How day-to-day work-life (and personal life) experiences influence behavior
People are “social animals” and are heavily influenced by the behavior of those around them. This is why organizational culture is so critical, because it defines the behaviors observed and mimicked by new employees (especially new employees) in order to fit-in with others and be successful. Leaders are powerful role-models of the behaviors that are appropriate and expected. Continuing with the “insider threat” example, while it may be understood by employees that using material and intellectual property (IP) for their own personal use is against the rules, if a new employee observes others copying material or sending IP to their personal email accounts, it is more likely they will begin to consider these behaviors acceptable.
The belief systems we hold and behaviors we exhibit can be powerfully influenced by the immediate circumstances we experience. For example, a trusted senior leader may behave very differently (relative to beliefs and biases) if he or she is going through a life-crisis, such as a divorce, a death in the family or experiencing financial problems. People can behave out-of-character when under pressure from difficult life events. Leaders (and coaches/consultants) must be aware and sensitive to team members who are experiencing difficult times.
Intentions
Intentions are a function of both beliefs about a specific behavior (for example, I think that having to wear a suit to work is stupid and uncomfortable) and subjective norms toward that behavior (but I see everyone else wearing a suit in my workplace). When I struggle to reconcile this contradiction (I experience cognitive dissonance), my intention is to wear a suit or likely be pushed out of the organization which (at the time) would have been a more damaging outcome. Intentions have been found to predict actual behavior more accurately than other factors – indeed, beliefs are not powerful predictors of behavior, intentions are. This is why market research surveys (and political surveys) often try to determine intentions versus attitudes or beliefs.
Interventions that influence behaviors
Given that intentions are good predictors of behavior, leaders and coaches can use the understanding of a person’s intentions to either foster positive behaviors or to intervene before bad behaviors emerge. Here are two examples:
* Enabling positive behaviors: In my consulting work with organizations undergoing culture change, I always attempt to coach leaders on how to role-model successful behaviors (this is a very specific, simple 5-step process). However, these new behaviors are often uncomfortable, and even somewhat embarrassing, for leaders and others to demonstrate to their teams – their feedback to me is that it feels like play-acting. Yes indeed, it is play-acting until the behavior becomes the norm. But it is essential that senior leaders overtly (at least initially) role-model these behaviors to enable others to feel comfortable doing so. For example, in one of my clients, “agile and quick decision-making” was a behavior that they had defined as important to strategy execution. Many team members said (in surveys as well as in person) that their intention was to enact quicker decision-making, but because they did not observe their leadership doing so they felt uncomfortable doing so. Once I was able to coach senior leaders on how to go about role-modeling these behaviors, the intentions of the team to mimic these behaviors happened rapidly.
* Intervene before bad behaviors: Again, using the “insider threat” case, our investigation found that employees with the intention to steal information assets, would do so when they thought it was safe, for example after hours when others had left work for the day. At this time, copying documents on a copy machine, or onto a thumb-drive was more common. The interventions we put in place were quite simple, for example messaging at copy machines (both posters as well as electronic messages) reminding people that copying for personal use was against the rules, and also that it was likely they would be identified (through monitoring technologies).
