Motivating Behavioural Change

Booz & Co recently released a paper co-written by Jon Katzenbach on motivating behaviour change which was subtitled Boosting Performance by Mobilising Pride Builders

Achieving strategic goals and accelerating performance results often requires that employees at multiple levels of the organisation change critical behaviours. Many companies do not succeed in helping these employees change despite investing heavily in formal initiatives such as financial incentives or training programmes. The problem is that they neglect an essential aspect of what motivates employees - the emotional commitments they must bring to the organisation and their jobs in order to do well and exceed expectations.

By mobilising these emotional commitments, companies can accelerate the behaviour changes required to elevate business performance. "Pride Builders" - employees who instinctively know how to connect what makes individuals feel good with their day to day activities and thereby instil in those in those people pride in the work they do - can play a substantial role in mobilising role in mobilising the kind of emotional commitment that makes behavioural change happen.

The concept of a 'Pride Builder' is very similar to the role of a 'Transition Person' that FranklinCovey has been advocating for many years, and its also interesting to see how the tools, ideas and strategies that FranklinCovey work with would actively support the characteristics Booz and Co define for 'Pride Builders'. For example

• 'Getting to know team members as individuals' - while this can often be done in an informal / social way, the approach FranklinCovey advocates within our Great Leaders curriculum s for leaders to 'formerly' focus on how they understand the range of motivations in individual will bring to their work so that roles and responsibilities can be better aligned to these motivations. In this was, a leader can play a key role in helping individuals to 'find their voice', which can in turn maximise the energy they contribute to the organisation
• 'Connecting Individuals day-to-day work to the bigger picture' and 'Communicating clear, actionable goals that the team can relate to' - these 2 characteristics sit at the heart of FranklinCovey's Disciplines of Execution approach. Our experience is that the process of narrowing the focus to 2-3 'wildly important goals', defining these in clearly measurable terms, creating a 'clear line of sight' as to how these relate to levels below and then helping all team members interpret how these goals relate to them (and how they can effectively contribute) is far from 'automatic' but can be highly impactful when done well
• 'Using an inclusive and transparent communication style' and 'Providing & seeking constructive feedback' - A core element on the work FranklinCovey does in relation to Leading at the Speed of Trust, enables leaders to develop the way others perceive their trustworthiness, which is central to open communication. In terms of then giving and receiving feedback effectively, the thinking and experience which relates to FranklinCovey's work on the 7 Habits of of Highly Effective People includes powerful insights on the mindset one approaches these conversations with in addition to the skills required to say what has to be said in a way that another will be responsive to.