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Currently viewing the tag: "Behavior"
Business Transformation initiatives are typically undertaken to solve a pressing issue, bring about improved performance, or to serve customers better. A critical element of the success of such initiatives entails transforming the existing behaviors of the employees across the organization. However, this isn’t a straightforward task.
Attitudes and practices get reinforced in people by following established routines day in and day out. Such practices become a part of an Organizational Culture over time. These ingrained behaviors and practices aren’t considered burdening until the organization’s performance keeps declining considerably over time. That’s when the leaders think about changing these beliefs and habitual actions.
Psychology and Neuroscience can help enterprises change the deeply embedded attitudes and practices of people and replace those with new beliefs and practices. Leading organizations are using psychology and brain research to induce successful Organizational Transformation.
The practices that these organizations employ to engender Transformation are based on the following 6 core Principles of Neuroscience:
- The brain is hardwired to hold on to habits, making it difficult to change them.
- Connections in the brain—even deeply embedded thoughts—are quite flexible to transform.
- Concentrating on new ways of thinking can overhaul individuals thinking habits.
- Don’t tell people what is wrong, just focus on drawing their attention to the positives.
- Encourage the ability to reject negative cerebral impulses.
- The competence to focus attention has to be created bit by bit.
Let’s dive deeper into these first 3 principles of Neuroscience.
Principle 1 – The brain is hardwired to hold on to habits, making it difficult to change them.
Our thinking patterns are stored in circuits by brain parts—including the habit center (basal ganglia), amygdala (emotion center), and hypothalamus (which manages hunger, thirst etc.). These brain parts, especially the basal ganglia, process info unconsciously and the activity feels rewarding to the individual. This activity makes stronger neuronal connections with other areas and gets the activity reinforced.
For the desired behaviors and practices to get embedded, the organization need to make stronger connections with the entire workforce’s’ basal ganglia to enable deep rooted neuronal circuits. The practices ingrained this way are difficult to remove.
Principle 2 – Connections in the brain—even deeply embedded thoughts—are quite flexible to transform.
People with obsessive compulsive disorder keep deliberating on their impulse to wash hands to ensure cleanliness. This fortifies brain circuits in the basal ganglia, which takes over their behaviors. However, Neuroscience reveals that even the most well-established notions can be altered. This can be done by making the individuals aware of what they are thinking and where their focus is in a given moment.
Training and directing people to think about their thoughts can make them conscious of their undesired behaviors, disengages brain areas notable for causing distraction, and adopt new behaviors.
Principle 3 – Concentrating on new ways of thinking can overhaul individuals thinking habits.
The 3rd principle highlights that persistent focus on unfamiliar, desired thoughts and objectives activates the habit center of the brain, which turns these desired thoughts into habits. The mechanism according to Neuroscience is such that basal ganglia’s caudate nucleus region processes…
Interested in learning more about the other principles of Behavioral Transformation? You can download an editable PowerPoint on 6 Core Principles of Neuroscience here on the Flevy documents marketplace.
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Understanding others has a lot to do with collaboration, performance management, and building effective teams.
Developed by Taibi Kahler in the 1970s, Process Communication Model (PCM) is a prominent psychometric tool for individual and team development. The main utility of the PCM model is in understanding others’ personality types, discovering one’s own personality, and personifying others’ personality types to have better relationships.
PCM allows the executives to understand others’ needs, influence others, find practical solutions to problems, and manage conflict. The model has found its utilization in a number of Fortune 500 organizations. NASA has used PCM for the training and selection of its astronauts for over 20 years.
As per the PCM model, each individual embodies an assortment of behaviors, each with its own set of psychological requirements, strengths, weaknesses, communication style, and motivations. The Process Communication Model describes that each of us exemplify a combination of 6 personality types—each of personality type has its strengths and weaknesses—but one personality dominates the others in an individual. The 6 personality types are:
- Harmonizer
- Rebel
- Thinker
- Persister
- Imaginer
- Promoter
Let’s discuss these personality types in a bit detail.
Harmonizer
Individuals with a dominating Harmonizer personality type are humble, quiet, and naturally gifted at forming relationships with others. The Harmonizers care for their family and friends, are compassionate, and use their feelings to judge the world around them. They treat others cordially, make them feel comfortable, listen to them attentively, and do not shy away from making physical contact.
Recognition of their personality and others’ amiable communication style motivate the Harmonizers. Under difficult circumstances, these individuals tend to become apprehensive, lack firmness, act irrationally, and make grave mistakes / incoherent decisions.
Rebel
The individuals possessing a Rebel personality are generally creative, fun loving, and radiate positive energy for others. These individuals respond promptly, reciprocate righteousness with virtue, and enjoy the present. The Rebels are valued for their extemporaneous humor, interest in others, energy, and problem-solving ability. They are a bit impulsive and judge the world around them through their likes and dislikes.
Others upbeat communication style and stimulation through playful contact motivate the Rebels. Under stress, the Rebels tend to get confused, whine, irritate others, leave complex situations, and bounce responsibility to others.
Thinker
Individuals with a dominating Thinker personality believe in data, logic, and perfectionism. They take on a methodical approach to doing things, ask too many queries, and only attend meetings when there is a formal agenda set in advance. The Thinker personality likes to evaluate detailed information before drawing any conclusions. These people are valued for their planning and organization ability, dependability, structuring ideas logically, and clear expression.
Recognition of their thoughts and accomplishments motivates the Thinkers. Under stress, they reverse delegate tasks and start doing those themselves, try to gather as much detail as possible to understand the situation, and may start arguments or even attack others. These people need time and assurance of their abilities to return to their organized selves.
Interested in learning more about PCM and its other personality profiles? You can download an editable PowerPoint presentation on Process Communication Model: Personality Types here on the Flevy documents marketplace.
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You can download in-depth presentations on this and hundreds of similar business frameworks from the FlevyPro Library. FlevyPro is trusted and utilized by 1000s of management consultants and corporate executives. Here’s what some have to say:
“My FlevyPro subscription provides me with the most popular frameworks and decks in demand in today’s market. They not only augment my existing consulting and coaching offerings and delivery, but also keep me abreast of the latest trends, inspire new products and service offerings for my practice, and educate me in a fraction of the time and money of other solutions. I strongly recommend FlevyPro to any consultant serious about success.”
– Bill Branson, Founder at Strategic Business Architects
“As a niche strategic consulting firm, Flevy and FlevyPro frameworks and documents are an on-going reference to help us structure our findings and recommendations to our clients as well as improve their clarity, strength, and visual power. For us, it is an invaluable resource to increase our impact and value.”
– David Coloma, Consulting Area Manager at Cynertia Consulting
“As a small business owner, the resource material available from FlevyPro has proven to be invaluable. The ability to search for material on demand based our project events and client requirements was great for me and proved very beneficial to my clients. Importantly, being able to easily edit and tailor the material for specific purposes helped us to make presentations, knowledge sharing, and toolkit development, which formed part of the overall program collateral. While FlevyPro contains resource material that any consultancy, project or delivery firm must have, it is an essential part of a small firm or independent consultant’s toolbox.”
– Michael Duff, Managing Director at Change Strategy (UK)
Just as in a co-located setting, a remote work environment warrants a defined culture. Culture in a co-located setting is distinctly evident. It is imparted and communicated through collaboration between colleagues, their behaviors, and the actions that are incentivized—or those that are considered inappropriate—at the organization.
However, defining, creating, and sustaining an Organizational Culture in a virtual environment is a bit complicated. It needs careful deliberation. Leadership can make good use of the 12 guiding principles to inspire a robust Virtual Workplace Culture. These guiding principles can be segregated into 2 categories:
General Culture Principles
There are 7 principles under this category:
- There are no unwritten rules
- Reinforce values
- Don’t take Culture for granted
- Embrace gratitude and transparency
- Institute structure around Culture
- Welcome changes to Culture
- Leverage disruption to improve Culture
Mental Health Related Principles
Virtual Work can lead to various ailments, including burnout, if it is accomplished without abiding by healthy lifestyle, best practices, and guidelines. The mental health category entails 5 guiding principles:
- Don’t encourage long work hours
- Document processes around mental health
- Recognize mental health struggles
- Prevent burnout, isolation, and anxiety
- Encourage a healthy virtual lifestyle
Let’s dive deeper into 4 of these guiding principles.
1. There are no unwritten rules
The first principle to foster a Remote Culture necessitates documented policies and systems. Careful documentation assists in prohibiting decline of a remote enterprise and culture. The first instance to document should be the company values including teamwork, productivity, clarity, diverseness, and inclusivity.
2. Reinforce values
The actions that are encouraged and rewarded by the company become organizational values. For instance, in virtual settings, hiring, promoting, and developing people play a huge role in encouraging and underlining the importance of values. The values dear to an organization are displayed through role modeling of required behaviors by the leadership. They are manifested by the people the organization hires and let go off. Organizational values are also evident by the yardsticks used to gauge qualification for increments, rewards, promotions, and performance management.
3. Embrace gratitude and transparency
Without clear-cut information sharing and appreciation, employees may begin to feel cynical and unenthusiastic. This can eat away at the organization culture. Leaders should be careful with 360 performance evaluation and feedback. Negative feedback should be delivered in a positive manner to instill hope and determination to do better. There is also a need to take drastic measures if there is a general sense of lack of appreciation and transparency prevalent among employees.
4. Don’t take Culture for granted
Culture is easily emphasized in a co-located setting, collaborating with colleagues day after day. However, underscoring the significance of culture in a virtual environment demands cautious deliberation. Various core elements of culture are often present, but are masked in our daily activities and habits. These elements are manifested by “how we do things in our organization.” These common habits are the hallmark of belonging to a culture.
In remote settings, leaders need to highlight the elements of culture that are evident in such settings and their importance, since these practices are a bit hard to observe in virtual teams. Leadership should mark boundaries of culture clearly and define what is disrespectful or unacceptable in their organizational culture.
Interested in learning more about the other guiding principles of Virtual Work Culture? You can download an editable PowerPoint presentation on Virtual Work: Corporate Culture here on the Flevy documents marketplace.
Do You Find Value in This Framework?
You can download in-depth presentations on this and hundreds of similar business frameworks from the FlevyPro Library. FlevyPro is trusted and utilized by 1000s of management consultants and corporate executives. Here’s what some have to say:
“My FlevyPro subscription provides me with the most popular frameworks and decks in demand in today’s market. They not only augment my existing consulting and coaching offerings and delivery, but also keep me abreast of the latest trends, inspire new products and service offerings for my practice, and educate me in a fraction of the time and money of other solutions. I strongly recommend FlevyPro to any consultant serious about success.”
– Bill Branson, Founder at Strategic Business Architects
“As a niche strategic consulting firm, Flevy and FlevyPro frameworks and documents are an on-going reference to help us structure our findings and recommendations to our clients as well as improve their clarity, strength, and visual power. For us, it is an invaluable resource to increase our impact and value.”
– David Coloma, Consulting Area Manager at Cynertia Consulting
“As a small business owner, the resource material available from FlevyPro has proven to be invaluable. The ability to search for material on demand based our project events and client requirements was great for me and proved very beneficial to my clients. Importantly, being able to easily edit and tailor the material for specific purposes helped us to make presentations, knowledge sharing, and toolkit development, which formed part of the overall program collateral. While FlevyPro contains resource material that any consultancy, project or delivery firm must have, it is an essential part of a small firm or independent consultant’s toolbox.”
– Michael Duff, Managing Director at Change Strategy (UK)
