This article has been accepted for publication in the March 25, 2004 issue of The Baltimore Business Journal.

How To Help An Employee Kick A Bad Habit
By Barbara Brown, PhD

If you want an employee to kick a bad habit, provide the right reinforcement for the right behavior. Use these three steps as your guide.

Step 1: Determine what you consider a desirable behavior. Keep the focus on what you want rather than what you don’t want. It’s not enough to tell an employee to stop doing something. You have to provide instructions about what to start doing instead.

Step 2: Eliminate positive reinforcement for the undesirable behavior. Practices such as rewarding or ignoring (a type of reward) undesirable behaviors fall into this category. Think about what your employee does. Does she get what she wants in spite of the undesirable behavior? If so, you are reinforcing a behavior you don’t want. When you eliminate positive reinforcement, you introduce negative consequences. While such consequences are important, they will only stop the behavior you don’t want. To get the behavior you want, you must also provide positive reinforcement.

Step 3: Provide positive reinforcement for the desirable behavior. Little things like a verbal acknowledgement or a written note can turn sporadic behaviors into continuous habits. Start by giving positive feedback every time you observe the desirable behavior. Decrease your feedback as the desirable behavior increases and the undesirable behavior decreases. Sustain the behavior by providing other types of recognition.

Over time, you will eliminate the bad habit if you reward the right behavior in the right way.

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