Whole Care Network → 07 Podcast: Increase Profits by Redirecting Negative Behavior

[Music] are you suffering from staff turnover too many lost business opportunities is your reputation at risk if so you know your workplace culture needs Improvement but determining how to do so and where to start is about as fun and effective as trying to assemble a puzzle with no picture to guide you culture change in a box is a show that takes you on a compelling Deep dive into an effective real-time culture change process so you can begin to feel hopeful and re-energized about your business and now here are your hosts for culture change in a box Chris mclen and Judy Ryan well greetings everyone it is Chris mclen the bow tie guy for another episode of culture change in a box and I’m here with my good friend Judy Ryan from Life work systems Judy it’s great to see you it’s great to see you too now we’re not going to let the Thunder bothering us today from the outside I’m going to predict it’s not going to happen it’s not going to happen but we’re going to have a thunderous yes conversation conversation today about a topic that I know you’re very passionate about redirecting negative behavior I know we’ve we’ve touched on this topic previously in some of our podcast but I think we’re going to we’re going to dive a little bit deeper yes we have some really nice comments from actual people that are using this out in the workforce so redirecting negative behavior is one of our most popular classes for a reason because I think just about everybody’s dealing with somebody that’s causing them some grief so very much so but not not us cently not us currently we’re we’re on we’re all on the same page most time sometimes once in a while once except when I’m trying to set up the technology so but you know you go into organizations on a regular basis and you create conditions that help people deal help help managers help owners you yes yes help them to have ability to cope when there’s difficult because all misbehavior is actually coming from discouragement all let me say that all misbehavior is coming from discouragement can you talk a little bit about that even though some people don’t look discouraged when they’re misbehaving they just look mean or arrogant or ignorant or uncaring um it really all comes from the same place of some State of Mind where a core need is not being met so absolutely that’s the uh stance we help people to take is if you approach it as if this person is discouraged it will change the way that you’re going to interact with negative behavior do you think um this is just kind of off the top of my head after listening to your your great explanation or do you do you think people recognize internally that they’re not being encouraged No in fact I don’t myself even every once in a while I’ll catch myself in a mistaken goal kind of a little bit like just a second ago I did it oh my gosh you know and I didn’t realize I was discouraged and often if I recognize that I’m misbehaving and I especially if somebody calls me on it I recognize it then I can usually Trace back where was I discouraged what happened I remember one time I just became aware I was in a mistake Sten goal and I thought oh I remember exactly where I got discouraged this morning at a meeting and this then this happened and but I wasn’t consciously aware that it had affected me goodness so can you talk a little bit more about those people who challenge us with their poor Behavior yes and I think what’s really tricky is sometimes when we’re teaching this in a workplace people are surprised to find out the various faces of misbehavior so the more obvious face of misbehavior is active destructive that’s when somebody’s doing something and it’s very evident that they’re actually causing harm or dis uh discouragement to another person or property active destructive active destructive and we all know a little bit more easily how to recognize passive destructive right that came right to my mind when you when you when you mentioned that because that’s that person who’s slacking off and isn’t doing their work and it’s very obvious that it’s destructive or wasteful in some way but the ones that are harder to identify are the active constructive and the passive constructive so these are things like somebody that maybe is running themselves ragged at work they look like the hardest worker on the team but they’re not quite delivering good customer service or taking care of themselves everyone else is trying to support them and um often enabling them but they sure look good like they’re really trying right but they’re not managing something well and it’s actually causing a lot of problems and it’s causing this person to underperform for example or a more active constructive misbehavior would be somebody that finds a way to ingratiate themselves in a meeting where it looks like they did all the work but they’re really undercutting other people while they’re doing that so they look like the good guy when in reality wearing the white hat yes so so those are things that people when they’re first learning them they don’t always recognize the importance of them till later we can say oh did you notice how that behavior was passive constructive and they’re like oh I can see it now but they wouldn’t have recognized it otherwise very much so so I know you’ve talked before maybe about forms of misbehavior yes so those those actually are the forms but I want to talk to you a little bit about the goals of misbehavior so the goals of misbehavior are well first of all there’s five of them and they evoke five very distinctively different kinds of feelings in us and that’s kind of the the difficulty about redirect is that some people really don’t even know what they’re feeling so that’s a difficulty for them because how you feel helps you identify the misbehavior pattern that another person’s in so it’s a little bit like going to the eye doctor you know how the eye doctor says is this lens better or is it this lens great analogy very very subtle differences so for example a lot of women they may be provoked to anger but because it’s not sugar and spice to be angry they’ll say well I’m annoyed but they’re saying they’re annoyed with steam coming out of their right mhm and the same with uh maybe a man who feels hurt and it’s not as conditionally acceptable for a man to say that really hurt so if you so first you have to be able to be honest with yourself about what is the emotion that is occurring right now because it is a diagnostic tool to determine whether a person’s in a goal of attention power Revenge inadequacy or significance and so the importance of knowing those is the same as if you went to a doctor with a sore throat and he says well I’m just going to give you some antibiotics well that’ be fine if you have strep throat but if you had just been to the Cardinal game or you had an allergy or you had a fishbone stuck in your throat or something different than an infection it would actually be harmful for him to give you that so understanding the goals behind misbehavior how in a sense how kind of crazy they are true so for example almost everybody can and recognize this goal that I’m going to share with you it’s called the goal of significance and it’s the kind of person that when they walk in the room the thoughts you’re thinking are who died made you God right so you’re you just feel might have done that once or twice yeah and and they they have you start having a feeling of inadequacy or feeling like somebody’s squashing you or something like like that kind of feeling of well gosh who does he think he is you know and when that feeling is going on that mistaken goal does not look very discouraged but it is a mistaken goal where the person in that goal actually believes they’re not enough mhm so they use their misbehavior in a puffing up activity as opposed to another goal where they shrink down so do you mind if we go ahead and go forward okay so we have a person from one of our client sites who actually shared a story she’s a coding and compliance manager and was having an exchange with with a physician who was in the goal of significance and this is what she has to say let’s take a listen I was having a difficult time getting through to one of the Physicians that I work with closely um I had to present some pretty difficult information to him and he I had later found out was in the goal of significance and he wanted to power over me and use this very puffed up image that he was a physician and he knew better even though what he was talking about maybe wasn’t necessarily related to what I was trying to get across to him about his coding and so I was able to work with him and use the redirect tool on him so that he could gain a better understanding of where I was coming from and now he’s a team player he sees that I’m on his side and I’m just trying to help him and help improve um his overall documentation and coding strategy so all in all it worked it was great it was nice to practice first before I went in cuz it was a little nerve-wracking trying to talk to a physician about something so delicate but once he saw that we were on the same team and we all had the same goal uh is a much different story the way I would have handled it previously um without knowing what redirect even is is I would have gone in and told him this is how it is and tried to Puff myself up and make myself seem like no I know what I’m talking about and I would have walked away and we wouldn’t have come to any sort of agreement or solution we would have left it as that we were both right in what we said and nothing would have gotten better but previously in my meeting with him before redirect or before Life Works in general I always walked away so upset and so discouraged in every meeting and now he really relies on me to give him the best feedback that I can he sees me as a trusted team member we have a great relationship now boy what a great example yeah yeah I love that one and it’s so common for us sometimes when somebody has that title and they in this goal it’s even more complicated in our minds anyway yeah the the thought that was coming to my mind as I was listening uh to that wonderful example was the struggles that some people have dealing with authority yes and and how some of that can can be easily worked out just when some great communication tools well that was a great example because in some senses he was an authority to her he was her customer he had this you know steam of being a physician but regardless if he had been in an encouraged State he wouldn’t handling things the way he was so the fact that she could come at it from a completely different angle which was counterintuitive to her it’s it’s sort of like that thing we do when a dog comes racing up to us if we if we aren’t trained properly we’re going to run but if we’re trained properly we’re going to stop and calm our body right that’s another great example yeah so redir is a little bit like that where your first instinct you want to kind of stop before you enter it you know I and I guess as I’m thinking out loud here I but bet some of these tools probably all of these tools are essential for home life as well they definitely are um we do actually have a division for education and family and when we teach these programs especially redirect when we teach it in corporate settings people are always saying to us this is helping me at home with my 2-year-old or my 17-year-old and when we’re teaching it in parenting programs or education programs people are saying this is really helping me with my co-workers or my nextdoor neighbor or my priest or whoever so there are lots of ways to apply pretty much everything we teach because it’s human system human systems so we do have some more CS of a couple different people talking about that yeah this has changed my home life a lot I love that the model Works in every instance where there’s a team or a mentor or a teaching relationship so if I’m a coach I’m a manager at work I’m a parent at home and it’s it it’s been incredible especially for my kids I already knew a little bit about the philosophy before Life Works came on board at work and it was astonishing because I thought oh my gosh I know how well this worked with my kids even the little bits that I can do with it so to have a clear model and some checklists and some coaching has improved my entire life everything we’ve got another one I’ve seen great strides in my personal life uh with my children it’s been an area of uh frustration uh one child is just turned five another um is just turned three and I’ve seen uh a lot of these skills uh really positively helping um our children communicate and verbalize especially at an early age life workk skills and tools has helped me realize that I was lacking in certain areas of communication uh these communication skills I believe should be incorporated in early childhood development and it’s really uh something that our culture in America as well as globally should incorporate God I just love that Judy goodness that is that is just terrific we’ve got one more too it’s funny it does make my life better at work and at home I don’t think you can have an improvement at home that doesn’t affect your job or an improvement on the job that doesn’t affect your home life um I’ve shared a lot of my learning with my husband and he has uh now often referred Back to Life Works and he will ask me sometimes if I’m in the goal of or uh he’ll say you’re using that life works on me now aren’t you and it’s kind of it’s it’s kind of nice but it’s um it’s definitely improved my life at work because I feel so much better about approaching a coworker about something that I would have I would have let continue to bug me and now you discover that those little things you can go ahead and say something and it’s okay well there’s there’s so much material here from the these three wonderful examples but I think the the last Lady really she really hit home when her husband redirected yes when she says are you doing the goal love are you are you are you I think that’s a that that is just terrific CU it demonstrates it’s a real life demonstration how this actually works yes and it is something that uh people do share with one another and they can have a Common Language and tools outside of the workplace as well as in when when he says that to her are you in the goal of what he’s referring to are those five mistaken goals and one of the things to just kind of give you a little example of what some of the terms are in redirect I’m going to just give you a story about one of the mistaken goals because there’s a guy that’s going to talk a little bit about that story and how that affected him okay um one of the mistaken goals is called the goal of attention and it’s the goal in which you probably experience people where you’re on the phone or you’re doing something and you can feel their energy just hovering and you just feel like there’s a fly that you want to swat right because don’t you see I’m busy go away you know and you just feel annoyed it’s not a terrible feeling but it’s kind of a mild feeling right well there was a mom one time when I was a young mom my I had four children at that point she had three so here we had seven kids under seven alog together and one of them little Robert kept coming up to her and he’d say mommy I’m hungry can I have something to eat and she’d go Robert you know we’re going to eat lunch later go go play and all right and he would walk away and then he’d come back and he’d want something else and this went on and on and she kept stopping to to talk to him and she finally got really frustrated and said I’m probably going to have to go he always does this he always drives me crazy I really don’t know what else to do with him I’ve tried bribing him I’ve tried spanking him I’ve done all these things and I just can’t seem to stop this behavior and I said well you know I’m teaching these classes do you mind if I give you an idea and she said absolutely and so I said when Robert comes up the next time I want you to relax your body I want you to think the thoughts as sincerely as you can I know you’re there and I love you and I’m I’m so glad you’re here with me I want you to think that thought and as he comes over close to you I just want you to put your arm gently on his shoulder but I don’t want you to look at him and I don’t want you to say anything to him and see what happens and so sure enough he comes up and he he wants something and she doesn’t say anything and um and I also told her if he gets louder Just continue but make sure your thinking is I know you’re there and I love you and just keep your body as relaxed as you can so sure enough he comes up and he starts to do his thing and then he kind of looks at her when she doesn’t give him the usual Behavior which is looking at him and saying something to him which we call the sugar it’d be like giving somebody an Indulgence right like give me a cookie okay here you go you know so she’s not giving him the sugar so he kind of wandered off like what just happened I said now he’s going to probably come back cuz this is a regular pattern and he’s going to up the antie what we call up the anti you’re breaking through a limiting belief that he’s operating right now that he has to have attention to be happy and so when he comes up he’s going to get worse and sure enough he comes up and he’s like pulling on her arm and he’s trying to get in her face and eventually he CES down and she’s just kind of cradling him in her arms as she’s continuing the conversation with me and then he went away and he didn’t come back he just played with the other kids and after a while she hears them laughing and she goes how did how did you know that would work so that’s what it means to be in the goal of is understanding what particular form of misbehavior is happening so that you can be effective in the way that you would manage it so we do have a little clip on a a father who um just appreciated this example of the attention goal well let’s let’s let’s uh let’s play it Okie do I think the training sessions I enjoyed the uh the little video clips I remember the one about the little boy coming up and interrupting the mom constantly and I think a lot of people don’t know what to do about that situation and it is true don’t give them the Sugar by stopping and letting them interrupt just tossle their hair grab them hug them you know put them in a bear hug or whatever while you continue to talk to the adult and to me that was just one of the most perfect examples I’ve ever seen of that’s the way you do it I think I’d inadvertently done that but this was a great framework and a great way to relay this to a lot of younger people with kids and I think the other thing is you you have to do it with employees too because sometimes you you can be on the phone or doing a job and somebody wants to just constantly interrupt you you can’t give them their sugar meaning the thing that will make them go this is how I get my attention so I thought that was really good oh goodness I’m never going to look at sugar the same that is that is fascinating yeah so he um he also mentions that uh you know you got to learn how to do this with the co-workers too because it’s not just children that misbehave this way very much so yeah redirect is a very powerful tool it does take a little getting used to it and so we recommend that people do specialized practice sessions on them we have in our client sites we have our every single person in the organization gets mentored and in the mentoring process there’s not generally time to do the practice of redirect sometimes there can be but we know people really love it it is a big game Cher for people so we recommend that they partner up with someone we have the um information on a phone app for them so that they can really become so that it becomes second nature to call they can just look right look at it right on the app yeah they can look at it on the app and then eventually they don’t even need that that’s when you’re really using it’s engrained you can almost do it but I I just I’ve got to go back to the sugar comment because it just makes it makes so much sense because it’s you know it’s easier to give something to somebody to make something go away yes but it really never goes away it just keeps coming back and it just gets bigger and bigger and bigger until the issue is dealt with directly yeah and even when we deal with it directly like if I were to have a gun and pointed at you and I said no if you cross your legs I’m going to shoot you and you thought I would it would work right so sometimes we deal with misbehavior directly but we’re using methods that have terrible side effects to them so you want to you know people need to know rewarding and bribing and punishing all quote unquote work but it what cost so in the in the redirecting negative behavior the thing we’re teaching people is that if somebody’s Miss behaving they’re operating out of a limiting fearful belief and if you give them the sugar it’s as if you’re feeding that belief feeding yeah and and it it not only Fe feeds it in the other person it feeds that same belief in yourself so when you break the cycle of a misbehaving goal you’re breaking it within yourself as well does that make sense it does very much so goodness so we’ve got a couple more examples okay you ready mhm so the the biggest challenge that I had so far is really picking the right tool for the need for the relationship whatever is happening cuz there’s so many tools that we learn and I I’m very analytical so I I read into the tools way too much so I usually find someone who um maybe someone who’s more of a a social person to kind of really pick those and kind of discuss it so just picking the right tool for the job I’ve overcome that and really the tool that I use the most out of everything is the redirecting negative behavior because I really it’s a self check of where I’m at um until I can figure out where I’m at I really can’t help better that relationship is what I found so I had a really challenging relationship through the first year and a half that I worked here um it happened to be one of my peers that I worked with so that was it was just very challenging just day-to-day operations and stuff were challenging so we we have mentoring sessions and we get to rate where our relationships are without saying names without um saying specifics and I really after quite a few of those I’m kind of talking about it I really took time to reflect and drill down into the relationship and I used the redirecting negative behavior tool that we learned and I really learned that myself I was had quite a bit of negative behavior with it so I learned how to change my mindset I learned how to see value in the um person what they brought to the team and really um they were really capable and I just had to empower them I had to give them a little responsibility and ask for a plan of action and for their help and once I did that it really changed the relationship goodness I want to I I got to interject something here because he said something very important when he said the word Empower yes because sometimes we need that in we need the internal permission to empower not only ourselves but the other person that that we’re dealing with and especially in that mistaken goal he had to have been describing somebody in an inadequacy goal but what I also heard was the humility that he had that came through so vividly he could see he needed to redirect himself first right and also the thing about the story is he said that he was in a problem with this person for the first year that he had known this person so that’s a lot of stress and strain and to have that off your back to have that off and just think about going to work for an entire year with a negative impression about some a coworker a situation what does that what does that do to your own wellbeing yeah I believe that a lot of those relationship issues cumulate and then people do yeah they become less engaged even if they’re physically present they’re just not as is in plugged into their jobs because they’ve got that weight of the negative behaviors so we got a couple of more we want to we want to we want to play and uh then I’ve got a a final a final question I think the most challenging for me was redirect because I feel like I’m not someone who really likes to have confrontation with people are to really tell them what I’m truly thinking being open and honest with someone and trying to get them to better understand and and better meet a result that you would like it is difficult for me it’s not my initial jerk reaction to different situations so trying to reprogram my brain to take a step back and really understand what I’m feeling before I react is is something that was very very difficult for me but through practice and consistent practice and training sessions and real life scenarios it’s just become almost second nature and let we’ve got one we’ve got one final one mhm my best life work systems aha was when I guess it was in redirecting negative behavior um when someone’s in the goal of um is it significance or ower like I always take things so personally and when we were going through that session I really realized that it’s not about me and it’s not directed toward me and so I’m able to help people who are in those mistaken goals to um redirect their behavior and we can actually have an effective communication this is just just off the charts goodness yeah I I love what she said about how easy it is to take things personally when somebody’s misbehaving there are two of the mistaken goals in particular that I think are very easy to take personally and one is the Revenge goal and revenge goal does not mean it’s somebody out to get you per se Revenge goal is actually somebody that’s deeply in shame over pain that they’re going through and so they’re prickly so the things they do feel like attacks and it’s very easy to feel shocked by them and hurt by them like if somebody was zinging you with a little cow prod or something right so the just the understanding that it’s not about you and really getting that is so helpful to people because it wastes so much energy defending ourselves the other one is the goal of significance where that person just feels like they got a thumb on your head holding you down and it’s it’s difficult not to remember this isn’t about me this other person’s in a bad place right now so we just got a couple of minutes left in our in our show today so I don’t know if we could have this in just two minutes but why is it important for people to learn to redirect I think that until until we find harmless ways to help people to become good citizens we will continue to end up with war we’ll continue to end up with all kinds of division I’m right you’re wrong you’re wrong I’m right you know that kind of um battling going on where we aren’t treating ourselves and each other in ways that actually bring the best out in each other so redirect is a harmless and a productive way to turn negative behavior around so that it actually becomes in service to good rather than just pushed underground Judy it’s a it’s great to do these shows with you I’m learning a lot about my behavior as we go through this and uh I hope our listeners are too yeah me too so how can uh how can people find you you can come to our website wwwi lifework systems.com or you can call us at 314 239 4727 if you are interested in a redirecting negative behavior program you can go to getmy tring specials.com get mytraining specials.com I tell you you’ve got it going on thanks Chris oh goodness okay that uh that does it for this episode of culture change in the boxing I’m Chris Mell and the bo High guy I am creating a life to Love by being with awesome people like Judy Ryan culture change in a box is part of the wholecare network check us out online at Hare network.com we’ll see you for another episode real soon

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