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Forget the Mind Games; Deal with Behavior
by
Charles Lamson
What is going on in employees' heads is not the business of managers. The employees' behavior is our business. We do not hire people's knowledge (that which is inside the brains or minds of people); we hire their behavior that demonstrates what we define as their knowledge. In business, the employee enters into an understanding or a contract, explicit or implicit, with the employer that says that he or she will do what the organization requires. It is legitimate to require people to change their behavior at work. It is not legitimate to require to require them to change their minds.
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Trying to solve a business problem by trying to change thoughts and feelings is a very inefficient approach to changing performance. While everyone has thoughts and feelings, and those thoughts and feelings seem concrete enough to the individual, we do not attempt to manipulate them in our approach. In conducting scientific research, thoughts and feelings are difficult to get at and study. Although much has been written and much research has been, and is being, conducted on thinking and feeling, those elements are not the primary subject of the book Performance Management. Granted, the thoughts and feelings of each of us are important. If such private events are shared or demonstrated in ways that we might describe as "emotional" (a loud outburst, crying, laughing, yelling) or in other overt ways, then they become relevant to our discussion, since they are observable. We know that if people are treated well, they will often say that they feel good about their work environment. If people are encouraged to act in ways that reduce differences between themselves and their colleagues, they will often report a reduction in thoughts of exclusion. That is how thoughts and feelings function in relation to behavior. Managers and colleagues are interested in how others think and feel, but again, we only know them by what we are told or what we see. We ask, "What could you have been thinking when you did that? or say, "You act like you don't feel well" or "You act like you are angry all the time" or "You act happy." We can only assume those things from observing some overt behavior of the person.
We infer thoughts and feelings of others from behavior; there is no other way to know that thoughts and feelings even exist. So why not focus on what can be known rather than what we can only speculate about? A little reflection reveals that when we say someone has a bad attitude or a good attitude toward work we are basing our statement on what he is doing and then using what we infer as an attitude to be the internal cause of behavior. This reasoning is circular and has no place in science because it is false logic and counterproductive.
If thoughts and feelings do not translate at some point to overt behavior they have no value to the business. Some would say that decision making and problem solving are mental activities. It would be helpful if we could capture brilliant thought, but we can only observe the overt actions and the ultimate result; then we use that data to improve decisions and solutions of others. We can describe exemplars in this area based on the value that their effective decisions (actions) have on solutions. If we study them closely, we can find patterns that may be worthy of replicating.
Trying to solve a business problem by first trying to change thoughts and feelings is usually not efficient. It is much more productive to change behaviors that would result in different thoughts and feelings (i.e. behavior under the skin). Contrary to popular psychological thought and practice, you do not always need to get what is bothering you out into the open before you can solve a problem. While people have negative thoughts and feelings about things that have happened to them in the past, dealing with them is not necessary to change behavior. Forgetting and forgiveness can happen without reliving the past. The best way to change someone's feeling or thoughts is to change their behavior. If you are doing things that lead to positive outcomes for you, that are successful, that make you smile or laugh, you no doubt feel good and think positively about your situation. Where what you are doing is unsuccessful or leads to criticism and rejection, you feel badly and think negatively.
The writers (Aubrey C. Daniels & James E. Daniels) contend that when the methods suggested in this book are implemented correctly, people will have positive thoughts and feelings about what they do and about the place in which they do it. With that said, however, it is worth pointing out that behaviors we typically label as emotional (negative) are of considerable concern to management. Generally these are behaviors of such intensity and are so disruptive and inappropriate that we are forced to attend to them immediately. Our society has many examples of employees who reacted to some aversive consequence(s) at work in a very destructive way. For example, a manager displaying repeated anger in front of his or her employees will create an environment of fear. How management acts to prevent or correct such behaviors is important. The key to successfully dealing with overtly negative behaviors is important. The key to successfully dealing with overtly negative behaviors is to investigate behavior-consequence relationships that produce the reaction and then, if possible, make the necessary changes.
*SOURCE: PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT: CHANGING BEHAVIOR THAT DRIVES ORGANIZATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS, 4TH ED., 2004, AUBREY C. DANIELS & JAMES E. DANIELS, PGS. 37-39*
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