What does it take to change your own or an employee’s usual behavior pattern in conflict situations?
More than anything it takes the motivation to learn and the commitment to practice that learning until it’s a new habit of mind.
I have the good fortune of hearing Clayton Christensen speak this weekend. In anticipation, I’ve been re-reading sections of his most recent book, Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns
Motivation is the catalyzing ingredient for every successful innovation. The same is true of learning. We all know that becoming a great athlete or a great painter requires an extraordinary amount of consistent work. The hours of time required to train the brain to fire the synapses in the correct ways and thus hone the necessary muscle memory and thinking required is no different from that needed to learn to read and process information or think through math and science problems. Unless students (and teachers, for that matter) are motivated, they will reject the rigor of any learning tasks and abandon it before achieving success. – Clayton Christensen
When I consider what distinguishes clients who succeed in changing conflict behaviors from those who don’t, motivation and commitment repeatedly rise to the top of the list.
I’ll be speaking more about conflict habits of the mind, learning, muscle memory and conflict behaviors tomorrow in my keynote address for the Northern New England Community Action Conference.