Performance Management: Changing Behavior That Drives Organizational Effectiveness (part 27)

Shaping - The Essence of Coaching

by

Charles Lamson

Even if you do your best to set a final goal that seems attainable and challenging, you may still find that it is too difficult for some people to reach. In such cases, shaping is necessary. Shaping is the process of reinforcing successive approximations toward a goal. Shaping is among the most critical skills for anyone to master if they are to understand the power of their influence and how to build and sustain performance excellence. In fact, it would be good for all those who lead others at any level to successfully shape the behavior of someone whom everyone has given up on and who is far from reaching some terminal goal. Few things provide as much personal satisfaction in the workplace as helping someone achieve a goal. Shaping is crucial to really understanding the potential of any employee and to understand how one can help or hinder that potential. Learn to shape behavior and all the rest of this analysis will begin to make extraordinary sense for how you build and sustain your relationships and your own performance.

Shaping is usually required when teaching any new response or activity. It is also necessary when working with people who have been unsuccessful at a particular behavior or performance in the past. The performance of new employees and poor performers often requires extensive shaping.

A classical shaping situation can easily be demonstrated in teaching someone the correct way to swing a golf club. Simek and O'Brien (1981) describe the typical advice a novice might receive when trying to learn the golf swing: "Keep your head down!" "Keep your left arm straight!" "Take a full turn with your shoulders and a half turn with your hips!" "Pause briefly at the top of your swing!" "Don't hurry!" "Slide your hips diagonally to the left to start your downswing!" "Now, swiftly slash your hands into the shot!" "No peeking!" "Now follow through in a high graceful finish!"

Because learning golf is such a complex task, if you only told or showed someone how to do it and then only reinforced when they did it correctly, the student would probably never learn. Indeed, many never do. If, however, the task is broken down into many small steps and the students are reinforced every time they make the slightest improvement, they will certainly want to continue practicing or look forward to their next lesson. If, on the other hand, they get no reinforcement and finish the lesson with no sign of improvement (because they still can't hit the ball correctly), they will probably be discouraged and wonder if they have any aptitude for the sport at all.

The success of group participation often depends on how well the leader shapes. If the group is reticent, the leader might reinforce any verbal comment in the beginning, no matter how off-the-wall it might be. Later, as participation increases, the criterion is changed and only comments closely related to the topic receive reinforcement.

In teaching gymnastics, coaches give much physical help in the beginning and gradually remove it until the students perform alone. For example, in teaching a backflip, coaches may place one hand on the back and use the other to flip the child. Coaches reinforce even the smallest improvement until no help is required. At that point, only occasional reinforcement is needed to generate continuous improvement.

Every major corporation in America today preaches the need for continuous improvement. Indeed, Masaki Imai (1986) attributes the results achieved by Japanese industry to the concept of KAIZEN. He defines KAIZEN as follows:

KAIZEN means improvement. Moreover, KAIZEN means ongoing improvement involving everyone, including both managers and workers. The KAIZEN philosophy assumes that our way of life, be it our working life, our social life, or our home life, deserves to be constantly improved.

The book KAIZEN is filled with examples of how the Japanese use the concept in their work. Although Imai does not mention positive reinforcement specifically. It is evident in many of his illustrations. Any one person or organization seeking continuous improvement without an understanding and practice at shaping will ultimately be unsuccessful in attaining that goal.

Setting Sub-Goals in Shaping

In shaping, the criterion for reinforcement is any improvement, no matter how small. Generally speaking, the smaller the improvement that is reinforced, the faster the progress. This occurs because as small improvements are reinforced, behaviors are strengthened and more improvements will inevitably follow. Usually, shaping takes the form of setting sub-goals toward some final goal. In shaping new goal attainment, it is important to understand that performance should be reinforced at the new level several times until it stabilizes, before proceeding to a new sub-goal.

When a particular level is reached, lower levels are not reinforced. If performance does not improve, you will usually need to break the task into smaller elements and reinforce those behaviors before proceeding. At that point, you may lower the goal, but usually when a level of performance is reached, you will know that it is attainable and you would therefore not reinforce performance below that level.

Attainability is clearly the key criterion in shaping. Having many smaller sub-goals instead of one large goal is not the distinguishing feature of shaping. It is the attainability of the sub-goals and the reinforcement for reaching each that defines shaping. For example, if people are performing at 75 percent efficiency and you set goals beginning at 90 percent, the initial goal of 90 percent is too far from current performance.

Shaping involves three distinct activities: 1) setting a sequence of attainable sub-goals, 2) reinforcing behaviors along the way, and 3) celebrating each time a sub-goal is met. Although some tangible reinforcement may be associated with reaching some of the sub-goals, social reinforcement is appropriate for any improvement.

Shaping Is Fundamental to Coaching

Successful shaping requires knowledge, skill, and patience: the knowledge of the proper behaviors and the sequence of behaviors that constitute the desirable performance; the patience to watch others make mistakes at something you do well; and the skill to see and positively reinforce the smallest improvement.

Most of us are not highly skilled at recognizing small improvements in performance and reinforcing them. Yet that is the essential skill for the most efficient and effective managers, teachers, counselors, and coaches. Shaping requires patience and when done properly, it is the most efficient and expedient route to high performance.

Technically, shaping refers to reinforcing any behaviors that resemble the desired behavior in some way. The most obvious situation that requires behavior shaping in business is in skills training. For example, very often the behavior of giving verbal reinforcement requires shaping. If someone who never says anything complimentary about your performance makes a crude attempt at positive reinforcement, you had better reinforce it, it is unreasonable to expect that a first attempt will be perfect. If crude attempts are reinforced, you will get more of them and have more opportunities to shape toward a more effective style. If crude attempts are punished, you can bet there will be no more attempts of any kind.

Rewarding results may not seem like shaping. However, since improved levels of efficiency, quality, and so on require people to do things differently, rewarding small improvements in results indirectly reinforces changes in behaviors. 

*SOURCE: PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT: CHANGING BEHAVIOR THAT DRIVES ORGANIZATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS, 4TH ED., 2004, PGS. 244-247*

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