Page 44 - The Power to Change Anything

Find Vital Behaviors 33

performers from everyone else. They’ve proven to be the same
behaviors across ages, gender, geography, topic, and anything
else the researchers could imagine.
One of the vital behaviors consists of the use of praise ver-
sus the use of punishment. Top performers reward positive per-
formance far more frequently than their counterparts. Bottom
performers quickly become discouraged and mutter things
such as, “Didn’t I just teach you that two minutes ago?” The
best consistently reinforce even moderately good performance,
and learning flourishes.
Another vital behavior they found is that top performers rap-
idly alternate between teaching and questioning or otherwise
testing. Then, when required, they make immediate corrections.
Poor performers drone on for a long time and then let the stu-
dents struggle, often leaving students to repeat the same errors.
After explaining the vital behaviors, Dr. Reid remarked,
“You’re probably wondering how we know for a certainty that
these are the vital behaviors—the ones that separate the best
from the rest.” She then turned to a plain wooden cupboard
attached to the wall behind her, opened it, and pointed to
dozens of doctoral dissertations.
For over three decades, Reid and a constant stream of doc-
toral students had tracked the same topic: What vital behaviors
set top teachers apart from the masses? She would pick the
learning target she cared about—say, vocabulary. Then she’d
find a data set and identify teachers who beat the predictive
model along with those who trailed it. Finally, she would
watch both groups in action, codify their actions, and tease out
which behaviors worked and which ones didn’t.
Dr. Reid now knows with a scientific certainty the specific
behaviors that lead to the best results. This means that she now
knows which vital behaviors to influence if she wants to improve
the outcomes she desires.
The good news behind this story is that this type of best-
practice research can be conducted in any organization. We