05/22/2022
Do you focus on fuel or friction in your horse training?
A few weeks ago I listened to a podcast on this subject and decided to write about it. Here’s a brief summary from my article. If you want to read the whole thing, you can find a link to it below.
How do we get people to change their behavior? If we exclude punishment based approaches (which the podcast did not discuss at all), our efforts fall into one of two categories.
They are:
• Fuel - elevate, enhance the appeal of an idea - incentives, evidence, emotional appeal, giving data
• Friction - Friction - psychological force that resists change - can take on several forms - act as drag on innovation and change
The most common approach to behavior change is to add more fuel. But, if we only add fuel, we are not taking into account all the factors that might be preventing the change (friction).
Changing our focus to removing friction requires us to analyze and identify what is preventing change. Then, by taking a more focused and creative approach, we can remove these obstacles and be more effective.
Friction comes in various types:
• physical limitations or costs (effort, difficulty, logistics)
• emotional costs (fear of rejection, emotional upheaval)
• inertia (reluctance to change the status quo)
• path of least resistance (always choosing the easier option)
We can address friction by:
• studying the needs of our audience
• Making tasks easier
• helping with logistics (where, when, how to do something)
• Encouraging ownership of the new idea
• Providing emotional support and minimizing emotional risk
• minimizing reactance (don't add fuel that creates more friction)
Want to read the whole article? Click on the link below.
Recently I’ve been listening to the Hidden Brain podcast. The host, Shankar Vendantam, covers a variety of topics, all with an emphasis on how our brains process information and how that affe…
