Which 3 or 4 Behaviors to Train First

Training often gets assigned before anyone has defined the "why" behind it. Most of us believe training is part of the answer, and with 500 trainings available it is easy to lose the pulse of what a team should train on. Choosing which 3 or 4 habits would move the team is the step that tends to get skipped.

Someone I was chatting with recently, an executive coach who has spent years running long-term engagements with leadership teams and has worked with thousands of leaders, said he can think of only five companies who actually know what their team specifically needs to train in. He compared it to the high school weightlifter who only does chest and biceps. That kid lives at the gym and works hard, but he is training whatever shows up first in the mirror, and he is not building a body that can perform.

A lot of corporate training works the same way. Content on any topic is available at any time, so it is easy to pick a lot of it before deciding which few behaviors matter most. His version is 4 competency trainings and 4 character trainings, cycled all year. Deciding which ones go on that list is the hard part, so here are the ones I would begin with.

Four behaviors to start with

• Emotional intelligence. Noticing your own reaction before responding, and reading what the other person needs.
• Psychological safety. The behaviors that create it, like asking for dissent and responding calmly to bad news. It is the result of what leaders do repeatedly.
• Feedback. Giving it specifically and early, and receiving it without defending.
• Accountability. Following through on your commitments and holding others to theirs without it turning personal.

A topic needs a Tuesday

None of these four is a topic for a single workshop. Each shows up as small, observable actions in a one-on-one or a meeting. A leader who asks "what am I missing?" at the end of a planning meeting is practicing psychological safety. A leader who tells someone on Wednesday that Monday's presentation buried the main point is practicing feedback.

If a team picks "psychological safety" and nobody can say what a leader would do differently on Tuesday, it stays an idea. The test for any behavior on the list is whether a manager and their direct report could agree on whether it happened this week.

The right four differ by team

I would expect the best 3 or 4 behaviors to vary from team to team. A newly formed team and a team in the middle of a reorg probably need different ones. The new team may need accountability and feedback first, so expectations are clear from the start. The team in a reorg may need emotional intelligence and psychological safety first, since people are uncertain and bad news is more likely to go unspoken.

Those are guesses, which is why the list above is a starting point and not a prescription.

How to assess and build them

1. Choose 3 or 4 behaviors. Start from the list above and pick the ones your team's current work depends on most. Leave the rest for a later cycle.
2. Define each behavior as two or three observable actions. For feedback, that could be "gives specific feedback within a few days of the event" and "asks the other person how it landed." If you cannot observe it in a meeting or a one-on-one, rewrite it.
3. Set a baseline. Ask each leader to rate how often they do each action, and ask their direct reports to rate the same actions about that leader. The gap between the two ratings shows where self-perception and experience differ, and it can confirm your choices or move a different behavior onto the list.
4. Practice in work that already exists. Attach one behavior to a recurring meeting or one-on-one so it gets repeated without adding a new training. A leader working on psychological safety can end every staff meeting by asking for the view that has not been heard yet.
5. Add a feedback loop. Pair each leader with a peer or their manager, and spend a few minutes each week on what they tried and what happened.
6. Re-measure with the same questions. Compare the results to the baseline, keep the behaviors that moved, and rework the ones that did not.

Workshops and training have a place in this. They work best as one part of a broader approach, chosen for the specific behaviors an organization has decided to build and timed around the practice in step 4, so people learn a skill and then use it in the meetings they already have. The right mix of workshops, coaching, and on-the-job practice will look different for each organization.

Test the list in practice, then revise it

You will not know whether you picked the right behaviors until people are doing them every day. After that you can look at the data, see what changed and what did not, and rework the list. Picking the behaviors is step one, and you need a way to test them in practice right after.

That review step matters as much as the first pick. The steps above repeat: re-measure with the same questions, compare to the baseline, and revise the list. If you have run a version of this with your own team, I would like to hear which behaviors made your list.