Editor’s Note: This article is based on Steve Sanduski’s podcast interview with Sean Young, Ph.D., of the UCLA School of Medicine. To access more than 100 interviews with industry leaders, subscribe for free to Steve’s podcast, Between Now and Success by clicking here.
Do you ever get frustrated when your clients don’t follow through on your advice, even when they agree they’ll do it?
Do you wonder why people don’t change their behavior even when it’s in their best interests to do so?
As a financial advisor, one of your main roles is to help your clients change their behavior. This could involve helping them:
1. Save and invest more money.
2. Get their spending under control.
3. Avoid making a bad, emotional decision that messes up their investment plan.
4. Stop procrastinating on making important financial decisions.
What’s so frustrating is people usually know what they need to do to reach their goal, or know what the “right” decision is, but they still don’t do it. They remain stuck in the old “knowing-doing gap,” and keep repeating ineffective behavior.
Financial advisors can add real value to clients’ lives if they can help them identify, change and stick with new behaviors that are aligned with the client’s values.
In a recent Between Now and Success podcast, best-selling author and researcher Sean Young told me behavior change is not about a lack of knowledge, it’s about getting the process right.
“Conventional wisdom teaches us that if we don't stick with things it's because there's something wrong with us as individuals,” said Sean. “If people aren't exercising, if people aren't following their hobbies or things they want to do, we're typically taught it's because they're not educated or motivated enough. Not only does that make us feel bad about ourselves, but it's actually the wrong science.”
Sean’s new book, Stick with It: A Scientifically Proven Process for Changing Your Life-for Good, outlines the real science behind behavior change. The book is rooted in Sean’s work as the executive director of the University of California Institute for Prediction Technology and the UCLA Center for Digital Behavior, as well as decades of additional psychological and scientific research on behavioral patterns.
From all that science, and his life experiences, Sean has learned “that it's really about changing the process of how we do things and just making tweaks to our own behavior and our own life. If we do that with the correct science, with the correct psychology, then we can get ourselves and others to stick with things we want to do.”
Sounds easy, right?
Step 1: Know Your ABCs
It all starts with knowing your ABCs—that is, identifying the type of behavior you want to change, and applying the correct “forces” to change it.
“A behaviors are automatic,” explains Sean, “things that are done automatically without us being aware that we're doing them. For example, if we're having a conversation and I'm interrupting you and I don't realize it, that's an A behavior. It's an automatic behavior. It happens without my awareness.”
B behaviors are “burning behaviors,” things we do that we’re aware of, but that we just can’t bring ourselves to stop doing: that impulse to reach for your phone every time it buzzes; digging into the candy bowl when you’re not even hungry; splurging on an online purchase without thinking about it. “The way most people talk about addiction, 'I feel like I'm addicted to this, I feel like nothing's going to stop me from doing this,' those are usually burning behaviors,” said Sean.
C behaviors are “common behaviors,” and, as the name implies, they are the most common of all behaviors. There’s often some underlying motivation behind the behavior, but then we get sidetracked. “For example, I want to be able to exercise, I want to be able to go out and recruit more clients for my business, but I have other work that I have to get done, or an email came up,” said Sean. “I'm aware of what I want to do and should be doing, but other things come up."
Step 2: Apply The Seven Forces
Once you’ve determined whether the behavior you want to change is an A, B, or C behavior, then you apply the appropriate “seven forces” to change that behavior.
These seven forces, dubbed SCIENCE, are rooted in real science, not self-help mumbo-jumbo. Sean’s SCIENCE is an acronym for “the forces that get us to move and behave in certain ways.” Being aware of these forces helps us to change our behavior and to stick with things.
The Seven Forces
All behavior change can be accomplished by using some combination of the following seven forces.
1. Stepladders—Taking small steps to change the desired behavior.
2. Community—Being involved in a community of people who are trying to change the same behavior has a big influence on us.
3. Important—If something is important to us, we will be more likely to do it.
4. Easy—The easier something is, the more likely we are to do it.
5. Neuro-hacks—Quick, mental shortcuts that can get us to think and act in ways we've never been able to before.
6. Captivating—The reward for changing our behavior needs to be truly captivating for the change to stick.
7. Engrained—If things happen repeatedly, and if we do them routinely, they become engrained in our brains, and easy to do.
When working with your clients to help them change a certain behavior, you can apply this two-step formula. First, help the client determine if it’s an A, B or C behavior. Then, based on the information in Sean’s book, you can match the appropriate seven forces to that behavior. And your role as the advisor could be to act as an accountability partner to check on whether they are following through.
Changing behavior is not simply about “getting more motivated” because motivation is a temporary feeling. Instead, if you really want to stay engaged and do something long term, you have to have a process for getting yourself to stick with something, no matter how you feel.
Sean’s two-step process is a simple and effective way to change behavior and stick with it.
Steve Sanduski, CFP, is the CEO and co-founder of ROL Advisor, a discovery process technology system, a New York Times bestselling author, host of the Between Now and Success podcast, international speaker and blogger at BelayAdvisor.com.