To help expand our view of human behavior, we’ve organized the potential root causes of all behavior (including broken promises) into a model that contains six sources of influence. At the top of our model are two components of behavior selection. In order to take the required action, the person must be willing and able. Each of these components is affected by three sources of influence: self, others, and things.
Personal
Source 1. Personal Motivation
We already know the first source. It’s the one that, considered alone, makes up the fundamental attribution error. People base their actions on their individual motivation or disposition. Does the action motivate? Does the person enjoy the action independent of how others think or feel? Does it bring pleasure or pain? That’s the model we already have in our heads, and it’s partially true. People do have personal motives. Human beings do take pleasure in certain activities, and it could even be true that they enjoy making us suffer. However, this model is also the source of influence that gets us in trouble when it’s the only factor we consider.
Source 2. Personal Ability
We can double this simple model by adding individual ability. We now have two diagnostic questions: “Are others motivated to do what they promised?” and “Are they able?” (Does he or she have the skills or knowledge to do what’s required?) By expanding the model from one to two sources, we acknowledge the fact that people not only must want to do what’s required; they also need the mental and physical capacity to do it. For instance, maybe your company’s customer-service agents aren’t returning calls to hostile clients because they don’t know how to defuse the hostility. Perhaps nurses aren’t using protective gloves consistently because they can’t put them on quickly enough.
With two options to choose from, we also have another story to tell ourselves. Rather than judging others who violate an expectation as unmotivated and therefore selfish and insensitive, we add the possibility that maybe they actually tried to live up to their promises but ran into a barrier.
Becoming Curious
Admitting that a problem might stem from several different sources will change our whole approach. We aren’t certain, we aren’t smug, we aren’t angry, and we slow down. We’re curious instead of boiling mad. We feel the need to gather more data rather than charge in “guns a-blazin’.” We move from judge, jury, and executioner to curious participant.
Social
None of us works or lives in a vacuum. We make a promise, and more often than not we sincerely want to deliver on it. We may even have the talent to do so. But what happens when others enter the scene? Will coworkers, friends, and family members motivate us? Will they enable us? Social forces play such an important role in every aspect of our lives that any reasonable model of human behavior must include them.
Source 3. Social Motivation
From the way adults talk, you’d think peer pressure disappears a few weeks after the senior prom. We constantly warn our children against the insidious forces wielded by their friends. Yet rarely do we consider the fact that those forces aren’t switched off in some secret ritual when we finish high school. Adult peer pressure may be less obvious than its teenage counterpart, but it’s no less forceful.
For instance, what do you think will happen if the supervisor of the software testers walks up to one of them and says, “Hey, Chris, we’re running behind schedule. Could you hurry things along?”
“What do you mean?” Chris asks.
“You know, maybe finesse, or even shorten, the final tests. The software seems to be running smoothly.”
And with that simple request, the tests are dropped.
Is the other person being influenced by peers, the boss, customers, or family, or for that matter, by any other human being? Remember the work of Solomon Asch and Stanley Milgram? They created conditions in which social pressure drove people to change their opinions, lie, and even inflict pain on others. Should it surprise us that many of the ridiculous things both children and adults do are a result of simply wanting to be accepted by others? Healthcare professionals violate standards, scientists turn a blind eye to safety, accountants watch their peers break the law, and nobody says anything. Why? Because the presence of others who say nothing causes them to doubt their own beliefs, and their desire to be accepted taints their overall judgment. Social pressure is the mother of all stupidity.
Source 4. Social Ability
In addition to motivating you to do things, other people can enable or disable you. They’re either a help or a hindrance. For you to complete your job, your coworkers have to provide you with help, information, tools, materials, and sometimes even permission. Unless you’re working in a vacuum, if your coworkers don’t do their part, you’re dead in the water.
For example, what about the software engineers? What if their testing package failed? What if the person responsible for keeping the servers online went off to a technical seminar and didn’t keep them up and running as long as needed? Who knows? Maybe that’s why the software is giving final assembly fits. That is the whole point of this discussion. Who knows? We’re going to have to gather data.
You’re a Big Part of the Social Formula
Let’s add one more piece to the social formula: you. You’re a person too. You may be acting in ways that are contributing to the problem that is bothering you. You’ve got the eyeballs problem: you’re on the wrong side of them if you want to notice the role you’re playing. For example, a staff support person misses a deadline because she didn’t like the way you made your initial request. She thought that when you rushed up to her, project in hand, the way you pushed for a commitment was too forceful, demanding, and insensitive to her needs. She didn’t say anything, but she did find a way to put your request at the bottom of her priority list: “Sorry, I just never got around to it.”
We encounter the same problem at home. You’re at your wits’ end because your husband is punishing and cold to your children (his stepchildren). You wonder why. Is he just selfish and impatient? Could it also be that you rarely show sympathy for his frustrations with them? Perhaps you are making him feel isolated and resentful about the challenges he faces, and that helps him feel more justified in behaving rudely to “your” children.
But that’s not all. As a big part of others’ “social influence,” you can also affect their ability to meet your expectations. How about that time your son didn’t complete his science project on time? You forgot to buy the ingredients for the volcano he was building on the way home from work. When that happened, of course, you realized that you were part of the problem. When you don’t enable people, you’re likely to notice your role, and others are certainly likely to say something to you if you let them down.
When your style or demeanor or methods cause resistance, others may purposefully clam up and not deliver, and you won’t even know that you’re the cause of the problem. You’ll just hear a lot of excuses and get no honest feedback, particularly if you’re in a position of authority. In this case, you need to turn your eyeballs inward and look for the whole story by asking yourself, “What, if anything, am I pretending not to notice about my role in the problem?”
You know people out there who do things that cause others to push back, resent them, reject their input, or drag their feet. Here’s a news flash: sometimes you may be that person.