Understanding human behavior scientifically is critical in safety, particularly when it comes to investigating when something has gone wrong. In this video blog, Dr. Judy Agnew and Dr. Aubrey Daniels explain how a scientific approach can lead to a safer workplace and why consequences are the most important thing in determining whether or not someone will do something again.
I want to start by saying ‘thank you’ to those who sent me stories of how you applied the tools and principles of behavioral science to your parenting challenges. I wish I could recall all of the stories I’ve heard through the years but in the end what is most satisfying to me is seeing people light up about how well the behavioral technology worked and how it leads to positive behavior where previously it had been problematic, and in their view, unresolvable.
With that, I share the following stories, from real parents, about the positive impact the science of behavior has had on their personal lives:
Learning to Drive
When my son, Sam, was learning how to drive, even though I knew better, I found myself only calling out the things he did wrong. Once I realized what I was doing wrong; I had to force myself to pay attention and identify the things he did right, and then specifically tell him about it. The first behavior I made a point to notice was following the speed limit. After watching him drive across town for a little while, I told him I noticed how well he did in following the speed limit. He was so happy and proud that I noticed, and said “I know! I do it all the time!” His response reinforced me to start noticing more of what he does right. I then made a list of specific driving behaviors to remind myself to observe them such as, maintaining 3 second following distance, making complete stops, or stopping with enough space to see the bottom of the tires of the car in front of you. I only picked one at a time so that I wouldn’t overdo it. It really made me realize the strong tendency to fall back into the pattern of only noticing the things he does wrong. Without a deliberate effort to watch for specific behaviors (that I had to write down and look for), I would have fallen back into the old ways.
Household Chores
Pinpointing seemed overwhelming to me when I thought about my work environment but it became more manageable after I first applied it at home. I learned its importance when working to teach my son John to wash the dishes when he was about 7 or 8. It was his task at night to wash and my task to dry. When we first started, I was confused when he left the kitchen with several dirty pots and pans in the sink and went to play. I said “Wait a minute, you’re not done!” He said “Yes I am!” I said “What about these?,” pointing to the dirty pots and pans. He looked at me begrudgingly saying “You said I only had to do the dishes!”
What Makes Them Happy
My daughter used an approach to identify things that were reinforcing to her twin daughters when they were 18 months old. She wanted to determine effective reinforcers for behaviors associated with toilet training and also for other toddler behaviors. Individually, she placed several objects in front of the first child and whatever item the daughter picked first was identified as a reinforcer. She then placed the remaining items in front of the child and repeated the process until 3 items were identified. She then went through the same process with the second child. Once she did this with both girls, she had effective reinforcers. It’s worth noting that reinforcers do change so the process, or a modified version, will need to be repeated over time. By the way, the twins picked different objects.
Seeing Eye to Eye with Your Teenager
While I thought I had tried everything to improve my relationship with my teenage daughter, our relationship still felt strained. After learning about the 4:1 Rule (four positive comments to one negative), I thought it was worth a try. Over a one week period, I consciously worked at applying this rule, and did so as genuinely as possible. I saw improvement in the first day and kept at it. By weeks end, our conversations had significantly improved, and were even enjoyable. This not only taught me how to improve my personal relationships but it also taught me that when you focus on the positives, you see more things you would have otherwise not seen.
School bells may be ringing across the country but I am convinced now more than ever that we are not prepared to provide the best education possible for our kids.
I was disheartened to learn of the cheating scandal that is rocking the Atlanta Public Schools. And to further hear of the reoccurring issues with the government’s No Child Left Behind program. More than half the nation’s schools are in jeopardy of failing to meet reading and math adequacy standards. More than half! Monetary implications aside, what are we doing to today’s youth? And to our nation’s future?
It is clear, as was evident in the Atlanta Public Schools fiasco, that what was well-intended when the No Child Left Behind program was initiated has set up a culture of penalty and punishment if targets are not achieved. It can be said based on past history that the federal government spends little time when it designs regulations to consider how to create student success through policy. Little thought of how such a policy, if designed thoughtfully, can shape educational cultures of delight where students learn at high and steady rates. What we see instead are policies that often set a goal—and attach a penalty if the school does not do it.
What No Child has done is create threat and fear, in the administration, with the teachers, and even down to the students themselves. Teachers and administrators who participated in the Atlanta scandal, it’s fair to surmise, were doing what they thought ‘best’ in the name of avoiding the loss of funding they would be awarded by meeting government-set standards.
A major overhaul needs to be undertaken in Atlanta and across the country; and we must look to the context—the requirements that are naïve at best!
Much of what is wrong with these programs can be fixed and the yield will be outstanding and effective teachers and students that reach higher levels of learning. The solution is an understanding of behavior, not from a common sense perspective but a scientific one.
I believe the Atlanta Public School has done the right thing in firing school personnel who have been caught changing test scores. Not that cheaters cannot be changed but in my experience, lying, cheating and stealing have always been firing offenses. The problem in changing such behavior is that it is very difficult to put immediate consequences on the negative behavior (i.e. changing test scores) and therefore it makes the delivery of effective consequences necessary to change the bad habits difficult to manage.
Although I am sure that the problem was produced by ineffective leadership at the highest level that deliberately or accidentally created a system that tempted wrongdoing, it is better to eliminate those who folded under the pressure to produce false results.
The incident reminds me of when I was a lieutenant in the Army. If I heard it one time, I must have heard it one hundred, “I don’t care how you get it, just get it. And by the way I don’t want to know how you get it…” Although I am sure this was never said by school administration, the pervasiveness of the behavior indicates that the pressure was there.
Until there is an administration where leaders understand the direct and indirect impact of their policies, procedures and management and supervisory behaviors on the behavior of teachers, the problem will not go away. When you award a bonus for increasing test scores, you can hardly claim lack of culpability in the scandal as there are people who will lie, cheat and steal to get it. They may think they are working for the greater good—the survival of the school system, the obtaining of needed resources for the children, and of course, their own self-interest—continued employment.
When you only look at results and not behaviors, people often find “more than one way to skin a cat.” Taking the test for the student is one. That slippery slope of how we reach incredibly wrong decisions often starts with subtle or visible threat and fear, not from the ‘bad character’ of a few. In spite of the bonus, I am confident that most people who were caught did not do it for the bonus but because of the negative consequences around failing to produce the required progress.
I submit that all staff in the system is there for one reason – to help children learn. By doing some reverse behavioral engineering (RBE), the criticality of those jobs can be determined fairly quickly. By RBE, I mean start with the student and ask how a job helps the student learn. Of course the main responsibility falls on the teacher. Therefore most staff positions should exist to support the teacher in being effective in the class room. In my experience, most staff positions make it more difficult rather than easier to do the job.
As far as testing goes, the teacher should be evaluated on the number of children who perform to some standard or show significant improvement – not an average for the class but the number who are successful. The teacher’s success metric is ‘number of individual students making progress above their baseline’. Dr. Fred Keller, a pioneer researcher and teacher said, “If the student doesn’t learn, he wasn’t taught.” Local administrators should be measured on the number of successful teachers, and so on up the line. Rewards and punishment should not be delivered on results without factoring in how the results were obtained. This means that teachers should be observed so that inefficient and ineffective practices can be determined and corrected when they happen. The measure of observer (coach) effectiveness is whether teachers ask for the help. Artists want people to see their work; athletes want people watch them play; musicians want people to listen to them play. Why would teachers who are good at what they do not want people to see how they do what they do. They will when they are successful. If coaches (i.e. administration) help teachers teach more effectively, they want people to know and will welcome observers in their classrooms. What this means is that results will never be a surprise as problems will be identified and corrected in real time. Over time most of the observations will be positive as the students will be achieving at high rates.
In 1983, Dr. B.F.Skinner wrote in “The Shame of American Education” that the data showed that the technology of teaching existed to teach twice as much in half the time. That was almost 30 years ago. It has been done in only a very few places. It has been verified and documented in the toughest of schools and with a wide variety of students, some who are labeled as hyperactive, from poor homes, without qualities of persistence, without learning being a value in their home environments, all the things that have been said about why teaching is so hard. These processes have created eager learners, wanting to go to school, teachers who find joy in their impact, parents who are amazed and delighted with new found love of learning in their children and our society that benefits as these students go on to make a difference in our world. What better time than now to do it in the Atlanta City Schools and throughout the country.
With all of the hype surrounding the new movie release “Horrible Bosses,” it forces those of us that have had a horrible boss in the past to relive our own experiences.
In an article I read this week on the topic, How to handle a bad boss (without killing them), a few anonymous people spoke up about their own dreadful experiences. I was surprised, although knowing what I know about positive reinforcement I’m not sure why, that in each example, they put up with the bad boss behavior rather than do something to combat it. I realize it’s normal to have ‘fantasies’ of bad bosses getting their just desserts but why not do what you can to redirect bad boss behavior?
Unfortunately most executives, looking only at results, don’t see the organizational costs of bad boss behavior. You certainly don’t get discretionary behavior but you almost always get reduced personal output that spreads to other employees not directly affected by the “bad boss”. It is not infrequent that employees resort to some form of sabotage.
Just as your boss changes your behavior (attitude, motivation, etc.) you also change hers. Although most people don’t realize the impact their behavior has on the boss, it can be significant and can turn a bad boss into a good one. The problem is that most employees do not see it as their responsibility to train the boss. However, if your life is made miserable by living with a boss 40 hours a week, it will benefit you to take on the task.
It bears repeating, as I say this quite often, that if you think that you get too little recognition or positive reinforcement for what you do at work; think of your boss because he/she gets less. Before you act (if even just in fantasy) on ousting your boss, try any or all of the following. Knowing what I know about the science of behavior and positive reinforcement, your work environment, and your relationship with your boss, is bound to improve.
A little positive reinforcement goes a long way to improving bad boss behavior. All people need positive reinforcement to do their best – bosses included. You have the ability to strengthen your boss’s good habits and improve other behaviors by how you respond to the boss’s behavior. Positive reinforcement will do the trick. Learn as much about it as you can. Doing it at the wrong time, in the wrong way or the wrong place will make things worse, but if you do it right and do it often, you and your boss will be the better for it.
Now, I know I’ve said this before but, just because something is printed in HBR doesn’t necessarily make it true or valuable.
I was reminded recently of an article in HBR that provides tips for how to do effective performance reviews, Ditch Performance Reviews? How About Learn to do Them Well? (Written by University of Michigan professors Maxim Sytch and D. Scott DeRue) For as much as I am asked to comment in the media about the annual performance appraisal process, it is clear to me that organizations absolutely insist on keeping them around. You see, business has been “tweaking” performance appraisals for more than 50 years and it is still the occasion for the most contentious interaction between employee and manager. Tweaking a bad system, while having the potential for making it “less bad,” cannot make it good or effective. Much has been written attributing the “badness” to the frequency of appraisal. This HBR article suggests that increasing the frequency from annual to quarterly will improve its effectiveness.
While frequency is an issue with the annual review, going from an annual to a quarterly appraisal will not address the frequency issue in any significant way. In fact it just keeps employees in a perpetual state of agitation over the process—they are not over the negative emotion of the last one before it is time to do it again. It bears repeating, as I have said this many times before, “the best job people will ever have is one where they know at the end of every day how well they have done.”
The real problem of performance appraisal is not how often or even how well the appraisal is done, but the fact that it is a divisive, labeling process. Once employees have been labeled as “average or below average” it is very difficult to shake the label.
Years ago I was employed by the Georgia State Department of Vocational Rehabilitation to give IQ tests to children to determine if they qualified for State services of various kinds. Qualification was based primarily on low intelligence. One day a young boy I was testing, looked at me and said expectantly, “If I do good on this test will I be able to get out of Special Ed?” I can’t tell you what I said because the question depressed me to the point that at that moment I began to question the value of the knowing one’s IQ. Soon after that I quit giving them. Since he had been labeled “Special Ed”, I knew that the chances of this boy getting into a regular classroom were slim and none. Unfortunately, once you have the label, you are treated as though you are the label. I am sure there will be readers who don’t like that fact that I am writing about special needs children in the context of writing about a “sacred cow” of business. However, the process is essentially the same. Once an employee is labeled “average” only the rare bird will escape the label. The label creates certain expectations about ‘the labeled” and any opportunity to demonstrate they are not the label only provides others that you are the label, “That was really good for someone who is only of average ability.”
You need not respond to this blog by giving me examples of people who have overcome the process. I know there are some but I assure you they are the exception. There should be only one business reason for giving an appraisal (I prefer to rename it, “progress report.”) and that is to help the employee improve.
The mission of a boss at any level of the organization is to “create successful employees.” In this sense a performance appraisal of direct reports is a scorecard of the boss’ effectiveness, not the employees! How about that for a surprising turn of events?
Professors Sytch and DeRue have it all wrong. Comparing one employee to another promotes mediocrity, not excellence. Let’s get rid of this outdated, ineffective, wasteful labeling process and get back to focusing on an effective coaching process that creates an achievement-oriented culture.
And all the people said, “Amen!”
Measurement gets a bad rap! In business, measurement can be used to solve problems and help companies perform better, but one of the most frequent uses of measurement is to identify performers who aren’t measuring up. What I have seen over my many years is that while clients think they understand measurement, there is a lot they don’t understand including how to use it to improve company, employee, and individual performance.
The following is adapted from my management classic, Bringing Out the Best in People, and gives you what you need to know about how to effectively use measurement.
I’m sure I don’t have to sell you on the importance of measurement in business. In business, we have to keep score. But measurement used to set the occasion for positive reinforcement has benefits that you may never have imagined. More than keeping score, measurement can help you significantly in your efforts to bring out the best in people.
Guest post by Bart Sevin, Ph.D.
Maureen Dowd recently wrote an Op Ed piece in the New York Times entitled Giving Doctors Orders, in which she discusses the importance of speaking up and asking your doctor to wash his or her hands in front of you prior to beginning an examination. She cited CNN reports and book authors who all recommend saying something to your physician if you don’t see them wash their hands with your own eyes. Sounds like a good idea, right? So what’s the problem? Well there are actually two problems: 1) getting people to start speaking up, and then 2) getting them to keep doing it. I have seen this all too often in working with clients, particularly on the safety side (but also on the non-safety side). Dowd’s article echoes one of the biggest challenges employees at all levels face, speaking up and giving feedback to others about their behavior, particularly those in authority.
Why is it so important for people to speak up in the moment when they see someone either engaging in a desired behavior (e.g., doctors washing their hands in front of patients) or an undesired behavior? And, why do people sometimes remain quiet even when they observe someone engaging in behavior that could (or will) negatively impact others or themselves? Why won’t they speak up more often, and what will it take to get them to start speaking up and doing so on an ongoing basis? The answer to all these questions is consequences.
First and foremost, it’s important to speak up in the moment (rather than saying something to the doctor later as you’re leaving the office) because the immediacy of the feedback increases its effectiveness. By interrupting the at-risk behavior and helping the person begin practicing the correct behavior now, it also holds the performer personally accountable for doing the correct behavior. Unfortunately the consequence history of people who typically say nothing when they should is one of being punished or penalized when they have given feedback in the past or they have ‘rules of conduct’ about respecting authority learned at an early age. The rule might be “respecting doctors means not questioning them about their practices”. In Dowd’s example, for instance, the negative consequences for asking your doctor to wash his or her hands might have been the doctor dismissively telling you his or her hands are already clean and even anticipating a sideways look that screams, ‘You dare to challenge me?”
What is needed to get people to speak up more often and keep doing so, is more positive reinforcement (R+). There are strategies that help to build in more R+ for speaking up and giving feedback. The first is to make sure that the person giving the feedback focuses on giving positive feedback for desired behavior, not just correcting undesired behavior. Dowd’s article focuses on correcting doctors when they fail to wash in front of you, but she doesn’t mention what patients should do when doctors do wash their hands in front of you. I’m sure we all can think of a number of times we’ve witnessed physicians washing their hands in the examination room just before beginning the examination. That’s an opportunity to speak up and strengthen that behavior!
Secondly, when giving constructive or negative feedback, plan before you do it. By doing this you help build in positive reinforcement for the giver. A very common strategy in sales is to anticipate the objections you’ll get from customers and plan what you’ll say to overcome the objections so you move one step closer to closing the sale. In my experience coaching frontline workers, I use the same approach: anticipate the push-back a co-worker (or your doctor) will give when you speak up about their undesired behavior, plan what you’ll say to overcome their resistance and move them closer to beginning to practice the desired behavior now.
Successfully overcoming resistance and getting people to demonstrate the correct behavior are usually very reinforcing to the person giving the feedback. In fact, many sales people begin to see objections as reinforcers because they represent an immediate opportunity for them to address any concerns and move the customer closer to saying yes.
Finally, it’s possible to build in more R+ for the person giving feedback by coaching the person receiving feedback on how to accept feedback well, such as thanking the person giving it and demonstrating strong listening skills by attempting the correct behavior. Apply these lessons to yourself as well. Learning to speak up about others’ behavior may require that you look at your own at-risk behaviors, addressing the feedback you get from co-workers, reinforcing them for providing you corrective feedback, and inviting feedback in the first place.
We have many opportunities in our everyday environment to speak up when we see both desired and undesired behavior. By understanding the science behind reinforcement, you can positively impact your own behavior and the behavior of those with whom you interact.
It’s happened again! An air traffic controller deliberately made his bed and slept in it while 7 different aircraft were trying to safely land at a Tennessee airport. I think it’s safe to assume this controller is a fine person who means no ill will. So why would someone in such a critical role take such a risk?
While the FAA continues its investigation into this and other claims of sleeping air traffic controllers, those who understand behavior from a scientific perspective will tell you that the solution to this problem does not lie in adding another controller in the tower or in punishing the offender.
For a better understanding of what should be done to eliminate situations that lead to unsafe conditions, I invite you to view a new video interview where I discuss the topic of Eliminating the Rare Error.
Several weeks ago Secretary LaHood unveiled with considerable fanfare, a new attack on smoking where manufacturers will be required to display on the top half of the pack of cigarettes larger, more graphic warnings of the dangerous effects of smoking
It’s a good bet that Secretary LaHood hasn’t read Bringing Out the Best in People. The third chapter is titled, “Louder, Longer, Meaner.” It refers to the situation where we don’t get the response we want after the first request so the next time we ask we get louder, yell longer and/or get meaner. From a behavioral perspective, increasing the size of the warning tells us that the previous warnings were ineffective and that the solution to the problem is not to “do the same thing harder” but to focus on the consequences of smoking — not its antecedents.
Most smokers, even those who try cigarettes for the first time, are well aware of the negative consequences of smoking. They know of its relationship to cancer, lung disease and heart disease. Telling smokers more often only makes them immune to the warnings. After a while they won’t even notice them.
Such warnings may even have the perverse effect of actually increasing smoking since smoking reduces stress and tension. The sight of dead bodies, cancer and diseased lungs may well increase stress levels causing the smoker to reach for his/her pack in order to calm down. It probably won’t have much effect on younger smokers either as the graphic warnings may actually be a source of more fun and social reinforcement from peers. (Think of candy in the shape of worms and insects!) Smoking in the face of such apparent danger may certainly garner social reinforcement for those teenagers prone to pick up the habit.
I wonder who came up with this campaign anyway. Whoever it is isn’t aware of all the research that has gone on in behavior analysis for the last 50 years on stimulus and consequence control of behavior. Maybe the behavioral research should be printed in large type. Maybe that would get their attention. No, that would be as much of a waste of government money and resources as this well-intended but futile initiative.
If you want to discourage cigarette smoking, a more viable approach would be to focus on children and friends who are able to apply immediate consequences to the smoker’s behavior. Slogans like, “Friends don’t let friends smoke – it’s a killer” or “Tell your daddy that his smoking is harmful to your health” will be more effective than the current campaign. It takes behavioral consequences to change behavior. Any program to change behavior that doesn’t include them is doomed to fail and wastes the time and money of all involved.
Everybody seems to have a plan for reducing the deficit. President Obama created a National Commission of Fiscal Responsibility. There is the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Debt Reduction Task Force and the Peterson-Pew Commission of Budget Reform. All have put forth ways to reduce the deficit. Not one of the task forces and commissions think it will be easy to achieve all the changes they are recommending. The Co-chairs of the National Commission produced a list of 58 concrete proposals to eliminate over $200,000,000 of Federal spending from a budget that is in excess of $2,000,000,000. While this is a good start, it turns out to be less than 10% of the budget. For a clear visual understanding of the impact of just 10%, I encourage you to view this short video on Wimp.com.
There is not a citizen outside Washington who believes there is only 10% unnecessary government spending. In some circles this would be considered “chump change.” I must say that all the suggestions sound reasonable and there is considerable agreement on many of the ideas across committees. Why then should it be difficult? As we say in the South, many people “have a dog in that fight.” Incomes and jobs of thousands will be affected. All those affected will be putting forth justification for exempting them from the cuts. You can expect to hear, “I know we need to cut but cutting my job will not save money and my job provides a necessary function.” Turning this discussion to business for a minute, one of the biggest failures in corporate downsizing is that organizations rush to cut jobs and fail to cut work. This means that the remaining employees have more work, so everyone gets punished. It is common in these downsizings that when the work unit falls behind, which it almost always does, or when customer service is reduced, which it usually is, old employees are hired back on a temporary basis or private contractors are hired to help catch up, yet they rarely do! It is not all that unusual for people to have temporary jobs for years.
Unless there are positive consequences built in, the savings from down-sizing will be short lived. It is often the case that in only a couple of years, the current organization looks strangely like the pre-down-sized one.
Art Buchwald, longtime columnist at The Washington Post, had what some would say was a radical idea about reducing the size of government. He suggested that since the cost of keeping someone on the payroll is several times the salary when offices, equipment, maintenance, supervision and supplies are considered, why not pay anyone who can figure out how to eliminate his/her job their full pay for life. Although he suggested this tongue-in-cheek, I think there is a lot of merit in such a plan and it should be given serious consideration by those in charge of cutting spending. Let’s face it; our current problem is a spending problem as the government revenue in 2009 was in excess of $2,500,000,000. If there is not some incentive to government employees to save or cut, someone will always find a way to spend whatever is available.
Here are a few ideas that, if properly implemented, will motivate Federal employees to reduce spending without a disruptive effect on their families and essential government services:
When employees are properly motivated to reduce unnecessary work, I am convinced that permanent savings can be realized far in excess of the 10% proposed by the National Commission. When they are not properly motivated, government will continue to grow in spite of current efforts to shrink it.
