Triggers: Creating Behavior That Lasts--Becoming the Person You Want to Be

by Marshall Goldsmith

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

We don’t know how to execute a change. There’s a difference between motivation and understanding and ability.

he claimed to value the opinions of his co-workers and family members. Yet whenever I brought up an area for improvement, Harry would explain point by point how his questionable behavior was actually justified. He’d remind me that he majored in psychology in college and then analyze the behavioral problems of everyone around him, concluding that they needed to change. In a mind-bending display of chutzpah, he asked me for suggestions in helping these people get better.

Some people say they want to change, but they don’t really mean it.

An excuse explains why we fell short of expectations after the fact. Our inner beliefs trigger failure before it happens.

belief triggers.

Good list

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

Now it’s your turn. Try this modest exercise. Pick a behavioral goal you’re still pursuing. We all have a few, from getting in shape to being a more patient parent to being more assertive around pushy people. List the people and situations that influence the quality of your performance. Don’t list all the triggers in your day; that’s overkill given the hundreds, perhaps thousands of sensory and cerebral stimuli we encounter. Stick to the trigger or two that relate to one specific goal. Then define it. Is it encouraging or discouraging, productive or counterproductive? Then chart the triggers to see if you’re on the right side. If you’re falling short of your goal, this simple exercise will tell you why. You’re getting too much of what you want, not enough of what you need.

We make plans that are wholly contradicted by our previous actions. The planner who intends to make a deadline is also the myopic doer who forgets that he has never made a deadline in his life. The planner believes this time will be different. The doer extends the streak of missed deadlines.

The exception was Rennie, who, I later learned, raised his hand and then wrote “No interruptions, no judgment” on an index card that he discreetly tucked under his water glass within his line of vision.

Forecasting is what we must do after acknowledging the environment’s power over us. It comprises three interconnected stages: anticipation, avoidance, and adjustment.

“the triumph of hope over experience.”

“Half the leaders I have met don’t need to learn what to do. They need to learn what to stop.”

father. I knew Stan to be a classic “people person,” an expert at reading the temperature in any room. Yet here with his family, triggered by the environment of his home, he was behaving against his best interests—and unaware of it.

If you know people who flit from one faddish diet to the next—and never lose weight—you know the type. That’s chasing, not creating.

“What in my life is worth keeping?” The answer can save us a lot of time and energy.

“sacrificing the future on the altar of today.”

When the consequence is extreme distress, we binge on elimination. The real test is sacrificing something we enjoy doing—say,

our natural impulse is to think wishfully (that is, favor the optimal, discount the negative) rather than realistically.

Asking people, “What do we need to eliminate?” fosters agreement more swiftly than asking, “What’s wrong?” or “What don’t you like about your colleagues?” One form requires people to imagine a positive course of action (even when it involves elimination). The other triggers whining and complaining.

“Do you have clear goals?” is an example of a passive question. It’s passive because it can cause people to think of what is being done to them rather than what they are doing for themselves.

There’s a difference between “Do you have clear goals?” and “Did you do your best to set clear goals for yourself?”

We reveal our preference for self-discipline or self-control in the way we phrase our Daily Questions. It’s one thing to ask ourselves, “Did I do my best to limit my sugar consumption?” and another to ask, “Did I do my best to say no to sweets?”

Am I willing, at this time, to make the investment required to make a positive difference on this topic?

It’s Always an Empty Boat

We behave one way when we believe that there is another person at the helm. We can blame that stupid, uncaring person for our misfortune. This blaming permits us to get angry, act out, assign blame, and play the victim. We behave more calmly when we learn that it’s an empty boat.

“Our mission in life should be to make a positive difference, not to prove how smart or right we are.”

“false positives”—making statements to upgrade ourselves, often at the expense of others—and

We’re trying to prove how smart we are to an empty boat!

When our facts collide with other people’s beliefs.

Confirmation bias—our tendency to favor information that confirms our opinions, whether it’s true or not—is an established psychological concept. It afflicts how we gather information (selectively), interpret it (prejudicially), and recall it (unreliably).

“Every decision in the world is made by the person who has the power to make the decision. Make peace with that.”

When we regret our own decisions—and do nothing about it—we are no better than a whining employee complaining about his superiors. We are yelling at an empty boat, except it’s our boat.

“My name is Alan Mulally and I’m the CEO of Ford Motor Company.” Then he’d review the company’s plan, status, forecast, and areas that needed special attention, using a green-yellow-red scoring system for good-concerned-poor. He asked his top sixteen executives to do the same, using the same introductory language and color scheme.

That’s one of structure’s major contributions to any change process. It limits our options so that we’re not thrown off course by externalities. If we’re only allowed five minutes to speak, we find a way to make our case with a newfound concision—and it’s usually a better speech because of the structural limitations

He’d never really developed his managerial muscles—paying attention to direct reports, mentoring them, following up on decisions and providing feedback, fine-tuning strategy as the business climate changed.

“If you were your own coach, what would you suggest for yourself?” The ideas he heard amazed him, largely because they were often better than his suggestions.

How can I help? This is the most welcome phrase in any leader’s repertoire.

Here’s my radical suggestion. From now on, pretend that you are going to be tested at every meeting!

“I expected it would be like a marathon. I’d pace myself, starting out strong and barely standing at the finish line. That’s when the hourly questioning would save me—when I was really frustrated and hating the situation. That’s not what happened. After three or four hours, I got stronger, not weaker. The phone would vibrate, I’d review my behavior, congratulate myself for doing well, and get on with it. By the end of the day, when I expected to be at my most curmudgeonly, I was on cruise control. It was a great day.”

Commitment. Successful people aren’t wishy-washy about a course of action. Choosing Hourly Questions as a structure and articulating the specific questions is a commitment device—certainly better than hoping things will work out. It’s the difference between considering a goal and writing it down.

Here’s an irony: I don’t rely on Hourly Questions for dreaded events and annoying people. Quite the opposite. My challenge is dealing with events I’m really looking forward to and people I really enjoy.

in the interpersonal realm—we’re talking about how a husband treats his wife, or a son deals with an aging parent, or a trusted friend responds when people are counting on him—good enough is setting the bar too low.

(like being half pregnant, there’s no such thing as semi-integrity).

We are professionals at what we do, amateurs at what we want to become. We need to erase this devious distinction—or at least close the gap between professional and amateur—to become the person we want to be. Being good over here does not excuse being not so good over there.

A customer expects daily updates on a project but when there’s nothing new to report, we skip a day or two. Without telling the other party, we unilaterally rewrite the tacit agreement between us to touch base every day, no matter what. We opt for good enough—and needlessly confuse our customer.

When we engage in noncompliance, we’re not just being sloppy and lazy. It’s more aggressive and rude than that. We’re thumbing our noses at the world, announcing, “The rules don’t apply to us. Don’t rely on us. We don’t care.”

“I wouldn’t go eighty percent of the way,” Nadeem said. “I’d go a hundred percent. I learned that if I change my behavior, I change the people around me. If I’d gone all in, we’d be friends even sooner.”

When her mother made a judgmental remark Amy let it hang in the air like a noxious cloud, waiting for it to vaporize from neglect. With her daughter unwilling to counterpunch, Mom soon stopped punching. And vice versa.