Randall Polito knows a supervisor who worked with children with behavioral health issues.
One day, a child started screaming. Getting louder. More frustrated. Nobody could soothe them. The standard response would've been correction—"calm down," "stop acting out," behavioral consequences. This was a behavior problem, right?
Until someone asked a question that flipped the entire script.
Instead of telling the child to calm down, they asked: "Do you feel okay today?"
The answer was no. He had a stomach ache.
One dose of Pepto-Bismol later, the child felt better and acted like themselves again.
That's the moment Randy Polito's approach to human behavior changed. The screaming wasn't a behavior problem. It was a symptom. The actual problem—the unmet need—was physical discomfort. The behavior was just how it was showing up.
This principle extends everywhere. Randall Polito calls it the "Pepto Plan."
When someone acts out at work, instead of correcting the behavior, ask: What's actually missing? What need isn't being met? Is it clarity? Is it context? Is it physical comfort, psychological safety, or understanding about their role?
Here's what Randy Polito has learned: people don't act badly because they're bad. They act badly because something is wrong. The behavior is the signal. Your job isn't to punish the signal—it's to find what caused it.
He's seen this in teams. Someone gets increasingly frustrated and starts snapping at people. The surface response: "You need to check your tone." But Randall Polito has learned to ask instead: "What's frustrating you? What's not working? What do you need that you're not getting?"
Nine times out of ten, the answer is clarity. Or context. Or someone didn't understand their role. Or the instructions were incomplete. The behavior—the snapping, the defensiveness, the frustration—was just the symptom.
Randy Polito applied this in his work. When two sides of a team were butting heads over seemingly small tasks, he could've corrected them. Instead, he opened the conversation with a question: "What's missing here?"
One side was giving incomplete instructions. "Take notes" is very different from "take notes and send them to me." The other side was confused because they didn't understand the collaborative context—they used to work independently and weren't sure how to lean on team members.
Same friction. Different roots. Different solutions.
Here's what Randall Polito believes: behavior is always feedback. It's always telling you something is wrong. Your job is to get curious about what that something is. Don't fight the symptom. Find the source.
Stop telling people to calm down. Ask them what's wrong.
Stop correcting the behavior. Investigate the need.
The Pepto Plan works because you're treating the actual problem, not the surface issue. And when you do that, the behavior changes on its own.
— Randy Polito