Hey guys, and welcome back to another episode of Change Wired Podcast. My name is Angela Sharina. I'm your host. I'm your partner in change transformation and personal and collective evolution, your executive coach 360, mind body work better, and just someone who is truly passionate about human potential in you, in myself, in the world, unlocking more of it, using more of it, creating the most extraordinary world and living the most impactful life. Today, guys, by the end of this podcast, you're gonna have a nice five-pillar framework for driving infallible follow-through in yourself and in other people when managing for high performance. Our brain is designed that way that to perform a certain action, especially consistently, we need to have certain things in place to remove uncertainty, to for the brain to ensure that your efforts add up to valuable outcome or some reward. And also our brains do not like spending a lot of energy on overcoming obstacles. And so when we are faced with uncertainty, with obstacles, with rewards being not really clear, then we tend to not take action. Even though somebody else, maybe you, trying to manage a high-performing team, even for others, it might seem well that's obvious, you know, how to do it, what to do, and that there is an upside, and that the person's in person's interest is to do this thing. Like, why aren't they doing things? Why aren't we doing things? Whether you are trying to eat healthier, or for finally start regular exercise, or sheep project, certain project on time and finish it uh to the quality that you wanted to finish it. Maybe have this tough conversation or have more of them consistently to uh build certain relationships or to drive certain projects or maybe your career and your life forward. Behavioral science and I studied and read and learned quite a bit in the past uh six months, especially about behavioral science and specifically what drives human behavior. And again and again and again, I came to this framework of in order for human behavior to happen especially consistently, three things must happen. There has to be clarity about what, when, how exactly is happening. Like, what do you need to do to actually eat better or sleep better or get some regular exercise or ship a project or have this conversation? Like what, when, and how? Let's say you're trying to have a difficult conversation, or certain type of conversations are not that comfortable for you. It means very often that you just don't know how to do it. And luckily, we have like a lot of intelligence right at the tip of our fingers that we can ask for a framework to have a difficult conversation of a certain kind, and I guarantee you it's gonna be pretty good. So, what or how to do it, it's almost eliminated out of our life if you're truly committed to making a difference. So, what, when, how, there has to be clarity about the process. The second thing, what behavioral science tells us that has to be present if we want to drive consistent behavior in ourselves or in others, incentives. Incentives have to be clear and have to be aligned. What is incentive? Incentive is what am I getting out of it? And sometimes you think, well, it's obvious that I don't know, you are getting out of this how how better health or better shape, you're gonna have more energy. But then you have such things as competing priorities. So there might be something else. Maybe your work, maybe your social uh connections and relationships, they're more just having fun and doing something that is more enjoyable, that doesn't require that much work, maybe you feel uncomfortable. What I'm saying here is incentives are so undervalued in a sense that it's not always obvious what the most important thing is to you, and a big part of my coaching uh career and coaching service and impact, you know, I've been in coach for more than 18 years. A big part of my coaching is helping people see that they have competing priorities, competing incentives. And if they truly want to drive a certain behavior that they've been uh failing to drive to begin to get consistent with, is that they need to get very clear what their priorities and incentives are and how to make the thing they know they need to do to for their future self, for their present self to enjoy their life more. Uh like how to align those incentives so the behavior they don't want to do that they want to do is worth it, like truly worth it, truly aligned with your values, right? So the second thing is incentives, which are again not that simple as a lot of people think. And the third thing is something is in the way. Friction, missing resources, it's too damn complicated. You decided to exercise and you decided you're gonna go drive to some gym that is quite some time away, and then also you need to like have new clothes and you're never sure what to do. Like all this friction, even if it's some emotional friction, some emotional discomfort, that is all has to be addressed in order to drive consistent behavior again from yourself or people around you. The tricky part, at least with yourself, you can dedicate some time and figure out pretty much every single piece of it, the three components of infallible follow-through. But with other people, it's not that clear. And in order for them to make it clear for you, they first need to get clear on it and trust you enough to make it clear for you. So that's where the tricky part is when driving high performance behavior, let's say, on your team or in your family. Um a couple of days ago, before writing a blog post that I'm talking about right now, I watched a video by Alex Hermozzi when where he was talking about management diamond, that's the name he gave it. And it was about driving high performance on teams and in people. And he was talking about those five things which directly align with behavioral science research and insights and discoveries that that is what drives human behavior, whether that's high performing behaviors on your team or certain habits in yourself. Five ingredients for driving infallible follow-through and performance in yourself and in people. Number one, what crystal clear expectation about what needs to get done, not just like eat better, but what exactly every day that eating better is gonna look like? What it's gonna be for breakfast, for lunch, for dinner. It has to be very precise, very clear. How the skill don't assume you have the skill or the person has the skill. Like, what do you need to learn in order to sleep better, in order to eat better, in order to get consistently out of yourself? Maybe you lack some emotional regulation uh skill, which I had to develop in order to eat well and sleep well and follow through on things in my life consistently, right? So, how do you really have the skill? Do people have the skills? Don't assume, and especially where there is status involved of some sort, and people might be afraid of being perceived as lower status or lower capability if they acknowledge that they don't have the skill. This is a very tricky situation because they don't even, they're not gonna tell you that you like the skill, and you might not be aware that you actually do like the skill of prepping your food, let's say, for the week ahead, so you don't make decisions at the hot moments when you're tired and wired and really don't have any motivation to think about those things. But the skill, the how, right? That's the second ingredient. Don't assume you or the other person has the skill, and it has to be there for the behavior to uh occur, to perform at a higher level. And then you have when accountability, when exactly it happens. Maybe that's a trigger in your day, morning, afternoon, after your breakfast, after your lunch, after your dinner, three times per week, five times per week, every day. For people that you manage or that you lead, it has to be clear, crystal clear when the deadline is, when it has to happen. And usually why explaining like this is important because other people depend on it and they we need to proceed with this because accident, right? So when it has to be crystal clear. Sometimes you think, well, it's obvious. No, it's not. Unless the person confirmed to you that they understand, then it's not obvious. Nothing is. You live in your own head. I live in my own head, so nothing is obvious. If I could also transfer meta skill to you, assume nothing ever. The so the first three ingredients is the one point that behavioral science sort of compiled in one big piece, like how, what, and when has to be super clear. Then the fourth ingredient in driving infallible follow-through and high performance is incentives. And as I mentioned at the beginning, it's not that simple as let's say pay people more money and they're gonna do certain things at a higher level. And research shows that after a certain point and for different people, a different point, money just doesn't drive behavior. And not only that, the highest, the best performance, money does not drive that in people. Social status might might, or their sense of mustering and growing, and also what research shows, progress might, money not as uh clear-cut, and paying people more money does not always at all, especially on a long-term horizon, translates into high performance, right? Incentives you want to understand what makes people tick, and usually it's some combination of progress, of purpose, and praise or social status. Those are actually stronger predictors of long-term high performance than money. Obviously, you need to pay people well for their work, otherwise, they're gonna be discouraged because their livelihood does depend on that. So, incentives, the fourth ingredient in infallible for through and high performance, which is again not that clear cut. You gotta understand your people and people in general, people's psychology. And then blocks, friction, and obstacles that are in the way, they gotta be removed. And sometimes it's an emotional blocker, like maybe there is discomfort. Sometimes it's I don't know. Uh, Alex was talking about how on his team, people who added their content for the company would go home to edit their stuff, and he couldn't understand like why couldn't they do it at work until he really tried to get to the bottom of this? And he was told that just uploading speed is so much faster in people's homes than it was in the office, and then they corrected this, they removed that block, and then voila, people started editing more and better in the office, right? So don't also assume that people have everything they need or they know how to get it, or that they even trust you or are comfortable with asking you for removing those blocks. So that's what you need to work on. That's why it's important to build psychological safety, to build trust. So people do tell you about problems or things that they lack in order to do their work well. People usually want to do great work, want to be praised, want to have great social status, want to be perceived as competent. You just need to make sure that they have everything they need: the what, the how, the when, the incentives and blocks removed in order to do their best jobs. And again, they're not gonna tell you all of that all the time. Even with me coaching, when people pay me to help them, they are not comfortable from the get-go to tell me everything on their mind. And the first sort of task of a coach is to build this trust, this partnership, this collaboration, so clients can come to you even when they are feeling like they're falling short and they're struggling with something where they shouldn't be struggling from their perspective, right? Building trust first, this collaborative spirit, and then a lot of those things that people need to succeed. They will tell you, and then you can help them to actually perform and do their work and become infallible with follow-through. And the value of what you are learning right now is twofold. Number one, if you are struggling with follow-through on certain behaviors, you gotta walk yourself through the list and make clear on what it looks like precisely, how to do it. Do I have the skills? Do I know when it is important to do it? Or is it like, well, for the next 10 years it might happen? Well, you know, your brain is very good at prioritizing. If that's that important, then probably not gonna happen, at least not for the last year of the decade. Then incentives, are you really clear on what your incentives are, or basically what do you care about? I really clear on that. And then blocks, what is blocking you? How can you make that thing that you're trying to do easy? So you can use it for yourself, or you can use it with people you manage and lead, your team, your family, your partner, people that you care about, people that you think can perform better, and you want them to perform better or to follow through on certain actions. Have a good conversation with them. What is blocking them? Is it the what? Is it the how? Is it the when? Is it incentives? Is it something in their way? Create the collaborative spirit, the trust, the safety, and then create a good space for people to come to you when they have troubles with any of this. And you can even teach people about them, and so they need to communicate those to you in order for performance to be at a higher level, right? So, twofold for yourself or for other people, walk yourself through this list: what, how, when, incentives, and blogs. So that's what Alex Hermozzi calls management diamond. I made a pretty graphic for my daily blog on that, that you know, diamond with AI, obviously, or maybe not, obviously. So you can check it out on my daily blog, Daily Thought for Change, which is linked in the show notes. And thank you guys for tuning in. Thank you for listening, thank you for learning and growing, and hopefully putting this into practice. Because, guys, the truth is if you don't put it into practice, if you don't write it down, if you don't sit down and think, how can I put this into practice? Then nothing gonna happen. Knowledge is not power, it's just potential power. And if you don't use it, you lose it. Just like with your muscles, if you don't train them, they're gonna become weak, flabby, and not performing really well. So use it, put it, stop this podcast and ask yourself how will I put this into action? Besides that, guys, there is an executive coaching body-mind work session available, a simple session, absolutely free, where you're gonna get clarity, where you're gonna get your answers, uh questions answered, where you're gonna get a plan on certain things on certain areas where you struggle available to you as a listener of this podcast 365 days a year. So it's also in the show notes. And please do me a favor, if you will, if you think that this podcast brings value into your life. Share, review, read uh one of those things, it would help immensely to reach more ears, to reach more listeners and uh learners and people committed to making this world better for all of us. Thank you guys for tuning in. Thank you for listening, and till next time, keep growing.