Two Consultants on Leadership: Establishing Influence
Two Consultants on Leadership: Establishing Influence
Leadership means having an influence on the people around you. Beyond relying on position of power or fear-based management, leadership is about inspiring people to do their best and help them achieve goals they may not have thought possible. While we have all seen great leaders, many people starting in leadership roles are not given the tools, resources, or coaching to develop their leadership skills. Behavioral science studies how people’s context (their environment) influences behavior. Behavior science has identified what’s necessary for people to learn fast and how to create an environment that supports high levels of performance. As I stated in a previous blog, “A leader’s role is to purposefully develop and maintain the critical behaviors needed from others to achieve an organization’s goals,” and while this is true, where to start becomes an important question. How does someone who is relatively new to leadership start applying the leadership principles learned from behavioral science? This blog is dedicated to identifying three key learnings from behavioral science that will make you a better leader.
Ashley Duhon, M.S., Senior Consultant
Leadership can feel daunting at first. It is a tremendous privilege and responsibility. That said, there are ways to make it feel less overwhelming. These three practical tips from behavioral science will help translate strategy into pragmatic tools to help new leaders become effective in their roles.
Positive reinforcement. Harnessing the power of positive reinforcement will be one of the most impactful skills for a leader. Positive reinforcement increases the likelihood that a behavior will occur again in the future, when a consequence that is meaningful to the performer follows that behavior. As a leader, a goal is to have a team that wants to go above & beyond¾to exceed expected performance levels. With the ability to engineer the environment to support and encourage critical behaviors in a team, leaders will be able to rapidly drive and sustain progress toward personal, departmental, and organizational goals.
Pinpointing. Knowing what behaviors to reinforce is equally important. Pinpointing is a skill that leaders can develop. Effective pinpointing is clearly and precisely defining a behavior. As a leader, practicing this skill will allow your teams to take actionable steps to do something (a behavior) more, better, or differently. Eliminating ambiguity and clearly defining critical behaviors utilizing pinpointing allows individuals to drive outcomes by focusing on developing the key behaviors that directly impact organizational goals.
Shaping. As a leader, once those key behaviors have been identified and pinpointed, it is time to begin the shaping process. Shaping is a best practice and is critical for establishing, developing, and sustaining behaviors. Shaping a behavior requires reinforcement provided or arranged by an external source and is critical during the very early stages of learning the behavior. As the behavior becomes more engrained in a team member’s repertoire, other sources of reinforcement can take over. The leader’s role is to help the performer transition from the early stages of the learning curve to a more robust, sustainable habit strength, where the behavior is being sustained by other sources of reinforcement.
These three practical tips from behavioral science will equip leaders with skill sets that will enable those around them to realize their full potential and effectively guide teams to meet targets and other meaningful goals.
Bryan Shelton, M.S., Senior Consultant
Leadership is made up of a complex set of skills and behaviors, and it’s a skillset that requires continuous improvement. For someone just starting out in developing their leadership journey, it’s important to develop some foundational skills and focus on changes that will create quick wins. Three foundational areas I suggest focusing on are: understanding the ABC model, pinpointing, and delivering positive reinforcement.
The ABC model is a core model in behavioral science and describes how the environment influences behavior. Having a basic understanding of the model helps in two important ways. First, it helps create a paradigm shift in how people think about behavior. Much behavior is based on habits, patterns, and our learning history in specific environments. Hence the saying “people behave in context.” Giving leaders a new paradigm for understanding behavior helps them look at performance differently and points us in a better direction to maximize our influence. Second, understanding the ABC Model helps leaders identify how they can best spend their time to influence behavior. There are times when leaders should be spending their time on the front-end, or antecedent side. This includes improving systems, processes, procedures, training, clarifying expectations, relationship development, and creating alignment within the organization. There are other times in which leaders’ time will be best spent during or after a performer behaves, the consequence side. Leadership behaviors such as providing feedback, showing impact, and reinforcing desired behaviors all fall on the consequence side. Learning about the ABC Model will help leaders determine how to spend their time to maximize their influence.
Pinpointing is being precise or providing specific descriptions of behavior and is a foundational leadership skill. It’s also a skill that every leader will have to develop as we are not typically taught to talk about behavior using precise language. Pinpointing is a necessary skill when planning (e.g., identifying behaviors that are critical to the organization’s success or in developing the culture you want), when working on the antecedent side (e.g., describing key behaviors for the sales call or what to do first when arriving at the jobsite), and on the consequence side (e.g., describing what you saw that you liked and want repeated). Developing this skill improves influence and prevents the common leadership error of being vague and expecting perfection.
Finally, the last key learning from behavioral science that will make someone a better leader is improving the quality and frequency of positive reinforcement delivered for desired behaviors. Positive reinforcement is fuel for behavior and is necessary when leaders want quality and consistency in performance. Without a leader’s purposeful use of positive reinforcement for behaviors that produce organizational success, the environment is likely to encourage other, less desirable behaviors. Providing positive reinforcement is not a nice thing to do: it’s a critical leader behavior that has a direct result on employees feeling valued, business results, and culture. Developing this skill will improve the performance of your direct reports or the people around you.
Final Thoughts
It’s clear that understanding and harnessing the power of behavioral science is useful for someone investing in their leadership skills. The foundational skills of pinpointing and delivering positive reinforcement effectively will make someone immediately more influential and effective as a leader. Ashley mentioned the concept of shaping, which capitalizes on those foundational learnings to help someone develop complex skills quickly. Shaping is a skill that advances a leader’s ability to coach effectively. Leadership development is a lifelong endeavor. Having a solid foundation of behavioral science will make someone more effective in how they approach and influence others.
You can also enjoy the video on this topic.
