How leadership habit-building helps leaders sustain behavior change

A 2009 study by Stadler, Oettingen & Gollwitzer showed that people who spend time each day predicting possible fail points in maintaining a new habit performed twice as well in successfully changing their behavior as a control group that didn’t. This was true both in the short and long term. Dr. Kelly McGonical terms this approach “Defensive Pessimism” and encourages people to use their pessimism to help them change successfully. Focusing on fail points sounds counterintuitive, as most productivity apps teach people to track their successes rather than their failures. Let’s face it. It feels better. However, studies show that focusing on success leads people to become complacent and less determined in the long run. Instead, becoming a detective of one’s potential failures helps people predict and preempt the possible causes of failure and increase their ability to develop new habits successfully. Moreover, studies have shown that people who are optimistic about their ability to change tend to be more surprised and thrown off-course by any setbacks, causing them to give up more readily. Leadership habit-building leverages these science-backed insights regularly, usually weekly, following up with program participants for an extended period after the training event – usually 3-6 months. Each check-in engages participants in a Defensive Pessimism exercise. These specially designed exercises prompt participating leaders to review what worked and didn’t work in the past week and also help them anticipate & solve possible fail points that could undermine their change efforts in the upcoming week. Such a proactive approach makes it easier for leaders to stick with their change efforts. Moreover, these regular check-ins by the program leader or coaches involved in the leadership program also work as an informal accountability framework that provides leaders with another incentive to stick with it.