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Behavioural Intelligence – Mistakes and Behaviours to Avoid

Guest post by: Clive Hook

Article Overview: Behavioural Intelligence means becoming acutely aware of your own behaviour and choosing what to do next rather than allowing your emotions or gut reaction to cause you to operate in a negative or destructive pattern. A common stimulus for bad behaviour is a sense of being attacked or unfairly criticised. Deciding too quickly that someone else’s contribution is wrong, interrupting them and jumping into judgment mode is an even more frequent mistake.

Behavioural Intelligence – Mistakes and Behaviours to Avoid

Behavioural Intelligence means becoming acutely aware of your own behaviour and choosing what to do next rather than allowing your emotions or gut reaction to cause you to operate in a negative or destructive pattern. A common stimulus for bad behaviour is a sense of being attacked or unfairly criticised. Deciding too quickly that someone else’s contribution is wrong, interrupting them and jumping into judgment mode is an even more frequent mistake.

Your brain is there to help but you have to give the pre-frontal cortex some help. If you react from your emotional centre (typically the amygdala – a tiny but powerfully influential part of your brain) then you put the results you want to achieve and the relationship you want to build at risk.

The pre-frontal cortex manages (amongst other things) inhibition and interruption of the messages from the instinctive emotional areas of the brain so that you can make an informed choice. The key here is slowing things down. There’s about 0.6 of a second available to interrupt the stimulus which is why learning the language of Behavioural Intelligence is so important. If you and your brain can instantly recognise what’s going on (by naming the behaviour or pattern) you are less likely to miss the opportunity.

A search for other articles and items on Behavioural Intelligence will remind you what best practice is and how to recognise the different behaviours in meetings and interactions. Here are two examples of things to avoid:-

Attack/Defend- It's not about scoring points or feeling you've won, so this is one to avoid at all costs. There's always another behaviour you can do. Think of the list as a menu to choose from. The other dishes may not, at that moment, seem as sweet as revenge or retort but once you start it quickly becomes a downward spiral. If you find yourself saying “But they started it” there’s a classic example of the amygdala taking over from your rational, logical, calculating sections of the brain. So ignoring the insult and choosing another behaviour is exactly what Behaviourally Intelligent professional negotiators do.

Immediate Counter Proposals – The best Behavioural Intelligence practitioners never follow another's proposal or idea with a proposal of their own as the very next behaviour. Doing this sends a clear signal of disagreement, and/or a suggestion that you weren't even listening. Of course, you may indeed not agree, and want to put forward your proposal - so the best tactic is to use Clarifying behaviours first, particularly Seeking Information, Testing Understanding and your best Behavioural Intelligence tool - Summarising. You're doing this to check you've really understood what they are proposing, but you are also showing you're listening.

So count to at least 3 (or 10 if it’s really provocative), run the interrupt and consider how you can best maintain the Relationship and achieve the Results you want. Just because they are not engaging in Behavioural Intelligence is not a good reason for you to lose your control of the conversation.

Related Articles
  Behavioural Intelligence – Modelling Excellent Behaviour
  Behavioural Intelligence – The Subtle Art of Controlling the Conversation
  Behavioural Intelligence - Deepening Your Understanding of Different Behaviours
  Behavioural Intelligence – Summarising is Your Best Friend
  Behavioural Intelligence – The Secrets of the Most Successful Negotiators
  Behavioural Intelligence – Noticing What Goes on in Meetings
  Behavioural Intelligence – Attack Defend Behaviour in Negotiating
  Personal Impact and Influence – Push and Pull on The Conversation Control Map
  Personal Impact and Influence – Behaviours on The Conversation Control Map
  Behavioural Intelligence, Impact and Influence in Negotiation – The Good, The Bad and The Ugly of Rewards and Punishment
  Maintaining High Emotional Intelligence for Employees
  What is Cognitive Behavioural Coaching?
  Behavioural Intelligence, Impact and Influence in Negotiation – The Good, The Bad and The Ugly of Logical Persuasion
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  Inspire, Lead, and Succeed with ACCOUNTABILITY - A Hidden Myth?
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Article Tags: behavioural intelligence, communications skills, managing meetings



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