Bad behavior on a team can spread like wildfire. What starts out as one person's complaining quickly becomes the team's mode of operation each meeting.
Luckily, what we've learned about how successful individuals build habits can work for teams, too.
"Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you want to be," author James Clear says in "Atomic Habits," his bestselling book on behavior change. "No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity. This is one reason why meaningful change does not require radical change."
To that end, we can create the conditions for our teams that help shape them into the teams we want them to be, teams that give them energy to be a part of.
There are four research-based laws of behavior change that Clear outlines in “Atomic Habits” that give us a framework for how to tackle toxic issues like teammates overly complaining.
Let's go through a case study in how we might create an environment that makes that behavior, complaining without offering solutions, challenging. In doing so, we'll also think through how to make its opposite behavior, solutions-oriented thinking, easier for the team to exhibit.
As we go through each of these laws, it's important to note that the laws don't need to be mastered in sequential order. Instead, they can happen in parallel, with the likelihood of their success increasing the more tactics we can implement effectively.
Law 1: Make the replacement behavior visible or the current behavior invisible
Typical convention holds that leaders need to confront behavior that negatively impacts the team's morale.
There's just one problem with that: It makes the behavior visible to the rest of the team.
When trying to eliminate a behavior, your best bet instead: Address it in private, and celebrate the opposite of that behavior in public.
What does that look like? Any time the team is together, make it a point to affirm precisely the behavior you want to see. Better yet, see if you can persuade an ally, someone on the team who can do it well and is bought into the goal, to do the same.
Then, build a system out of it. Here's how:
Start each 1-on-1 meeting with the question: "When was a time you were solutions-oriented this week? What positive impact did that have? When is an opportunity in the next week for you to be solutions-oriented? What will that look like?"
Book time in your calendar to observe your team in action to catch them exhibiting the behavior, then affirm them in 1-on-1s and team meetings so they know you're watching for it.
Start or end each team meeting with an opportunity for you and your team to celebrate each other for the behavior. The clearer you are in your definition of what it looks like, and the more you model shouting others out for it, the more your team will do the same.
Law 2: Make the replacement behavior attractive or the current behavior unattractive
We complain in large part because it's attractive to do so. Research has shown repeatedly that complaining actually has a host of positive benefits. We feel validated, connected, and a sense of belonging when we complain on our teams.
So, how do we make the opposite of complaining attractive?
We first need to understand what the underlying need on the team is behind the complaining. Then, we need to address that underlying need before challenging, celebrating, and rewarding the team when they exhibit the replacement behavior.
What could that look like?
Have the team reflect on what's at the root of complaining by asking them what needs are not being met. For some, it might be connection. For others, it might mean feeling understood. By understanding the need behind the complaining, we're much more likely to understand our team's needs and what we can do as a leader to address them.
Once you've understood the underlying need, you can then enlist the team in coming up with ways to meet their needs and do so in a way that strengthens connection AND morale.
Challenge your team, including you, to come up with one example each of someone else on the team being solutions-oriented and post it or share it publicly. Have a different owner each day who publicly shares an example of someone being solutions-oriented. Track your progress toward the goal of each member doing it and share where you are in relation to that goal as the week goes.
Law 3: Make the replacement behavior easy or the current behavior difficult
Sometimes, we're better off making the current behavior difficult, rather than the replacement behavior easy.
In this case, we can learn from Victor Hugo, who James Clear writes about. Hugo, on deadline to write "The Hunchback of Notre Dame," came up with this ingenious plan: He'd have his assistant lock his clothes in a trunk, take the key, and only give it back when he was finished with a draft of the book. Lacking the clothes to go outside, he finished the book two weeks early.
Hugo used what psychologists call a commitment device, a choice you make in the present that guides your actions in the future.
For our teams, that could look like:
Have each person on the team write down two things: 1) Why being solutions-oriented, the replacement behavior, is important to them to exhibit; 2) What they'll do in scenarios in which they are likely to find themselves complaining (the current behavior). You can use sentence starters to help them get precise with their commitment devices, such as, "If someone on the team complains to me without offering a solution, I will ..." Or, "If someone on the team complains during a team meeting with out offering a solution, I will ..."
Then, at the end of the week or the next meeting, have the team reflect on how well they did with their commitment device, what the impact was, and what actions they feel they still need to take to make it a habit.
Law 4: Make the current behavior unsatisfying or the replacement behavior satisfying
It's hard to see the immediate reward of stopping a behavior like complaining. That's why you have to create intentional structures to capture the impact the replacement behavior, being solutions-oriented, has had.
Especially if it's an entrenched behavior, we skip the part where we really lock in our understanding through rewarding the behavior we want to see. It's the reward that triggers our brain to want to repeat the behavior again, though. Think of this step as closing the behavior loop and tying a bow on it.
Here's how:
Close the week out with a reflection on the impact the behavior change has had on the team, like this: "What positive impacts have you personally experienced from us being more solutions-oriented? What has been a positive impact on the team's success? What positive impacts do you think this behavior will have for our team long term if we stay focused on it?" Capture these reflections and return to them when the behavior needs a restart.
Those four laws (visible/invisible, attractive/unattractive, easy/difficult, satisfying/unsatisfying) are a helpful framework to get your team to start taking actions that are, in Clear's words, votes for the type of team they want to be.
As Clear writes, "True behavior change is identity change. When your behavior and your identity are fully aligned, you are no longer pursuing behavior change. You are simply acting like the type of person you already believe yourself to be."
And not just for individuals, either. For our teams, too.
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