Awareness of Behaviourism

How an Awareness of Behaviourism can have a Powerful Effect in the Modern Organisation

Behaviourism can be used in 2 ways by executive coaches in today’s organisations. The first is to help people to understand themselves and the changes that can affect them as people and leaders. The second is to help them to learn how to harness behaviourism as a way to enhance the ways they manage people and make improvements within their organisation.

Behaviourism explains a lot about what happens to us from moment to moment during the day. Most people don’t pay it much thought.

What is Reinforcement

In order to assess behaviourism, it’s essential to look into reinforcement. So what is reinforcement? Well, the best way to explain it is when it comes after a behaviour, reinforcement has a tendency to strengthen that behaviour. You can witness reinforcement all around you, but many things that people believe to be reinforcements are just rewards. The difference is that the person demonstrating the behaviour desires those rewards and likes them, but doesn’t reliably display repeat behaviour.

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To examine behaviourism it is useful to look at reinforcement, a reinforcement is anything that, when it follows a behaviour, tends to strengthen that behaviour. Reinforcements are all around us, but some things that people think are reinforcements are purely rewards, the difference being rewards are desired by the person demonstrating a behaviour. The person likes the rewards, but the person does not reliably produce repeat behaviour.

It’s hard to determine which is the most effective out of the two, but a lot of people put more credence in rewards as they give the person experiencing reinforcement some credit for their actions. Whereas those extrinsically reinforced could just relate the learning or behaviour to the reward. Some might say “I did it for the money” or “I was up for a good bonus”. Some also say that the extrinsic rewards can eventually “wear out” whereas intrinsic rewards rarely do. The thing is that people never usually tire of something they enjoy or that gives them satisfaction.

Behaviourism as a Powerful Tool

Using behaviourism effectively can be a really powerful tool for an organisation. When we begin to work with a client, we often begin the executive coaching process by asking them to make a list of the covert and overt reinforcements that exist within the operational processes in their organisation. This can be a really interesting exercise and enables the client to think about the power of behaviourism on themselves and other people in today’s society and in their own organisation.

However, care needs to be taken as random reinforcement can have catastrophic consequences for modern organisations. Contingent reinforcement on the other hand often achieves the desired results.

About the Author

Dave Marr is a Director at t2 Management Training, a UK-based leadership and management training company.