Is it My Job to Change The Behavior of My Work Colleague?

Is it my job to change the behavior of my work colleague, is a question we will get a mixed response and varying degrees of results?

Dr Milton Erickson a prominent American psychiatrist and psychologist as well as a founding father and contributor to NLP, Neuro Linguistic Programming.

One day Dr Erickson was requested by his fellow colleague to assist in an urgent matter at his colleague’s psychiatric institution. One of the patients was causing trouble by having a behavior that was upsetting all the other patients.

The patient, Malcolm, was moving his arm violently back and forth as fast as possible and would not stop. If you can imagine stretching your left arm out in front of you with palm facing up, NOW. Then bend your elbow and allow your hand to touch your shoulder. Good. Continue with this movement back and forth as fast as you can, yes, that’s right. This is what Malcolm has been doing since he was admitted.

Dr Erickson agreed to come and talk to Malcolm to help with this situation.

Dr Erickson introduces himself to Malcolm as Malcolm continues to move his arm violently back and forth. Dr Erickson says, “Malcolm, I can see that you are moving your arm back and forth very quickly, that’s wonderful”.

“Thanks”, say’s Malcolm.

Dr Erickson then asked Malcolm, “Can you make that same movement at a slightly different angle?”.

Malcolm attempts to change the angle slightly and can still maintain the violent movement.

For the next 10 minutes Dr Erickson and Malcolm work together in adjusting the vertical movement of Malcolm’s arm to a horizontal movement.

Malcolm is still very proud of his behavior of his arm moving violently with now the only variation is it is moving horizontally instead of vertically.

Dr Erickson invites Malcolm to come down stairs to the basement as he would like to show him something.

They walk down 2 flights of stairs and as they get closer to the basement they both can hear banging sounds and the noises of, what appears to be, electrical equipment in use.
They arrive at a large double wooden door and without announcement they both barged their way through the doors swinging wide open…

Immediately they realize they are standing in the middle of a wood working carpenter’s workshop as they see sawdust floating through the beams of sunlight coming in the window and the smell of freshly cut wood, adhesive and finishing chemicals gets the attention of their nostril’s, not to mention those loud banging noises of hammers driving nails into wood.

Dr Erickson takes Malcolm to the back of the workshop where he puts a piece of sandpaper in his violently moving hand and puts Malcolm to work sanding down large lumps of wood.

Understand this…

Is it my job to change the behavior of my work colleague?…

Dr Erickson realized it wasn’t his job to change Malcolm (without permission) yet with some slight adjustment he was able to utilize Malcolm’s current behavior and create a win / win situation for everyone.

How can we utilize the behavior of those around us without substantially trying to change others (it’s a tough job) and create a win / win situation for everyone?

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