
Some highly experienced people acquire auto-expertise on the job. They learn to recognize complex business patterns and relationships instantly. Auto-expertise emerges implicitly through many iterations of solving related complex problems.
This section addresses the top three success factors in the above table, all of which require specialized techniques that handle the inherent discomfort that often blocks attempts at improvement.
The left column in the following table identifies in more detail the three types of success activities controlled by the auto-self that we address here. For each of these types of activities, we sometimes need to execute them infrequently (center column), so we search for reliable techniques to help us execute them if our auto-self comfort priorities pull us in a different direction. Examples of situational executions that overcome blockages to action include completing a boring or tedious task on time, taking decisive actions against a poor performer, and participating in and receiving personal feedback from a leadership performance survey. Examples of situationally avoiding counterproductive behaviors include avoiding specific instances of micromanaging, displaying anger, and intimidating. Examples of substituting an explicit context for an auto-context include explicitly adopting a more constructive attitude before entering a meeting with a difficult person and examining radical business alternatives that challenge the status quo.
Improving Automatic Behaviors and Thought Patterns
If we need to execute these activities frequently (right column), we can avoid the trauma of repeatedly overcoming our opposing auto-self drives by changing our auto-behavior or auto-context to enable us to enact them automatically in ways that meet business needs. Examples of frequently encountered blockages to action include the repeated need to conduct candid performance reviews for all direct reports, the need to resolve conflicts with habitually aggressive people, and the need to hold people accountable for meeting their commitments. Examples of frequently displayed bad habits include repeated micromanaging, an unrelenting need for control, and recurring displays of abusive behavior. Examples of the need to reconstruct an auto-context because it frequently interferes with framing issues constructively include permanently altering a non-constructive attitude, reconstructing a self-image, and changing an obsolete business culture.
When we examine the above
table, a consistent pattern emerges that enables us to identify a basic principle of improving performance for
these three auto-self success factors. Whether attempting to execute situationally or to transform to become
effective consistently, discomfort always lurks beneath the surface threatening to sabotage our efforts. The center
column explicitly identifies the discomfort associated with situationally attempting to overcome an auto-behavior
or auto-context. The auto-self inherently resists erasing and replacing established patterns. Our
personal auto-self characteristics serve us well by automatically displaying consistent behaviors that others
can count on and by providing fixed contextual frameworks in which to make sense of complexity and
communicate with others. However, when the environment dictates a need for deep change, the stability asset
becomes a rigidity liability. Discomfort creates such a strong barrier that most improvement attempts
eventually fail unless we explicitly take measures to overcome this potent obstacle. Previously, we discussed
the Comfort Imperative, which is an auto-self driving force that relentlessly compels or repels us. It
creates our comfort priorities, which normally, and often imperceptibly, overwhelm our success priorities as
we attempt to enact the key issues identified in the above table.
Here are some principles that determine performance improvement toward sustaining success:
Our next challenge is to create techniques to overcome the unfair fight so we can reliably improve auto-self related performance.
We demonstrated that, even when we recognize the need to change a habit or reconstruct an auto-context, we rarely succeed on our own due to the unfair fight. This fight is "unfair" because relentless, powerful comfort priorities normally wear down our thinking-self intentions. We also identified evasion gimmicks, including procrastination, escape rituals, simplistic solutions, rationalization, and creating feeble excuses, that we reflexively use to avoid feeling badly about failing to execute our success agenda. These evasion mechanisms provide an apparently helpful way to avoid immediate discomfort associated with attempting to act contrary to our comfort priorities, but they simultaneously rob us of the drive to execute effectively or to transform bad habits.
We have seen that the antidote to the venom of the unfair fight is to use external resources to help guide us through the discomfort of completing disliked tasks, transforming our unwanted habits, or reconstructing counterproductive auto-contexts. External help only works if the helper understands some effective techniques for getting us to execute our success priorities when our comfort priorities work against us. Two effective methods that can overcome comfort priorities that oppose our success needs are counteracting the feelings and recontextualizing the auto-context that frames how we relate to people and situations to change our reactions to them.
I have encountered coaches who assert they do not believe in inducing discomfort in their clients because it goes against their ethics. Handling the three auto-self success factors above requires overcoming auto-self comfort drives, and the best way to do that is through inducing positive and negative counteracting feelings. There is nothing unethical about guiding people to achieve their improvement goals no more than there is anything unethical or “wrong” about giving candid feedback during performance reviews. In fact, the discomfort of transformational change blocks most self-help attempts due to the unfair fight, which coaches help their clients overcome by inducing counteracting feelings.
The Counteracting Principle: Don't Attack, Counteract
Since our thinking-self normally cannot prevail over our auto-self just through intentions, and since our thinking-self is our source of intentional control, we must find a way to use our thinking-self to create an environment that allows us to overcome our comfort priorities when they oppose our success needs. Fortunately, a Counteracting Principle exists in human nature that enables us to use the thinking-self to leverage the properties of the auto-self to overcome the unfair fight and to level the playing field. We can use the thinking-self to induce feelings in the auto-self that counteract the natural feelings (fight fire with fire) generated by our comfort priorities instead of trying to overpower the Comfort Imperative through strong intentions and tenacious willpower. Now the challenge becomes not how to overpower a comfort priority through willpower but how to induce feelings to counteract the effects of a comfort priority that undermines attempts to satisfy a success need.
Techniques for
Counteracting Comfort Priorities
To counteract the discomfort that blocks needed executions and auto-self transformations, we can induce either positive or negative feelings.
Two ways to counteract discomfort that blocks needed actions: The path of least discomfort seems like a technique we should avoid. If the needed action already creates discomfort, why in the world would we want to induce still greater discomfort? Because it gets results! It enables us to execute our success agenda.
Using pleasure pull to overcome the discomfort of taking a difficult task seems like a more humane approach. Can we simultaneously experience pleasure and feel discomfort about the same task? Yes, we can. Think about the joy of accomplishing a difficult task. .
Before providing examples to make these two techniques more understandable, let's fill in the bigger picture by examining techniques we can use to counteract the other form of counterproductive activities – disruptive auto-behaviors.
Two ways to counteract pleasure or internal (auto-self) "drives" that cause us to exhibit undesirable behaviors:
The Path of Least Discomfort – Ouch!
The path of least discomfort doesn't sound appealing, but you have had it used on you throughout your life, and I suspect you use it on other people now. Before reading on, try to figure out when you have experienced this process. Once we identify a common use of this technique as an instance of a more general principle, we can begin to use it more broadly.
Have you figured it out? … Deadlines work because they create a path of least discomfort. You encounter this at work when a project is due just as you faced it when homework assignments were due at school. The process works as follows: most homework assignments were not fun, and many business projects are not a joy either. In both cases, discomfort often causes us to put the task off – we procrastinate. As the deadline approaches, our discomfort rises. We no longer just think about the fact that there may be consequences, we start to feel them. At school, we would get a bad grade if we didn't get the assignment turned in on time. As the deadline neared, we started to experience escalating anxiety associated with the growing reality of bad grades, a lower GPA, and other consequences. At work, we experience an escalating set of potential penalties as a deadline approaches. "If I don't finish this assignment on time, my boss may chew me out, or worse yet, I may get a poor rating on my next review." "Help, it could get even worse; I may not get a bonus, and I may receive a low raise next year." "Oh no, I may not get the promotion I'm expecting." As the deadline becomes imminent, panic starts to set in. "If I don't get this project done on time, they may demote me." "I can't stand it; what if they fire me because I miss this important deadline." As the deadline approaches ever nearer, the discomfort of not doing the task escalates to become greater than the discomfort associated with doing the task, and we get it done. Whew, just in time!
Deadlines are an excellent example of an empirically-derived (tried and tested without any theoretical underpinning) process that normally produces the desired result. As we embrace the bipartite-mind theoretical structure, we can now see deadlines as an instance of, and a validation of, the more general principle of employing the path of least discomfort to attain results. The path of least discomfort is in turn a particular usage of the principle of counteracting comfort priorities that oppose our success needs. Identifying general principles within the bipartite-mind theory enables us to employ performance-improvement techniques in a greater number of ways and in additional situations.
How to Induce Counteracting Feelings
The same counteracting principle works whether we try to get people into action, including executing a task or continuing a transformation process, or try to stop them from displaying undesired behaviors. In both cases, we can employ two opposite counteracting techniques simultaneously. We can push people by inducing discomfort if they fail to complete the desired action. We can also pull them by inducing pleasure if they successfully enact their intentions. This looks promising, but how do we go about inducing targeted feelings? The most common way is the threat or implied threat of real punishments if someone misses a deadline or displays an undesired behavior. However, more sophisticated and ultimately more powerful techniques also exist.
Here are three powerful techniques for inducing counteracting feelings: ▪ Elicit Declarations (Commitments and Intentions) ▪ Instill Virtual Consequences ▪ Expose Evasion Gimmicks
Elicit Declarations (Commitments and Intentions):
I use this potent technique to help people complete tasks on time and to get others to deliver results to them on time. I also use it as the anchor in transformational coaching to guide clients to transform to act the way they desire.
Committing: To foster timely project completion, create internal (auto-self driven) motivation instead of having to apply external (environment driven) motivation through threats of punishments or promises of rewards. Get people to declare commitments, and then work with them until they automatically feel these commitments. That is, guide them to experience these feelings until their auto-self automatically creates positive feelings (joy of accomplishment) when they meet a commitment and produces terrible feelings (disappointment, embarrassment, even humiliation) when they miss a commitment. These auto-self-based feelings create an internal accountability mechanism. Strong feelings emerge when we treat a formal commitment as a promise, a test of character, and an indication of personal integrity. The process only works well if people declare unconditional commitments. Never let them sneak in conditions such as, "I think I will," or "I'll try," or "I commit to doing it as long as other activities don't interfere." People need to take into account a normal level of interruptions when they make their commitments and then make those commitments unconditional. When people hedge commitments, they feel all right if they don't deliver the desired result on time. Conditional commitments lay the groundwork for evading both internal and external consequences. Guiding people to feel their commitments instead of just thinking about them often requires that we coach them to experience the outcomes of their commitments. This is a good, focused way for managers to practice the coaching process on their way to becoming leader coaches.
Constructing Internal Motivation: Tim, the solid HR Director for a Midwest manufacturing company, displayed a common inability to construct internal motivation in others to meet their commitments. While the process of publicly declaring a commitment to achieve a verifiable result by a specific date is sufficient to create strong internal motivation in many people to complete their task, others do not seem to care about their commitments. Due to layoffs to survive the late-2000s deep recession, Tim took on the responsibility to drive the company's strategic planning process. Tim understood the company's business and technologies better than most HR Directors and he reported directly to the CEO, so he was in a good position to drive the process. I was coaching the CEO but not Tim. However, Tim and the CEO asked me to help Tim drive the process that was to contain planning for a major breakout when the economy rebounded to get the jump on their surviving competitors, which had also hunkered down for the recession.
I have heard helpless comments similar to Tim's from many other leaders, and it particularly distresses me when I hear these complaints from Human Resources professionals. Internal motivation to complete tasks on time works better in the long run than external motivation. Commitments create a powerful mechanism for establishing internal motivation. The challenge for leaders is to make commitments work effectively. The goal is not to get people to understand the importance of commitments; it is a transformational coaching activity to cause them to feel their commitments. Commitments should always lead to results due to the pride of accomplishment and huge personal discomfort of failing to meet a commitment and disappointing others and ourselves. If people don't automatically respond powerfully to their commitments, we need to take actions to make commitments matter to them.
Here are the steps to make commitments work:
I met with Tim sometime after the breakout planning sessions had completed. We reviewed the previous year's "action items." We noted that some actions did not have specific deliverables, others did not have a specific person named to deliver the results, and still others did not have specific follow-up actions identified. No wonder many people failed to achieve the results Tim expected. But it was still worse, Tim dismissed two key individuals from the current year's wrap-up session where we needed them to make explicit, public commitments. I advised him to invite them into the final session, but he pushed back saying the wrap-up session was for executives only. Tim missed the opportunity to increase the chances people will complete their actions when he failed to negotiate dates and elicit commitments. He missed the power of people declaring publicly that they commit to a result. Tim needed to learn how to make commitments matter.
Creating Intentions: In coaching, we anchor the transformation process in goals and intentions. In order to focus motivation for change, we have a coaching client commit to achieving 2-5 "grand goals" (which are usually personal stretch goals that exceed their normal business goals). Each grand goal must have a measurable or verifiable result and must have a fixed date for accomplishment. After reviewing performance feedback, clients create intentions for new behaviors that will help them achieve their grand goals. The client then keeps a log of hits and misses with respect to intentions. When a client enacts an intention, she celebrates. When a client misses an intention, he feels badly. After many repetitions, the blockage or old behavior feels more and more uncomfortable, and the action or new behavior feels better and better. In the beginning, the coach often must induce the feelings. As the process progresses, the coachee's thinking-self should take over the process until the auto-self automatically takes over the role. This is how auto-behavior transformations work and why it takes several months to move from displaying instances of desired behaviors to having them become the norm. The coaching process for Ron, a results-oriented manufacturing executive, provides an excellent illustrative example of the power of declarations to change counterproductive behaviors.
Blocking Escape Paths: Ron entered coaching due to excessive control issues and an unrelenting drive to win personally at everything – often at the expense of colleagues and his company. Following our normal course, Ron declared four grand goals. Consistent with his bold, winning style, he chose tough but doable goals to achieve by the end of our targeted one-year coaching engagement. As usually happens, Ron struggled with the results he received from his leadership performance feedback that included an online 360° survey and interviews. To his credit, after working through his discomfort with some of the challenging feedback he received, he identified three auto-behaviors that he thought he needed to change in order to achieve his grand goals. He then wrote down explicit intentions to change each of his three undesired behaviors.
Ron embraced the coaching process and made steady progress. As he became increasingly adept at noticing occurrences of the auto-behaviors he wanted to change (overcoming the natural barrier imposed by auto-self Property #2: Operates outside normal awareness), he diligently kept a log of his hits and misses with respect to his intentions. During our sessions, we would always focus on how he felt about enacting his intentions, and his strong pleasurable feelings would reinforce his ability to continue with the new behaviors. As normally occurs at the beginning of a coaching engagement, Ron also had quite a few misses. Because he took his declaration of intentions seriously, and because he believed enacting those intentions would enable him to achieve at a higher level and complete his grand goals, he faced up to his intention-misses and authentically felt badly about them.
One day we hit a critical point in our coaching engagement. Ron had gone through his hits and misses with regard to his intentions, and we had moved on to discuss other activities that had taken place since we last met. He casually mentioned an event that I thought was inconsistent with one of his intentions. I asked him how he felt about that behavior. He replied he felt fine about it. I kept probing to keep him focused on that particular behavior.
I responded that it was not for me to determine his intentions, so he could delete #3 if he liked. I next asked Ron to pull out his grand goals. I asked him to explain how likely it was that he would achieve his second grand goal if he deleted intention #3. After another pregnant pause, his well honed rational calculations took over and he said he thought it was unlikely. I then asked him what his next move was. After another uncomfortable delay while he continued to struggle with his internal reality war, he said rather meekly, "I want to keep intention #3, yes I violated it, and darn you for trapping me so I couldn't skate by this one." As the tension eased a bit, we discussed what had just happened, and Ron agreed avoiding that particular behavior was his agenda, not mine, and I was just making it difficult for him to rationalize his counterproductive behavior. This exchange also illustrates why self-help transformation efforts normally fail to produce the desired results.
During our next coaching session, Ron said he had reviewed some of the material I previously sent him and asked if I deliberately led him into a trap that would force him to admit he had behaved poorly because that was the path of least discomfort out of his internal reality war. I affirmed his suspicion. Then he asked why I didn't tell him that's what I was doing. I explained that discussing the auto-self and various transformation techniques at the beginning of a coaching engagement could help a client understand auto-behavior and auto-context activities, some techniques that can transform them, and the discomfort that normally accompanies the transformation process. Also, a retrospective discussion, such as we were having, can help clients understand what happened so that they can leverage the process for future personal changes or possibly use it while trying to help others. However, during the process, one must experience it, not think about it, for it to create the desired result. Ron got it. He volunteered some appreciation: "It really helps me to understand the existence of, and a little bit about, the auto-self. I don't think I could make sense out of what happened to me without those insights." He also offered his observations about our last session: "The previous coaching session was a turning point for me. I struggled with it the last couple of days. I had to face the fact that I was rationalizing a deep-seated behavior that I found difficult to change, and I came out feeling confident I now can change all auto-behaviors related to my intentions." Ron then lightheartedly offered a parting observation, "Although the process helped me greatly, I hope we never have to repeat it because it felt like crap." Such is the nature of transformational change.
The situation with Ron is similar to many others I have encountered. Declaring grand goals and intentions puts stakes in the ground for anchoring transformational change. Goals provide the reason to change and produce a backstop if sliding occurs on intentions. However, explicit declarations of intentions for new behaviors create the basis for inducing feelings, both positive and negative, to counteract the normal human tendency to avoid the discomfort of transformational auto-behavior change. Ron went on to transform the three counterproductive behaviors that he indicated in his intentions. He also achieved three of his four grand goals on time, and he completed the fourth one just one month late. Ron's future looks brighter than ever before.
The nature of "the future" may surprise you. The future is a story told in the present about something that may happen. As such, our thinking-self creates and processes it, so the future is unique to humans. Stories about future consequences normally do not carry strong feelings because the consequences are too vague and/or seem too remote. As a result, stories about future consequences normally do not create sufficient feelings to counteract the auto-self feelings that drive undesired behaviors.
When we try to use stories about future consequences to get people into action or curtail an undesired behavior, we simply lead them into an unfair fight where we expect thinking-self intentions to overpower auto-self drives. That explains why the recognizing that anger outbursts create failures at work and home doesn't cause most people to eliminate them, the publicity surrounding the likelihood of contracting terminal cancer doesn't stop most people from smoking, and the threat of the death penalty doesn't curtail serious crimes. To induce counteracting feelings, we need to translate the thinking-self concept of future real consequences into auto-self induced immediately felt virtual consequences. This is quite difficult to do for yourself, but an expert coach can induce these feelings. A coach can induce virtual consequences by repeatedly having the client focus on the consequences of failure or success, experiencing what that would feel like, and associating these feelings with the old and new behaviors. This works for blockages to action and dysfunctional behaviors, and it works using both penalties and rewards. In fact, pushing and pulling simultaneously with virtual penalties and rewards usually produces the best results.
Destructive Anger Overcome: Roger was a consultant in a professional services organization. His intelligence, skills, and deep knowledge enabled him to achieve strong results and reach a high level in his organization. Roger came to me because he had one characteristic that blocked further advance and, if not corrected, could derail his career – he could not control his anger. As we always do, we had Roger log hits and misses with regard to his intention to curtail his anger outbursts. We noticed a strange pattern. The vast majority of Roger’s reported events were from his home life. Because our auto-behaviors operate involuntarily, they normally manifest in all parts of our lives. Since we expected a proportional number of anger outbursts at work, Roger’s behavior appeared to run counter to part of our model of the auto-self. As we probed about how he avoided his anger outbursts at work, we discovered that Roger would withdraw from situations when he felt his anger rising because he was afraid that he would lose control and create a career-impacting conflict. He was able to avoid anger displays at work most of the time but at a high price. He would retreat when he should interact with his colleagues to add value, and occasionally he would fail to engage a client on a potentially conflicting issue. Because he feared he would lose control, Roger had developed a blockage to certain types of needed actions, which decreased his effectiveness.
As we moved into the coaching process, it became clear that Roger suffered from very tenacious impulses toward anger outbursts. When auto-behaviors reach an extreme point of abnormality, professional coaches should terminate the engagement and suggest engaging a mental health specialist. Roger’s anger management issues were at the limit of what business transformational coaches should address, but he functioned well most of the time and was strongly committed to overcoming his dysfunctional behavior, so I agreed to continue coaching him.
When inducing virtual penalties, I employ the lowest level of discomfort that gets the job done. However, since Roger was not making the progress either he or I desired, I decided to induce some potent virtual consequences at our next face-to-face meeting. When we met, I induced uncomfortable virtual consequences about his potential career derailment if he didn't gain control of his anger and engage more fully with his colleagues and clients, especially in potentially conflicting situations. However, since he reported repeatedly behaving very poorly around his family, I induced particularly severe virtual consequences regarding the impact his anger outbursts were having on his young children and the jeopardy his raging had already created in his marriage, both of which he needed to reverse. The process was quite traumatic for Roger, but it was better for him to experience severe, short-term virtual consequences with me than to suffer enduring, real consequences later. Because we were meeting face-to-face, I could see Roger’s face contort, tears well up in his eyes, and his hands shake as he experienced the virtual penalties. I focused mostly on virtual penalties that day because I needed to break his uncontrollable anger responses to normal environmental pressures. Virtual rewards followed later to help him feel comfortable about his more-constructive substitute behaviors.
That intense session, followed up with less-intense virtual-consequence sessions, produced the desired results. We ended up spending 15 months on this coaching engagement, but at the end of that time Roger had gained sufficient control of his anger urges that he was well within the normal range. Roger's career thrived, and I am convinced that the coaching played a significant role in saving his marriage and in preventing his children from growing up emulating Roger’s uncontrollable raging.
Chain Smoking Stopped: Our coaching engagements focus on the issues identified in the Leadership Performance Survey and by the leader we coach, the leader's boss, and the leader’s HR developmental resource. However, I routinely ask clients if they have any other undesired habits they would like to change while we spend a year working together. Many people select a health habit such as to eat more sensibly, exercise regularly, or stop smoking. Don was a long-term smoker in his early 50s who wanted to stop smoking but failed on all previous attempts (the unfair fight again). I applied virtual consequences.
This is the easiest mechanism to implement for a coach, but it does require astute pattern recognition and some finesse. The coach politely points out when the client employs an evasion gimmick. "That sounds like an excuse to me." "It seems to me like you are trying to substitute rationalization for intended action." "You seem to take that action a lot when you have something more important to do. Do you think that might be one of your escape rituals? Explain how that activity at work helps you succeed." When we strip away evasion mechanisms, clients immediately experience the feeling of failure or encounter an internal reality war, as Ron did above with his intentions, and that normally helps to counteract the comfort priority that was causing them to fail.
Making Commitments Matter: George, a manufacturing manager responsible for a large number of manufacturing cells, was hard-driving and results oriented, but he frequently over-committed. During one coaching session, he identified an activity he had been struggling to accomplish. I had coached George on how to use commitments to get results from his managers and those outside of his organization, so I asked him if he wanted to commit to accomplishing that task. He replied that he did. I then asked him when he would complete the task. George said he would accomplish it by the next time we met, which was three days away. We agreed he would email the results to me prior to our next session. I checked my email just before he was to call me for our next session; I had not received an email confirming George met his commitment.
Before our next coaching session occurred, I had a discussion with the company's HR Director who had repeatedly stated he didn't believe commitments worked because people don't take them seriously. He told me that people in his company usually could not get timely results out of anyone who did not work for them, and often could not get consistent results from people in their own organization. I continued to tell him that with appropriate coaching, people would meet their commitments and deliver results on time. I told him of my interactions with George at our previous session. I also asserted that George would meet his commitment by our next session. He chuckled and said, "Oh sure." What do you suppose happened by my next session with George? You guessed it. I received an email confirming he had completed his task. There was no question in my mind that George would meet his commitment this time. George didn't work for me; in fact, I worked for him – he could fire me as his coach at any time. I did not yell at him or try to intimidate him; I avoided the ogre blunder. What did I do? I stripped away his escape mechanism. I exposed the reason he gave as an excuse because he could have anticipated and controlled the interruptions. After I exposed his excuse at the previous session, it was clear to me he would not want to go through another session like that. He knew I would call him to task for any more excuses, so he took the path of least discomfort and accomplished his committed task. I'm not sure his HR Director appreciated the sequence, but George certainly did. He took another step forward in creating an auto-self construct that will cause him to meet his commitments in the future. To generalize this point, when people miss their commitments, they often resort to evasion gimmicks to avoid feeling badly about letting themselves and others down. If we politely, but firmly, strip away their evasion mechanisms, they must face the fact that they failed, and the associated discomfort moves them one step forward in the construction of the auto-self characteristic that drives them to meet their commitments consistently.
Recontextualizing Attitudes to Change Behaviors
"Recontextualizing" expresses the concept of changing the hidden context that frames our realities, which we refer to as an auto-context. Sometimes we get angry with people or circumstances because we have an attitude toward them. This attitude is normally not something we think about so much as experience emanating from an auto-context that automatically controls our responses. We can change these reflexive responses by reconstructing an attitude. The first step in reconstructing an auto-context is to make the hidden context explicit. Next, try to identify a more functional context that might work better, and practice using the new context explicitly. Eventually the new explicit context will automatically migrate [via auto-self Property 7] into a new auto-context.
Mick, the CEO of the auto supply company who we discussed earlier, moved past some of his rages by recontextualizing the hidden assumptions that created his attitude. We uncovered the auto-context that created his attitude when I asked him why he raged at his employees. With some probing on my part, and after considerable reflection, Mick said it was "because they deserve it." As we continued to pursue this line to make his auto-context explicit, he said, "They make a lot of money, so they should not make mistakes." Mick also complained about the lack of innovation and initiative; everybody came to him for all decisions. He had not yet learned to recognize that he was causing the avoidance behaviors that he disliked so much. I next reminded Mick of a story he told me about his skiing experiences. Here's what Mick said, "I ski in three zones. The green zone is very easy, but I never get any better when I ski there. The red zone is near a cliff, and I am so frightened that I never take any chances, so I also never get any better when I ski there. I have the best fun and I improve the most when I ski in the yellow zone. This zone is difficult for me so I sometimes fall, but it is also safe and I can get up and try again. This making mistakes and getting up and trying again enabled me to ski at the level I do today."
Mick, the CEO of the auto supply company who we discussed earlier, moved past some of his rages by recontextualizing the hidden assumptions that created his attitude. We uncovered the auto-context that created his attitude when I asked him why he raged at his employees. With some probing on my part, and after considerable reflection, Mick said it was "because they deserve it." As we continued to pursue this line to make his auto-context explicit, he said, "They make a lot of money, so they should not make mistakes." Mick also complained about the lack of innovation and initiative; everybody came to him for all decisions. He had not yet learned to recognize that he was causing the avoidance behaviors that he disliked so much. I next reminded Mick of a story he told me about his skiing experiences. Here's what Mick said, "I ski in three zones. The green zone is very easy, but I never get any better when I ski there. The red zone is near a cliff, and I am so frightened that I never take any chances, so I also never get any better when I ski there. I have the best fun and I improve the most when I ski in the yellow zone. This zone is difficult for me so I sometimes fall, but it is also safe and I can get up and try again. This making mistakes and getting up and trying again enabled me to ski at the level I do today." I used Mick's skiing zones as a metaphor for what was happening in his company. Mick's raging when his employees made mistakes had taken away the yellow zone in his company. Instead, there was a green zone and a huge red zone. Mick's rages created a red zone cliff that caused everyone to retreat to the safe green zone of grudging compliance and little of the risk-taking that independent decision-making and innovation require. Mick needed to define for others and for himself the boundaries of the red zone where mistakes could have devastating effects on the company. After that, he needed to open a vast yellow zone where his team could take initiatives and make mistakes without fear of receiving humiliating punishments. Mick was to point out the mistakes politely so they could get back up, brush themselves off, and try to do better next time. That way they would grow and innovate. Mick got it. His employees didn't need punishment when they made a mistake; they needed guidance and encouragement along with boundaries that define the business red zone. At first, he struggled to apply this new context explicitly, but due to the marvels of the human mind, this context eventually migrated to become an auto-context. Mick no longer rages because his attitude changed, and his company has vastly improved because of it. At the time of this writing in early 2010, Mick's company is the last remaining Michigan supplier to his niche in the automotive market. He out-executed all of his competition.
Systematic transformation techniques based on a firm understanding of the principles of auto-self transformation achieve excellent results. However, before somebody can improve their performance, they have to realize they have some characteristics that need improving. And since we normally do not notice our auto-self's activities and we display them whether we intend to or not, most people are oblivious to many of their blockages and dysfunctional behaviors. Remaining ignorant of one's own auto-self characteristics derails many careers. What you don't know will hurt you.
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