The 7 Principles of Reinforcement will help you to create a successful reinforcement program and a well-balanced series of messages. There is a strong cohesion among all of the principles. Some drive results by creating a strong foundation for your reinforcement program; others drive participation by focusing on engagement. Both results and participation are essential to making your reinforcement program successful.

This chapter explains how each principle influences a reinforcement program. Before you focus on the cohesion, let me list the principles:

1. Master the 3 Phases of Behavior Change.
2. Close the 5 Reinforcement Gaps.
3. Create Measurable Behavior Change.
4. Provide the Perfect Push and Pull.
5. Create Friction and Direction.
6. Follow the Reinforcement Flow.
7. Place the Learner in the Center.

PRINCIPLE 1: MASTER THE 3 PHASES OF BEHAVIOR CHANGE

If you want to change behaviors effectively, you cannot skip any of the 3 Phases of Behavior Change:

1. Awareness: Learners must understand why the behavior change is important to them.
2. Knowledge/Skills: Learners must know how to change their behavior.
3. Apply: Learners must focus on how to apply your training back on the job. In this final phase, learners should focus on using their newly mastered knowledge and skills in their daily work.

I cover these phases in more detail in Chapter 6.

PRINCIPLE 2: CLOSE THE 5 REINFORCEMENT GAPS

It is easy to determine the knowledge and skills your learners need for specific behaviors that will create business impact. However, to apply the new knowledge and skills, you need more. How is the environment to practice, to reflect, or know the options to fail? Think about my stay in Mátraháza in northern Hungary, with no luxury, no diversion, and no acquaintances. It was the perfect environment for me to learn.

What do you need to explain about workplace procedures? For example, perhaps you are a leader and the procedures for evaluating your direct reports are not clear. What will the results of the evaluations be? What will be the impact of your team evaluation? Even if your evaluation skills are fantastic, if your direct reports don’t understand part of the process, they will not incorporate your feedback as well as they could.

If you want to change behavior that creates business impact, you must focus on all five gaps during your reinforcement program.

• Knowledge: Are the information and new knowledge sufficient?
• Skill: Do your learners know how to implement and apply their new knowledge?
• Motivation: Are learners motivated by internal or external forces to achieve the desired change?
• Environment: Do your learners have enough support and time to be successful?
• Communication: Do your learners receive enough directions, procedures, process, and other communication from you?

PRINCIPLE 3: CREATE MEASURABLE BEHAVIOR CHANGE

If you want to create measurable behavior change, you need a measurement plan. During my Olympic career, all sorts of measurements were taken of my body and of my performance. None of these measurements felt like assessment tools.

To create a foundation for your program, determine your objectives, which will determine the metrics you measure. Reinforcement starts with building on learning goals to determine the objectives. With reinforcement, the focus shifts away from knowing how to do something toward a more sophisticated model of evaluation, application, and mastery.

When you craft your measurement plan, think about the desired impact you want to see in your organization. Avoid measuring on a “happy sheet” level: “How was the training?” “How well did the trainer do?” “How did you like the workbook?”

When you design a measurement plan, consider how and when you will communicate results to the learners. Avoid building an assessment tool that only has value for the organization and not the learners.

PRINCIPLE 4: PROVIDE THE PERFECT PUSH AND PULL

If you want to maximize retention and drive behavior change among learners, you must provide the perfect balance between push and pull. It’s not the action that drives the impact—it’s the combination of action and reaction.

To deliver impactful reinforcement, think about the message you want to send and how to create the most impact for the learners. Also think about what the learners need to respond to you.

PRINCIPLE 5: CREATE FRICTION AND DIRECTION

To increase the impact of your reinforcement program, the brain needs to work. Lazy brains create lazy performance. You know how the brains works from Chapter 2, so you can optimize the effect for better results. In your reinforcement program, you need to find the balance between friction and direction, as my coach did with the big ax in his trunk.

You don’t want to lose the learners because of too much friction, but also, you don’t want to lose the learners because of too much direction or with a program that is too predictable. You want to find the balance between those worlds. When your learners’ brains must work to master your content or complete a puzzle, or figure out the structure or connections, your content will stick much longer.

PRINCIPLE 6: FOLLOW THE REINFORCEMENT FLOW

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a Hungarian psychologist, introduced “flow” theory in his book, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, which focuses on finding a balance between challenge and ability. According to Csikszentmihalyi, when a challenge far exceeds a learner’s ability, it is probably too difficult and will frustrate the learner. On the other hand, when something is far too easy for the learners, they are not stimulated or engaged and the program is boring.

Most training experiences involve overwhelming the learners with a lot of new information. This leaves learners feeling exhausted. For your reinforcement program to be effective, check the program’s structure and ensure that it follows the reinforcement flow.

Is your reinforcement program becoming more difficult to keep your learners in the flow, or is it just a reminder service? Keep a consistent balance between challenge and satisfaction to encourage engagement, retention, and adoption among your learners.

When Kees became Dutch champion, he was in the flow. All elements fit together. Ask any athlete who has won a medal and he or she will tell you the same thing: “I was in the flow.”

PRINCIPLE 7: PLACE THE LEARNER IN THE CENTER

Reinforcement is intended to make a difference in performance, educate learners on how to do their jobs better, and promote the success and growth of learners. Many organizations focus on quizzing the learners, but keep in mind that a reinforcement program is not an assessment tool. Instead, focus on reinforcing and measuring the information that is most valuable to the learner.

Everything my coach, training team, and I did during my Olympic journey was focused on me. Everything—and I mean everything—was meant to help me perform as well as possible. No exceptions.

Sometimes it was hard for my staff to put my needs before theirs. My coach fired my physiotherapist because he wouldn’t put me ahead of everything else. He was an independent therapist with his own company and clients. When I had a tournament, or came back from a training camp with an injury, my coach did not want to wait for the physiotherapist to see me the next day; he insisted on immediate treatment, even at 9 p.m. on a Sunday. The physiotherapist was not willing to make these sacrifices to his weekend. Although the therapist was good and understood Judo and its injuries, my coach decided to select another specialist who understood the principle of placing the learner first.

THE COHESION OF THE 7 PRINCIPLES OF REINFORCEMENT

To build an effective reinforcement program, your focus must be on results and participation. You cannot separate them. If you don’t have focus on participation, your learners drop off after one week, and you won’t get results. And if your program is not focused on results, you don’t get much participation. Learners don’t want to spend time on your program if they think they won’t see any results. It’s as simple as that. Even as a young sports person, I needed results; I needed to win some medals to stay engaged and motivated to train hard every week.

Supporting Results and Participation

Each of The 7 Principles supports results or participation. Three principles are needed to build a strong foundation to focus on results:

1. Master the 3 Phases of Behavior Change.
2. Close the 5 Reinforcement Gaps.
3. Create Measurable Behavior Change.

If your training foundation addresses the phases of behavior change, shores up the gaps that can lead to shortcomings, and identifies the correct measurements to analyze, it is built perfectly to gain results.

However, results require participation. The next three principles are more focused on engagement, which drives participation:

4. Provide the Perfect Push and Pull.
5. Create Friction and Direction.
6. Follow the Reinforcement Flow.

These principles help you stay focused on the engagement. Balance the actions and requested reactions from your learners, stimulate their thinking process without losing them, and make your reinforcement program more difficult over time.

But you are missing one principle:

7. Place the Learner in the Center.

Figure 5.1 depicts the relationships among The 7 Principles in terms of foundation, engagement, results, and participation. A bar, titled “7. Learner in the Center,” runs diagonally from the lower left to the upper right, across the first six principles. This bar is the Reinforcement Lever, which shows you exactly how well you do on the other six principles. If one principle is not used correctly, the lever will change position.

The three principles below the Reinforcement Lever build your foundation. As you know, a good foundation creates results. The three principles above the Reinforcement Lever drive your engagement. The better you fulfill each principle, the higher the results and your engagement will be.

Throughout the rest of the book, I help you fulfill each principle and show you what happens to the Reinforcement Lever if you fail. The useful assessments will help you to build a strong reinforcement program with great results and a high percentage of participation.