What triggers behaviour? It is caused by the playful interaction of body, emotion, thoughts and environment. Together these form the building blocks of the Behaviour Framework. Let’s have a look at the different parts, starting with those that are part and parcel of any human.
Behaviour
Behaviour is anything we can observe from looking at the body. That is why the distinction between attitude and act makes little sense. Posing is also doing something. Behaviour is anything we do while awake or asleep, like going to work, exercising, housekeeping, lazing and laughing. A clear distinction can be made between reacting to what occurs and taking the initiative. There is a fundamental difference in the routing through the brain and body between creating own circumstances and facing circumstances. This distinction is clearly visible in the framework.
We display behaviour with our body. That is why any change in our physical appearance will have an effect on the way we behave. Take for example clothing. It can have a profound psychological and behavioural impact. Which effect depends on the symbolic meaning that wearing certain clothes has. Research has shown that people wearing labcoats preformed better in doing exactly the same thing than people that wore a painters jacket. This indicates that clothes influence our subconscious. A similar impact has holding your meetings standing up. On construction sites this is common practice. Meeting while standing cost a fraction of the normal time to confer, while the quality of the decision-making remains the same. Participants are more actively involved in the conversations, listen better, process more information, get to the point quicker and are less distracted.
Emotion
Emotion is the subconscious collection of learned and congenital scripts. These nurture and nature scripts allow us to react in a preconditioned way to the things we come across or set our mind to. We process the information from our body, surroundings and thoughts in a (pre)programmed way. It is not conscious thought, but our emotional subconscious that controls our behaviours. Humans are in essence emotional beings that think they are rational. Our basic emotions are congenital. Everyone possesses them. They are universal. The remainder is taught and culturally determined. This makes emotion not just the limited set of known facial expressions with their corresponding bodily reactions, like anger, sorrow and pleasure. No, emotion encompasses all manner of acting. Seeming unemotional or not being moved are also emotions. Actually, most of the time we display indifference or disinterest and simply go about our own business. What’s more, emotions should not be confused with feelings. Feelings are the inner sensation of our body. Through introspection it is the made up and rationalized explanation of what we think is going on inside of us.
An American software company undergoes a strategic change of course. All employees get the new strategic intent in a glossy and beautifully designed brochure. Despite the effort to make the reading appealing, little note of the content is taken. Most brochures disappear unopened in drawers. The board of the company decides to intervene. They start to call employees at random to ask them to recite the new strategy. Not only did they start calling. The board members also circulate the story that anyone not being able to rattle off the strategy will get fired. This reaches in no time the tens of thousands within the company. Nearly everyone starts to dust off the brochure to rehearse. Within days a radical change in behaviour takes place. And why? Because the story struck a nerve. What the story does not tell is how many were called, nor whether anyone was laid off. In the end it could just be no more than a story.
Thought
Conscious thought is the dance partner of emotion. Together they form the inner world between our ears. Thought encompasses basically two things. On the one hand it is the voice in our head that incessantly chatters and draws attention to itself. And to what end? We can enhance our performance with motivating self-talk or put ourselves down with battering self-critique. On the other hand thought can represent personal experiences and fantasized life events. These are images that pop into mind like watching a film. By talking to ourselves and imagining things our conscious mind functions as the mental guide for everything we do. We use thought to plan ahead or invent reasons to account for our (wrong) doings. Thinking also makes it possible to look at our own behaviour (introspection) and reflect on own thoughts (metacognition). Last but not least, self-talk controls our learning of new knowledge by reading out aloud in our mind and repeating texts to get a better understanding. So thinking is always a conscious act. That is why subconscious thinking does not exist. Subconsciously we process information according to our conditioning.
Self-talk has been extensively researched in sports. Top athletes rehearse their matches over and over again in their head well before ever showing up at the start. They have seen themselves perform the routines to come out on top. Telling themselves that they are a winner enhances performance, however there is a downside to this verbal capability. Dysfunctional thoughts lower achievements, also in changing behaviour. Thoughts that do not help are the organization must change, management is to make this happen and there is nothing I can do. Notions like these prevent someone from starting to try and practice. Another showstopper is the mainstream idea of how behaviour changes. The common view is that behaviour is hard to chance and that it takes long, but this is flawed. Behaviour changes the moment we start to act differently. What requires time is for new behaviour to become a habit and to acquire true mastery. So, is it hard to change dysfunctional thoughts? No, experience using cognitive therapy proves that, even with just a few minutes online, someone can be taught to reframe persistent thoughts.
Physical environment
Thus far, we have focused on the human building blocks. Let us now have a close look at the outer world that influences behaviour. We shape our environment and are shaped by it. The first environmental factor is the physical world of buildings and interior design that we can observe using our senses. We automatically react to light, colours, smells, sounds and temperature. Because this is actually what our senses pick up. How we react depends on the associations we have learned. In general the colour red promotes focus and helps to concentrate, whereas blue stimulates creativity. Peppermint causes alertness, the scent of citrus stimulates action and lavender relaxes. In short, the direct surrounding constantly evokes different unintentional responses. However, these uncontrolled and subconscious reactions can be counteracted with conscious thought.
LEF Future center of the Department of Waterways and Public Works is completely set-up for influence by the environment. The moment you enter everything is about triggering subconscious associations. The sessions that take place are aimed at breaking existing thought patterns and bringing participants into a constructive and cooperative mood. This is done by customizing the physical space with carefully selected furniture, image projections on the walls, sounds and lighting. For example, creativity is given an impetus by projecting images from deserted beaches or by holding the meeting in the middle of an exotic jungle. Oticon, a Danish company producing hearing aids, is also a great example of how our physical environment influences behaviour. In what they called the spaghetti revolution, Oticon tore down all physical and department walls to get rid of compartmentalised behaviour. They reorganized themselves into projects that everyone could choose for themselves. Offices were dismantled to create open floor spaces and sofas were set in the middle to hold meetings on. Everything that reminded of the old hierarchical and bureaucratic way of working was removed. The result was that within five years profits rose tenfold.
Social environment
The second environmental factor is our social surroundings with the people we hang out and pass the time with. It encompasses the groups we are a member of and the communities to which we belong. Typical examples are being a member of a family, the team members of a sporting club, the colleagues at work and friends. So how do we join a group? We become a member through selection and socialization. Once we have made the choice to become a member we will start to adopt and adept to the practices of the group. Unknowingly we copy behaviour of the people we spent time with. Literally we allow ourselves to become enrolled by imitating what others do. We owe this to our mirror neurons. The only condition for this to take place is direct exposure. Our senses must observe in order to copy what others do.
Behaviour recalls behaviour, usually without anyone noticing. The influence that others have is clearly visible in the way we physically copy each other. A typical example is yawning. When someone starts to yawn, pretty soon everyone in the room will follow suit with an orchestrated yawning concert. We constantly imitate gestures, poses, mannerisms and even preferences. Everyone has experience with this, also in organisations. Socialisation occurs when starting a new job. During the first weeks all sorts of things get noticed and make the newcomers wonder. After a few months and the decision to stay, everyone adapts to the daily practices and accepts the common ways of interacting as the norm. Socialisation also occurs when organisations start to intensify their collaboration, are taken over or merge together. The only prerequisite is physical exposure. That is why a merger ended up in a complete disaster by keeping the two companies separated in different buildings for a prolonged period of time. A different merger was a great success by mixing employees from the onset.
Regulated environment
The last factor is the regulated environment. It encompasses all written and unwritten behavioural rules to which we commonly abide. Typical examples are laws, agreements and social norms. All these rules prescribe how to behave in public and help to organize social life. Rules are meant to make the way we interact more predictable. Almost everything we do is regulated, especially in the way we construct organisations. It contains the designed and formalized way of working. Usually this is written down in codes of conduct, policies, procedures and working instructions.
A team manager no longer wanted the passive and wait-and-see attitude of the team members. What she did not realise was that an important rule was the root cause. As manager she had received for many years all the dossiers and distributed the work among the team. By doing so, she made everyone dependent. For a large part this induced the questionable behaviour she no longer desired. She changed the rule into the team will distribute the workload evenly among themselves. This made the team act more proactive and show more initiative.
Events
We have briefly met the inner and outer worlds that influence our behaviour. The last building block of the behavioural framework is the event, in which all the building blocks come together. Events can be fact or fiction. Facts are personal experiences and reconstructed memories. Like the things we have initiated or that have happened to us. Fiction is fantasized and often has never taken place. Both facts and fiction make up our experiences. The reason for this is that we seem to be incapable of observing the world objectively. Testimonies testify to this. Ask someone to recollect what happened and it becomes apparent that everyone has a unique perception of what occurs around them. We filter what we observe and quickly forget details. Details we just make up as we retell the whole story. With the exception of vivid experiences, like births, loved ones passing on, relocations, accidents and grievous bodily harm. These events make a stronger imprint and stay with us in more detail. Life-changing events often have a major impact on our behaviour.