Teamership: Taking action
When considering being at our best more often, smart design is a smart choice. Photo by Centre for Ageing Better on Unsplash
In many ways, this is the culmination of the other questions in this series:
What are you like at your best?
What are some things that make it harder to be at your best?
How can others help you be at your best?
In which ways can I best support others to be at their best?
Each question along the way in the sequence helps us to consider and create a better answer to this final question. What actions will you take to be at your best more often?
There is a temptation to try and do more. More effort, more exertion, more time, more discipline. The answer to being our best, in the long run, is rarely more of those things (assuming that you are already making a significant effort in your role). The answer is often less. Less friction, fewer distractions, less noise, and less reactivity.
My thinking on this has been influenced by the world of Behavioural Economics. At its core, Behavioural Economics seeks to observe how humans actually behave - not how they would behave if they were making completely rational decisions. The realisation that we are all irrational is essential to supporting behaviour change in ourselves and others. While I am not an expert, I enjoy considering how these principles of human behaviour and behaviour change can apply in our roles across teams.
When helping clients to consider the actions that they want to take to be at their best more often, the advice of four different thinkers (two named Dan) has proved useful.
The first Dan is Dan Ariely. Among his many pearls of wisdom around human behaviour and behaviour change, Ariely talks about two forces - Fuel (that drives us towards the desired behaviour) and Friction (that slows our progress down). Simple but so effective.
When considering being at our best more often, it is sometimes more fuel, but more frequently a matter of removing friction.
The second Dan is Dan Gregory of The Behaviour Report. In 2015, I heard Gregory present at an event alongside his business partner Kieran Flanagan. He shared three words that took me about a year and a half to fully appreciate. They were:
Design beats discipline.
To make sustainable changes in our ways of living and working, willpower works – to a point. It is, however, an energy-intensive and volatile strategy. While it still takes effort, design is a more sustainable and reliable method of making change.
For instance, a client of mine, Sarah, told me that if she wants to go for a run in the morning, she goes to bed in her running outfit! That piece of design significantly increases the chances of her desired behaviour of a run in the morning. Sarah had learnt that relying on her willpower or discipline alone was less effective than designing a solution that made her desired behaviour more likely.
When considering being at our best more often, smart design is a smart choice.
The third way of thinking comes from Lisa Lahey and Robert Kegan. Their approach is called Immunity to Change. It explores the fact that most efforts to change behaviour need both technical adaptions — changes to a person’s skill set — along with adaptive changes to a person’s mindset. Their approach is a bit more involved and takes some more commitment. It is also a healthy reminder that there may be some pretty well-established protective mechanisms that we need to overcome to shift our behaviour.
In the words of Kegan and Lahey, “the failure to enact visible goals is often due to the 'success' of enacting unseen ones.”
These approaches are complementary. Using one, some or all of these in an experimental way can help us explore and express what it takes to bring our best.
A few questions for you to consider this week:
Do you need more fuel or less friction to be at your best more often?
How can you apply more design and less discipline to be at your best more often?
Might there be hidden goals that are stopping you from achieving your visible goals?