Each year I listen to my friends, family, and co-workers make their New Year’s resolutions. As I listen to their intentions to loose weight, get organized, start to meditate, or get healthy, I hear how motivated they are to accomplish the goal. They want to succeed. Most of them will spend some amount of time being somewhat successful, perhaps for a few days or a few weeks. A few won’t start at all despite their motivation to succeed. Isn’t a strong sense of motivation and some will-power enough to get it done?
I am guessing that right about now you as the reader are saying “No” because you already know from experience, will-power and some motivation are simply not enough. It is one of the double standards we throw at kids when they are struggling to meet our expectations with behavior. We want them to get good grades or clean their rooms and we believe that when they are not meeting the expectation that either they are not trying hard enough or that they are not motivated. We over-simplify behavior into a matter of motivation and will-power. So we try to motivate them with stickers or loss of iPhone privileges and believe they just need to plow through and try harder. “If you fail, its because you didn’t try hard enough” becomes the message. If will-power and motivation are not enough for us to succeed at losing weight or getting healthy, why do we think these approaches will work on kids? What if you thought of your adult expectations on kids as in the same way we though of New Year’s resolutions?
It shows us that just like you or your friends at New Year’s, there is motivation. There is no need for rewards or punishments to motivate you because motivation is there. The problem is that will-power for most people isn’t as strong as we think. We tend to over-estimate our own will-power and motivation. We all tried the “I will just have one piece of chocolate” thing and how did that work for you? Just as adults can’t will themselves into getting fit or losing weight or my personal favorite resolution of being on-time, kids also can’t just will themselves into meeting expectations because behavior is more complicated then “will” it is also a matter of other powerful sources that influence us.
Researchers, Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny and their team at VitalSmarts talk about this in two of my favorite books on making change happen, Change Anything: The New Science of Personal Success and Influencer: The New Science of Leading Change. In each book, they introduce us to the Six Sources of Influence to either personal or systemic change. They claim that there are 6 powerful sources of influence on our behaviors and that when we are blind to what they are. We struggle to make change. They also claim that when we harness at least 4 of the six, we better our chances of successful change by ten times. If we use all 6, we are good as guaranteed we can make changes in behavior.
The Six Sources of Influence
In the chart above, you see in block 1 that personal motivation is important. In order for them to want to do something they will ask if its worth it. For most kids, just the fact you asked might make it worth it based on your relationship with them. If that doesn’t work, then using stories and meaning are a much more powerful way of getting them motivated than rewards or threats. We need to tap internal motivations not external.
Next, they will move to block 2 and ask, “can I do it” and often the answer is no. All too often and in the paraphrased words of Ross Greene, we believe kid’s behavior is a matter of “will” when it is really a matter of “skill.” Often we are motivated to do well, and I believe kids are motivated to do well because they value relationship with us. Being motivated to do it doesn’t mean we have the skills to do it. Just because you are motivated to eat healthy doesn’t mean you know “how” to eat healthy. Just because a kid wants to wear the uniform for school doesn’t mean he has the clothes to actually wear. He is motivated and lacks the ability to complete the task.
Ross Greene in his book, Lost at School: Why Our Kids With Behavioral Challenges Are Falling Through The Cracks and How We Can Help Them, talks about the skills piece. He believes that kids are motivated to do well and that maladaptive behavior is a lack of skills not will. He primarily talks about 3 big skills: frustration tolerance, cognitive flexibility, and problem solving. His mantra is that “kids do well if they can” which means when they have the skills and therefore the ability. You ask little Billy to come set the table while he is playing a game. He wants to do what you asked but doesn’t have the cognitive flexibility to end a task unfinished like his game. You push for him to come set the the table for the third time and wonder why he isn’t coming? He doesn’t know how to flex his thinking to interrupt one task for another like adults can.
Blocks 3 and 4 get us to start thinking about the social motivators influencing the behavior, for teens this is important because we know the social opinions matter more to them then the opinions of adults. This is hard-wired for them according to Dan Siegel’s in his book Brainstorm: The Power & Purpose of the Teenage Brain. Thinking about the hoodies in school, if everyone is wearing one and my friend gave me one, I have both social motivation and social ability. My friends are motivating the behavior and making it possible by giving me ability. On the flipside, if no one was wearing them and other kids gave nudges and reminders of why we don’t wear them in school, could we influence the behavior in the opposite direction?
Lastly, we need to think about the environmental motivators and ability that make-up blocks 5 and 6. Going back to the hoodies in school, if the school is always freezing cold, we need to recognize the structural influence that has on wearing hoodies.
For adults looking at why our kids do what they do, we need to think beyond will-power and that little Johnny isn’t trying hard enough. Its helpful to look at what is motivating and influencing the behavior we don’t want and how we can support and influence the behaviors we do want. We need to pay particular attention to the developing skills kids have or don’t have as they grow. From getting kids to clean their room or take off their hoodies in school, we need to think beyond motivation which will almost always be punishment or threats of punishment. We need to look at the big picture. We also need to end the double standard on kids and their behavior. If adults can’t do it, stop asking kids to do it.
The following video from VitalSmarts walk you through these powerful sources of influence.