Make Change Stick With Dial Up, Dial Down

Posted on February 4th, 2010 by Keith Ferrazzi

Last Tuesday I wrote about poor listening skills, and someone challenged me in the comments to give you guys more about not just recognizing behaviors that need to change, but how to actually CHANGE them. Fair enough!

Here's part of a Tip we sent out a while back address just this question. It's an exercise called "Dial Up/Dial Down" that we use at FG and in corporate engagements. It's effective!

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At my company we have an exercise we call "Dial Up/Dial Down." We use it to push each other to constantly develop our strengths and improve on our weaknesses. We introduce it to clients too. You can use in your own office, in your family, with a buddy, or in any kind of group that cares about each other's success. You can do it alone, of course, but it's not nearly as effective when there's no one to hold you accountable.

Here's how it works: We create a chart on a giant Post-It ® page, with all of our names, plus columns for "Dial Up" and "Dial Down."

The "Dial Up" column is for skills or behaviors an individual wants to put into action more often. These could be strengths the person already has but needs to push more to the fore, or areas where improvement or learning is needed.

The "Dial Down" column is for negative or unconstructive habits and personality traits that someone wants to cut back.

We go around the room and team members each volunteer a dial-up and a dial-down that they plan to work on. If they have trouble deciding, they can call on the group for help. Sometimes examples help inform people's thinking, so at the bottom of this email I've listed some common dial ups and downs.

Everyone's commitments go in writing on the chart, which hangs in our conference room as a reminder to the person, and to everyone else, of the change they plan to make.

At the next staff meeting, we self-evaluate on a 0-5 scale how well we each did. If your team's relationships are strong enough -- and that should certainly be a goal to work toward -- you can also have peers offer up their evaluations. Believe me, opening the floor to that feedback keeps the process honest like nothing else. But it requires that your team is tight enough to feel safe giving and receiving candor.

Does your office have any weekly accountability in place around behavioral change?

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3 comments // In Coaching
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3 Responses so far | Have Your Say!

  1. I love the idea of "dialing up/down" to control the pace of your career and life. At some points in our life, we are going to want to focus more on work and our career leaving little room for family and even fun. At other points in our life we find that family, friends, travel, charity, whatever is more important.

    When I was at Deloitte, we experimented with an organization-wide program that allowed us to "dial up" or "dial down" our careers. It's called "Mass Career Customization", a program developed at Deloitte by Cathy Benko.

    Check out the site here: http://www.masscareercustomization.com.

    I think it's a really interesting idea, and if it worked as it's intended would be a great asset to employees in any organization. Unfortunately, what I found to be true at Deloitte is that it's often more difficult to implement than it is to write about.

  2. SUNDER LALVANI says:
    February 14, 2010 at 9:53 pm
    Reply

    Dear Keith
    The Dial-up/down approach is an Excellent tool that jerks each of us out of our cocoons of latent potential & eggs us on to accepting own reality, to finally embark on the journey toward Self-Actualisation.
    Regards,
    Sunder

  3. SUNDER LALVANI says:
    February 14, 2010 at 10:00 pm
    Reply

    Dear Ryan
    Your experience at Deloitte reflecting the mass career customisation was revealing. I daresay, the MCC appears to be a sophisticated tool for controlling the pace of your life & career.
    Regards,
    Sunder

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