subject: Behavioural Intelligence – Noticing What Goes on in Meetings [print this page] Behaviour is what you say or doBehaviour is what you say or do. It's not about what you think or feel. As human beings we have a unique brain structure which allows us to separate our behaviour from our feelings. We can act brave when we're actually frightened. We can calmly explain our position on something even when we're furious. We can, though, only do these things if we make a conscious decision to hide our true feelings or emotions and use behaviour to achieve a particular objective. If we are ruled by our emotions then we risk doing the wrong thing and damaging our chances of getting the result we want and the relationship with others.
Meetings and interactions at work are one of the places where this behavioural skill is most important and relevant. Behavioural intelligence or managing behaviour is about raising awareness, so that you notice your own and others' behaviour, and make conscious decisions about it.
I rate Behavioural Intelligence as one of the most important things for anyone to learn in business. I use a model developed from Neil Rackham's Behavioural Analysis to help leaders, managers, facilitators and negotiators improve their behavioural skills.
There are four classes of behaviour, and you need to learn to spot these in yourself and others. Each of these behavioural classes has its purpose, and each breaks down into four or fewer behaviours.
Initiating - Getting things moving, or keeping things moving
Making Proposals - Putting forward a suggestion for consideration
Seeking Proposals - Encouraging others to put forward suggestions
Building - Extending or developing another's proposal
Directing - Issuing an instruction to one or more members of the group
Clarifying - Increasing your own or others' understanding
Giving Information - Providing facts, data or opinions to others
Seeking Information - Seeking facts, data, opinions from others
Summarising - Restating in brief, the content of previous discussions
Testing Understanding - Establishing whether or not something is understood
Reacting - Evaluating others' contributions and responding
Disclosing - Describing your own feelings in relation to a proposal or the situation
Supporting - Declaring agreement or support for another's proposals or thinking
Disagreeing - Stating disagreement or objection to another's proposals or thinking
Attack/Defend - Attacking others or defensively strengthening your position with "put downs".
Controlling - Managing the flow of information
Bringing In - Inviting contributions from others who are not actively participating
Shutting Out - Excluding others, or reducing their opportunity to contribute
These are not skills, you can already do them. The skill is in noticing what's needed and consciously deciding to do a specific behaviour from the list not just reacting from your gut or letting your emotions take over. Copy the list of behaviours and check which ones happen most or least in your meetings. With this information you'll be ready to move to the next step to skilfully choose the right behaviour at the right time. Look for more articles and items about Behavioural Intelligence to deepen your understanding, learning and development.
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Behavioural Intelligence Noticing What Goes on in Meetings
