A recent survey on wellness efforts in the workplace showed that the #1 challenge companies’ face is how to get people to achieve sustainable changes in their lifestyle. A survey of training professionals showed the same # 1 concern: How to get people to actually change their behavior AFTER training. I am just back from speaking to 400 CEO’s and business owners in Milwaukee who told me that my talk on how to change yourself and how to help others change their behavior really struck a chord. It was something they really needed help with.

So how do we change habits? Over the last decade a great deal of research has emerged on changing habits. One of the most fascinating things is that it turns out that believing you can change your habits is a pretty good predictor of whether you will. Research by Carol Dueck at Stanford shows that our “mindset” of believing we can change, helps facilitate making a change. So the first thing we have to shake is our mindset. Do you ever hear yourself saying, “I am not artistic, not a good speaker, not a people person, not a (fill in the blank)” or “this will never change around here?” If so you begin to see why mindset matters. If we think something won’t change we probably won’t try very hard or very long to change it.

Another fascinating thing we have learned is that it takes about 3 – 5 months before we really replace an old habit with a new one. Studies at Harvard by Alvaro Pascual Leone show that the brain maps of people learning new skills revert back to old patterns even with just two days off from learning for about 3 – 4 months which means the old habit still dominates. But after about 4 months, even with time off, the new habit begins to dominate. Since it takes about 3 – 5 months for our brains to replace old habits with new ones we have to be a lot more patient AND perseverant.

We are also discovering that some habits are what may be termed “key habits.” It turns out that some habits tend to produce broader changes once we implement them. Here are two examples: People who start exercising usually start eating better but not the other way around. People who keep logbooks of what they eat everyday are more likely to lose weight.

Organizations can also use key habits to drive change. In hospitals for example, implementing the simple habit of leaders doing “daily rounds” (having a defined time every day to go out and talk to patients and staff), often leads to gains of up to fifty percentage points in patient satisfaction. University faculties who regularly meet and talk about their research (and talk about how they can collaborate) produce more published research than those faculty teams who don’t do so.

In my book Stepping Up, I tell the story of Don Knauss who took over as the leader of the worst region for Frito-Lay and within a year helped them achieve first place. One of the secrets was instituting a new habit of having route drivers meet every week to benchmark their numbers with each other and share ideas for increasing sales. On the back of that habit, Knauss took his region from worst in the USA to first in less than 8 months.

It takes patience to change habits. For example, the average person who quits smoking will have seriously tried to quit 8 – 12 times before finally succeeding. The emerging neuroscience suggests that old habits never die, but rather simply replaced by new habits. Whether the habit is a personal one or an organizational one, we often stop trying to change just when we may be on the brink of change. Leaders need to recognize that it may take several significant change efforts before new organizational habits begin to dominate.

There are two final things to know if you want to change habits. The first is that social support (being connected to others who are trying to make changes) may make it twice as likely that you will adopt new habits. This may as true for a group of leaders trying to change their leadership style as it is for someone trying to quit smoking or stop drinking.

Finally, it turns out we really can’t change anyone else, even if they report to us or are married to us. Research strongly suggests that people may even be less likely to change when someone else is telling them why they should change. Turns out that we need to get people in touch with their own motivation. Rather than telling someone why they should change, ask them what benefits would come to them if they chose to change and how motivated they are to make the change. Then ask them what step they are willing to take right now to get started.

Here are five tips for changing yourself and changing others:

1) Change one thing at a time for a 3 – 4 month period. Once you have made real progress, then move on to another change.
2) Try to find a “key habit” that will shift things. For example, if you tend to be a leader who focuses on tasks instead of connecting with people, spend the first thirty minutes of every workday connecting to people.
3) Be accountable to another person. Get a change partner and meet each week to talk about progress and ideas.
4) Don’t give up if you can’t change your habits (or your team’s habits) the first time. Falling back into old habits is natural and most people who make a significant change have tried many times before finally succeeding.
5) Never try to change someone else. Instead, help them get in touch with their own motivation for change, identifying what is in it for them to change and choosing a step they are willing to take.