What does influence look like? There have been many great influencers throughout history. One of my all-time favorites is Braveheart. Braveheart tells the story of William Wallace, who above all else, influences his Scottish countrymen to take on the English after many years of tyrannical rule. The behavior he sought to change was the belief in and desire for freedom. The clip below demonstrates many of the influence principles noted in the rest of this post. If you watch the movie you can notice most, if not all of the influence methods discussed in the Influencer book.
Influencers don't just randomly create change in human behavior. They count on three keys to success (pages 13-34):
1. Focus and measure: Influencers are crystal clear about the result they are trying to achieve and are zealous about measuring it. Unsuccessful agents of change make one of three early mistakes that undermine their influence: 1) fuzzy, uncompelling goals, 2) infrequent or no measures, or 3) bad measures (page 16). "Start every change project with a clear and compelling statement of the goal you're trying to achieve. Measure your progress. Don't leave it to intuition or hunches. Measure your measures by the behavior they influence. And finally, measure the right thing, and measure it frequently" (page 26).
2. Find vital behaviors - Influencers focus on high-leverage behaviors that drive results. More specifically, they focus on the two or three vital actions that produce the greatest amount of change. "The good news is that the key of finding no more than a handful of high-leverage behaviors works with almost any problem. Change vital behaviors, and soon you'll achieve the results you've wanted all along" (page 28).
3. Engage all six sources of influence - Finally, influencers break from the pack by overdetermining change. Influencers identify all of the varied forces that are shaping the behavior they want to change and then get them working for rather than against them. According to the research, by getting six different sources of influence to work in their favor, influencers increase their odds of success tenfold. It is important to note that you cannot ignore any of these six sources. All must be engaged in order to ensure successful change. It is likely that a couple sources are more important than the others but if any one source is neglected, the change will fail. The six sources are: 1) personal motivation, 2) personal ability, 3) social motivation, 4) social ability, 5) structural motivation, and 6) structural ability.
How do you find the vital behaviors people need to change in order to achieve results?
Influencers don't create methods for changing behavior until they have carefully identified the exact behaviors they want to change (page 35). Influencers then identify the most important of those behaviors (top two) and focus their execution on these two behaviors. Influencers stay focused on these top one or two behaviors because, according to the Pareto Principle, the old 80-20 Rule, 80 percent of your results come from 20 percent of your efforts (page 44). Follow these four vital behavior search strategies to avoid spending your time and effort on the wrong behaviors (page 47):
1. Notice the obvious - Recognize behaviors that are obvious (or at least obvious to experts) but underused.
2. Look for crucial moments - Find times when behavior puts success at risk.
3. Learn from positive deviants - Distinguish behaviors that set apart positive deviants - those who live in the same world but somehow produce much better results.
4. Spot culture busters - Find behaviors that reverse stubborn cultural norms and taboos.
Influencers identify the behaviors that need to change through finding the obvious but underutilized actions, examining the advice of experts, tailoring their own change program and trying to see what will work for them, and examining the 2 percent of time they fail not the times they are successful (page 62). These crucial moments inform them of the actions they are needed to follow. Often times studying the individuals who are outliers in their success will help you find the positive behaviors others need to learn. And, they look for behaviors that might be needed to break free from a culture that sustains past problems (page 63).
One of the most influential restaurateurs in the business is Danny Meyer. Danny identified vital behaviors and then used all six sources of influence to create a environment which places hospitality as the change needed to make his restaurants successful. Here is a video which demonstrates how his restaurant keys in on behaviors, speaks up when there are mistakes, and then works quickly to maintain a high level of hospitality.
Now that you have identified the vital behaviors that need to change, how do you ensure the behaviors will change?
The key to changing the vital behaviors is to overdetermine change. It is imperative that all six sources of influence are engaged to determine change. Quick fixes rarely work. There are no silver bullets. Impacting change on just one or two of the sources of influence may improve results, but if you are facing a long standing behavior challenge you must utilize all six to make long-lasting change (page 68).
There are two basic drivers of behavior. At the end of the day a person asks, "Can I do what's required?" and, "Will it be worth it?" (page 69). The first question asks "Am I able?" The second, "Am I motivated?" No matter the number of forces that affect human action all these strategies work in one of two ways. They either motivate or enable a vital behavior. Some do both (page 69).
Is is therefore necessary to consider that the methods used to affect behavior change fall into the domains of motivation and ability. These domains are then further subdivided into personal, structural, and social sources.
Motivation
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Ability
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Personal
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Make the Undesirable Desirable
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Surpass Your Limits
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Social
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Harness Peer Pressure
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Find Strength in Numbers
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Structural
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Design Rewards and Demand Accountability
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Change the Environment
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Let's look closer at each of these sources of influence and the tactics you can employ to change behavior.
Personal Motivation - Help them love what they hate
"Is the vital behavior intrinsically pleasurable or painful?" (page 78). Sometimes people like to do things that may give them pleasure in the short-term while harming them in the long-term. For instance, an obese person may eat cake in the short-term for pleasure and sacrifice the long-term health effects it will have on his body such as diabetes. Bad actions, such as this, are usually fun and offer immediate gratification to the person. On the hand, long-term behavior changes may seem far off, fuzzy, and too much work to not be worth the sacrifice. "To turn this around, influencers learn to help others love what they currently hate by allowing them choices, creating direct experiences, telling meaningful stories, and turning the tedious into a game" (page 111).
Allow for choice - when given a choice, people often step up to the plate and deliver (page 88).
Create direct experiences - "let people feel, see, and touch things for themselves" (page 92).
Tell meaningful stories - create vicarious experiences through telling compelling stories. "The difference between influencers and the rest of us is that when influencers recognize that others aren't personally motivated to enact a vital behavior, they don't work around that problem. They work through it. They operate on the confidence that people are not morally defective, but morally asleep" (page 108).
Make it a game - keep score, make it a competition, show constant improvement through visuals, create and record measures over which individuals have complete control (page 110).
Personal Ability - Help them do what they can't
In order to change behavior, leaders need to help employees learn new skills. "World-class influencers spend far more time engaging people in deliberate practice than the rest of us" (page 142). Deliberate practice involves realistic conditions, coaching, and feedback. Break the behaviors down into smaller actions that allow people to judge their own progress, give them support when they have setbacks, and help them develop the skills they need. Most importantly, provide them with meaningful opportunities to learn the interpersonal skills necessary to master the new behaviors. "Develop greater proficiency at deliberate practice as well as the ability to manage your emotions, and you significantly increase your chances for turning vital behaviors into vital habits" (page 143).
A great example of deliberate practice is that of the Karate Kid, Daniel. Daniel deliberately practices, with the expert help of his mentor (Mr. Miyagi) who provides him coaching and corrective feedback so he can properly defend himself. If you are not familiar with the Karate Kid (where you born on a rock?) here is a synopsis video.
Social Motivation - Provide encouragement
Our peers play a vital role in our ability to change our own behaviors. They can provide both positive and negative reinforcement through enabling the right behaviors or, conversely, the wrong behaviors. Therefore, influencers "use the power of social influence to support change by ensuring that the right people provide encouragement, coaching, and even accountability during crucial moments" (page 146).
There are three best practices that help magnify the power of social support:
The Power of One - one respected individual can create conditions that compel ordinary citizens to act in different ways (page 151). This respected individual must have credibility with the peer group you are trying to influence or else it may have a converse effect on the behavior change. Sometimes these respected individuals need to make sacrifices, particularly with their ego, in order to affect change.
Engage Formal and Opinion Leaders - sometimes and outside expert can shed light on the situation while other times it is important to engage informal opinion leaders throughout the organization. It is important to know who the formal and opinion leaders are and get them on board early and communicate with them often throughout the change process to ensure success. You can find out who your opinion leaders are by having all employees make a list of people they believe are influential and respected and then make a list of the names that appear most often. These are your opinion leaders.
Create New Norms - It is so difficult to break from old norms and establish new norms. I was struck over and over throughout this book by how influential leaders have tackled this problem. Invariably, the two methods they employed to create new norms were:
1. Make the undiscussable discussable. "Unhealthy norms are almost always sustained by what we call a culture of silence" (page 173). It is critically important that individuals are empowered to speak up about issues or problems, including when they notice a supervisor acting poorly. Management needs to embrace this new culture to break the code of silence which exists in nearly every workplace if the new norms are to have a chance to succeed.
When I think of discussing the undiscussable, the movie "A few good men" comes to mind. In the movie, a murder is covered up because of a code of silence. The code is so powerful that subordinates are willing to go to jail before they speak up. Here is a clip from the movie.
2. Create 200 percent accountability. "Create an environment in which everyone is responsible not just enact the vital behaviors - but to hold others accountable for them as well. When this happens, people make personal transformation that are hard to believe" (page 181). In essence, we are all accountable to everyone. Therefore, if a team member is not practicing a new norm, then another team member must step up and call him out on it. This includes calling out a member of the management if he is not following the new norms.
Social Ability - Provide assistance
"Influencers take care to ensure that those they want to influence are sufficiently encouraged to adopt vital behaviors" (page 186). Provide more than just a nod or acknowledgement of the adoption of vital behaviors. Provide information, coaching, and/or hands-on help. One way to do this is to enlist the power of social capital. As the Beatles suggested, we're more likely to succeed when we have "a little help from our friends" (page 193). Positive friends who model and expect the appropriate behaviors enable others to embed these behaviors into their daily routine. It is important that people have a social network which is supportive and is a resource for them when they need help. Interdependence, working as members of teams, with common purpose, language, positive supports, and open and honest feedback with 200% accountability help to form a basis for providing needed assistance to support the behavior change initiative.
Structural Motivation - Change their economy
Things can be a powerful source of motivation for individuals. These things can include rewards, perks, bonuses, salaries, and the occasional boot in the rear (page 218). "Your goal with structural motivation and using incentives should not be to overwhelm people to change. Rather, it should be primarily to remove disincentives - to "change their economy" as it were" (page 218). Further, it is important to make certain that positive and negative incentives are not undermining the influence message you are trying to send.
Use extrinsic reward third. "In a well-balanced change effort, reward come third. Influencers first ensure that vital behaviors connect to intrinsic satisfaction. Next, they line up social support. They double check both of these areas before they finally choose extrinsic rewards to motivate behavior. If you don't follow this careful order, you're likely to be disappointed" (page 218).
Use incentives wisely. Engage personal and social motivation before you choose to use incentives. Make sure that rewards are immediate or close to immediate and that they definitively reinforce the behavior you desire. Symbolic rewards are often more motivating than financial rewards. Think of the Ohio State Buckeyes football helmets. When players accomplish feats on the field they are immediately rewarded with a buckeye leaf on the helmet. This is an immediate positive and symbolic reward for reinforcing behavior. Make sure that what you are rewarding is a vital behavior. Do not award just results such as scoring a touchdown. Also make sure you reward the block which freed up the runner to get to the end zone.
Read Brian Mossop's article from Wired Magazine on how Woody Hayes started the buckeye leaf tradition. It will clearly demonstrate this concept.
When all else fails, punish (page 242). Sometimes it becomes necessary to discipline an employee. Influencers typically try a "shot across the bow" in which they make an announcement to the entire group that if a behavior is exhibit then the discipline will be quick and decisive. Many times this will impact behavior change. It really impacts behavior change if someone immediately gets punished and publicly the first time it occurs. This typically tells everyone that you mean business and they better come around. Unfortunately, this does not always convince everyone to comply and it becomes necessary to fire an employee.
Structural Ability - Change their space
There are nonhuman forces which influence behavior. These can include such things as the physical buildings we work in, how they are designed, the sights and sounds, etc... Often times we see people misbehaving and we try to change them. Sometimes we need to change the physical environment to be conducive to the behavior change we are trying to reinforce.
Remember to think about things, the physical environment, and then identify ways the environment can be changed to enable behavior change. First, learn to notice things. Observe people as they work and notice how the environment interferes with success. Second, make the invisible visible. Provide visual cues around the space to make people knowledgable of their environment. This is why you see signs in doctor offices about the positive or negative effects of proper hand-washing, or lack there of. Third, mind the data stream. Use the visual cues to draw attention to important pieces of data which reinforce the behavior change.
Manage the physical space of employees. Consider the proximity of the employees and how that affects performance (propinquity). Employees need to have time and space to chat, get to know one another, and jointly work on problems (page 268). This helps to insure that they are not operating alone, or in silos. Make the work of the team and individual visible to everyone, regardless of the mess it may cause (my desk is always a mess, what a relief). Keep in mind how you can change the physical space to make it easier for employees to enact the behaviors you desire. The physical space can help to make a good behavior unavoidable if properly planned.
Are you ready to become an influencer?
If you have read this entire post you must be dedicated to learning about influencing change in your organization. You are most likely a school district administrator and possibly even an educational technologist. If you focus on a change initiative, measure the right variables, identify the vital behaviors (remember the 80/20 rule), and then engage all six factors of influence you are much more likely to have success than if you try a quick fix. Change is hard but it is achievable.
For more information you can go to http://www.influencerbook.com.
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