How to Change Bad Norms or Behaviors of your Team?

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How to Change Bad Norms or Behaviors of your Team?

I read an interesting article about changing bad norms or behavior. Suppose you're appointed as a new manager of a team that isn’t working hard enough or that is otherwise behaving in an objectionable, reprehensible way. Grenny (2017) provides some suggestions and/or steps to change bad behaviors/norms of your team effectively and with minimal resistance:

1. FEEDBACK: First you should obtain feedback from a number of key figures in the organization to ensure that your concerns about the bad norms in your department are truly valid and do conflict with the organization’s policies. Your concerns should not be just a matter of your own subjective personal view on appropriate norms and values.
2. ESTABLISH SUPPORT: Then you should investigate to what extent the bad norms are accepted throughout the team/organization. If, for example, people above you are supporting the bad behaviors, it will be difficult to change the behaviors. In that case it is necessary to first create active consent or even common cause among your boss and peers. Only with an adequate degree of support it is possible to take further steps.
3. PUBLIC DIALOGUE: The third step is starting the conversation about the problems openly and publicly. Acknowledge your own vulnerability to negative norms while at the same time maintaining your ethical stand. Provide room for feedback and try to balance referring to those above and besides you, and making your own argument.
4. FUTURE: Emphasize the fact that the past is the past and the future has to be the main focus.
5. CONSENT VERSUS DISAGREEMENT: Of course, there will be people who comply with your arguments and principles, and people who don’t. Praise those who comply. But the probability that you will be tested — and the principles that were set could be violated — is high. As Grenny points out correctly: Human beings are social learners… They discern social norms mostly by watching what happens to others when they conform to or violate them. In those cases, confront the violator and impose fair sanctions calmly and decisively. Always emphsize that those sanctions aren’t personal, but rather about the principles that have been set.
6. COMMUNICATE THE NEW PRINCIPLES: the last step is communicating the new norms and expected behavior. Involve your associates, because changing the norms will occur at the pace with which the associates will start to tell others about the new norms.

In my opinion, above steps can be a useful guide towards changing bad behaviors or norms without causing conflicts within your team and with yourself.

⇒ What do you think about aforementioned suggestions to bring about such changes?

Source: Grenny, J. (2017) “What to Do when you Inherit a Team that isn’t Working Hard Enough?” HBR June

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		14 Bernhard Keim Business Consultant, Germany
	Changing Bad Norms Requires Guidance, Leadership and Respect Talking about proper behaviour is talking about MUTUAL RESPECT. The less you respect others, the less you will be respected by them. Schopenhauer once said: Good manners are like cushions absorbing the hard blows of life. Bad norms demonstrate a lack of respect. There might be good reasons for such behaviour (erratic boss), but these are very rare. The problem with every norm is, that it is "the normal". People tend to assimilate to such norms and here it does not make a huge difference whether these norms are seen as good or bad. Therefore: changing norms is challenging. But you can't expect what you don't respect. If you want it, live it.

		4 Kunal A Bhat Consultant, India
	Interest & Engagement I have been there. Practically, what worked for me was some introspection: 1. GOAL - What was my goal - to change behaviors or to improve productivity? Here, I prioritized productivity. 2. APPROACH & OBJECTIVE: how could I influence them to become more productive? I know by experience that people become more cooperative when they see positive personal results. Thus, I resorted to sharing positives regularly at the team level. This included rewarding someone through other members' consent. 3. VISION AND ENGAGEMENT: Set a vision and get them engaged: with a better and more positive environment (than before), I shared my project's vision and engaged them in improving it. Though it took a while to get things on track, we managed to get the desired results.

		2 Paramathmuni srinivas Kumar India
	Address the Heart of Issue First To me any change initiative requires first to ADDRESS THE HEART OF THE ISSUE (read Values). If there's a conflict then it hinders change. For example at human development institutions, if colleagues are encouraging manipulation of data in one form or other, this would give rise to conflict. 2. Having the right value set in place, a debate or churn with regard to pros and cons may be the second stage. 3. To facilitate the implementation of values availability of right tools.. 4. Finding a solution which satisfies all boundary condition.. 5. Iterating on the solution to improve on the solution may be fifth stage. 6. Addressing the Power structure which hinders implementation of change.. 7. Restoration of character of change to entire organization.. 8. Employing the tactics to implement change may be 8th step. 9. Garnering the Will of self and management.. 10. Having policies, procedures, practices in place is the tenth.

		4 Gary Wong Consultant, Canada
	Apply a Sense-Making Approach to Change System Behavior You can try conventional practices such as interviewing, setting goals and standards. Post principles on the wall. Add in reward and punishment measures. All are based on the idealistic paradigm of changing individual behaviour. Or you can do something different - don’t change the person but CHANGE THE RELATIONSHIPS AND INTERACTIONS BETWEEN INDIVIDUALS. This paradigm recognizes organizations are complex adaptive systems with diversity, emergence, feedback loops, self-organization properties. The Sense-making Approach involves gathering stories to understand what’s happening. From the data discover the emerging behaviour patterns which provide hidden order to the system. To perturb the system, change a system constraint (e.g., procedure, rule, policy) and collect more stories to monitor how relationships and interactions respond. If desired behaviour emerges, accelerate the system constraint change. If unintentional negative consequences arise, dampen or abandon the constraint change. A team or organization is dispositional, not predictable. That is, it has a tendency to head in a certain direction but can be influenced to go another way. Our aim is to “nudge” it towards a desired direction.

		6 John Henry Project Manager, United States
	What to Do if Cultural Norms Conflict with Greatness @Bernhard Keim: Yes Bernard, I think you were spot on with the norms and respect issues. When we have encouraged bad behavior and an attitude of entitlement in our team. When we all have no consequenc...

		2 Dr.Abu-Gieseisa Consultant, Sudan
	Analyze the Past to Change for the Future We have to collect learned hard lessons when we found ourselves following bad habits. That's why our team needs to analyze the past performance of the team first if we want to avoid they keep behavin...

		2 Raza Usmani ICT Consultant, Pakistan
	Trainings and Demonstrations of Cultural Values to Educate in Proper Behavior Leadership also includes TRAININGS and development of employees through demonstration of ethical and cultural values. To correct someone for their bad behavior the HR must demonstrate the true profess...

		2 Arif ur Rehman Professor, Pakistan
	Treat your Employees with Respect to Get Rid of Behavioral Issues Whatever be the professional, corporate and social needs, an individual's behavior is reflected through the norms that are clearly visible in a particular cultural setting. We may talk of ethical and ...

		2 Ivan Kohlinsky Management Consultant, Guernsey
	Assess your Team First Before you Accept Management Responsibility It might be your own fault… When you are asked to take over a team, BEFORE YOU DECIDE you should surely have some insight into its members and their abilities, motivations instead of just saying YES m...

		1 Vincent Miholic Manager, United States
	What Got Us Here in the First Place? Amen on "Live it" and paraphrased, "I knew what?... Before I took this job?" What got us to norms and behaviors? That's usually an easy question to answer: Gallup purports 70% are poor managers (whic...

		5 Jeff Washburn Strategy Consultant, United States
	Gold Brick Dirty Brick Approach to Change Bad Behavior A manager cannot tell in advance what effect any particular action will have. In fact, "good" behavior may not produce desirable results, but they'll look "good." One application of Coue's Law is wha...

		1 Salieu Bojang Student (University), United States
	Map-out a Process Flow to Change Wrong Behavior Since "how" is representative of a process, then it's correct to say Grenny's 6 Step approach makes sense as it follows a normal problem identification & solution process. Most interlocutors above als...

		3 Doaa Saayed Professor, Lebanon
	Explain the Aim and Add an Element of Competition As a teacher and lab assistant the best way is to explain in details the aim of the work and its importance in addition to encouraging the team, in a challenging way, to give their best or to be in co...

		2 Misbah Mokaddem Management Consultant, Lebanon
	Dismantling Corruption in Public Administrations When corruption has become the NORM in a public organization, and when it has become VALUED and even considered as a ‘SMART BEHAVIOR’ then a change from within the administration itself is not suffici...

		1 Henry Accountant, Jamaica
	Are the Bad Behaviors of a Team Actually True? My department is currently merging with another, we also have two bosses, one on the outside and the other is new. At first, the acting boss was engaging and everyone was involved. Then suddenly the a...

		1 Naveed khalid Accountant, Pakistan
	Changing Bad Norms in your Team - On #2 (Establish Support): If we have collected feedback then we don't always need to establish support. If we were getting positive comments, support has already been gained automatically. - On #3...

		3 Annette Rattigan-Leo Saint Lucia
	Establishing Support for Changing Behavior is Very Important It is important to gain support from above when attempting to change behavior. It becomes such a challenge when those above accept the wrong behavior and causes it to become the norm. So having a vis...

		1 Bernhard Keim Business Consultant, Germany
	It Starts with a Changed Attitude @John Henry: You mentioned it: It's about attitude that has to change first to make change happen. Attitude is very personal. It will be impossible to alter bad behaviour if you can't bring employees...

		2 Philippe Barteau Entrepreneur, France
	First Accomplish Feedback and Support to Change Bad Team Behaviour @Annette Rattigan-Leo: I agree in a tactical sense, getting Feedback (from your superiors and colleagues) and Support (from your team members) is key. Quite a few people might forget these 2 preparat...

		2 John Henry Project Manager, United States
	The Behavior Has to 'Want to Change' So if someone has a paycheck, and is doing nothing significant but complaining, they have a personal victory, they get something for nothing. So to correct this, they need to understand that success i...

		1 Gary Wong Consultant, Canada
	A New Paradigm: Behaviour Economics @Dr.Abu-Gieseisa: The emerging practice of Behaviour Economics aka Nudging is based on complexity science. A top-down approach typically does not nudge but yanks, shoves, or smacks by constraining th...

		2 Gary Wong Consultant, Canada
	Kotter’s 2 Change Processes @Misbah Mokaddem: Be aware that Kotter has 2 change processes. - Kotter's Leading Change (1996) Process works in a traditional linear hierarchy driven by a small core group typically at the top. - K...

		2 Dr.Abu-Gieseisa Consultant, Sudan
	Nudge Theory Summary Nudge theory (aka nudge) is a concept in behavioural science, political theory and economics that aims to influence the motives, incentives and decision making of groups and individuals through positi...

		2 Gary Wong Consultant, Canada
	Examples of Nudging (Behavioural Ethics) @Dr.Abu-Gieseisa: You can find some good examples in a study in the American Business Law Journal entitled Nudging Corporate Compliance. Behavioural ethics nudging is the use of choice architecture s...

		1 Omondi Manager, Kenya
	Organisational Change Change is driven by power and influence to align people to a cause (good or bad). Organizations are political systems with networks controlled by power (bestowed through both formal and informal stru...

		2 Gary Wong Consultant, Canada
	Nudge Theory Summary In 2008 Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein co-authored the ground-breaking book Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness. Nudge theory falls under the emerging field of Behaviour...

		1 Ivan Kohlinsky Management Consultant, Guernsey
	Changing Bad Behaviors of your Team: Dig Deep and Find 'Hot Buttons' I am afraid that in the recent environment the only way may be to 'dig deep' and fully understand what motivates them. It may not be the same as your wishes, and their interest in a successful conclus...

		2 Maurice Hogarth Consultant, United Kingdom
	Tips to Change Bad Behaving Teams to Good To change the team’s behaviour, change the manager’s. Everyone works according to how they are managed. Try this: Clarify you have a ‘team’ (two or more people whose work is interdependent...