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The Eight Strategies of Influence: A Manager’s Guide to Succeeding at Change

by Phil Gerbyshak on October 12th, 2007

This article comes to you courtesy of Kerry Patterson, the author of the book Influencer: The Power to Change Anything. I’m working through it now, in tandem with a few other books, and it is a great read thus far! Kerry also was one of the authors of one of the books you must have in your management library, Crucial Conversations.

I’m very excited to share this article with you, as Kerry wrote it exclusively for you here at Slacker Manager, and while it’s a long article, it is very well worth the read! In fact, I would recommend you print it out and share it with the other Slacker Managers in your office.

The Eight Strategies of Influence: A Manager’s Guide to Succeeding at Change

By Kerry Patterson

During the last forty years, a handful of world-class scholars and practitioners have learned a great deal about solving profound and persistent problems. Enormous challenges that had gone decades without being resolved are now being wrestled to the ground with some regularity. For instance, individuals are learning how to take charge of their addictions; executives are starting to create cultures with terrific safety, quality, and customer-satisfaction records; social workers are making great headway in reducing criminal behavior; and whole countries are eradicating widely-shared, anti-social behavior right along with plagues and diseases.

It all comes down to human influence. In each case, chronic problems were resolved when individuals figured out how to change people’s behavior. We may not know how to change the pull of gravity, but we do know how to both motivate and enable others to act in new ways. Considering many of the profound problems that curse organizations are behavioral, this ability to influence human behavior is one of the most important talents managers can possess.

Here are eight principles from our book, Influencer: The Power to Change Anything, that today’s savvy influencers use to eliminate profound, persistent, and resistant problems.

Principle # 1: Change the Way You Change Minds

Change starts with a change of mind. To encourage others to adopt new, healthier behaviors (say, follow a safety procedure or live up to a commitment) a person must believe two things. First, they must think, “I can do it!” and second, they must believe that, “If I do, it’ll be worth it.” If they don’t believe these statements, then why would they even try to adopt the new behavior?

So here’s the question: how do you get others to believe that they can change their behavior and that it will be worth it? If you’re like most people, you rely heavily on verbal persuasion. You’ll explain: “Hey, if you always use a ladder, you’ll avoid an accident.” And you’ll speak from the podium: “Listen up everyone, if you live up to your commitments, profits will improve.”

Unfortunately, verbal persuasion rarely works with persistent and resistant problems. Instead, you must create a personal experience. When others personally experience the new behavior and the resultant consequences, they are far more likely to believe what’s actually happened to them than they are to believe what you say will happen to them.

How do you create personal experiences? Take others on a field trip where they can watch the target behaviors in action. For instance, when a production plant full of automobile employees didn’t believe that their Japanese competitors actually produced more per employee; executives flew a team to Japan where they watched their competitors in action. Now they believed.

When others won’t or can’t take the field trip, create a vicarious experience. That is, tell a vibrant and believable story. Stories break away from cold facts and figures that people readily dismiss and transport individuals into the circumstances you’re trying to explain. Vibrant details and poignant accounts become a surrogate for personal experience. You can tell your kids to buckle up, or you can tell a story of how you lost a friend who was seated next to you in the car. In the case of the auto workers, the employees who had taken the field trip to Japan returned and told their coworkers the whole story about the Japanese production line.

Principle #2: Find Vital Behaviors

How do you get employees to meet deadlines? You could have them fill out detailed plans. Or perhaps you could assign more project managers. It turns out neither approach is successful. However, if you study companies that routinely deliver their projects on time you’ll discover a vital behavior that leads to the difference. In these successful companies, leaders create a culture where people speak up the moment they are given a deadline that can’t be met. This behavior alone solves chronic failure to deliver.

Masters of influence understand that key results stem from changing a handful of vital behaviors. They don’t chase a dozen different rabbits. Rather, they go to great pains to locate the few behaviors that matter. Instead of selecting the trendiest technique or solution, they search for the vital behaviors by studying those who have succeeded in the face of failure.

Principle #3: Make the Undesirable Desirable

Humans seek pleasure and avoid pain. So, when the requisite task is noxious, repetitive, painful, boring, or simply less desirable than other tasks, find a way to make it more desirable. You can either change the task itself, or help people view it in a new way. Individuals who take pleasure in their work tie it to core values and human consequences. For example, help people see how a job, although not particularly interesting, is intimately tied to customer satisfaction.

Principle #4: Surpass Your Limits

When individuals fail to comply with a procedure, we commonly assume it was because they didn’t want to do the task. In truth, many problems stem from a lack of ability. Individuals often simply don’t know how to do what’s required. For example, consider the company where people spoke up when they viewed a deadline as impossible—they didn’t do it because they had more courage. They were taught the skill of holding a crucial confrontation.

A whole new body of literature reveals that most forms of expertise or talents that we thought were genetically determined are actually a function of careful practice. Elite performers aren’t smarter or faster, they are however better trained. Before you leap on the motivation wagon, check for ability, and where required, help people surpass their limits by teaching them new skills using the latest principles of deliberate practice.

Principle #5: Harness Peer Pressure

Start every intervention by first identifying opinion leaders. Ask others who they listen to. Then involve these opinion leaders in the change process. Have these opinion leaders go through training, sit on committees, etc. Let opinion leaders lead the way.

Principle #6: Find Strength in Numbers

Create a culture of collaboration. The behaviors most people were looking for when they shifted to teams back in the 90s was helping, sharing, supporting, and otherwise collaborating. We now live in a time where interdependence rules. So, reward people who pitch in when others need help. Teach people how to work through their differences. Talk about, model, and show excitement for collaboration.

Principles #7: Design Rewards and Demand Accountability

As you identify new, healthier behaviors, build them into the formal reward system. Teach individuals what they’re expected to do, measure if they do it, and then reward success. Equally important to rewarding people is holding others accountable who fail to embrace the change. People will judge what you value as leaders by what you measure and reward.

Principle #8: Change the Environment

Finally, don’t forget the power of the environment. Space determines who collaborates. The closer people are to one another, the more likely they’ll collaborate. Data determines what people get excited about and act on. If you want people to get excited about the customer, provide them with accurate and detailed customer data. In short, before you work on changing people, first look at changing the space, data stream, work flow, systems, machinery, or other things that, once changed, will stay changed forever.

Summary

In the face of profound, persistent and resistant problems, Influencers use experience to change people’s minds about current bad behaviors; they identify a handful of vital behaviors that when changed, will solve the problem; and they use six sources of influence to profoundly influence people to enact the Vital Behaviors every time, all the time—making change virtually inevitable. With these eight strategies, the most persistent and pervasive problems give way to solutions and take people and performance to the next desired level.

For more information and resources visit www.influencerbook.com

Kerry Patterson is coauthor of Influencer: The Power to Change Anything, (McGraw-Hill) and the New York Times bestseller Crucial Conversations. He is also a sought-after speaker and consultant and cofounder of VitalSmarts, an innovator in corporate training and organizational performance.

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