Motivating Behavior Change
For my motivation class this week, we were given the prompt to explain our perspective on the active ingredients for positive and negative behavior change. Below is an adaptation of the paper I submitted. One of the ways I’ve grown in recent years is in how I’ve learned to take the good things of the past and not overlook their gaps or flaws. My understanding of systematic behavior change has been adapting in recent years and this class is helping me fill in some of my own gaps.
15 years ago, while working in a non-profit, I went to a 2-day training based off the book Influencer: The New Science of Leading Change (Grenny, et al, 2013). A few years after that, I began working at the company that produces this training and the 6 sources of influence from the book have been a foundational model for how I approach any form of positive or negative behavior change. It is written from an organizational change model perspective, but its principles apply on individual levels as well.
The Will Power Trap
Both Crucial Influence (Grenny et al, 2023) and Change Anything (Patterson, et al, 2011) begins their model of influence by calling out “the will power trap” (Patterson, et al, 2011, p. 4). Meaning, that if you believe that all that is needed to change is to just “try harder,” then you are very likely to fail because you are ignoring the many different things that are influencing that behavior. In the model (which is listed in more detail later), you explore hierarchies of influence from yourself, your social situation, and the structural influences in your world. If those sources you are ignoring are making a negative behavior easier to do, then you need to systematically change what is influencing that behavior so the positive behavior is easier to do. The 6 source model is made to be both diagnostic and forward facing so that changes that are implemented are more likely to stick.
The 6 Sources
After dispelling the “will power trap,” this systematic model then encourages you to discover moments of disproportionate influence or what they call “crucial moments” (Grenny et al, 2013, p. 50). These are times when you will either make a positive decision for behavior change or a negative decision. For example, the moment when you open the fridge at 10pm. This is a crucial moment because you are either going to eat the ice cream you’ve been thinking about all day, or you’re going to stick to your diet. Once that moment is identified, you choose some “vital behaviors” (Patterson, et al, 2011, p. 32) that are necessary to create the positive change you need in that moment. For instance, your vital behavior may be something as simple as closing the fridge or to not even let yourself go near the fridge after 9:30pm.
Once the vital behavior is identified, you build a plan around it using as many of the 6 sources of influence as you can. The sources of influence are broken into the following 6 categories: 1) individual ability—do I have the knowledge and skills to enact the change? 2) Individual motivation—do I want to change? 3) Social ability—do others in my life make it easier or harder to change? 4) Social motivation—do others in my life support my success or failure? 5) Structural ability—do the systems and processes I work within allow the change? And finally, 6) structural motivation—what are the extrinsic rewards and punishments for change? Examples of some sources that can be enacted in our diet scenario are things such as a mantra to remind you of why you are on a diet (source 2: individual motivation), or a spouse who closes the fridge for you and reminds you of your goals (sources 3&4: social ability and social motivation), or a sign posted on the fridge that reminds you that you’re not actually hungry (source 6: structural motivation).
I’ve seen this model work well for systemic change. We used it often in non-profit because it was one of the few models that didn’t recommend just throwing a bunch of money at creating change. We knew that we needed to leverage as many sources of influence as possible and we needed to be creative in how we got it done. Honestly, it is fun to do. I also saw this model work well in healthcare and industrial organizations as these organizations tried to implement better safety practices organization wide.
After spending 15 years implementing this content, I can say that although it is nice from a systemic perspective, it also has a gap when it comes to learning to listen. Because it is so focused on behavior change and has a bias towards action, it spends most of its time on observable behaviors and does not spend enough time on true motivational discovery. Yes, there are motivational factors in the model, but I can say that the training/book addresses them mostly at them on a high level only and does not teach you how to actually understand what motivates individuals. My experience with it was to treat motivation like a check list – are they motivated? Yes or no?
Because this model is so robust and has a heavy focus on being able to scale across many organizations and industry types, it does not have a focus on getting close to the person you are working with to create change. It encourages a “solving” or “fixing” mindset and it relies on a small number of experts to tell those who need to change how they should change. As someone who has used this model as a coach and consultant, I know that even I have used it to create a “professional” buffer between myself and those I’ve been helping. The process is so rational and sanitized from human messiness, that it can be easy to forget that you are helping “human beings” with complex backstories—not just “human doings” whose only purpose is to be productive. It also does not ever validate that the person needing change probably already knows what they need to do. This is where other methods, such as motivational interviewing, can help fill those gaps.
I think these 6 sources can be a good frame for brainstorming what is influencing behavior and how to move forward once you’ve made a goal. However, I think that it can also be used too lazily and that if we want to truly understand why people do what they do, we must be willing to ask good questions and learn to shut up and listen.
Thanks for reading with me today. I hope you’ve learned a little bit more about the complexities of change. There’s a lot to it, but it’s always worth growing.
References
Grenny, J., Patterson, K., Maxfield, D., McMillan, R., & Switzler, A. (2023). Crucial Influence, Third Edition (3rd ed.). McGraw-Hill Education.
Grenny, J., Patterson, K., Maxfield, D., McMillan, R., & Switzler, A. (2013). Influencer : the new science of leading change (Second edition.). McGraw-Hill Education.
Patterson, K., Grenny J., Maxfield, D., McMillan, R., & Switzler, A. (2011). Change Anything: The New Science of Personal Success. Business Plus.