people before process

a compassionate
approach to healthcare
improvement
  • Home
  • Themes
    • Preliminaries
    • Committed
    • Active
    • Responsive
    • Energetic
    • Focused
    • Uniform
    • Leading
  • Solutions
    • Individual
    • Team
    • Business Case
    • Organisation >
      • Patient Experience
      • Staff Experience
      • Leadership Development
      • Decision Making
      • Reputation
      • Efficiency
    • The Hospital Game
    • Governors
  • Concepts
    • The CAREFUL organisation
    • The Three Circles
    • The Elephant and the Rider
    • Implementation Cliff-face
  • Elements
    • Behavioural Guidelines
    • Breakthrough Leadership
    • Coaching and Buddying
    • Complaint Handling
    • Compliment Handling
    • Customer Service
    • Dealing with Negativity
    • Delivery Teams
    • Do-Say Don't-Says
    • First or Best
    • Induction
    • Kindness and Compassion
    • Leadership Rounds
    • Leadership Training
    • Meeting Effectiveness
    • Measuring Leadership
    • Organisational Management System
    • Patient Forums
    • Performance Boards
    • Process Documentation
    • Publicising First or Best
    • Recognising Great Performance
    • Staff Forums
    • Staff led recruitment
    • Staff Surveys
    • Talking up
    • Telephone Follow-up
    • Thank you letters
  • Book
    • Get the book
    • About the Author
    • Translations >
      • Gujarati
      • Mandarin
    • Reviews
  • Help
    • Untitled
    • About Us
    • Ambassadors
    • Partners
    • Clients
    • Contact us
    • Forum
  • Blog
  • Feedback

The elephant and the rider

The Elephant and the Rider is a simplified model of human psychology developed by Professor Jonathan Haidt, which he published in his book "The Happiness Hypothesis" in 2006. It was taken-up and publicised by Chip and Dan heath in their popular book "Switch" in 2010.

The model suggests that the  subconscious part of our mind is like an elephant - strong, determined, but easily spooked - and is controlled by the conscious part of our mind only in the same way that a mahout "controls" an elephant. The rider has influence, and can train the elephant over time - but can't force it to behave in a particular way.

If we are to affect change in individuals we must work not only to "direct the rider" - ie tell people what is required and persuade them rationally - but also "motivate the elephant" - i.e. encourage involvement at an emotional level. We must also "clear the path, making it easy for people to change.

The elements of the CAREFUL approach seek not only to direct the rider (behavioural guidelines, Do-say Don't-say guidelines for instance) but also to motivate the elephant by generating positivity (Leadership Rounds, Thank you letters, First or Best position for instance). We also hope to 'clear the path' by creating elements that are themselves easily-digestible sections of implementation, fully documented, and "chunked" into themes.

Useful Documents

036010.the_elephant_and_the_rider.one_pager.04-jan-13.ppt.pdf
File Size: 200 kb
File Type: pdf
Download File

The Elephant and the Rider Leadership Brief
File Size: 68 kb
File Type: pdf
Download File

Search material on this site

Creative Commons Licence
All material in this website is licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. (In brief, this means you can use it all, for free, providing you attribute it to us - and don't try to make any money out of it). Downloading any material from this website implies acceptance of this licence.

Comment on this page


Contact Us    -    About Us   -   Our Privacy Policy   -   Licence Terms