Can Old Dogs Really Learn New Tricks?

“Good habits are worth being fanatical about.”
John Irving

In raising Indy, our 6-month year old guide dog puppy in training, we have learned a lot again about just how long it takes to learn a new habit.  Some of our guide dog puppies we raised seemed to take forever to learn new habits but eventually passed and became working guide dogs for many years before they were retired. There are many lessons in being a puppy raiser that I can directly apply to my executive coaching work with clients to become more effective.

So, how do we help clients become effective in actually acquiring new habits and making them automatic?

Ingredients for Learning a New Behavior

There is, in fact, a big difference between “experts” and those “who are expert” in what they do.

In a book co-edited by Anders Ericcson called “The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance”, the authors conclude that great performance comes mostly from two things ((K. Anders Ericsson, ed., The Road to Excellence: The Acquisition of Expert Performance in the Arts and Sciences, Sports and Games. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1996, pp.10-11)).

• Regularly obtaining concrete and constructive feedback
• Deliberate practice of difficult behaviors

Two authors in the Cambridge Handbook (Janice Deaking and Stephen Cobley) analyzed diaries of 24 elite figure skaters to determine what might explain some of their performance success.  They found that the best skaters spent 68% of their practice doing really hard jumps and routines compared to those who were less successful (they spent about 48% of their time doing the same difficult things).

Having raw talent is wonderful but it’s what you do with it that really seems to matter.  “Only dead fish go with the flow” is an old saying–if you don’t work to get better it just doesn’t happen naturally.  Ericsson and others use the word “deliberate practice” to mean focused, structured, serious and detailed attempts to get better.  That means it has to be challenging and difficult (i.e., practicing the most difficult tasks).

How The Best of the Best Get Better

Graham Jones in his HBR article “How the Best of the Best Get Better and Better” outlines five unique characteristics of top performers.  These themes can be summarized as:

• Top performers compete against themselves and their own standards continuously pushing themselves to new limits–particularly when they are the new benchmark.  Their perspective is longer term with respect to goals and accomplishments.
• Top performers can block out distractions very effectively whether it is competitor behavior or personal/family issues (e.g., death of a family member).
• Top performers play with other elite talent to stretch their skills and abilities.
• Top performers seek immediate and candid feedback geared to helping them become even better (i.e., they want honest and constructive feedback not admiration and gloating praise).
• Top performers both celebrate successes and reflect on what got them there–they are strongly interested in their own continuous improvements to sustain their excellence.

How Long Does it Take for New Habits to Form?

Research by Phillippa Lally and colleagues from the UK suggest that new behaviors can become automatic, on average, between 18 to 254 days but it depends on the complexity of what new behavior you are trying to put into place and your personality ((Lally, P. et al. (2009). How are habits formed: Modeling habit formation in the real world. European Journal of Social Psychology, DOI: 10.10002/ejsp.674)).

They studied volunteers who chose to change an eating, drinking or exercise behavior and tracked them for success. They completed a self-report diary which they entered on a website log and were asked to try the new behavior each day for 84 days. For the habits, 27 chose an eating behavior, 31 a drinking behavior (e.g., drinking water), 34 an exercise behavior and 4 did something else (e.g., meditation).

Analysis of all of these behaviors indicated that it took 66 days, on average, for this new behavior to become automatic and a new “habit” that seemed pretty natural. The mean number of days varied by the complexity of the habit:

• Drinking / 59 days
• Eating / 65 days
• Exercise / 91 days

Although there are a lot of limitations in this study, it does suggest that it can take a large number of repetitions for new behaviors to become a habit. Therefore, creating new habits requires tremendous self-control to be maintained for a significant period of time before they become more “automatic” and performed without any real self-control. For most people, it takes about 3 months of constant practice before a more complicated new behavior gets “set” in our neural pathways as something we are comfortable with and seemingly automatic. So, adopting a new physical workout routine or learning to become more participative as a leader might take quite a while with or without coaching to truly become more natural (i.e., about 90 days).

Want Help to Facilitate Successful Behavior Change in Clients?

Our new book Clueless: Coaching People Who Just Don’t Get It is based on a new three stage individual behavior change model.  These stages include:

1. Enlighten
2. Encourage
3. Enable

We have developed 115 free coaching exercises to help your clients translate awareness from coaching and feedback into deliberate practice.

Over time, these new behaviors become automatic requirng less cognitive load (concentration) and rehearsal (i.e., the reason we can drive without much effort now leaving us tempted to do things we shouldn’t such as speaking on the phone with others).

Have a look at our book and free exercises to see what might be useful for some of your challenging (and easy) coaching assignments….Be well…..

Ken Nowack

Kenneth Nowack, Ph.D. is a licensed psychologist (PSY13758) and President & Chief Research Officer/Co-Founder of Envisia Learning, is a member of the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations. Ken also serves as the Associate Editor of Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research. His recent book Clueless: Coaching People Who Just Don’t Get It is available for free for a limited time by signing up for free blog updates (Learn more at our website)