Leaders' Playground

13: How to change a habit. How to change a culture.

• Irene Salter, PhD • Season 1 • Episode 13

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Stuck in the grip of bad habits? Me too. In this episode, we dive into the challenge of altering entrenched habits, starting with my own terrible phone habits, ending with my friend who is shifting her company from a rigid, top-down culture to one driven by collaboration and innovation. Both scenarios highlight a common theme: despite knowing what needs to change, actual transformation is elusive.

Our discussion will center on the science behind motivation and behavior change, drawing on Chip and Dan Heath's influential book, Switch. We'll dissect their "Rider and Elephant" analogy, exploring how our rational and emotional sides interplay. You'll learn strategies to direct the "Rider," motivate the "Elephant," and shape the "Path" to facilitate change.

Resources:

For complete show notes, transcript, and free downloadable resources go to: https://www.irenesalter.com/podcast

Speaker 1:

Welcome again to the Leaders Playground. What do elephants, iPhones and pyramids have in common? The answer will teach us something about motivation. We are going to be busting some bad habits, changing an organization's culture and diving into the science of motivation. This week it's going to be a wide-ranging, super fun episode. I just can't wait to share with you. Hi, thank you for listening to the Leaders Playground super fun episode. I just can't wait to share with you to rekindle your spark. I'm Irene Salter, your host, and a PhD neuroscientist and science educator with a passion for helping people thrive, not just survive. Please click that follow button so you don't miss a single episode. I'm going to start this episode with a confession.

Speaker 1:

One of my very worst habits that I've spent years trying to break is the way that I compulsively use my smartphone to check email and social media and the news. I have gotten way better, but I am nowhere near perfect. If you rewind to a morning, maybe about five years ago, typical morning, my phone is next to my bed, I groggily wake up and, of course, first thing I do is I pick it up. At my very worst, I averaged 348 phone pickups per day. Oh my gosh, that's equivalent to checking my phone every two to three waking minutes. My phone was so much more than just a little piece of tech. I ran my entire life on it and I was just like almost half of the adults under the age of 50 in America. I was online almost constantly and I know it's a terrible waste of time. I know I should stop. I know it's not good for my mental health. I know I need to put my phone down. Why is it so hard to change? Well, change is the topic of today's episode, and I wanted to give you another example of change when change is really hard.

Speaker 1:

So I've got a friend in Japan. She grew up cross-culturally both here and in Japan. She is now the CEO of a very traditional top-down company. There For years people were told exactly what to do and not expected to take much initiative or work together all that much. She wants to change the culture to a workplace that's driven by innovation, collaboration and internal motivation. In her former workplaces where she had been in Europe and in the United States she had created exactly that kind of playful, creative, collaborative environment. She and her employees now know that there's a different way. She knows it's possible because she's created it before she and her top staff know that their current organizational culture isn't effective. It's not working. They know that the market is changing around them. Why, then, is it so hard to change? So here's what we're going to do in this episode. We're going to look at behavior change through the lens of motivation. We're going to explore how I changed my terrible phone habits and we're also going to take a look at what's happening in my friend's company. We're going to explore the science, the neuroscience, of motivation and the lack of motivation, and we're going to look at how all of that impacts behavior change.

Speaker 1:

I want to begin with my absolute favorite book by Chip and Dan Heath on behavior change. It's called Switch and I love the subtitle. It's how to change things when change is hard. Again, this is a book that we're reading for my book club and I would love anybody who wants to to come and join me at book club Totally free, once a month, last Thursday of every month at 4 pm Pacific time. In the show notes you'll have information on how to get to Book Club. Anyway, this book Switch it's a whole book built around a single analogy from psychologist at University of Virginia. His name is John Haidt. He talks about the rider and the elephant.

Speaker 1:

What it's about is that John Haight and Chip and Dan Heath they think of our brain as having different components. We have three different brain systems. The third one we're not going to talk about too much. It's the brainstem and midbrain, which control all of the automatic stuff. What we're interested in are the other two brain systems the limbic system and the cortex. The limbic system is the emotional part of our brain. It deals with all of our emotions, our feelings, our motivational system. Then we have the cortex. That's all of the wrinkly stuff on the top of our brain. When you look at a brain you see it's all like pink and wrinkly. That's the cortex that you're looking at. The cortex deals with all of the thinking stuff, the processing, the goal direction, the understanding, the analysis, the memory, learning all of that good stuff, All of the language happens in the cortex. Now think of them as two different things. The cortex we're going to think about as the rider of an elephant, the elephant being that emotional, motivational limbic system.

Speaker 1:

Chip and Dan Heath's premise is that you have this logical rider. It's rational, it's goal-directed, it is the part of our brain that holds on to ideas and keeps us moving forward. It knows exactly where it wants to go, it sets the direction. But it's riding a huge elephant, that emotional limbic system, the rider thinks that they're in control, but their control is precarious because the rider is so small compared to this big, huge elephant. The strength of the rider, the strength of that logical, cortical part of your brain, is that it has all of the executive function. It makes the plans, it weighs the pros and cons, it makes all the decisions. It controls all of our memory and learning. It grows, it learns from mistakes, it remembers things. All of these things are good. It helps you have self-control and stick to your goals and have grit. It's creative and problem-solving. It comes up with all of our new ideas. It's brilliant and problem-solving. It comes up with all of our new ideas. It's brilliant and wonderful.

Speaker 1:

However, our rider also has weaknesses. It's a little bit lazy. It overthinks things. It has a tendency towards perfection. In many of us it's a lot of analysis, paralysis and that laziness it's because it gets overwhelmed and tired really easily. In previous episodes I've talked about cognitive load and working memory capacity. All of those things create the tendency for the rider to just shut down and go take a nap.

Speaker 1:

Well, that rider, as I said, is riding on an elephant. It's riding on our emotional systems. The emotional systems are fantastic as well. They are the source of our love, compassion, our passions, sympathy, loyalty. It's even the source of our anger, because there are times where you have to protect the people you love or stand up for the things that you truly believe in. And that is what drives it. It's the motivational drive to plow ahead, the energy to get things done. It's our momentum and our determination.

Speaker 1:

Unfortunately, the elephant also has weaknesses. It's basically pretty skittish and kind of lazy. It tends to prefer doing what's easy, like scrolling social media, over what's hard, like getting out of bed. It likes to do what's quick, so that very simple two-minute to-do list item over what's actually most important, which is the end of year fiscal report. It does what's immediate, like dealing with a text message, over what's really long-term, like writing my book. And it operates on heuristics, which is what psychologists Kahneman and Tversky call thinking fast. It's the way that we initially make snap judgments. It's not conscious, but we do it all the time. It's where implicit bias comes in, it's where negativity bias comes in. All of these are heuristics, ways that our brain naturally tends to work and it's how we think really quickly, without slowing down and thinking hard. So those are the two parts of this model of how our brain works and how our motivational system works. You have this rider who's trying to direct this elephant below.

Speaker 1:

There's a third component to Chip and Dan's model, which is called the path. So the environment around us plays a big role and sometimes that's neglected in change management. But the environment has a huge part to play because the elephant in particular will take the easiest path, the one with no obstacles, the one that's got plenty of room, lots of resources, a lovely landscape. It tends to avoid the dense jungle, the conflict, scarcity and problems. It's going to take the easy path.

Speaker 1:

There's another habit guru. His name is James Clear. I love his book Atomic Habits. He has a whole system to help you create good habits and break bad habits. In order to create a really good habit, you have to make it obvious, make it attractive and make it easy. That's how you can shape the environment to make the elephant move more quickly. If you want to break a bad habit, the things to do is make it invisible, make it unattractive and make it difficult. That is, I think, a wonderful way to conceptualize what shaping that path and making the environment work for the elephant and the rider. It's really helpful in both individual habit change and in organizational habit change, like the things that my friend in Japan was facing in her company.

Speaker 1:

In order to summarize this whole idea, what Jip and Dan Heath say is you want to make change. If you do, first, direct the rider, second, motivate the elephant and third, shape the path. So let's take a look at what that looks like with me and my terrible phone habits. I had to direct the rider. That's me trying to get really clear on the specific changes that I wanted to make. I couldn't just say stop using your phone all the time, because that wasn't clear enough for my brain to actually latch onto and do something about it.

Speaker 1:

So I came up with three main things, three really clear, specific changes that I could make. The first one is that I needed to stop touching my phone first thing in the morning. No morning doom scrolling. My brain is too sleepy and tired, with the writer not having any control, so it's all elephant all the time first thing in the morning. I needed to not pick up my phone first thing. Second thing I need to put some time limits on social media and the news, because those were the places where I was getting sucked in and I also realized that the gateway drug for me was email. Email was the thing that I was like oh, let me just check if that email came in. Oh, let me just check if so-and-so responded. I just wanted to have that quick little check on my email and then that would lead me into social media and news and this endless cycle of just constantly being on my phone.

Speaker 1:

Well, I had to motivate the elephant in order to make those very specific changes possible, and I also found three ways to do that, and mostly it relied on peer pressure. So take that thing with the checking my phone first thing in the morning. Well, I knew that I wanted to make that different and I needed to also write this darn book of mine. So I made a deal with a friend and the deal was that I would do something on my book. I'd touch my book before I touched my phone every morning, and I made a promise to him that I would text him a thumbs up if I was able to do that, if I was able to touch my book before I touched my phone. And that peer pressure, that accountability with a partner, was huge. It really helped me because I knew that my friend was waiting for my thumbs up every day.

Speaker 1:

As to that social media and the news, I just put limits on my social media. See, when I was a school principal, I'd have to admonish the eighth graders day in, day out, for being on their phone all the time. I had to support the teachers who were enforcing a no phones in class policy, so I felt guilty about doing that myself. That peer pressure from my school principal hat really helped me realize and make some motivational change and get that elephant to move. And finally, the email thing. Well, a client of mine deleted the mail app from her phone. Well, shoot, if she does it, I'd better be able to as well. So that elephant, for me in particular, is super motivated by my peers. It's motivated by my eighth graders, motivated by my clients and motivated by my friend who offered to help. Then, finally, how do I shape the path? How do I shape the path so that getting off of my emails is easier and off my phone?

Speaker 1:

Well, first thing was total serendipity, but also a tragedy. My phone got stolen in Rome and that had to reset my brain in a way that proved I could actually cut back. For 10 days I was completely phone-less and it was amazing how much my brain rewired in that time. The other thing that I did was, once I got my new phone, I did all sorts of things. I treated myself as a teenager with a bad phone habit, so I did things like disable all my notifications except from favorite contacts. I used that screen time function in order to schedule downtime so that from 10 pm until 7 am my phone was pretty much off. The only things I could access were my apps to message and text and stay in contact. I set limits on social media and the news so that after a certain amount of time all the apps would simply gray out. So for social media it gave myself 20 minutes a day and news 15. That small, limited amount of time really helped.

Speaker 1:

At bedtime I put my phone in the office or kitchen, not next to my bed, and, yeah, I did delete that phone app. In addition, I put on my phone private browsing mode so that when I tried to even use my backup. So I put on private browsing mode, which is a special mode that you use in order to protect your privacy online. When I went into Safari or onto my web browser, I could surreptitiously sneak around my own guardrails and be able to access my email. However, with private browsing, every time I did that, I had to log in again. That logging in was just enough friction, enough difficulty in order to make me not want to do it. The other things is that I started to really enjoy like really love having my mornings back and having so much of my time back, I'm so much more able to savor the present, enjoy my writing in the morning. It's a lovely thing to have that joy of missing out instead of the fear of missing out.

Speaker 1:

So let's take a pause. I want to have you do something to change in your own life. How could you pick something that would be wonderful if you could change, and for that I want you to choose the three things. How could you direct the writer? Which means get really, really, really clear about what you want to change. Crystal clear direction will not overwhelm your rider. It's one step at a time. So what are the top things that you could do to get really clear about, to give your rider lots of information and very clear direction of what to do.

Speaker 1:

Then, second, how will you motivate the elephant? I'm motivated by my peers. What motivates you? Maybe it's also peers, Maybe it's rewards. What will get you to not only know what's best, but to feel it deep down in your bones? So it's activating emotions like love and play, enrichment and connection, or anger, and making sure that that elephant has those to chew on. Beware of some of the paralyzing emotions fear, blame and shame. Those can be real trouble. Those can be real trouble. And then, lastly, I want you to shape the path, Just like James Clear says, to create a good habit, you make it obvious, you make it attractive and you make it easy. And to break a bad habit, you make it invisible, you make it unattractive and you make it difficult. So do those three things for the habit that you want to change. All, right back to the show.

Speaker 1:

Let's get back to my friend in Japan, the CEO, who wanted to change your company's culture from top-down. Do what you're told to something that was collaborative, innovative and creative. Well, the big problem here wasn't directing the rider or even shaping the path, it was motivating the elephant. Everyone knows what to do, but they aren't motivated to do it. In that case, I shared with my friend something that I call the motivation pyramid. It's a way to conceptualize the different ways that we stay motivated and what can help bring people to that next level.

Speaker 1:

I want you to imagine a five-tiered pyramid. At the very bottom is shame, blame and fear. That's the one that is. It is motivating, but the effects of that kind of motivation don't last long. They don't feel good and they don't lead to that higher level of motivation.

Speaker 1:

The next level, up away from shame, blame and fear, is extrinsic motivators. Those are the things the rewards, the carrots, the sticks that will allow you to stay motivated. It's giving more pay, it's benefits, it's things like that. It's also consequences, like a bad evaluation and the threat of firing. Then you have intrinsic motivation things inside, consequences like a bad evaluation and the threat of firing. Then you have intrinsic motivation things inside. It's your desire to achieve, your wanting to be recognized, the gratitude that you receive from others. It's all of those things that feel good on the inside. That's the intrinsic motivation. It's what you want, it's what your goals are and it's how do you get the things that make it feel good to you.

Speaker 1:

The next tier. Tier four is about play and a flow state. It's the level of finding the things that just light you up and make you feel completely alive. It's the things that you love to do. Naturally, the very, very tippy top of the motivation pyramid is love. You're motivated by the people you love and the causes you love, and all of that leads to living a really meaningful life because you love the things that are in and around you.

Speaker 1:

This motivation pyramid is a little bit like Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Maslow proposed this idea ages and ages ago, really conceptualizing the different human needs and the ways that our bodies and brains are organized and structured in order to seek these things out In some similar way. The motivation pyramid is like that hierarchy. What are the ways that the brain gets motivated and which ones sustain motivation for the longest? Well, see those bottom two tiers of the motivation pyramid, which are shame, blame and fear, and extrinsic motivation. They don't sustain motivation for long. I mean, it's obvious, with shame, blame and fear, you have that basic human need of physical, mental and emotional safety, and when that's violated you just want to get the hell out of there. Unfortunately, the current culture within my friend's organization included a lot of shame, blame and fear. How can you turn that around? Well, they had already tried.

Speaker 1:

Extrinsic motivators raises, rewards, performance reviews, demotions, consequences. It's not that those didn't work, it's just that they weren't working well enough, and that's very common. Extrinsic motivation isn't enough to fully satisfy a person's needs for belonging, achievement and purpose. It's not actually fulfilling a lot of that Maslow's Pyramid. It's not that extrinsic motivation is bad per se. For example, in 2019, there were researchers in Germany who found that intrinsic motivation is the key to unlocking the creative spark and innovative problem solving, but that when you layer intrinsic motivation on top of extrinsic motivators, you have a compounding effect and the creative and innovative outcomes are even higher than when it's just the intrinsic motivation alone. What the research suggests is that innovation and creativity are stifled when it's all about the carrot and stick. In many ways, those external rewards kind of act like drugs or painkillers. Your brain gets used to their presence and needs more frequent doses in order to sustain the benefit.

Speaker 1:

Studies have shown that people will often choose that quick, easy path when chasing rewards and avoiding consequences, because that kind of behavior is short-term focused. It's rider-directed. You can entice the elephant only for so long with a carrot dangling in front of its nose. You can only force an elephant forward with a whip for so long. Instead, when you can combine extrinsic and intrinsic motivators, you get not only creative and innovative solution, you get lots of really high-quality work and lots and lots of it. In fact, it's the intrinsic motivation that seems to be the better predictor of the quality of the work, intrinsic motivation that seems to be the better predictor of the quality of the work, while the amount of work is more due to those extrinsic motivators.

Speaker 1:

Anyway, my friend and I we sat down to compare Maslow's Pyramid with the motivation pyramid and it was clear that their company was really operating on those two bottom levels the extrinsic motivators and shame, blame and fear with only a little sprinkling of the intrinsic. Instead, what they needed to do was move more and more into those top three tiers, that intrinsic motivation, the play and the love. It was those top three tiers of the motivation pyramid that create the most long-lasting motivation in the employees, because they address the top human needs in Maslow's pyramid belonging, esteem and self-actualization. After our conversation, my friend began two campaigns. The first one was to eliminate shame, blame and fear from the culture and the second was to promote intrinsic motivation, play and love Isn't that beautiful? And fortunately, the company had adopted company values that were all about those top three tiers all about intrinsic motivation, play and love, which gave her a real natural place to start, and she and I are both hopeful that the next time I go visit Japan I'm going to be able to witness an organization in which the riders and elephants are gladly moving forward together.

Speaker 1:

Thank you so much for listening to the Leader's Playground. I did a bit of an experiment this week where I didn't script it out as much and instead did a little bit more off the cuff. I'm curious how that landed for you. Please drop me a line at irene, at irenesaltercom, and let me know what you think. I would love, love, love your feedback. I personally would love to thank Tyler Lockamy, my sound editor and designer and producer, for making this podcast possible. I'd love to thank Robin Canfield for being my amazing web developer and graphic designer, as well as Tessa Borquez, my chief operating officer and the person who really holds me together. In the show notes, you're going to find a link to all the books I mentioned Switch, Atomic Habits, Play, Thinking Fast and Slow and you should head over to my website, where you can find the complete show notes and download a graphic of the motivation pyramid.

Speaker 1:

Finally, if you might be able to do me two favors, First, do you know a leader or friend who's surviving, not thriving? Do you know a leader or friend who's surviving, not thriving? Maybe they need to learn about the elephant rider, or maybe the motivation pyramid and will help them get their organization unstuck. If so, please text them a link to the show. Also, please, please, please, click the follow button on Spotify, Apple, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts, and that's going to ensure you find out about the next episode. We're going to be visiting a Japanese onsen and a really contentious board meeting, both of which will help us understand the role of centering in our work. Join me next time here at the Leaders Playground.

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Irene Salter, PhD

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