U/S; 14522 – Analyse and Explain the Impact of One`s Personal Interactive Style on One`s Relationship with a Client 

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Analyse own behavior in managing interactions with people in different situations.

WHAT ARE SOCIAL SKILLS?

Social skills are the skills we use to communicate and interact with each other, both verbally and non-verbally, through gestures, body language and our personal appearance.

Human beings are sociable creatures and we have developed many ways to communicate our messages, thoughts and feelings with others. What is said is influenced by both verbal language and the way we use it – tone of voice, volume of speech and the words we choose – as well as by more subtle messages such as body language, gestures and other non-verbal communication methods.

The fact that some people are better ‘social interactors’ than others has led to detailed investigations into the nature and function of interpersonal interaction. Developing social skills is about being aware of how we communicate with others, the messages we send and how methods of communication can be improved to make the way we communicate more efficient and effective.

There are distinct advantages to having well developed social skills. Here are five:

More and Better Relationships

Identifying well with individuals leads to more relationships and, at times, friendships. By developing your social skills you become more charismatic, people are more interested in you since you are (or at least appear to be) more interested in them.

Most people know you cannot advance far in life without interpersonal relationships. Focusing on relationships will help you get a job, get promoted, make new friends, and give you a better outlook on life. More relationships can also help to reduce the negative effects of stress.

Better Communication

Relating with people and being able to work in large groups naturally develops one’s communications skills. After all, you can not have great social skills without good communication skills and being able to convey one’s thoughts and ideas may be the single most important skill.

Greater Efficiency

If you are good with people, you can more easily avoid being with the people you do not like as much as others. Some people dread social interactions because they do not wish to spend time with individuals who do not have similar interests and viewpoints. It is a lot easier to attend a meeting at work or a party in your personal life if you know at least some of the people who will be there. If you are in a social situation and do not want to spend time with ‘John’ because he cannot help you with a particular issue, a good set of social skills will allow you to politely convey that you need to spend time with other people at the get together. 

Advancing Career Prospects

Most worthwhile jobs have a ‘people component’ and the most lucrative positions often involve a large amount of time spent interacting with employees, media and colleagues. It is rare that an individual can remain isolated in their office and still excel in their job. Most organisations are looking for individuals with a particular, tactical, skill set: the ability to work well in a team and to influence and motivate people to get things done.

Increased Overall Happiness

Getting along and understanding people will help to open many personal and career-related doors. Having the confidence to start a conversation at a work-related conference may lead to a new job offer with a higher salary. A smile and ‘hello’ in a social situation may lead to a friendship being formed.

Characteristics of Social Skills

• Social skills are goal-directed.
• Socially skilled behaviours are interrelated in the sense that one person may use more than one kind of behaviour at the same time, for the same goal.
• Social skills should be appropriate to the situation of communication. Different social skills will be used for professional and personal communication.
• Social skills can be identified as certain types of behaviour whereby an individual can be judged on how socially skilled they are.
• Social skills can be taught, practiced and learned.
• Social skills should be under the cognitive control of the individual – learning them involves learning when to use particular behaviours, as well as what behaviours to use, or how to use them.

Use the characteristics of social skills to think more about what the term, ‘Social Skills’ means. The acknowledgement of social skills in this way leads us to think that social skills can indeed be learnt and therefore taught. As social skills involve effective communication it is useful to further explore the models of communication and understand how effective communication can be encouraged and developed. We have lots of pages to help with this development, follow the links below for more.

It is generally acknowledged that social skills and character development are more difficult to attain and harder to change when people get older, so the sooner you start, the better.

The Doctrine of Situationism

Traditional social psychology, by contrast, construed behavior as a function of differences in the physical and (especially) social environment.  In their research, social psychologists typically manipulate some aspect of the social environment, such as the presence or behavior of other people, and then examine the effect of this independent variable on some behavioral dependent variable.  In such research, the effects of individual differences in personality are generally construed as “noise”.  This view is captured by what might be called the Doctrine of Situationism:

Social behavior varies as a function of features of the external environment, particularly the social situation, that elicit behavior directly, or that communicate social expectations, demands, and incentives.

As examples of the doctrine of situationism, consider first the classic definition of social psychology.

“With few exceptions, social psychologists regard their discipline as an attempt to understand and explain how the thought, feeling, and behavior of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of other human beings…. social psychology wishes to know how any given member of a society is affected by all the social stimuli that surround him.”

Personal Reflection

Don’t make promises unless you will keep them.

Not plan to keep them. Will keep them. Reliability is one of the keys to any good relationship, and good client service is no exception. If you say, “I will provide feedback before Tuesday”, make sure it is given before Tuesday. Otherwise, don’t say it. The same rule applies to client appointments, deadlines, etc. Think before you give any promise – because nothing annoys clients more than a broken one.

Listen to your clients.

Is there anything more exasperating than telling someone what you want or what your problem is and then discovering that that person hasn’t been paying attention and needs to have it explained again? From a client’s point of view, I doubt it. Can the sales pitches and the product babble. Let your customer talk and show him that you are listening by making the appropriate responses, such as suggesting how to solve the problem.

Deal with complaints.

No one likes hearing complaints, and many of us have developed a reflex shrug, saying, “You can’t please all the people all the time”. Maybe not, but if you give the complaint your attention, you may be able to please this one person this one time – and position your business to reap the benefits of good customer service.

Take the extra step.

For instance, if someone walks into your store and asks you to help them find something, don’t just say, “It’s in Aisle 3”. Lead the customer to the item. Better yet, wait and see if he has questions about it, or further needs. Whatever the extra step may be, if you want to provide good customer service, take it. They may not say so to you, but people notice when people make an extra effort and will tell other people.

Throw in something extra.

Whether it’s additional information on how to use the product, or a genuine smile, people love to get more than they thought they were getting. And don’t think that a gesture must be large to be effective. The local art framer that we use attaches a package of picture hangers to every picture he frames. A small thing, but so appreciated.

If you apply these simple rules consistently, your business will become known for its good customer service. And the best part? The irony of good customer service is that over time it will bring in more new customers than promotions and price slashing ever did!

CLIENT RESPONSE MANAGEMENT

The social customer

Today’s customer is empowered to make important decisions and is central to the product and service development process. Actively engaging on the web and voluntarily participating in online community discussions about brands, customers are driving product innovation and quality improvements. In order to fully grasp the needs of these customers, organizations must provide a platform for customers to communicate effectively and integrate their feedback into the development process.

TWO WAYS TO IMPROVE THE CLIENT RESPONSE PROCESS:

1. Provide multiple channels and response methods

Make it easy for your clients to communicate with your organization. Naturally, different clients have different preferences and needs:

some prefer to directly engage in dialogue, while others prefer to visit a website. Providing more than one avenue for customers to respond will increase their involvement.

The benefit of providing multiple channels of communications to clients is clear. The more customers you engage in dialogue, the more you can understand their needs and obtain clarification on their issues. As a result, you have quality information which you can use to improve your client responses. For more information on how helps you accomplish this, take the product tour.

2. Following-through on customer responses: Taking action

Don’t just listen to your customers, engage with them. This means going that extra step to elaborate upon any details that they have provided and to work together to ensure their needs and expectations are completely understood. Good customer response management ensures that client issues or concerns are received and used to affect change related to your products and services. Many times customers are heard, and feedback is collected but changes are not implemented. You can seize the opportunity to deliver value to your customers by using their feedback to improve the development process.

Customer response management: Business benefits

Effective customer response management results in:

• Increased customer engagement
• Increased customer retention
• Strengthened brand loyalty and company image
• Increased customer satisfaction
• Increased customer participation and overall customer community involvement
• Increased ROI

Interpret the Fundamentals of Sustainable Client Relationships for a Specific Work Environment.

Building and developing sustainable client relationships

We all want to do it. We have all read about the need to develop deep and sustainable relationships with our best clients, and we all know that building trusting professional relationships with clients leads to many benefits: less fee resistance, future work, referrals to new clients, and effective and harmonious working relationships with the clients. 

Unfortunately, in many firms the partners tend to their relationship with their clients on a file-by-file basis. When there is work to be done, the client is uppermost on the lawyer’s mind. When nothing is happening, the client tends to be forgotten. This cannot be construed as developing a sustainable relationship with the client.

Too many professional-to-client interactions concentrate only on the current matter. The lawyer wins the instructions because the client recognizes his/her expertise, and is used to the way they work. There is little, however, beyond that. Neither party really believes they have a “relationship” with the other beyond the confines of the specific file. As a result, the depth of mutual respect which categorizes a sustainable relationship is at the least minimal and in many cases wholly absent. So, when the next file comes along, there is little guarantee that the firm will continue to be instructed. For the client, there may be advantages in trying out someone new.

Although it is not an identical concept, this difference between the two types of relationship, file-by-file or a continuing one, is similar to the distinction between being an expert versus being an advisor.

An expert’s job is to be right—to solve the client’s problems through the application of technical and professional skill. In order to do this, the expert takes responsibility for the work away from the client and acts as if he or she is “in charge” until the project is done.

The advisor behaves differently. Rather than being in the right, the advisor’s job is to be helpful, providing guidance, input, and counselling to the client’s own thought and decision-making processes. The client retains control and responsibility at all times. The advisor’s role is subordinate to this, not that of a prime mover.

The file-by-file approach (focusing on the getting the job done, not on the other person) allows the partner to remain detached and unengaged.

This approach emphasizes the technical knowledge and skills in which the lawyer has been trained. The lawyer does not need to be stressed by interpersonal, psychological, or political nuances. For many, this is a great blessing.

Relationships, by their very nature, are not as clear-cut as the negotiated contract terms of a transaction. On both commercial and psychological grounds, it is easy to see why some individuals might prefer the clarity of a “propose, get hired, deliver, get paid” method of behaving.

Other symptoms of the file-by-file approach include:

Focus on rehearsing what you are going to say to the client in proposals and presentations rather than how you plan to get a true conversation going.

Avoiding contact with clients unless there is something concrete to talk about.

Too obviously trying to sell more work to get what you want rather than serving the client.

So, what is wrong with dealing with clients on this basis? It clearly works; many partners have built their client bases on this approach.

The file-by-file approach is also inevitable. Clients increasingly treat lawyers as vendors; they audit bills, they use purchasing departments and consultants in their selection processes, they bargain hard, and they emphasize contractual terms. Then again, the first tangible acknowledgment that many clients get from their lawyer is a standard retainer agreement that lays out in no uncertain terms what the firm is going to do for the client — and to them — if the client does not pay the lawyer’s bill in a timely fashion.

The problems with this approach lie in the increasingly competitive world in which we live and in the changing mindset of many top managers in the corporate world.

In a truly competitive environment, the successful remain on top by constantly questioning how they provide the goods or services they sell, and by constantly challenging the status quo. “Can we do it faster, cheaper, smarter?”

Strategies to ensure that client relationships are sustainable are proposed in terms of consistency across all client relationships in a specific organisation.

Integration of sustainability in marketing concepts — features of sustainable customer relationship. The evolution of the marketing theory is a straight outcome of seeking after new, appropriate responses to continuous transformation of social, economic and technological environment, resulting in new requirements of competitiveness. This evolution follows changes of business organizations, such as the emergence of collaboration in networks as well. The essence of the recent evolution may be recapitulated in four main orientations that serve as framework for sustainable customer relationship:

(1)      Increasing role of added value delivery to clients

(2)      Shift toward societal marketing concept

(3)      Adoption of the relationship marketing concept e.g. Building of long-run and mutually beneficial relations with key customers

(4)      Building networks for close cooperation, based on partnership with key customers along the supply chain.

According to Kotler (2000) from company’s view marketing is traditionally considered as the task of creating, promoting and delivering goods and services to consumers and businesses. A more accurate definition of marketing is “meeting customer needs profitably, more effectively and efficiently than competitors”. Kotler (2000) points out, that today’s customer and competitors are different from yesterday′s ones. Companies have confronted with empowered customers and new competitors, and have had rethink their business models. While customers substantially increased their buying power, companies must seek after newer values to offer and newer competition strategies.

Added value delivery to customers

The concept of added value delivery to customers anticipates that “customers are value maximizers, within the bound of search cost, limited knowledge and income” (Kotler 2000). Companies may successfully compete with each other and attract customers by increase of the difference between the customer delivered value and the customer cost.

• Eco-cost: materials, energy, labour, emission, depreciation
• Cost: materials, energy, labour, emission, depreciation, tax, profit
• Value: image, service quality, product quality

 Value proposition of many companies is increasingly including benefits related to environment-friendliness of their products, such as durability, energy saving, or taking back of the used product, etc. But customer cost of environmental attributes is usually high on short-run, and only restricted number of customers is ready to evaluate long-run benefit and pay for it immediately. This is a crucial contradiction of consumer behavior regarding individual and social interests in relation to environment-sound products. This is also the principal argument at many companies when cost/benefit considerations have to be applied in business decisions. 

Societal marketing: socially responsible marketing 

The societal marketing concept calls upon companies to build social, ecological and ethical considerations in their production and marketing practice. Companies must balance the often conflicting criteria of company profits, consumer want satisfaction and public interest. According to the society’s view marketing′s role is to deliver higher standard of living.

The evolution toward socially responsible marketing is marked by different notions and interpretations, such as enlightened marketing, cause-related marketing, green marketing, ecological marketing, environment-friendly marketing, etc. The notion of “enlightened marketing” (Kotler at al. 1996) has a close meaning to societal marketing, but it comprises also the principle of the “sense-of-mission marketing”. This principle highlights that companies define their mission in broad social terms rather than product terms. Social terms concern interests of every stakeholder, including shareholders, employees, suppliers, and others in the “world of community”. 

The relationship between personal values and client relationships.

Customer relationship marketing

Relationship marketing is aimed at building long-term mutually satisfying relations with key parties, e.g. with customers, suppliers, distributors. Adoption of customer relationship marketing permits companies to build close economic and social ties with key customers, and focus on valuable, profitable customers, at the same times. This marketing concept clearly expresses a new orientation of the contemporary business philosophy, e.g. to find out newer competitive advantage under the pressure of changes in business environment, including sustainability requirements.

This concept is based on the recognition that a major driver of company profitability is the value of the company’s customer base (Kotler, 2003), and much of the company’s market value and competitive advantage comes from intangible assets, including their customer base, distributor and supplier relations.

While traditionally companies have preferred to attract continually more new customers, this concept compels for policy of customer retention and building of customer loyalty. 

Clients may be retained by mutual benefits. Benefit proposition includes both financial and social benefits. Typical financial benefits include credits, rebates or free services in the framework of clubs, frequency programs or customer cards. Among social benefits membership may have the meaning of belonging to communities, permit to identify themselves as important and responsible individuals for the company’s business, e.g. as stakeholders. Loyal customers are considered as clients provided by individualized relationship.  

Sustainability concern of customer relationship marketing includes the opportunity to make loyal a customer base by means of higher satisfaction, including environment friendly products and services, and consequently the social value and reputation of having environment conscious consumer behavior.

Companies may target loyal customers and engaged them as partners for more actions related to sustainability requirements.

It is to notice, that definition of customer relationship includes relations not only with consumers but also with organizations as buyers, as well as with suppliers and distributors, namely with the majority of stakeholders groups of a company. 

The relationship between corporate values and client relationships 

Corporate values 

These are the operating philosophies or principles that guide an organization’s internal conduct as well as its relationship with its customers, partners, and shareholders. Core values are usually summarized in the mission statement or in the company’s statement of core values. 

Examples of Core Values

Core values are the fundamental beliefs of a person or organization. The core values are the guiding principles that dictate behavior and action. Core values can help people to know what is right from wrong; they can help companies to determine if they are on the right path and fulfilling their business goals; and they create an unwavering and unchanging guide. There are many different types of core values and many different examples of core values depending upon the context. 

Corporate Core Values

Companies can have core values as well. These are the guiding principles that help to define how the corporation would behave. They are usually expressed in the corporation’s mission statement.

Some examples of core values for a company might include: 

• A commitment to sustainability and to acting in an environmentally friendly way. Companies like Patagonia and Ben & Jerry’s have environmental sustainability as a core value.
• A commitment to innovation and excellence. Apple Computer is perhaps best known for having a commitment to innovation as a core value. This is embodied by their “Think Different” motto.
• A commitment to doing good for the whole. Google, for example, believes in making a great search engine and building a great company without being evil. 

As you can see, many of the core values that companies have are similar to those that individuals might choose as guiding principles as well.

Companies may also have negative core values as well. Companies that are solely motivated by profit, such as tobacco companies who lied to their customers about the dangers of smoking, may have been driven by core values of self-interest and an overly strong profit motive. 

Identifying Core Values

While some people or companies might expressly publish their core values, often the best way to identify these values is to which how they act and behave. A core value is only a true core value if it has an active influence and if the people or company manages to live by it, at least most of the time.

Analyse the inter relationship between two parties in an interaction.

The effects of own behaviour on the response from other parties in a relationship

Have you ever wondered why you behave the way that you do? Or, why others react to you the way that they do? Successful individuals know that the foundation of personal and professional success lies in understanding yourself, understanding others, and realizing the impact of personal behavior on others. This understanding results in improving communications and reducing conflict.

We can never change another person or their behavior. The only person we have direct control over is ourselves. Sometimes, by slightly altering our own behavior, we can get the results or outcome that we desire from another individual or situation. Key factors that determine our behavior include; how we respond to our environment, our perception of ourselves as more powerful or less powerful than our environment, and our belief that we can change or overcome our environment.

It is recommend that anyone who wants to learn how to be more effective when dealing with others (that includes most of us), take a highly effective assessment called DiSC – Dimensions of Behavior. It provides a nonjudgmental language for exploring behavioral issues across four primary dimensions; Dominance, Influence, Steadiness and Conscientiousness.

The detailed, personalized report from the assessment enables individuals to assess to what degree they utilize each Dimension of Behavior in a situation. The great news is, unlike many other assessments, you don’t need a ‘consultant’ to help you interpret the results! And the results are actionable. You will get a very clear understanding of behavior styles, your own individual behavior styles and you’ll learn how and when to adapt your behavior. 

When clients see the results of their assessment, they are always amazed at how accurate it is. But more importantly, they all quickly realize the valuable results they get after easily applying what they learn about themselves and others after taking the assessment. Most find that their professional and personal relationships are enhanced and they become much more effective when dealing with individuals who may be very different than themselves. 

Let’s face it, we often have to work with a difficult manager, colleague, employee, customer or vendor. In our personal lives, we deal with family members who may be quite different than we see ourselves. Think about how much frustration we would avoid if we could learn how to reduce conflict and improve communications by simply understanding and appreciating why those differences occur and then adjust our own behavior accordingly.

But don’t take my word for it; try it for yourself if you’re ready to increase your own personal and professional effectiveness. 

Case study – Anna Marry

Some years back I remember walking along a corridor with a CEO. A member of his organization passed us and greeted him. He did not respond.

When we returned to his office I mentioned the incident and he was not pleased. I wondered what his silence has cost the organization in lost motivation. What if this person had taken offense and mentioned it to others? The negative effect could have spread too many.

Do you wonder about the effect of your behaviour on others? When you put a stop to unfounded gossip by merely speaking out you could be stopping a message that could cost the organization many thousands of dollars.

I also heard about a very highly skilled technical person who was also a manager. He was short-tempered and rude when he didn’t get what he wanted. He was also considered too technically skilled to lose so people would have to tolerate his temper tantrums. Imagine the cost in turnover.

How can you measure the effect of your behaviour? Do people copy your positive behaviour as well as the negative?

Self-awareness and self-assessment are truly gifts from above. As manager of a business or a home, we need to be able to read and understand our emotions and recognise their effect on others and their work performance. We also need to be able to accurately assess our own strengths and weaknesses in this area of emotional maturity.

Try this for size…Ask someone how your behaviour affects them. Listen carefully to the answer and don’t defend yourself or rationalise your behaviour. Ask the person to nominate areas that you could improve. What behaviours would you like me to change to support you more and help you to become more productive? Listen very carefully. I remember one manager being told… simply listen to me without interrupting.

Emotional skills will take time to develop so don’t promise an immediate improvement. Maybe get some help or coaching. It is a matter of trial and feedback. Keep going until you have developed the new skills. Maybe you withdraw when there is conflict. Maybe you lose your temper. It will take time to modify these responses but the benefits will be worth the effort. Remember practice makes permanent and only perfect practice makes perfect. A little practice each day will help you make progress.

There is some wonderful reading on the subject on emotional intelligence but it is the practice that will make a difference. 

The chain reactions that emanate from specific behavioral patterns

Behavioral patterns

In software engineering, behavioral design patterns are design patterns that identify common communication patterns between objects and realize these patterns. By doing so, these patterns increase flexibility in carrying out this communication.

• Chain of responsibility: A way of passing a request between a chain of objects
• Command: Encapsulate a command request as an object
• Interpreter: A way to include language elements in a program
• Iterator: Sequentially access the elements of a collection
• Mediator: Defines simplified communication between classes
• Memento: Capture and restore an object’s internal state
• Null Object: Designed to act as a default value of an object
• Observer: A way of notifying change to a number of classes
• State: Alter an object’s behavior when its state changes
• Strategy: Encapsulates an algorithm inside a class
• Template method: Defer the exact steps of an algorithm to a subclass
• Visitor: Defines a new operation to a class without change 

Behavior Chaining

A specific sequence of responses in which the completion of each response provides a cue to engage in the next response. For example, when an individual puts on a t-shirt, placement of the shirt on top of the individual’s head is a cue for the individual to pull the shirt over the head; having the shirt around the individual’s neck is a cue for the individual to put each arm through the armholes, etc. Other examples include independent living skills (e.g., brushing teeth), carrying out daily routines such as getting ready for bed (e.g., changing into pajamas may be a cue to go brush teeth; completion of this task may be a cue to go get a story book, etc.), and following activity schedules).

Behavior chains also may be associated with disruptive behavior. For example, getting off the bus when arriving at school is a cue for walking into the school building; walking into the school building is a cue for walking down a particular hallway; walking down a particular hallway is a cue to engage in tantrum behavior. In this situation, having the child enter the school building by a different entrance and therefore walking down a different hallway may prevent the tantrum behavior. 

Apply a selected behavioral model to a specific work situation. 

Three Different Models Of Behavior: 

1.The Theory of Planned Behavior & Theory of Reasoned Action

The theory of planned behavior (TPB) is one of the most widely cited and applied behavior theories. It is one of a closely inter-related family of theories which adopt a cognitive approach to explaining behavior which centers on individuals’ attitudes and beliefs.

The TPB (Ajzen 1985, 1991; Ajzen and Madden 1986) evolved from the theory of reasoned action (Fishbein and Ajzen 1975) which posited intention to act as the best predictor of behavior. Intention is itself an outcome of the combination of attitudes towards behavior.

That is the positive or negative evaluation of the behavior and its expected outcomes, and subjective norms, which are the social pressures exerted on an individual resulting from their perceptions of what others think they should do and their inclination to comply with these.

The TPB added a third set of factors as affecting intention (and behavior); perceived behavioral control. This is the perceived ease or difficulty with which the individual will be able to perform or carry out the behavior, and is very similar to notions of self-efficacy (see Bandura 1986, 1997; Terry et al. 1993).

These key components of the TPB are illustrated in Figure 1. Existing literature provides several reviews of the TPB (e.g. Armitage and Conner 2001; Hardeman et al. 2002; see also Rutter and Quine 2002; Munro et al. 2007; Nisbet and Gick 2008; Webb et al

2010).

The TPB is suited to predicting behavior and retrospective analysis of behavior and has been particularly widely used in relation to health (Armitage and Conner 2001; Taylor et al. 2007). Evidence suggests that the TPB can predict 20-30% of the variance in behavior brought about via interventions, and a greater proportion of intention.

Strong correlations are reported between behavior and both the attitudes towards the behavior and perceived behavioral control components of the theory.

 To date only weak correlations have been established between behavior and subjective norms.

Armitage and Conner (2001), however, suggest that this issue is most likely to be methodological and state that the few studies which measured subjective norms appropriately actually illustrate reasonably strong relationships with behavior.

The TPB is not considered useful or effective in relation to planning and designing the type of intervention that will result in behavior change (Hardeman et al 2002; Taylor et al. 2007; Webb et al. 2010). Using the theory to explain and predict likely behavior may, however, be a useful method for identifying particular influences on behavior that could be targeted for change. As Hardeman et al. (2002: 149) conclude:

“Even when authors use the TPB to develop parts of the intervention, they seem to see the theory as more useful in identifying cognitive targets for change than in offering suggestions on how these cognitions might be changed’. 

2. The Health Belief Model

The health belief model (HBM) (Hochbaum, 1958; Rosenstock 1966; Becker, 1974; Sharma and Romas, 2012) is a cognitive model which posits that behavior is determined by a number of beliefs about threats to an individual’s well-being and the effectiveness and outcomes of particular actions or behaviors.

Some constructions of the model feature the concept of self-efficacy (Bandura 1997) alongside these beliefs about actions.

These beliefs are further supplemented by additional stimuli referred to as ‘cues to action’ which trigger actual adoption of behavior.

Perceived threat is at the core of the HBM as it is linked to a person’s ‘readiness’ to take action.

It consists of two sets of beliefs about an individual’s perceived susceptibility or vulnerability to a particular threat and the seriousness of the expected consequences that may result from it.

The perceived benefits associated with a behavior, that is its likely effectiveness in reducing the threat, are weighed against the perceived costs of and negative consequences that may result from it (perceived barriers), such as the side effects of treatment, to establish the overall extent to which a behavior is beneficial.

The individual’s perceived capacity to adopt the behavior (their self-efficacy) is a further key component of the model.

Finally, the HBM identifies two types of ‘cue to action’; internal, which in the health context includes symptoms of ill health, and external, which includes media campaigns or the receipt of other information.

These cues affect the perception of threat and can trigger or maintain behavior. 

Nisbet and Gick (2008: 297) summarise the model as follows:

‘In order for behavior to change, people must feel personally vulnerable to a health threat, view the possible consequences as severe, and see that taking action is likely to either prevent or reduce the risk at an acceptable cost with few barriers. In addition, a person must feel competent (have self-efficacy) to execute and maintain the new behavior. Some trigger, either internal … or external …, is required to ensure actual behavior ensues’. 

Although designed and developed in the healthcare context, the HBM has been applied to the analysis of other types of behavior, such as recycling (Lindsay and Strathman 1997), and is most suited to explaining or predicting patterns of behavior. Formal reviews have, however, concluded that it has generally weak predictive power, suggesting it can predict only around 10% of behavioral variance (Harrison et al. 1992). Literature suggests that, of the HBM’s components, perceived barriers are the most significant in determining behavior (Janz and Becker 1984). The two established criticisms of this model are that its components and rules about their inter-relationships are not well defined, and (in common with other cognitive rational choice-based models focused on the individual) that it does not include social or economic or unconscious (e.g. habitual) determinants of behavior, which are generally considered to be at least as important as the personal cognitive factors covered by the model. Jackson 2005: 133) clearly explains this latter problem:

‘This model [rational choice] is inadequate as a basis for understanding and intervening in human behaviors for a number of reasons. In particular it pays insufficient attention to the social norms and expectations that govern human choice and to the habitual and routine nature of much human behavior. It also fails to recognize how consumers are locked into specific behavior patterns through institutional factors outside their control.’ 

3. Stages of Change (Transtheoretical Model)

The Stages of Change (SoC) model (also referred to as the Transtheoretical Model) (Prochaska 1979; Prochaska and DiClemente 1983; Prochaska et al 1992) is a widely applied cognitive model which sub-divides individuals between five categories that represent different milestones, or ‘levels of motivational readiness’ (Heimlich and Ardoin 2008: 279), along a continuum of behaviour change.

These stages are:

(i)       Pre- contemplation,

(ii)      Contemplation,

(iii)      Preparation,

(iv)      Action, and

(v)      Maintenance (see table 3 for a summary). 

First developed in relation to smoking, and now commonly applied to other addictive behaviours, the rationale behind a staged model is that individuals at the same stage should face similar problems and barriers, and thus can be helped by the same type of intervention (Nisbet and Gick 2008).

Whilst practitioners acknowledge many hundreds of different interventions, the SoC model identifies ten types (‘processes’) which are most widely used and investigated (see Table 3).

Movement or transition between stages is driven by two key factors:

(i)       Self-efficacy and

(ii)      Decisional balance (that is, the outcome of individual assessment of the pros and cons of a behaviour) (heimlich and ardoin 2008; armitage et al 2004).

Relapse, moving backwards through the stages, is common.

 The SoC model is more popular amongst practitioners than researchers as its constructs and concepts are not particularly well defined. Questions regarding how discrete the stages actually are and whether an individual must move through each (and not jump stages) are common. Further to this, the model is not clear on how individuals change or why some change more effectively or quickly than others.

This model shares the problem of other cognitive models in that it is egoistic (centred on the self) and consequently misses the structural economic, environmental and social factors which affect an individual’s ability to change behaviour. It is not that the influence of these factors is denied by the model, but rather that they lie outside its boundaries. For example, Prochaska et al. (1992: 1103) note that: ‘Families, Friends, neighbours, or employees … are often well aware that the pre-contemplators have a problem. Where pre-contemplators present for psychotherapy, they often do so because of pressure from others’.

SoC also focuses on individual problem behaviors, such as addictions. This has implications for its transferability to behaviors which bring public costs or benefits. The over use of pesticide, for example, could be a problem behavior in terms of water pollution but this is not necessarily a problem for the pesticide user directly.

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