Each of us has a very specific behavioral strategy - like a recipe - for our behavioral successes (like turning in our homework or showing up on time). These successes don’t just “happen.” And we have specific recipes for our behavioral failures, too. When we understand our specific behavioral recipes, we then have the option to change outcomes by changing just one ingredient of that recipe. This breakout provides an overview of Strategic Behavioral Inquiry - a curious and compassionate approach to eliciting our students’ and clients’ behavioral strategies. Dr. Nowell has shared this approach to thousands of breakout participants internationally. This Inquiry can be applied to clinical interviewing, parenting, counseling, and classroom management. With an ultimate goal of increasing that executive function we call “metacognition,” the approach we will review in this breakout affirms the unique interior experience of each student and client. And it boldly assumes that each of us has the ability to be in greater control of our mood, our choices, our mouths and hands, and our management of time! Implicit in the approach is the assumption that everyone is doing the best he or she can right now. Students do “better” when they have the skills and self-efficacy to do so, and when “worse” choices aren’t being rewarded. In this fast-paced interactive experience, we will apply the basic principles first to ourselves, asking of our successes and not-quite-successes: “How exactly did you do that?”

1. David D Nowell PhD
www.DrNowell.com
How Exactly Did You Do That?
Supporting Metacognition for Self-
Regulation and Goal Management”

2. www.DrNowell.com
DavidNowell
DavidNowellSeminars

7. • Metacognition
• Self-regulation
• Goal management

8. • Metacognition
•Self-regulation
• Goal management

11. Strategic Behavioral Inquiry
• How exactly did you do that?
– Everybody’s doing the best he/she can
– Every behavior problem is either
• Skills deficit
• Contingency problem

13. Curious compassionate nonjudgmental
evaluation

15. Objectives of Strategic Behavioral
Inquiry
• Specific behavioral strategy
• What was the feeling-goal?
• Motivational level on a scale from 1-10

17. Benefits of Strategic Behavioral Inquiry
• Affirms the value of clients’ unique internal
experience
• Emphasizes the culture of self-regulation
• Encourages metacognition

19. 6/26/2014
© 2011 David D. Nowell, Ph.D. All rights
reserved.
19

20. Assumptions of Strategic Behavioral
Inquiry
• Everybody’s doing the best they can
• Behavior is not incomprehensible or random
• Behavior follows patterns which reveal
themselves to the curious observer free of
prejudice or blame or theory

22. How to do Strategic Behavioral Inquiry
“How exactly did you do that?”

24. Personal Application
• What have you done that you are truly proud
of…and how exactly did you do that?
• What can you do today that you were not
capable of a year ago?
• What bad habit persists? And How Exactly Do
You Do That?

26. Fall in Love with the Truth
• Self-monitor and collect data:
– How long does your morning routine take, exactly?
– How much time – exactly – do you need to complete
expense forms?
– How, exactly, do you follow through on commitments
to others and not to yourself?
• Learn from your To-Do list
– Which things are not getting completed?
– How – exactly – are these not getting completed?
How do you do that?

31. Clinical Application
• Who in your clinic or classroom is
demonstrating remarkable “resilience” –
persistence despite significant obstacles? And
how, exactly, does he/she do that?
• What recurring behavioral problem is showing
up in your clinic or classroom?
• Note: we aren’t asking “why did you do that,”
but rather “how exactly did you do that.”

35. Q & A & D

38. Let’s stay in touch!
Join my e-newsletter list:
 Fill out a card today and drop it in the box.
 Sign up on my web site or Facebook page
Visit me on the web: www.DrNowell.com
@davidnowell David Nowell Seminars