3 Things Lead to Lasting Behavioral Change if Leaders Behave Accordingly

Leaders can drive behavioral change in their organization by giving those changing ownership in the process, writes Larry Robertson.

Over the past several decades, science has infiltrated leadership in ways it once would have been hard to imagine. Business and management gurus, including Peter Drucker, Jim Collins, and Tom Peters, have been joined by psychology researchers like Daniel Kahneman, Amos Tversky, and Richard Thaler. Those newer names may or may not ring a bell. Still, the insights these experts put forth and that influence all leading-edge leadership advice today surely do, including cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias, thinking fast and slow and the unexpected power of nudges. 

Such concepts have delineated the growing field of behavioral change and behavioral economics. It sounds science-y, but it’s undeniably about leadership and business. It’s the territory within which leaders come to understand the difference between what they hope or expect people to do and how they actually behave and why, including what employees and customers will or might actually do to impact a leader’s plans for success. At a high level, if behavioral economics has taught us anything about leadership, it’s that leaders can no longer just command the behaviors they seek. They must instead take actions to try to influence it — a very different conclusion from the top-down, command-and-control image of traditional leadership.

It’s a hard reality for many leaders to embrace. It’s hard because it contrasts with long-held beliefs and with leadership mythology. Yet it can be just as hard because of the volume of tactical advice out there about how to lean into this new knowledge. Indeed, research by McKinsey & Company and others has repeatedly shown that while many senior leaders are familiar with these concepts and their potential, few feel they have a handle on how to consistently and effectively impact behavior. Indeed, more than half acknowledge that, on the whole, they fail to effectively implement strategies that drive lasting behavioral shifts to achieve the desired results. It’s time to change that, and it may be easier than you think.

All the suggestions for how to achieve lasting behavioral change and all the terminology, much of which doesn’t sound all that business-like, can feel overwhelming. Yet, looked at with a little distance and perspective, the patterns across behavioral change research reveal that three basic elements enable or undercut lasting change depending on how leaders embrace them: priorities, habits, and systems. Consider that by keen and constant attention to these three things; all the rest might just fall into place and enable change. Knowing these three elements matter most is a valuable start. The question then is how leaders can raise the odds that attending to these will ultimately result in success? The following tips are critical and far too frequently overlooked.

See priorities, habits, and systems as a constellation, not a list

Getting down to three basic things is enormously helpful, but simplicity often comes with a risk. The risk is that as a leader, you see them simply as a to-do list, with each item completed once equaling complete for good. But, priorities, habits, and systems are all living entities. They undergo constant adjustment and refinement. Their usefulness and fit are intimately tied to circumstances and to the teams that make them real, two things that are forever changing. Because they do, leaders must attend to these three simple elements not one time or only in annual planning cycles but continuously. There’s more. Each of the three impacts, shapes, and needs the others. Each is integral to the other’s effectiveness. That’s why a constellation view of priorities, habits, and systems is a critical difference-maker when it comes to actually influencing behavior.

Treat all 3 are guides, not boundaries

All of us, not just leaders, want the priorities, habits, and systems we establish to lead us somewhere. In other words, to lead to the desired results that cause us to create them in the first place. In our focus on the results, there’s a great tendency to treat these three as rule-like and restrictive. Yet, we already know that priorities, habits and systems are living, changing things. That’s why each is better seen as a guide and allowed a degree of openness to change. Treating priorities, habits, and systems as guides rather than unbendable laws is a simple observation but often overlooked. That’s guaranteed to erode the effectiveness of even the best priorities, habits, and systems, and the best intentions.

Define and refine priorities, habits, and systems perpetually and collectively

The first two insights suggest that priorities, habits, and systems naturally shift and need refinement as circumstances and needs change. Even when they acknowledge constant change, organizational leaders too often default to thinking that they alone should assume that responsibility and dictate how to define and refine it. But if actual behavioral change is the goal, the very people you want to change must take part and take ownership of that change. It’s not the capitulation, nor does it lead to the chaos many leaders fear collective decision-making will. Quite the contrary, it’s a conscious and active cultivation of the very ground in which the seeds of behavioral change must be planted and will either grow or wither – that is, in the minds and hearts of those who will make the change. 

As the leader, you can make-believe that mandating behavioral change is enough to make it work. But the reality is, as wise observers of actual human behavior like Kahneman, Tversky, and Thaler have shown, that the behavioral changes most likely to stick are the ones owned by those asked to change. Allowing them to share in the definition and refinement of the behaviors themselves is the surest way to covey such ownership.

Written by:  Larry Robertson, innovation advisor who works, writes, and guides at the nexus of creativity, leadership, and entrepreneurship, for Smart Brief.