Planning behaviour

Working out, in advance, what to say and do (ie how to behave) in order to achieve a particular objective.

Planning is acknowledged as necessary for most activities in life, but strangely there is often a blind spot when it comes to planning behaviour. There are a number of reasons for this:

• People think of behaviour as a vast amorphous thing that is impossible to plan.
  
  
• People believe that behaviour is best left to natural, spontaneous expression.
  
  
• People prefer to be opportunists and leave themselves the flexibility of ‘seeing what happens and reacting accordingly’.
  
  
• People argue that if you don’t know the people you are going to meet you can’t plan how best to behave.

None of these reasons provides an adequate excuse for leaving an important ingredient like behaviour to chance.

Behaviour is just as amenable to a planning process as, say, constructing a building. It only requires behaviour to be broken down into some specifics, the equivalent of building blocks, and for those specifics to be cast into a coherent plan of action.

Behaviour categories are the key to breaking behaviour down into manageable proportions. However, before deciding which categories to employ, it is necessary to have:

• a clear idea of the objective you wish to achieve
  
  
• some notion of what behaviour you ideally want from the other person, or persons, in order to achieve your objective.

Once you have these, you are then in a position to work out which behaviours to use and which behaviours to avoid yourself in order to shape the reactions you want from the other person.

The following is an example of a behaviour plan arrived at using the behaviour category approach.

The situation

Imagine that you are a manager with three supervisors reporting to you. One of them, Bill, was promoted to a supervisory position a few months ago. Technically he is excellent but you have noticed that he is falling down on the supervisory aspects of his job. For example, he tends to pitch in and sort things out for himself and does not spend enough time on man-management. You decide to help Bill improve his performance as a supervisor.

The overall aim

To have improved Bill’s performance as a supervisor.

The immediate objective

Result: To have agreed criteria for judging Bill’s performance as a supervisor.

Indicators of success

• We shall have produced at least six criteria.
  
  
• Each criterion will be specific enough for Bill and me to judge performance against it without hesitation and to reach the same conclusion.
  
  
• Each criterion will be concerned with the supervisory aspects of Bill’s job and not the technical aspects.
  
  
• Bill will have spontaneously suggested at least half the criteria himself.
  
  
• Bill remarks that the criteria have helped him to be clearer about what is involved in being a good supervisor.
  
  
• Bill volunteers the suggestion that we should meet to review his performance against the criteria quite soon.
  
  
• All to be achieved within one and a half hours.

The behaviour I want from Bill

The behaviours I don’t want from Bill

The behaviours I shall use to get what I want from Bill

The behaviours I shall avoid

This plan makes it as likely as possible that I shall employ behaviours that are appropriate in two vital ways:

1. to achieve the immediate objective and thus have taken a significant step towards achieving the overall aim
2. to shape Bill’s behaviour so that he is positive and helpful.

A plan can do nothing more. It is then up to me to implement it successfully by controlling my behaviour while keeping an eye on progress towards the indicators of success. In this way behaviour is eminently plannable. The existence of my plan does not mean, however, that I shall stick rigidly to it, come what may. I might have to modify it in the light of circumstances. Suppose, for example, Bill is very forthcoming and has lots of ideas on possible criteria. My plan assumed that I would have to work for these by actively seeking ideas. If in the event there were plenty of ideas, then my plan to seek them would become redundant. Neither objectives nor plans are an invitation to become inflexible. They need to be constantly revised, up or down, depending on actual circumstances rather than assumed circumstances.