Same Person, Same Stadium, Different Circumstances: What Changes When the Environment Changes?

Picture the same coach standing on the same sideline in the same stadium.

Same title. Same responsibilities. Same person.

But not the same environment.

Last season, the team was winning, the locker room was loose, and the coach came across as calm, communicative, and confident.

This season, injuries have piled up. The schedule has gotten harder. Expectations haven't changed, but the results have. Now that same coach may appear more impatient, more direct, less communicative, or simply different from the person everyone remembers from a year ago.

So what changed?

Maybe not the person as much as the circumstances surrounding them.

And that distinction can matter.

The environment can influence how behavior is expressed

One of the useful concepts within the AVA® methodology is that understanding someone's natural behavioral tendencies is only part of the picture.

The SELF profile reflects the person's natural behavioral tendencies, largely independent of a particular job.

Those tendencies don't exist in a vacuum. People are constantly responding to what is happening around them, and the environment can influence which aspects of their natural behavioral pattern become more or less prominent.

Think about how different the same coaching job can feel from one season to another.

Winning versus losing. Stability versus uncertainty. A healthy roster versus an injury-depleted one. Strong organizational support versus mounting outside pressure.

The title hasn't changed. The responsibilities on paper may be largely the same.

The environment has.

Favorable and unfavorable environments can bring out different behaviors

AVA recognizes that certain aspects of an individual's natural behavioral tendencies may become more or less prominent depending on whether that person perceives the environment as favorable or unfavorable.

That word matters. It isn't the win-loss record or the injury report itself that shifts behavior — it's how the individual reads those circumstances. Two coaches could face the identical season and experience it very differently. One may perceive a difficult rebuilding year as an unfavorable environment. Another may perceive the same year as a fair challenge and not experience it that way at all. The circumstances are a input. The person's perception of them is what actually shapes which behaviors become more visible.

When the environment is perceived as unfavorable, task-oriented aspects of an individual's natural behavioral tendencies may become more prominent, while certain people-oriented aspects may become less prominent.

In a favorable environment, the opposite may occur, with certain people-oriented aspects of the individual's natural tendencies becoming more prominent and task-oriented aspects becoming less prominent.

Exactly how that appears depends on the individual's natural behavioral tendencies.

For one coach, a difficult environment might make a more direct or task-focused side increasingly noticeable. Another coach may respond very differently.

That's why a change in someone's observable behavior shouldn't automatically be interpreted as a change in who that person is.

The circumstances matter — but only as far as the person experiences them that way.

Don't mistake a change in behavior for a change in the person

When a season starts going badly, organizations naturally notice changes.

• "The coach isn't communicating like last year."

• "They're becoming impatient."

• "They're spending less time with the staff."

• "They seem much more controlling."

Those observations may be accurate — and they're also a fairly recognizable pattern. Less time with staff, less communication, more control: that's people-oriented behavior receding and task-oriented behavior stepping forward, which is exactly what AVA would predict from someone who is perceiving the current environment as unfavorable.

But before concluding that the coach has changed, there is another question worth asking:

Has the environment changed what aspects of this person's natural behavioral tendencies we are seeing?

That is a very different question from asking what is wrong with the coach.

The first looks at the person in context. It recognizes that the behavior leadership sees today may be influenced by an environment that feels considerably different from the one the coach was operating in six months ago.

That context can help an organization avoid drawing conclusions from behavior without first trying to understand what may be contributing to it.

Look at the person and the circumstances

This is where a certified AVA Analyst can add value.

The objective isn't to explain away difficult behavior or assume that every behavioral change is caused by the environment.

It is to understand the individual's natural behavioral tendencies and consider how the circumstances surrounding that person may be influencing which aspects of those tendencies are becoming more or less prominent.

That can lead to better questions.

What has changed around the coach?

When did the behavioral change become noticeable?

What aspects of the coach's natural behavioral tendencies appear to be more prominent now?

What appears to have become less prominent?

And what does that tell leadership about how this person may be responding to the current environment?

Those questions create a more informed starting point for a conversation than simply assuming the person who coached last year's team has somehow become a different person this year.

The takeaway

Same person. Same stadium. Same job.

Different circumstances.

It is easy to observe a change in someone's behavior and conclude that the person has changed. But AVA provides another way to examine what may be happening.

An individual's natural behavioral tendencies are one part of the picture. The environment in which those tendencies are being expressed provides important context for understanding what others may be seeing.

When circumstances change, different aspects of a person's natural behavioral pattern may become more or less prominent.

So when the coach on the sideline doesn't look quite like the coach everyone remembers from last season, the better question may not be:

"What happened to this person?"

It may be:

"What changed around this person, and what are we seeing as a result?"