PERSONAL SPECIAL....................... Here's why behavioural fitness is important in high-conflict office meetings

Here's why behavioural fitness is important in high-conflict office meetings

It's the end of a long day, and you're in a meeting you knew would be difficult. Anil doesn't like you very much, he likes your proposal even less, and he's trying to derail the meeting. And since you and Radhika are both vying for a promotion, she likely won't pass up this opportunity to poke holes in your ideas in front of the boss. It's another daily "moment of truth" in the modern workplace, one in which your behavior is as likely to determine your results as the quality of your proposals.
What happens in this meeting, and how well you perform, comes down to a concept I call — behavioral fitness. To be successful, you must excel at the job-specific aspects of your work. However, in a world of increasingly well-educated and well-trained business professionals, you aren't the only one around who can get the work done, and done well. What sets the most successful people apart is their ability to move their projects and ideas forward, and this is often more about the quality of their behaviors than that of their ideas and proposals.

Who's flying your plane? Back to your difficult end-of-day meeting. What will likely happen is that you will do what you tend to do by default. When I present the common workplace scenario above to executives or to MBA students, about half say their default is that when pushed hard by colleagues, they push back. The others say they usually take a more passive approach, by either giving in or retreating to plan their battle for another day. Ask yourself, what would your default reaction be in this scenario?

We all have automatic behaviors. These are deep-seated habits that, when triggered, get executed almost automatically with very little effort and self-control.
The problem

iis that when we are running on auto-pilot we are less flexible, and flexibility is one hallmark of people who are behaviorally fit. In high-conflict meetings there are times when you should actively fight back, and other times when you should not. The key is to read the situation and act appropriately. People who are behaviorally fit are more aware of their automatic behaviors, and thus better able to override and replace them with behaviors that are more productive in the moment at hand. Depending on the situation, they can choose whether to interrupt - or allow others to keep talking; they can hold firmly to their own ideas - or let them go and carefully consider the ideas of others; they can willfully move a conversation in a particular direction - or follow someone else's lead.
What's in your toolbox?

In addition to flexibility, people who are behaviorally fit focus their efforts on developing a broader array of tools to choose to use from when they find themselves in challenging workplace situations. They are people who take the time to observe and learn from others, particularly those who do things very differently. How is Kumar so persuasive, what tactics does he use? When Priya runs meetings, how is she able to keep people focused on the problem rather than on their personal agendas? What allows Anita to feel so comfortable delegating to her team? Becoming behaviorally fit is about seeing the more effective behaviors of colleagues not with envy, but with curiosity.

Can you make it happen?
Behavioral fitness is about building a broad array of essential tools, and developing the flexibility in the moment to choose the right ones. But you also have to be able to use each tool properly, and this requires practice. Think about the last management or leadership article that you read, or training workshop you completed. Perhaps it had a title like "Five Essentials for Running Winning Meetings" or "How Leaders Listen". Inspired by the article or workshop, you might have thought briefly about trying some new and improved behavior in your next meeting or conversation with a colleague. Did you do it, and if so did the change stick? Far too often we fail to make changes in our behaviors, even when we are motivated to do so. We know we should be better listeners, micro-manage less, and be more open to the ideas of others, but with ever-growing inboxes of email and the constant pressure to deliver results, behavior change doesn't happen. Behavioral fitness in the workplace is like physical fitness in the gym. You don't get aerobically fit by running the treadmill a few times, and you don't become a better listener by spending a few days listening more carefully in meetings. People who become behaviorally fit make time to fine-tune their behaviors, and they practice daily. Fitness requires commitment.

The good news is that behavioral science offers a range of techniques that make behavioral change more likely to happen and to stick. Create social pressure by telling colleagues you are working on being a better listener, and then make things fun by challenging them to choose one behavior and do the same. Set alarms on your mobile device so that whenever you enter a meeting, you are reminded of your plan to regulate your emotions by taking a few deep breaths every time you feel yourself becoming frustrated. Motivate yourself to stop micromanaging by earning rewards: track every situation in which you feel the urge to tell others what to do, and reward yourself with a dinner at your favorite restaurant if you are able to "let go" at least 50% of the time.

Professionals who are behaviorally fit are the people who are able to make things happen. They succeed where others who equally smart and experienced cannot. So work to become more behaviorally flexible in the moment, build your behavioral toolbox, and practice better behaviors in every workday.

By Lee Newman ETCD19 Dec, 2014