Lessons from a puppy on changing behaviour
By Cate Maguire | Adoption and Influence
Empathy is a key but underutilised player.
Like so many other people recently, I got a lockdown puppy: a sassy and sweet spoodle named Scout. As well as readying her to take a role as STCK’s ‘Head of Loyalty’ (office dog), training Scout has reminded me of something that’s often overlooked when we try to create change with people and organisations.
Empathy’s importance to creating change is more than just getting your message across in a way people can understand.
Now, please don’t think I’m comparing the nuances of people change directly to the psychology of training pups! I know that organisational change is far more sophisticated, particularly when you throw in variables like politics and the complexities of human systems.
But there are some parallels that brought to mind important lessons in people change I thought were worth a reflection. (I’d also love to avoid coming across as a crazy dog lady if I can…but, come on…look at that little face!)
There’s no doubt of the basic importance of empathy in creating change. A web search will show you dozens of articles on this very topic: but most of them focus purely on how empathy helps leaders communicate change.
These articles only tap into part of empathy’s power in change.
When training Scout to help her build great behaviours, I can communicate the change and teach her how to adopt it through clear instructions (plus a visual cue and lots of poached chicken), but it certainly doesn’t help her stick with the new behaviours over time.
When I train Scout to do something new, I’m asking her to prioritise my ask for a change or new behaviour alongside an array of other distractions (ibis!), incentives (new friend!) and potential threats (skateboard!). Those distractions change constantly, which means I can’t simply rely on the initial training for her to successfully stick with her new behaviours as time goes on.
It’s similar for the people we work with.
When we ask them to take on something new, they need to be able to prioritise this ask alongside the politics of the organisation, what’s happening in their lives outside work and the reward and reinforcement mechanisms in the organisation that drive performance. These distractions can be incredibly individual and prone to change over time.
Tapping into empathy’s power in change is about constantly learning about your people to know what’s needed to help them take on something new and to successfully incorporate it into their lives.
When it comes to teaching Scout to sit and wait to eat, I needed to learn how she tells me she’s confused about what I’m asking (head tilt) or that she’s getting impatient and about to break out of her ‘sit’ to race for the kibble (licking lips). Those are my cues to intervene earlier or add in additional training steps to help her be successful in her new behaviours.
Empathy, or understanding people, is not only the first step in creating change, but the most important tool we have to help it get adopted.
Yes, we need to understand people and how they like to communicate to help us craft the right message for change. But we then need to understand what’s going on in the environment around them and how that motivates or influences their likelihood to adopt a change.
Change happens one person at a time, so we need to be ready to constantly learn and then hone and iterate the adoption experience to respond to individual considerations.
Leading others to adopt new behaviours means recognising when needs change (yours or your team’s) and adjusting accordingly.
As much as I’ve been Scout’s teacher over the past few months, training her has really brought home a few key lessons about empathy in organisational change for me:
Keep an eye on the environment – is there an ibis, new friend or skateboard that might be impacting behaviour?
Watch out for which parts of a change have stuck and which haven’t
Monitor those going through the change for cues that indicate we will need to influence the change in other ways
And just like I need to help Scout embed her newest behaviours (spin around!), my challenge is to turn my own lessons into habits and incorporate them into the work we do in our Adoption and Influence practice.