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I would love to change for you, but actually, I can’t.

“Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,the courage to change the things I can,and wisdom to know the difference.”

I know you don’t want to hear this,but really, you can’t change someone else’s behaviour. Believe me over the years as a manager, wife, friend, human being I have wanted and I have tried …… in fact definitely as a wife, a lot! ;o). It may have been for my own benefit (you are driving me nuts), for the benefit of others (you are driving the family/team nuts) or even in my opinion for their own benefit (everyone thinks you are nuts and so has stopped paying attention to what you want or need). So have such endeavours ever worked? For more than about 2 days, Errrrr……..No.

So my rule on this starts as…….

You can’t change someone else’s behaviour — only they can, it’s their behaviour after all.

Why do I think this is? Well in my experience people don’t deliberately set out to drive other humans round the bend so they do what they think is right for their own reasons, most of the time it kinda works out OK (often because in fact the folks around them don’t want the project/event/occasion to fail either so they just work with or despite the individual’s behaviour. So we all bumble along doing OK, making things happen; getting a reasonable outcome. Given that then what is the incentive to change? Let’s face it once you get past about 12 years old it is very hard to make a behavioural change just because someone else told you to, for your own good of course; once you get over about 25 it’s damn hard to make a behavioural change even if you want to (dieting, regular exercise, giving up smoking, cutting back on caffeine, stopping shouting at the kids….. stop me when you recognise one!)

So I am not sure I really want to make the change you are suggesting because “I am doing OK as it is, thanks”, and even if I do buy into the fact that your suggestions are for my own good I probably can’t quite see it myself (if I had, and had decided that in the long run the consequences of my behaviour were impactfully detrimental to me or others, I probably would have done something different by now) and “making such a change is going to be very hard work on my part for exactly what significant benefit?”

Great! So I have someone in my circle whose behaviour is adversely affecting themselves or others and apparently I can’t get them to change, doing nothing is very possibly what got us into this state in the first place so what on earth to do? In my experience the only thing you can do is change your behaviour, that might be your behaviour outside of the particular circumstance, before a situation arises or more likely it may be your reaction to their behaviour.

Let’s give a (purely hypothetical) example of a husband who is so incredibly untidy that your home looks like a tip, permanently! In the first flush of love and cohabiting you roll your eyes at the mess he left and then tidy it up. However after a time this wears thin, so you start telling him that he is making the place look like a pigsty and you don’t like this, problem is he doesn’t really see the mess (I need those glasses, do they come on prescription!), it causes him no particular stress or discomfort, even when his mother comes to visit! (although that may be because you can’t bear it to be at its worst and so have had to take some evasive action prior to her arrival). In fact, he doesn’t really even seem to lose that much stuff or paper because if it is absolutely critical to the running of the your house/car/life then you help him look for it (and because you see the mess daily you often can find the item!). So you asking him nicely to make a change, explaining why such a change would benefit you both, and thoughtfully doing it frequently so he doesn’t forget (this is apparently known in the trade as “nagging”) has exactly zero affect beyond the following hour, if at all.

This means my ‘rule’ changes into……

You can’t change someone else’s behaviour, you can only change your reaction to that behaviour.

So in this hypothetical example, if you are lucky enough to have space for him to have a study, then you may decide to change your reaction to his messy behaviour by every time you find ‘stuff’ making the place look untidy, after a first request for removal you place it in his study (not “put away” in his study, just “in” his study). This has the effect of reducing the stress on you, of the vast majority of the home being tidy and you feeling less like a constant nag. Is it perfect, no but it is a lot better than before and definitely a win for you, who are most affected by the situation and behaviour.

So the key is when faced with behaviour from another that causes you stress, frustration, worry, etc. don’t try and persuade them to change, it ain’t gonna happen! Instead focus on how you can change your reaction, behaviour, habits to reduce the impact on you. In the case of someone’s behaviour or communication to you, then the right change may be to not react, I have certainly experienced in my career a number of instances where someone’s bad behaviour continues because it gets a reaction (this is animal nature, if you have ever trained a dog you will know that they consider any reaction & engagement, even shouting “NO”, to be preferable to no reaction…. not as good as a pat and a treat, but potentially worth encouraging the human to repeat!).

Now not reacting with your first instinct is a challenge, stepping back from the situation and not taking things personally in the heat of the moment is hard, but a number of things can help

1. For a few seconds before you start an interaction with this person mentally prepare and remind yourself that you are going to react in a considered way (sounds like nothing, but it really helps in the heat of the moment for your brain to have recently considered this).
2. Consider do I really care about this topic/conversation/behaviour? It is easy to find yourself embroiled in a ‘wrestling match’ with someone over something that actually doesn’t bother you too much based on how the interaction started. If it is not that important then let it flow over you, make a brief comment and disengage — pick your battles.
3. Visualise and role play in your mind calm and improved interactions with this person once a day.
4. Try and understand and focus the interaction with the person on what they are trying to achieve, ask them this, explore it, demonstrate you are interested in getting to their outcome and take focus away from the how they are going about things.
5. and finally the tried and tested, take a deep breath and count to 10 before responding, that in itself indicates to the other person that you are having to do some processing of their communication or behaviour……. much easier in electronic communications.

A great example of this I have personally experienced many times in the office environment is what I call “shouty people”, if someone has a tendency to shout and swear and you don’t, then I suspect they are better at it than you, they are more practiced for a start…. so the natural tendency to shout back probably isn’t going to end well for you (basically you are getting into a shouting competition with an experienced expert, you being the novice). I am not suggesting that you completely ignore them, but you do strongly resist the temptation to shout back or to get upset, but instead remain focused on speaking calmly and keeping your stress level down and if it continues then politely removing yourself from the situation “until they have calmed down a bit and you can discuss it further”. Doing this over the years has definitely reduced my stress levels when interaction with people who use this style and to realise that in fact while I was taking it personally, they didn’t mean it so, they were just using a style of getting things done that had worked for them before.

Now interestingly to return finally to our hypothetical example of the chronically untidy husband, you could envision a situation where as a result of changing your reaction to the mess, of the fact that now most of the house looks tidy, that in fact your husband doesn’t leave quite so much mess out in the “public areas”. Maybe because the norm now is tidy then he sees the mess more and feels obliged to do something about it, maybe he tries a little harder because you stopped nagging, who knows, but it does result in some change. Note the “quite so much mess”, let’s not claim that the leopard has completely changed his spots yet…. just maybe morphed them a little!

So in the end I land with the slightly longer…..

You can’t change someone else’s behaviour, you can only change your reaction to that behaviour. Sometimes that results in their behaviour changing…..but don’t count on it, make your behaviour change count towards a better situation for you.

Would love to hear your views and strategies…….

With thanks to @robphippen & @Mrs_Hawthorne