Welcome to our ongoing series of FAQ blogs about the core principles of LaL’s methodology. In this FAQ, CEO Shayne Hughes

Q. Most people know the pain of trying to change a behavior like being argumentative or procrastinating. Why is it so difficult to do?

The first problem lies in recognizing we even have an unhelpful behavior. We don’t tend to notice our own leadership and communication styles. And there’s such rampant conflict avoidance in the workplace, people rarely express their feedback to one another.

The second obstacle is when you do notice something needs to be changed, it’s not enough to tell yourself, oh, I should do something different. People need to uncover why they began the behavior in the first place. It’s not an accident that they’re repeating it.

Q. Can you give an example?

A. I used to be a pathological procrastinator. I’d have a report or a project to deliver and I would see the deadline looming off in the distance. I’d tell myself, start early, get going now. The days would go by and I would somehow find a way to avoid it until the very last minute.

I wasn’t getting the results that I wanted and I was very frustrated and judgmental of my inability to start early. It’s a great example of how knowing what to do doesn’t necessarily mean I’ll do it.

The explanations I gave myself only made things worse. I was suffering from character faults of laziness or lack of discipline that had been genetically passed on to me by my parents. I felt powerless to change.

As I began the work of LaL, I discovered that it had little to do with genetics; I was, in fact, committed to procrastinating.

Q. Committed? Why would anyone be committed to a counterproductive behavior?  

A. It’s a powerful concept. The light bulb moment for me around my own procrastination came when I realized I was committed to procrastinating because it was serving me in an unconscious way.

If we behave counter-productively, and can’t stop it, then we must be getting something very potent from that behavior. In order to make a change, you need to uncover what that is for you.

So, using the example of my procrastination, I was able to ascertain that behind this judgment that I was lazy and undisciplined, there was a layer of fear and anxiety.

It was the fear of being stupid. If I started early, did my very best work and then delivered something less than a stellar outcome, I would have to confront that I wasn’t smart enough to succeed at this new level.

I couldn’t deal with that. So my ego found a tradeoff. Put it off until the last moment, then whip it out in a fury of stressful productivity. If the outcome is mediocre, it’ll be due to my dysfunctional procrastination habit, not my intrinsic intelligence.

At LaL, we call that a benefit. I had an ego benefit which protected me from feelings of failure or inadequacy. In my particular case that benefit was so compelling, I was willing to behave in a very frustrating way to maintain it.

What I want to illustrate with my example is that by identifying your fears and “benefits”, you can get to the root cause of your choices. If I’m committed to a behavior I don’t like, what is my ego getting from it? How is it protecting me or making me feel more comfortable through avoiding things that might be unpleasant?

The unconscious reward I get from that behavior benefits me short-term as a survival mechanism. I’m trying to escape negative feelings in the here-and-now. If you were to ask, from a five-year perspective, is this behavior of benefit to you?, we would have a different answer.

Q. Once a person has identified the root cause of their behavior, what do they do about it? What’s the next step in resolving and moving beyond it?

A. Change requires rewiring the original driver. At some point in our formative years we learned that this kind of behavior helped us avoid unwanted feelings or experiences.

Let’s take conflict avoidance, another prevalent behavior. If I don’t say what I really think, others are less likely to get upset or shut me down.  We’re less likely to have unpleasant conflict and more likely to have a harmonious relationship.

The relationships I do have might not be as deep as they could be. We might end up avoiding certain important topics. Some needs that really matter to me might not get met, but I’m successfully avoiding what I’ve learned in my emotional past should be avoided.

The problem is that now I’m in my 40’s, and this avoidance no longer serves me. But I keep on with it anyway, because that old memory of getting yelled at by my parents is still operating in the background, at an implicit level. In our seminars we teach people how to revisit these experiences, draw more mature emotional conclusions about them and then let go of what doesn’t work anymore.

When we’re able to rewire events like this we actually gain the ability to tell ourselves, it’s okay to risk that reaction because today I have the capacity to deal with it. I can respond skillfully if I come up short on a project or someone gets angry. When I was five years old, I couldn’t.

So you learn to bring your emotional presence to a more mature point and that allows you to make more conscious and effective choices around these challenging situations.

Adjunct Professor, University of Michigan 

Co-Director, Program on Intergroup Relations, Conflict and Community
Department of Psychology, University of Michigan

Charles Behling is Adjunct Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan. A clinical psychologist, he is Co-Director of the Program on Intergroup Relations, Conflict, and Community. This program, which focuses on racism, sexism, heterosexism, and other issues of social justice, was cited by President Clinton’s Initiative on Race as one of fourteen “Promising Practices” that successfully bridges racial divides in American communities. In addition, the program has received awards from the U.S. Department of Education, the American Association of Higher Education, the American College Personnel Association, the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators, and TIAA-CREF. Professor Behling has won awards for effective teaching from Lake Forest College and the University at Buffalo. Lake Forest College’s award for promotion of cultural diversity is named for him, and he received a University of Buffalo award for services to students from underrepresented social groups.

Email contact: Charles Behling < cbehling@umich.edu >

Associate Professor
Stanford University School of Education and (by courtesy) School of Business

Associate Professor of Education, and teaches at Stanford’s School of Business. Affiliated faculty at Stanford’s Center for Social Innovation and Stanford’s Center for Comparative Studies on Race and Ethnicity

Professor Meyerson earned her B.S. and M.S. at M.I.T. She received her Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior from Stanford. She is author of the recently published book,Tempered Radicals: How People Use Difference to Inspire Change at Work, named as a top 10 book on work-life issues by the Wall Street Journal, as well as more than 30 articles or chapters in scholarly and applied publications. Her work has been featured in Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Inc. Magazine, Business Week, Fast Company, San Francisco Chronicle, The Boston Globe, Business 2.0, and others. Debra was named as one of the most influential women in business for the past two years by the San Francisco Business Times.

Email contact: Debra Meyerson < debram@stanford.edu >

Ohio Eminent Scholar in Social Psychology

Professor of Psychology
University of Ohio  

Faculty Associate at the Institute for Social Research,
Former President of SPSSI and Division 9 of the American Psychological Association

Jennifer Crocker is Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan, and Faculty Associate at the Institute for Social Research. Dr. Crocker received her Ph.D. in 1979 from Harvard University, and has held faculty positions at Northwestern University, and the State University of New York at Buffalo in addition to the University of Michigan. She is the author of numerous articles on the topics of social stigma and self-esteem, and was awarded the Gordon Allport Prize for her research on social stigma and self-esteem from the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI). Professor Crocker is Past-President of SPSSI and Division 9 of the American Psychological Association. She received an Independent Scientist Award from NIMH and an R01 award for her research on contingencies of self-worth.

Email contact: Jennifer Crocker < crocker.37@psy.ohio-state.edu >