Last fall, my partner and I adopted an 18-month-old Swiss mountain dog named Obi.️
In one day, he went from an isolated house in upstate New York to a bustling neighborhood in the middle of Brooklyn. We expected he’d be a little overwhelmed at first but we thought it would pass after a few days.
WE. HAD. NO. IDEA.
Obi was terrified of everything.
Whether it was bicycles, other dogs, children with backpacks (or from his perspective, tiny shrieking gremlins), Obi was convinced everything was out to get him.
His coping strategy was to make himself seem as big and tough as possible. In other words, our hundred pound monster of a dog lunged and barked his head off at everything in sight. When he exploded at a garbage truck, it was a problem. When he did the same thing to a small, crying, and justifiably terrified child, it was a catastrophe.
It was a hard time.
My partner and I more or less disappeared. We spent every waking moment watching training videos and reading training books. We slowly reintroduced Obi to the world. It was a long, grueling, and emotionally exhausting few months but it worked. Obi is unrecognizable today. He walks well, plays with dogs in the park, and basically ignores NYC’s wide variety of benign weirdos. He’s still afraid of brooms, French bulldogs, and his water bowl (???) but I can live with that.
A few months after the worst of the dog training marathon had passed, I found myself at work reflecting.
Lately, everything had been going unexpectedly (and suspiciously) well. Projects that had been stuck were starting to move in the right direction. Relationships that had been contentious became smooth. I couldn’t quite pin down why. What changed? Was I doing something different?
With a shock, I realized something was different. Without realizing it, I had made a change.
I was using dog training techniques with my coworkers. And it was working.
Before you dive into the comments section to point out my ethical bankruptcy, let me say something. My coworkers are wonderful, talented people and I have the utmost respect for them. I happened to internalize these principles via dog training. But crack open any modern management book and you’ll find the same concepts. I could have written this using stuffy business examples instead but why bother? Talking about puppies is much more fun.
Here’s what dog training taught me about running effective teams.
Consistency & Repetition
Consistency and repetition are mandatory for dog training. You have to do the same exact thing over and over again until it sticks. If you say ‘sit’ while pointing to the ground, that’s one signal. If you say ‘sit’ while scratching your arm, that’s a completely different signal. When trying to shape a behavior there’s no room for improvisation. You have to be crisp and precise with your communication, and you have to repeat it constantly.
Business is the same. Successful leaders are consistent in the things they say and do. They find a simple mantra, and they repeat it over and over again until it sinks deeply into the team’s psyche. If you change the way you talk about something, it muddies the waters. If you go too long without repeating it, the message fades.
If you repeat your message so often that your team rolls their eyes, stops you, and finishes the sentence verbatim, you may have repeated it enough.
But you should probably repeat it again. Just to be sure.
Positive reinforcement and offering behaviors
There are two schools of thought in dog training. One school involves punishing dogs when they do something bad so that they do less of that behavior. The other school rewards dogs when they do something good so that they will do it more often. There’s a time and place for each method. But deciding which one is your go-to can have a big impact on your dog’s outlook and interactions with the world.
Dogs who are mainly punished start to shut down. True, they learn to avoid the things that are bad, but they also stop experimenting. When any new behavior can trigger a punishment, it makes sense to stick to what’s tried and true.
In contrast, reward-trained dogs experiment. They learn that any new behavior could trigger a reward. When you ask for something unexpected, they treat figuring out what you want like a game. They keep offering new behaviors until they find one that works.
People react the same way. If your main managerial tool is punishment and prohibition, your teams will learn that trying new things is risky and bad. They’ll stick to the status quo and resist any change. Negative management hamstrings your company’s ability to innovate and grow. But if you consistently reward new ideas and approaches, innovation will flourish.
Immediate praise
Dogs have short memories and poor conversational skills. Well-reasoned arguments linking now-treats to five-minutes-ago-behaviors just don’t work. If you’re going to reward them for a behavior, it needs to be within a few seconds or they’ll lose the connection.
People are better at understanding delayed praise but it just doesn’t make the same impact. If you really want to reward (and encourage!) a behavior, there’s nothing like immediate and overwhelming praise the instant the behavior occurs.
Fixing fear
On the surface, a lot of Obi’s early issues looked like aggression. But if you looked closely, it didn’t take long to see that he was actually just afraid. Once he learned that grocery carts and strollers were (shockingly) not harbingers of the apocalypse, he lost all interest in them. Once we addressed the fear, the manifestations of that fear went away too.
I’m convinced that the root cause of most interpersonal issues in companies is fear. Fear that a funding round won’t come through, fear of losing out on a big client or promotion, fear of going unnoticed. Stressful situations trigger powerful emotional responses. And those responses can bubble to the surface in unpredictable ways.
Next time you’re blindsided by someone being unexpectedly obstructive, belligerent, or standoffish, pause for a moment. Try to consider where they’re coming from. Is there something in the situation that may be spiking stress and fear? If you can find a considerate way to calm that fear, then you may turn a challenging relationship into a collaborative one.
Keeping a rhythm
One of the biggest triggers for Obi was walking past another dog on the sidewalk who was watching him. Something about dogs locking eyes as they walk closer sets off immediate puppy alarm bells. The dogs build off of each other’s tension and when they get too close, frenzied barking ensues.
Punishing the barking or crossing the street to avoid other dogs only makes it worse. It adds tension to an already tense situation and reinforces the idea that other dogs are a threat. The best strategy is distraction.
To fix it, keep up a stream of simple, achievable tasks for the dog to do as they approach. Touch-Treat-Sit-Treat-Spin-Treat-Touch-Treat. Tasks and rewards encourage them to break eye contact with the other dog and refocus on you. It diffuses the tension and lets the dogs pass each other calmly. Over time, they learn that even the biggest most threatening obstacles (other dogs) are fine. They can all be dealt with if they stay calm.
Keeping a rhythm of small wins is a useful metaphor for business as long as you don’t overthink it too much. I’m not suggesting you gloss over or conceal important issues at work. If something is a legitimate problem then you should address it. But nothing gives a team confidence like an armload of small victories behind them.
Stopping while you’re ahead
When training a new trick, the first time the dog picks up on what you’re asking for is incredible. Like the sun popping out from behind a cloud, you break through the confusion and miscommunication and you’re finally on the same page. Most of us immediately want to do it again! And again! And again! …
You may think that repeating the trick will help it sink in. And for the first few repetitions, you’re probably right. But repeat it too many times and you’ll create a big problem.
If you stop when the dog is still engaged and having fun then they’ll be eager to play again next time. They’ll associate your requests with excitement and happiness.
But if you keep going long after they’ve lost interest, you’ll get something else. Instead of fun, they’ll associate your requests with boredom and frustration. Repetition may give them a better idea of what you want. But all the repetition in the world won’t help if they aren’t motivated to play along.
As leaders, there’s a natural tendency to push the people you work with. We all want our teams to excel and that’s a good instinct. Still, too much pushing can be counterproductive.
When your team overcomes a challenge, achieves something new, or generally does something exceptional, consider stepping back and calling it a day. Celebrate while everyone is still riding high. They’ll associate big problems with satisfaction, achievement, and pride. The next time an issue looms, the team will be that much more excited and eager to tackle it.
I could go on, but given the last section is about stopping while you’re ahead I’ll take my own advice and pause there. Somebody could use a walk, anyway.