Many of our most destructive habits can be changed through coaching, training, or other developmental activities. However, not all troubling leadership behaviors are so easy to change. Even when they show early signs of shifting, some reappear over time. Despite well-intended efforts, many of us struggle to maintain the new and improved version of ourselves. Pressures and triggers can cause us to slide right back into familiar, though unwanted, behavior.
Getting to the Bottom of Destructive Behaviors
You have to understand your story before you can rewrite it.
December 09, 2019
HBR Staff/H. Armstrong Roberts/ClassicStock/Getty Images
Summary.
The origins of destructive behavior are almost always attached to well-formed narratives. These narratives serve as templates, or biases, through which we make sense of the world, and often manifest in reaction to experiences we faced earlier in life — or our “origin stories.” Unless we rewrite them, we spend our lives recreating conditions that reinforce them. But we can’t rewrite stories that we can’t even name. If you, or someone you coach, has struggled to change chronic destructive behavior — anything from angry outbursts to freezing up in high-risk moments to asserting excessive control under stress — uncovering their origin stories may help you break through and make way where other approaches have failed to.