Career Coach: Bridging the Knowing-Doing Gap

If you're like most human beings, you're probably aware of something you should be doing to improve your career or another area of your life…but you aren’t doing it. You’re smart. Insightful. Capable. Ambitious. Yet you are failing to do something you know to do—something you even say you want to do. What’s going on here?

It’s called the “knowing-doing” gap, and many people struggle with it. Why? Because there is a big difference between knowing and accepting something intellectually and knowing and accepting the same thing on an emotional level. Knowledge and logic do not move us into action—emotion does (ever notice the “motion” in “emotion”?). I bet if you think about it, you can identify at least one area of your life - career, relationships, health, etc. - that you know you should improve, but haven't.

To illustrate my point, let’s imagine that you need to work on completing your weekly reports on time. To help close the “knowing-doing” gap, you might try putting the following six-point plan into motion.

1. Identify the why. Locate the reason why you don’t want to do what you know you should be doing. (“I hate details and drudgery, and writing reports are both.”)

2. Drop the self-judgment. Don’t blow your shortcoming out of proportion. Berating yourself and being overly critical will only widen the gap you want to close. ("This isn't such a big deal. I must be good at what I do overall, or I would be on a performance improvement plan.")

3. Find a motivation. Clarify how you would benefit from your new change and behavior. (“If I got my reports on time consistently, my annual performance reviews would be higher.")

4. Set a measurable goal. Commit to a plan of action. Many people don’t close the “knowing-doing” gap simply because they never make a firm decision regarding how to go about it. ("My report is due on Monday, so I should plan to have a rough draft completed by Wednesday of the previous week.")

5. Accept help. Be accountable to someone. I know of a very successful entrepreneur who uses a personal trainer simply because he struggles with finding the discipline to complete his workouts otherwise. (Tell a colleague, "I'd like to work on getting my weekly reports done on time. Can we check in each Wednesday to make sure I'm on the right track?")

6. Reward yourself. Find a way to celebrate! Don’t tell yourself that you should have been doing “it” long ago—focus on the fact that you are doing “it” now. ("That's three reports in a row I've completed on time. I'm planning a weekend getaway!")

Now that you have a six-step plan to bridge the “knowing-doing” gap, apply it to your own area that needs improvement. Each of these steps is important, so if you skip one and don’t see the results you want, come back and try using all six. Before you know it, there won’t be a gap between what you know and what you do at all.

—Alan Allard, Career Coach