Now if you’re a leader, manager, or HR professional you might be thinking, "no I really can control people". Well technically, you still can’t control other people, but you do probably have more carrots and sticks than the average employee. You can think about how to use those carrots and sticks to influence people’s behaviour.

This goes back to the science of behaviour change. We call it the ABC’s of behaviour change. A is for antecedents - it means the things that happen before a behaviour. B is for behaviour. And C is for consequences - that means the things that happen after a behaviour.

So for example, let’s say you call a team meeting. Joe and Matt have been at odds with each other for a while. They walk into the room and Matt bumps into Joe on his way to sit down at the meeting. Then Joe calls Matt a loser. Everyone laughs. Matt declares this is harassment and he’s filing a complaint.

Let’s analyze this from the ABC’s:

What’s the behaviour? Let’s talk Joe "calling Matt a loser" as the behaviour in question. As you might be thinking, there’s actually lots of behaviours here, but it’s really important to narrow it down a very specific behaviour.

What was the antecedent? Well, maybe it was Matt bumping into Joe when he came into the meeting room.

What was the consequence? Everyone laughed, which may serve as social reinforcement, which means that, because he got a laugh, Joe might be more likely to call Matt or someone else a loser again.

We often focus on the B to get someone to change but you can also focus on the A and the C to influence behaviour. If you’re a leader or HR professional, you have more ways to alter A and C.