In this article, Amy King discusses skills vs behaviours and the crucial role behaviours play. She emphasises the need for organisations to focus their efforts on changing behaviours to drive performance and growth.
What is behaviour?
It’s surprisingly difficult to find a universal definition for human behaviour. Yet, despite this, every one of us is governed by our own behaviours; they’re the foundation of our daily lives, influencing almost every aspect of our interactions and experiences.
For organisations looking to grow and evolve, it’s imperative that they understand not only the behavioural indicators of high-performance, but also the factors that motivate, influence and impact behaviour.
At KultraLab, we define behaviours as ‘patterns of habitual actions that are observable by others.’ To bring this to life, behaviours such as ‘empathy’ are usually demonstrated to others through actions or habits. This could be checking in with others, or clearly demonstrating active listening during a conversation.
Behaviours are influenced by a myriad of factors, including our environment, personal motivation, and past experiences. In addition, we believe that true behaviour can often be observed under times of stress, adversity, or challenge.
“For organisations looking to grow and evolve, it’s imperative that they understand not only the behavioural indicators of high-performance, but also the factors that motivate, influence, and impact behaviour.”
Why is behaviour so important?
We’re obsessed with understanding human behaviour within the workplace, because, while certain behaviours may come more naturally to some than others, they’re all learnable. Therefore, by understanding the key behavioural drivers of high-performance, we can coach everyone to reach their full potential.
Getting behaviour change right has massive benefits for workplace performance and productivity, as well as our personal relationships.
Behaviour change has the ability to truly stick when an individual has the right conditions, motivations and support in place to change, unlike new skills which can quickly become obsolete if they are not put into practice immediately.
“By understanding the key behavioural drivers of high-performance, we can coach everyone to reach their full potential.”
How are behaviours different to skills?
The simplest way to understand a behaviour is to think about it as something you will do, whereas a skill is something you can do. Learning the knowledge and skill to do something tends to equip you with the capabilities to do something effectively for specific tasks or situations. For example, you may learn the specific skill of how to create a project plan, with project milestones, dependencies and risks. This ‘know-how’ is very useful for situations when you are assigned a specific role to lead a project. However, it does not mean that on a day-to-day basis you always do it. By contrast, a true behaviour means that your colleagues would see this skill in action in your behaviour every day in terms of planning, managing deliverables and driving action to meet deadlines. The two, whilst related, are very different things. Within the world of work, it is these behaviours that make the biggest difference to drive performance consistently.
“By adopting a behavioural science lens to this high-performance study, we’ll begin to uncover the micro-actions, rituals and routines that drive consistently high-performance.”
Applying a behavioural science approach to our research
Currently we’re focusing on uncovering high-performing behaviours within retail and consumer teams. By adopting a behavioural science lens to this high-performance study, we’ll begin to uncover the micro-actions, rituals and routines that drive consistently high-performance.
We’re asking questions to a diverse range of employees about their experiences working in high-performing teams: what they see and observe in their working day that demonstrates high-performance, and what kind of culture is needed to optimise performance.
The world of work is ever-changing. So, for organisations to nurture and sustain high-performance, they’ll need to develop behaviours that optimise productivity across the workforce, empowering individuals to harness creative, innovative and ultra-collaborative ways of working.
One emerging theme from our research so far suggests that this may be done by building the social-emotional intelligence of teams.
In essence, we mean the ability to regulate emotions and improve self-awareness, dynamic social skills, and the ability to effectively manage diverse relationships. What has struck us most is the way in which employees, particularly high-performing managers do this; it can be as simple as checking in with their team members, taking time to understand how their colleagues are feeling, and being attuned to the emotional energy of their store on different days to understand when and how to inject positive morale into the team.
Studying behaviours is complex. It’s only through intentionally seeking to understand the experiences and perspectives of others that we can shed light on some of the inner workings of high-performing teams and individuals.
Watch this space… we can’t wait to share more outcomes with you.
To find out more about KultraLab’s approach please get in touch.
