Countless books on personal improvement and organizational transformation recount the behaviors and actions of people who have achieved remarkable results with the promise that, by replicating their behaviors, you can achieve similar outcomes. This formulaic approach to improvement takes as its starting point the simple idea that behaviors drive results. This idea is illustrated in diagram 1: the behavioral model. In this diagram, the triangle represents a person’s or an organization’s behaviors or actions. The model presumes that the collective behaviors of a person or organization are what produce the results that person or organization achieves.
Diagram 1. The Behavioral Model
The idea that behaviors drive results seems almost self-evident. But how many of us have tried to replicate a behavioral formula—adopting the same leadership practices or mimicking the same interpersonal approaches of those who have achieved enviable results—only to throw up our hands in frustration? “Well, that didn’t work!”
These experiences suggest that what is implied by this model is misleading. We want to suggest that the model is misleading for at least two reasons.
Consider, first of all, a simple story. A person we’ll call Mia attends a workshop on improving communication. Over the course of two days, she learns an array of new skills. She learns to ask more open and inviting questions. She is taught how to respond when someone becomes verbally aggressive or, on the other hand, when someone becomes evasive or completely shuts down. She practices paraphrasing what others say to demonstrate that she is paying attention. She learns to use more tentative language to invite better responses from others. She also learns how to offer better nonverbal cues: presenting a pleasant look and demeanor, maintaining better eye contact, and so on.
Mia returns to work determined to put her learning into practice. In particular, she wants to see if these skills will help her in her interactions with a colleague named Carl, with whom she has struggled. The truth is that she very much dislikes and distrusts Carl. She tenses up whenever he is around.
What do you think is likely to happen when Mia begins to apply these new skills in her conversations with Carl? Could Mia’s behavioral changes make her seem so different to Carl that their interactions will significantly improve as a result? Perhaps. However, Mia is likely to feel different to Carl only to the extent that she actually feels differently about Carl, regardless of what new skills she uses or behaviors she adopts.
If Mia feels the same way about Carl as she always has, and if Carl senses this, he might begin to wonder what Mia is up to. He might even get upset, feeling that Mia is trying to hide significant issues beneath a veneer of superficial change.
If Carl were to respond to Mia in this way, one would say that the new behaviors Mia adopted ended up not making much of a difference. In fact, the whole experience could even increase the tension between them. Mia’s new and better skills could result in worse outcomes rather than better outcomes.
This doesn’t mean that Mia’s new skills were damaging in and of themselves. It does suggest, however, that something in addition to behavior plays an essential role in both our successes and our failures. And if that’s true, then the effectiveness of our behaviors depends to some significant degree on something that is deeper than behavior. The behavioral model doesn’t account for this. Consequently, the model is incomplete and therefore misleading.
The behavioral model is misleading for a second reason as well. To consider how, let’s think about Chip Huth and his SWAT squad. Their story is powerful in part because it is so surprising. We don’t imagine SWAT officers stopping in the middle of an operation to mix baby bottles. It’s not just that most SWAT officers would choose not to mix baby bottles; it’s that the very idea would never occur to them in the first place. Why not? Because it is not an idea that would spring from the prevailing mindsets of most people who operate in that kind of role.
The way we use the term, mindset is more than a belief about oneself. It refers to the way people see and regard the world—how they see others, circumstances, challenges, opportunities, and obligations. Their behaviors are always a function of how they see their situations and possibilities.
So we are suggesting two core problems with a purely behavioral approach for improving performance:
1. Like seeing the need to make baby bottles, the behaviors people choose to engage in (that they sense are right and helpful given their situation) will depend on how they see their situation and those with whom they interact. So while behaviors drive results, behaviors themselves are informed and shaped by one’s mindset.
2. As in Mia’s story, in whatever a person does, his or her mind-set comes through, and others respond to this combination of behavior and mindset. This means that the effectiveness of an individual’s behaviors will depend to some significant degree on that individual’s mindset.
We capture these realities in diagram 2: the mindset model. In the area of organizational change, what does the mindset model suggest? It at least suggests that change efforts built upon the incomplete behavioral-model approach, where a person or organization tries to improve performance by focusing only on behavior change, will fail much more often in comparison to efforts that focus on changing both behavior and mindset.
Studies conducted by McKinsey & Company corroborate this. One study finds that “failure to recognize and shift mind-sets can stall the change efforts of an entire organization.”1 A second McKinsey study finds that organizations that “identify and address pervasive mindsets at the outset are four times more likely to succeed in organizational-change efforts than are companies that overlook this stage.”2 Think about that. Those who attempt to effect change by concentrating on changing mindsets are four times more likely to succeed than those who focus only on changing behavior.
Diagram 2. The Mindset Model
With these findings in mind, consider two different performance-improvement approaches. In the first approach, a person or organization attempts to push behavior change while neglecting mindset change, as shown in diagram 3 on the next page.
If a person or company tries to get people to adopt new behaviors that aren’t supported by their underlying mindset, how successful do you think such a change effort will be?
In response to this question, one executive we were meeting with said, “Some leaders, through charisma, willpower, or constant micromanaging, may be able to drive this kind of change in the short term, even without an accompanying degree of mindset change. But in my experience, it won’t last. When that leader leaves, if not sooner, things will snap back to where they were.”
Diagram 3. The Behavior-Push Approach
Others in the meeting agreed. “Without a change in the prevailing mindset in an organization,” one of them said, “behavior-change efforts tend to be resisted. While ‘compliant’ behavior by employees might be achievable, at least to some degree, ‘committed’ behavior won’t happen without a change in mindset. And it’s committed behavior that makes the biggest difference.”
Is the same thing true in your experience? In your work life and in your home life, what have you noticed happens (or doesn’t happen) when people try to push behavior change in a culture where the mindset remains unchanged?
Contrast the behavior-push approach with an approach that includes a focus on mindset change. Diagram 4 shows the approach Chip initiated within his SWAT squad when he started working on mindset change.
A focus on mindset change among Chip’s team members led to dramatic improvements in their behaviors and results. As their story illustrates, when you sufficiently improve the mindset—either of an individual or of an organization—you no longer have to specify everything each team member is supposed to do (the way those who operate from a behavioral model often assume). As the mindset changes, so does the behavior, without having to prescribe the change. And where certain behaviors still need to be stipulated, the suggestions won’t be systematically resisted. For these reasons, mindset change facilitates sustainable behavior change.
Diagram 4. The Leading-with-Mindset Approach
Moreover, as the mindset changes, people begin thinking and acting in ways that hadn’t been imagined before. Chip had never thought about a scenario where his team might need to prepare baby bottles to help mothers calm screaming children. Consequently, he’d never taught or mentioned this to his team. However, because he had put in the effort to establish a different mindset in the members of his team (beginning with his own), he didn’t have to think about or mandate it in advance. When this new and unanticipated situation came up, one of his men thought of the right thing to do on his own. The underlying mindset prompted the most helpful behaviors in the moment.
In the next chapter, we begin to explore the mindset that makes this possible.
