Founder of Connect Consulting Group, helping leaders adapt to our BANI world with neuroscience, behavior design and lean communications.
getty
“How do you balance compassion and accountability?”
Coach.me CEO Kendra Kinnison asked me this practical question after my commencement address to the February 2023 Coach.me’s habit certification graduates.
My immediate thought: That’s another great example of how the road to good intentions can be paved with hell, but I don’t want to overuse that phrase in this short talk.
My response: I paused to craft a more useful answer that included how I demonstrate compassion while fostering accountability. The point is to ensure that we coaches help set up our clients for the success they want.
Later, Kendra’s question kept swirling in my head. Compassion and accountability need to work hand in hand with behavior change. People hire coaches to help them become better versions of themselves, so we coaches have a responsibility to help individuals improve and sustain their progress. And this is true for more than building individual habits. People want to make other behavior changes for themselves and their team members. Plus, many want more than sustainment; they want to continue to grow and develop.
Yet we professional coaches can’t be so presumptuous as to believe that behavior change only happens when we’re guiding individuals. Many want to change on their own or with the help of a colleague or partner who agrees to encourage them.
It’s possible for individuals to change on their own. Based on my experience with habits as well as overall behavior design, you’ll be better equipped if you first understand why you need to feel compassion and have accountability.
Behavior change of any size can be hard to do unless you work with rather than against your brain. If you try to muscle your way through change without designing the change with your brain in mind, you’ll go against your natural way of doing something. In this case, you’d be interrupting what you’ve been doing, often by rote, which makes it harder to get your brain and your body working in sync. Your new action may not be as extreme as this example: I will ditch my smartphone for landline phones at my office and home in order to regain focus. But your new commitment can still feel unnatural and uncomfortable to do. So as a human, you deserve both compassion and accountability, especially when you intentionally make a commitment to change your behavior.
When you decide to change your behavior, you want to acknowledge yourself for the courage to change. And you also want to feel as upbeat as possible about the change. When you’re confident about what you’re doing rather than fearful, you can be more optimistic, more creative about how you go about the change and more supportive of yourself. When you’re in this positive state, you can also reduce the stress and anxiety that can interfere with your ability to think clearly and take action.
At the same time, you want to stay on course, doing the new behavior and following through. However, you don’t want to be accountable for doing a behavior that has unintended consequences that don’t work for you. Using the earlier example, if you discover that giving up your smartphone is causing you more pain than gain, keep the smartphone and look for other ways to regain your focus. (More about this important step later.)
To keep yourself accountable, stay positive so you can be receptive to making changes. For example, recognize yourself immediately after you do your new behavior. And yes, that means every time you do it. This recognition, a la celebration, serves as self-compassion. And it gives you—and your brain—a positive boost, which encourages you to keep doing the behavior.
Dr. B.J. Fogg, known as the founder of behavior design, the inventor of Tiny Habits and the author of the bestselling book Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything, advocates celebrating twice—after you remember to act and then again after you do the new behavior. (Full disclosure: I’m a graduate of both the Tiny Habits and Coach.me habit certifications.) The celebration doesn’t have to be big; it just needs to be meaningful to you. For example, some people respond well to saying “Good job!” and others petting their dog, channeling the pose of their favorite superhero or something else.
Once you understand the importance of feeling compassionate and being accountable, you’re better positioned to set yourself up for success. Next, ask yourself these three “H” questions in this order. Answer from 1 to 10, with 1 being low and 10 being high. (My brain-based coaching training through the NeuroLeadership Institute introduced me to the power of the rating scale as well as a version of these questions, which I’ve adapted over the years.)
1. How helpful? How helpful will this new behavior be to get me closer to achieving my goals, living my values and fulfilling my ideal self? (If the rating is 9 or below, adjust the new behavior so it’s more aligned with your purpose and plans.)
2. How likely? How likely am I to do this behavior? (If the rating is 8 or below, consider how to make the new behavior more appealing to do. Or switch it to something else.)
3. How easy? How easy will it be for me to do this behavior? (If the rating is 8 or below, start smaller or make the behavior less complicated and simpler to do.)
Asking and answering these three questions can give you valuable insights about the extent to which you’re on a smooth path toward behavior change. To keep yourself on track, you need more than good intentions; you need to be focused on taking targeted achievable actions. And if you find it too hard going solo, ask a peer or coach to help. There’s no shame or blame in going outside yourself. Just make sure as you and your partners practice accountability that you’re compassionate. That’s how you set yourself up for successful behavior change.
Forbes Coaches Council is an invitation-only community for leading business and career coaches. Do I qualify?
