What's the paradigm?
A little while ago I became concerned about unwholesome influences on my teenage daughter. I had noticed the popularity of vaping among kids her age, and I worried she might have succumbed to peer pressure. I decided it was time to address the matter directly, so I asked, “Have you ever vaped?” She seemed offended by the question, and she immediately denied she had.
Overcoming my wishful desire to accept that response at face value, I pushed for details: “What did you say when it was last offered to you?” She rolled her eyes, took a deep breath, and set me straight. “Look, Dad, when kids are vaping, they don’t even bother to ask me anymore. They just laugh and say, ‘She’s a runner.’”
It was a profoundly reassuring, and frankly inspiring, answer. My daughter had embraced a specific paradigm to guide and regulate her behavior. She had defined herself in such a way that she was inoculated against social influences, and motivated to live up to what this paradigm represented.
Paradigms are often at the root of performance challenges. Imagine you work with someone who is perpetually tardy. Suppose he asked for your advice on how to address this lingering source of tension with colleagues. You could recommend a new scheduling app, or suggest blocking out more time between meetings. In all likelihood, however, that wouldn’t fix the underlying issue. Old habits would eventually start to reemerge. In time you would probably notice how his lateness stems from something deeper than a lack of organization.
To make a more permanent change, you would have to alter the way this person looks at punctuality itself. You would have to explore the reasons why he consistently prioritizes other activities over pre-scheduled commitments. What are the motivations, conscious or otherwise, for treating punctuality as negotiable? What aspect of his identity is used to justify this trade-off? How does his self-image reinforce these recurring choices?
In the world of sales there is an unmistakable correlation. 100% of those who make it to “President's Club” each year (top 1-2% performance) are people who have simply decided they are President's Club caliber. Their daily habits start to reflect this view of themselves, and that in turn becomes a necessary, though not always sufficient, condition of their success.
Best-selling author Steven Covey summarized it best: “If you want small changes, work on your behavior. If you want quantum-leap changes, work on your paradigm.”