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Behavioural Intelligence – Modelling Excellent Behaviour

Guest post by: Clive Hook

Article Overview: There is only one person you can directly control and be responsible for – you. Behavioural Intelligence is about taking charge of your behaviour and deciding what is most useful, appropriate and constructive to say or do next. If you decide while you’re doing it or saying it - it’s too late. The most skilled practitioners interrupt their instincts and make a conscious decision about their next behaviour.

Behavioural Intelligence – Modelling Excellent Behaviour

There is only one person you can directly control and be responsible for – you. Behavioural Intelligence is about taking charge of your behaviour and deciding what is most useful, appropriate and constructive to say or do next. If you decide while you’re doing it or saying it - it’s too late. The most skilled practitioners interrupt their instincts and make a conscious decision about their next behaviour. Your human brain is unique in the animal kingdom thanks to your pre-frontal cortex which makes it the perfect tool for this. But you do have to practise and learn or the tool gets rusty and doesn’t work well. We all have the potential to build on emotional intelligence and develop our Behavioural Intelligence. But, like playing the piano, only those who actually practise get really good at it.

The bonus for you and your organisation is that, if you actively model Behavioural Intelligence, other people start behaving more constructively and, as a result meetings achieve more, waste less time and build engagement not frustration. But you have to start with you.

As well as becoming highly aware of your own and others’ behaviours – previous articles have given checklists and definitions to help with this – there are specific, proven techniques which advanced practitioners use to achieve the results they want and, at the same time, help to build constructive relationships which in turn increase the amount of Behavioural Intelligence used by everyone.

There are two particular techniques or practices which make a massive difference to building Behavioural Intelligence in your own and others’ words and actions:-

Behaviour Labelling - Clearly announce the behaviour you are about to do, before you do it. Most people do this to some extent, but skilled practitioners do it as much as five times more than the norm. Say things like:

"Can I make a proposal?"

"Can I check I've understood?"

"Can I ask what the group thinks we should do?"

"Let me ask a question before we continue."

Behaviour Labelling as one of the Behavioural Intelligence tools builds trust, increases your reputation for openness, makes people more likely to engage with you and also helps you to do the next thing, which is...

One Behaviour at a Time - The most skilled, powerful, influential leaders, managers, negotiators and facilitators do just one behaviour, and then they stop talking. They don't ask a question, and then suggest a range of answers; they don't make proposals, and then suggest which is the right one; they don't summarise, and then go on to add their own ideas.

Behaviour labelling works in tandem, because it forces you to think which behaviour you are about to do and then you tend to label and do just one, rather than rambling through a cluster of them.

Both of these techniques take a surprising amount of practice until they become Behavioural Intelligence habits. Look for more items and articles to discover what you should avoid if you are to build and model Behavioural Intelligence.

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Article Tags: behavioural intelligence, communications skills, managing meetings



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