Why I closed my Behaviour Change Course

I’m proud that over 3,000 practitioners from around the world have completed my Behaviour Change course.

It worked. It was well received. It helped people have better conversations with patients and clients. It has also been a significant part of my income as a business owner.

And I’ve still closed it announcing it this week to my list of dedicated practitioners.

For a long time, something hasn’t sat right with me about what I was teaching. Not because I don’t believe in the Behaviour Change work. I do. I’ve dedicated years of my life to it and stand by my teachings.

But something I’ve not spoken about is that I’ve become increasingly uncomfortable with the wider culture surrounding it. I shall save my opinions on who is doing the teaching for another time though I’d love to hear your opinions on this if you have them?

Across healthcare and coaching, we’ve been subtly reinforcing the idea that if we can motivate better, communicate more skilfully, notice ambivalence more precisely, structure goals more effectively, then change should naturally follow.

But what happens when it doesn’t?

In my experience, practitioners tend to respond in one of two ways. Some double down and look to refine their approach, learning more models, trying to sharpen their technique. Others gradually detach, lowering expectations or becoming more procedural in order to protect themselves.  Hello burnt out and stress.

I’ve seen and watched this pattern for years.

Thoughtful, conscientious practitioners who carry the message that outcomes sit solely with them can begin to slip. They may move into rescuing, assuming that when movement or change hasn’t occurred, the problem must lie in their own skillset.

Here is my challenge.  What if that isn’t accurate and in actual fact it’s just means that…

Not everyone changes.
Not every person is ready.
Not every stuck point is a failure of conversation

Change is not just about insight, motivation or rapport. It’s about timing, identity, autonomy, threat, context, all aligning in a way that allows important reorganisation. 

When those conditions aren’t present, even excellent practice just stabilises the current state, rather than shifting it.

That isn’t incompetence. It’s the human condition. I mean think about this from your own perspective; if you don’t want to do something, can anyone really make you do it?

Current Training Practice

What began to concern me is that much of our training prepares practitioners to act, but not necessarily to discern. We are fluent in techniques for engagement, but less confident in recognising when non-change is appropriate. Something I’ve actually been quite outspoken about for years.  If you go back to any podcast I’ve been on I’ve always said ‘not everyone will change..and that’s perfect’.  

We encourage effort, but rarely spend time recalibrating the expectations we might of have of our patients/clients.  Over time I would argue that it’s this which creates a subtle but powerful distortion so that practitioners avoid carrying responsibility for outcomes that do not belong solely to them.

So coming back to why I closed the course.  Closing the course wasn’t my rejection of ‘Behaviour Change’.

It’s been my own evolution and recognition that something different needs to come first.

I believe that before we teach people how to help others change, we need to recalibrate what we mean by change in the first place. We need to distinguish engagement from readiness. We need to normalise limits. We need to understand when restraint is more ethical than escalation. An unpopular opinion in this outcome driven world.

We also must understand ourselves better in order to be able to understand the dynamic that is created in the room….and I don’t just mean enhancing our ‘compassion’ which is another red-herring!…but more about that for another time.

What next?

This is the recalibration I’m now focused on.

This summer, I’m inviting 30 experienced practitioners to join me in-person to explore this next phase, not as an add-on set of tools, but as a shift in how we see and do this work entirely. A deeper dive into psychology while staying within our scope.

If you already sense that something in the current Behaviour Change narrative doesn’t quite sit with you either, or maybe doesn’t account for what you’re seeing in real practice, you’ll understand this and maybe you’d like to be a part of this new way of doing things.

If you’re interested, please sign up here.

And thank you for taking time to read this today. I’d love to know your own thoughts.