Advanced Corporate Coaching-Module 5

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Aims and Outcomes

• Explore the literature on habit development and discuss application to coaching

• Discuss cues, routines and rewards and their influence on behavior change

• Examine the philosophy of mini habits as a process for behavior change

• Analyze the pillars of habit development and their role in behavior change

• Explore the triggers to reverting back to previous behaviors with a focus on how to address triggers

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Learning Goals

• Critically reflect upon the literature on habit development with application to coaching practice

• Apply what is known about cues, routines and rewards and their influence on behavior change to coaching practice

• Experiment with the philosophy of mini habits as a process for behavior change

• Employ the pillars of habit development for effective behavior change with clients

• Utilize the trigger evidence in working with clients to create successful behavior change

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Atomic Habits

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A Way of Life

How much of your daily activities are influenced by habits?

Charles Duhigg & HPI

5% conscious and self-regulated

95% non-conscious and automatic

What’s in a habit?“

Habits are:

• non-conscious routines that may or may not serve a mission/vision

• behavior that starts as a choice, and then becomes a nearly unconscious patterns

• why we do what we do in life and in business

• the heart of change

HPI and Charles Duhigg

Atomic Habits

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Four Laws of Behavior Change

1. Make it Obvious/Make it Invisible

2. Make it Attractive

3. Make it Easy

4. Make it Satisfying

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Law One-Make it Obvious/Invisible

• Once a habit is formed, it is unlikely to be forgotten

• People with high self-control tend to spend less time in tempting situations-it is easier to avoid temptation than resist it

• One of the most practical ways to eliminate a bad habit is to reduce exposure to the cue

• Self-control is only a short-term strategy

Creating Good Habits

• Track habits

• Implementation intentions

• Habit stacking

• Environment control

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Make It Attractive

• Every behavior has a surface level craving and a deeper underlying motive

• Habits are modern-day solutions to ancient desires

• Prediction leading to a feeling precedes habits

• The attractiveness of habits is directly related to the positive feelings associated with them

Building Good Habits

• Use temptation bundling

• Join a culture where desired behavior is the norm

• Create a motivation ritual

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Law 3: Make It Easy

• Practiced not planning

• Focus on taking action not creating motion

• Habits become progressively more automatic through repetition

• The number of times a habit is performed is more important as the amount of time

Building Good Habits

• Reduce friction

• Prime the environment

• Master the decisive moment

• Use the Two-Minute Rule

• Automate habits

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Make it Satisfying

• Human behavior follows the Law of Least Effort

• Create environments where doing right thing is easy

• Reduce friction with good behaviors; increase friction with bad behaviors

• Prime the environment

Building Good Habits

• Use reinforcement

• Make “doing nothing” enjoyable

• Use Habit Tracker-don’t break the chain

• Never miss twice

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Mini HabitsSTEPHEN GUISE

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A mini habit is a very small positive behavior that you “force” yourself to do every day; a mini habit is too small to fail.

MINI HABITS DEFINED

• Amount of effort

• Perceived difficulty

• Negative affect

• Subjective Fatigue

• Blood Glucose levels

FIVE COMPONENTS THAT IMPACT BEHAVIOR CHANGE

• Choose your mini habits and habit plan

• Use the “why” drill on each mini habit

• Define your habit cues

• Create your reward plan

• Write everything down

• Think small

• Meet your schedule and drop high expectations

• Watch for signs of habit (be careful not to jump the gun)

EIGHT MINI HABIT STEPS

1. Compliment one person

2. Think two positive thoughts

3. Meditate for one minute

4. Name three things you're thankful for

5. Do one push-up

6. Write fifty words

7. Read two pages

8. Do ten jumping jacks

9. Go outside and take 100 steps

10. Drink one glass of water

TEN MINI HABITS IDEAS

Better Than Before

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The goal for creating effective habits

“Perfection may be an impossible goal, but habits help us to do better….

…Making headway towards a good habit, doing better than before, saves us from facing the end of another year with the mournful wish, once again, that we’d done things differently.”

“…Saves effort and gives us more capacity to deal with complex, novel, urgent matters….means we don’t strain ourselves to make decisions, weigh choices, dole out rewards, prod selves to begin…Life becomes simpler, many daily hassles vanish.”

- Gretchen Rubin

Habit Tidbits

• Self control is a crucial aspect of our lives

• With habits we conserve self-control

• Habits free us from decision making

• Habits matter more when we are under stress

• We use decision making to choose and then willpower to get started

• Changing a habit is more difficult if it means losing an aspect of ourselves

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Four Pillars of Habits

Better Than Before (Gretchen Rubin)

MonitoringMonitor in a quantifiable way, the process and outcomes

(tracking progress)

FoundationBegin with a foundation of changes that will produce results

quickly and in a rewarding way (SMART Goals)

Scheduling When the habits take places

AccountabilityStaying accountable for the changes you are making

(Change team and helping relationships)

Monitoring

• Self - Measurement -> Self – Awareness-> Self-Control

• Identify precisely what action is monitored

• Measuring

• Drives execution through feedback (leads to making informed decisions)

• Review measurement withsomeone else (Accountability partner)

• Commitment to making progress weekly (A small win is still a win)

• Don’t be afraid to own what the measurement tells you

• Act accordingly

Foundation

• Habit formation requires energy

− Focus on habits to strengthen our foundation

• Sleep, Move, Nutrition, Uncluttering

• Begin with a habit that deliver a high payoff in return

• Habit that most directly strengthen self-control

• Will serve as the foundation for forming other good habits

Scheduling

• Consistency, repetition, no decision helps develop the habit

• Habits grow strongest and fastest when repeated in predictable ways

• Scheduling eliminates decision making

• Tends to lock us into action

• Confront the natural limits of the day

• Decide how often a habit must occur, and for how long

• Helps us say no, prioritize

-Gretchen Rubin

• Face consequences for what we’re doing

• Resolve to not be a victim

• Willing to take different action

• Success

• Acknowledge Reality

• Focus on what can control

• Align with people who are accountable

Accountability

Desire, Ease and Excuses

✓Abstaining

✓Convenience

✓ Inconvenience

✓Safeguards

✓Loophole-Spotting

✓Distracting

✓Reward

✓Treats

✓Pairing

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Timing is EverythingDANIEL PINK “WHEN”

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• Peak: Spike

• Trough: Big Drop

• Rebound: Subsequent Recovery

Hidden Patterns of Everyday Life

Leveraging the Troughs

▪ Something beats nothingIdeal 52 minutes work….17 minutes break

▪ Moving beats stationary

▪ Social beats solo

▪ Outside beats inside

▪ Fully detached beats semidetached

▪ Breathe

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We Are All Birds

• Chronotype” influences physiology and psychologyBedtimes, mornings and middle of the day

• Percentage of the population:

• Larks: 14%

• Third Birds: 65%

• Owls: 21%

Any challenges???

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Larks, Owls and Third Birds

LARK THIRD BIRD OWL

Analytic

Tasks

Early Morning Early to Midmorning Late afternoon and

evening

Insight Tasks Late

afternoon/early

evening

Late afternoon/early

evening

Morning

Making an

Impression

Morning Morning Morning

Making a Decision Early Morning Early to Midmorning Late afternoon and

evening

For the questionnaire.www.danpink.com/MCTQ

Mid-PointsDANIEL PINK “WHEN”

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Midpoints

Slump

Spark

The “Uh-Oh” Effect-Mental siren-time to get cracking-Healthy dose of stress

Mid-Points

• More likely to cut corners in middle

• Relax standards potentially because others relax assessment of us

• Slump common but can be mitigated

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Mitigate Mid-points

Make them visible-normalize

Use them as wake-up calls

If not behind, imagine you are a little behind

Set interim goals

Publicly commit to goals

Stop you work where you want to begin the next day

Don’t break the chain

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Triggers

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Summary of Ideas

• A trigger is any stimulus that reshapes our thoughts and actions”.

• “Fate is the hand of cards we’ve been dealt. Choice is how we play the hand”.

• Admitting a need for change requires an awareness of a new desirable behavior or letting go of excuses.

• Inertia prevents change.

• You need a change community.

• Triggers push and pull us off course.

• Our inner beliefs trigger failure before it happens.

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Belief Triggers

• If I understand, I will do.

• I have willpower and won’t give in to temptation.

• Today is a special day.

• “At least I’m better than …” We award ourselves a free pass because we’re not the worst in the world.

• I shouldn’t need help and structure.

• I won’t get tired and my enthusiasm will not fade.

• I have all the time in the world.

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Belief Triggers, con’t

• I won’t get distracted and nothing unexpected will occur.

• An epiphany will suddenly change my life.

• My change will be permanent and I will never have to worry again.

• My elimination of old problems will not bring on new problems. We forget that as we usher an old problem out the door a new problem usually enters.

• My efforts will be fairly rewarded.

• No one is paying attention to me. People always notice.

• If I change I am “inauthentic.”

• I have the wisdom to assess my own behavior.

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Environments

• Environment shapes our behavior-most people are not aware of this

• A nonstop triggering mechanism

• Some environments are designed to act against our best interests

• We either control the environment, or it controls us

• We have to anticipate environments

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Feedback Loops

• “Feedback—both the act of giving it and taking it —is our first step in becoming smarter, more mindful about the connection between our environment and our behavior”.

• “A feedback loop comprises four stages: evidence, relevance, consequence, and action”.

• “As a trigger, our environment has the potential to resemble a feedback loop”.

• “Where a well-designed feedback loop triggers desirable behavior, our environment often triggers ineffective behavior, and it does so against our will and better judgment and without our awareness”.

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Daily Questions

• Commitment Device

• Announces intention

• Articulation of change

• Focus on areas that need help

• Manageable twenty-four-hour increments

• Distract us from our obsession with results

• “Change doesn’t happen overnight. Success is the sum of small efforts repeated day in and day out. If we make the effort, we will get better. If we don’t, we won’t”.

• “We do not get better without structure”.

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