Behaviour – What’s Driving You?
Do we ever stop to consider why we sometimes behave the way we do?
Whoever we are at work, staff member, manager or director, our behaviour is visible to everyone around us and can have an effect on them.
Conversely, the behaviour of those around us it can have an effect on us. Those effects can be either positive or negative.Many years ago, I had a manager who banged the drum of timeliness and efficiency: arriving on time, meeting deadlines and completing tasks correctly. She also was a stickler for insisting on a professional approach to clients and ensuring they received excellent service. She never failed to promote herself, her intelligence and her achievements to everyone. To the outside world she was the epitome of a successful manager.
Within the office and the team, however, it was a very different story. Although she applied her rules to the team’s behaviour, she did not live up to them herself. She would often arrive late having hit the shops early to make the most of the sales, and was only too keen to show off her purchases to the team members who had been rushing around trying to meet deadlines in her absence. She would frequently shout and be very aggressive leaving the staff members who suffered her regular put-downs feeling quite intimidated.
What was driving her behaviour?
For all of us, the answer to the question ‘what drives our behaviour?’ lies deep within us; within our ‘beliefs’. To put it simply, whatever ‘belief’ we hold, affects our ‘thinking’ which then affects our ‘feelings’ from which come our ‘attitudes and behaviours’.
The manager in my story clearly believed it was her right to push others to work hard whilst she had the right to go shopping. She may also have believed it was her right to be aggressive and that the team had no right to challenge her. So, linked with our beliefs are the ‘rights’ we give ourselves and others in any given situation.
If we want to be more effective in our communications, then we must first learn to recognise our own and others’ beliefs and rights in specific situations, and then use assertive responses to improve the pattern and outcome of the communication.
In the case of my story there were two types of outcome. Most of the staff felt intimidated and de-motivated, and their subsequent behaviour became submissive. One or two were very angry and made sure the manager knew they were not happy. Neither of these responses led to a good result, as neither was delivered in an assertive manner.
However, one person within the team did challenge the manager in an assertive way along the lines of: ‘When you go shopping and arrive in the office at 10.30, we feel that you are taking advantage of your position and it leaves the team feeling very de-motivated.’
Most people, particularly those who use aggressive behaviour, find it difficult to react in their usual manner when faced with an assertive response such as this and in this case our manager apologised.
Responding assertively is not a natural behaviour for most of us but it is a skill that can be learnt and improved over time. Training in assertiveness skills will provide people with insight and understanding of their personal ‘beliefs and rights’ which may be limiting or preventing them from communicating in an assertive manner. We can learn to challenge these beliefs in order to change our behaviour and become more assertive.
There are a number of reasons why people wish to become more assertive in the workplace:
- to influence people
- to promote effective team working
- to create interdependence
- to deal with unreasonable requests
- to handle an irate customer
- to convey an unpopular decision
- to disagree with others without being aggressive
Assertiveness training can be delivered over one or two days for groups of between six and twelve delegates within organisations and can be very effective for whole teams. Coaching sessions for individuals who have difficulty with their communication techniques and who display either aggressive or submissive behaviour with work colleagues can also be designed.
