Commitments
Most of us struggle at some point in our lives with sticking to goals such as exercising more, losing weight, stopping smoking, drinking less and so on. Making commitments, especially if these commitments are public, is a powerful mechanism to help us stick to their goals. This is the influence that emerges from our social or business culture and the need to be accepted by those in our work or social milieu. Chevron applied some remarkably effective commitment mechanisms when I was working with them on a workplace safety project. Company leaders where expected to post their commitments to safety on written and framed placards outside their offices. Further, Chevron’s “behavior-based safety” process required any employee who witnessed an unsafe practice to verbally and directly request that the individual conform to the safety practice, and ask for a commitment to do so. This was remarkably effective in my experience. When people are encouraged to make public commitments to take action, they are much more likely to follow through.
Ego balance
One of the primary drives we humans have is to maintain and enhance a positive self-image. We routinely (and largely unconsciously) compare ourselves to those in our work or social milieu to judge what behaviors are acceptable, what builds our self-image versus what is not acceptable and what reduces our self-image. When we act in a way that contradicts or diminishes our self-image, cognitive dissonance occurs which can cause extreme, anxiety and discomfort. We then struggle intensively to regain balance between our actions and our self-image. What is fascinating with this process is that – to regain ego balance – we are more likely to change our beliefs versus our behaviors to maintain self-image. Here’s an example: In the banking experience I shared in a previous blog: A senior executive (who did not like me!) was extremely antagonistic towards my strategy to improve customer service, but begrudgingly allowed it to proceed because my sponsor was more senior.
While this executive was on vacation, he was invited to speak at an international conference in Johannesburg on the topic of service quality. Given his absence I was asked to develop his presentation. On his return, he had little opportunity to make changes to the presentation, and he essentially presented my customer service strategy as-is. It was very well accepted by the audience and rated as one of the best presentations at the conference. After this event, he became a big advocate of my program. Why did this “flip-flop” occur? The level of dissonance that he experienced having presented a very successful presentation and thereafter continuing to be critical would have been a contradiction of his self-image – he would have been viewed as inconsistent and insincere. So, he changed his beliefs and began talking positively about the customer service program. What was abundantly evident was that this individual was unaware of this psychological change within himself.
Approaches to reduce this kind “ignorance”
Daniel Kahneman (“Noise”) describes that training people to become aware of their biases, heuristics and the potential for noise is possible but difficult. He notes – “Decades of research have shown that professionals (experts) who have learned to avoid biases in their area of expertise often struggle to apply what they have learned to different fields”. For example, weather forecasters have learned to avoid over-confidence in predicting weather patterns, but are just as overconfident as anyone else on general knowledge questions. The role of a coach is valuable in these circumstances to remind expert leaders that they are straying outside of their areas of expertise and that well understood biases can creep up unknowingly. The power of this coaching is that it is “in-the-moment” versus in a training program. As Kahneman notes, “people often recognize biases more easily in others than they do in themselves” – skilled coaches (Kahneman calls these “decision observers”) are even more effective in this role.
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