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

by Marshall Goldsmith

The environment that I’m most concerned with is actually smaller, more particular than that. It’s situational, and it’s a hyperactive shape-shifter. Every time we enter a new situation, with its mutating who-what-when-where-and-why specifics, we are surrendering ourselves to a new environment—and putting our goals, our plans, our behavioral integrity at risk. It’s a simple dynamic: a changing environment changes us.

If we do not create and control our environment, our environment creates and controls us. And the result turns us into someone we do not recognize.

Radar speed displays—also called driver feedback systems—work because they harness a well-established concept in behavior theory called a feedback loop. The RSDs measure a driver’s action (that is, speeding) and relay the information to the driver in real time, inducing the driver to react. It’s a loop of action, information, reaction. When the reaction is measured, a new loop begins, and so on and so on. Given the immediate change in a driver’s behavior after just one glance at an RSD, it’s easy to imagine the immense utility of feedback loops in changing people’s behavior.

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

This is how feedback ultimately triggers desirable behavior. Once we deconstruct feedback into its four stages of evidence, relevance, consequence, and action, the world never looks the same again. Suddenly we understand that our good behavior is not random. It’s logical. It follows a pattern. It makes sense. It’s within our control. It’s something we can repeat.

What if we could control our environment so it triggered our most desired behavior—like an elegantly designed feedback loop? Instead of blocking us from our goals, this environment propels us. Instead of dulling us to our surroundings, it sharpens us. Instead of shutting down who we are, it opens us.

A behavioral trigger is any stimulus that impacts our behavior.

A behavioral trigger can be direct or indirect.

Direct triggers are stimuli that immediately and obviously impact behavior, with no intermediate steps between the triggering event and your response.

Indirect triggers take a more circuitous route before influencing behavior.

A trigger can be internal or external.

External triggers come from the environment, bombarding our five senses as well as our minds.

Internal triggers come from thoughts or feelings that are not connected wit...

A trigger can be conscious or unconscious.

Conscious triggers require awareness. You know why your finger recoils when you touch the hot plate.

Unconscious triggers shape your behavior beyond your awareness. For example, no matter how much people talk about the weather they’re usually oblivious abo...

A trigger can be anticipated or unexpected.

A trigger can be encouraging or discouraging.

Encouraging triggers push us to maintain or expand what we are doing. They are reinforcing.

Discouraging triggers push us to stop or reduce what we are doing.

A trigger can be productive or counterproductive.

This is the most important distinction. Productive triggers push us toward becoming the person we want to be. Counterproductive triggers pull us away.

Triggers are not inherently “good” or “bad.” What matters is o...

They express the timeless tension between what we want and what we need.

We want short-term gratification while we need long-term benefit.

We define what makes a trigger encouraging. One man’s treat is another man’s poison.

we define what makes a trigger productive.

encouraging triggers lead us toward what we want and productive triggers lead us toward what we need.

If only our encouraging triggers and productive triggers were the same.

Praise, recognition, admiration, and monetary rewards are common triggers here. They make us try harder right now and they also reinforce continuing behavior that drives us toward our goals. We want them now and need them later.

If you’ve ever binge-watched a season or two of a TV show on Netflix when you should be studying, or finishing an assignment, or going to sleep, you know how an appealing distraction can trigger a self-defeating choice.

You’ve sacrificed your goals for short-term gratification.

Rules (or any highly structured environment) are discouraging because they limit us; they exist to erase specific behaviors from our repertoire. But we need them because obeying rules makes us do the right thing. Rules push us in the right direction even when our first impulse is to go the other way.

Pick a behavioral goal you’re still pursuing.

List the people and situations that influence the quality of your performance.

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.

You might learn that you regularly miss your early morning workout because you waste your wake-up hours on Facebook or checking emails. You need the former, want the latter obviously. (You need to rethink whether morning is your optimal time to work out.)

In his engaging book, The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg applied this ABC template to breaking and forming habits. Instead of antecedent, behavior, and consequence, he used the terms cue, routine, and reward to describe the three-part sequence known as a habit loop.

I’d like to propose a modification to the sequence of antecedent, behavior, and consequence—by interrupting it with a sense of awareness and an infinitesimal stoppage of time. My modified sequence looks like this:

The more aware we are, the less likely any trigger, even in the most mundane circumstances, will prompt hasty unthinking behavior that leads to undesirable consequences.

Rather than operate on autopilot, we’ll slow down time to think it over and make a more considered choice.

As we go through life making plans to be a better friend, partner, worker, athlete, parent, son, or daughter, inside each of us are two separate personas. There’s the leader/planner/manager who plans to change his or her ways. And there’s the follower/doer/employee who must execute the plan.

We think they are the same because we unwittingly function as one or the other throughout our day. They are both part of who we are. But we are wrong.

As the leader, you assume the follower in you will obey each order precisely as you have articulated it. And that your follower self will not be presented with any reasons to fail during the day. (After all, who plans to fail?) You ignore the possibility that the worker in you will be upset by a customer or colleague, or called away to deal with an emergency, or fall behind because a meeting ran overtime. The day will go smoothly. Everything will fall into place. Not just this one day, but every day.

Whether you’re leading other people or leading the follower in you, the obstacles to achieving your goals are the same. You still have to deal with an environment that is more hostile than supportive. You still have to face other people who tempt you away from your objectives. You still have to factor in the high probability of low-probability events. And you still have to consider that as the day goes on and your energy level diminishes, your motivation and self-discipline will flag.

We are superior planners and inferior doers.

“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.”

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