Mastering the Skill of Influence--
Leadership is intentional influence. You can't get people from A to B unless they change their behavior. Leadership isn't just about motivating but about us acquiring confidence to do so. We need to study from those who understand influence.
--Whoever is designing video games understands influence
--1 person out of every 34 is incarcerated. Why? Influence is driving their behavior.
--Obesity has doubled since 1980. Those who want us to eat more have developed strategies.
--Smoking rates in the US dropped from 44% in 1950s to 21% in 2008. How was that influence exerted?
We should be taking lessons from social science.
--In 2007 61% of Americans said religion was losing influence
--80% know a Christian but only 15% see any difference in their behavior
Journey through social sciences--
(story of Jane in the Mathare Slum in Nairobi, Kenya--lives in 15 X 15 shack and as she approached puberty her father began to assault her and she chose to leave the home; her only option at age 12 was to enter the sex trade; She had 2 strategies--to serve the tourists or to stay near home; she had 2 children so she stayed closer to home which meant she was selling herself for 25 cents. In just the Nairobi area there are 800,000 women like Jane.)
How would you influence Jane's prospects? Try to engage her in a vital behavior of weekly savings--one regular behavior. How do you influence this?
Lab experiments on 6th and 7th graders. Gave opportunity to earn $40 by completing 4 tasks over 4 minutes. They were asked to set goals for the use of the money to anchor their intentions. The only temptation was the opportunity to buy things along the way for prices at 5-10 times the regular price. They still gave in to that temptation and out of $40 the average person took home $13. Some of them went into debt in a 10 minute period of time. Why?
We believe people do what they do because they lack commitment. This is a naive view of the world which leads us to sermonize. Asked the children to explain their failures--they couldn't explain. But there were intentional motivators.
--as the kids came in we gave them a taste of the candy
--we put them in novel circumstances with no skills
--we gave them social motivators (got other students to come in and make statements "there's a lot of awesome candy over there."
--manipulated structural incentives (credit card)
--decorations in the room of children enjoying candy
For experimental purposes they reversed all the above. When all those things were changed, the students left with $34 average--a 270% difference.
Leadership is intentional influence and exercising these 6 sources of influence brings change. Examine these in your own situation and see which are missing.
Six Sources of Influence--
1) Personal Motivation -- The good behavior feels bad and the bad behavior feels good. How do you solve this? We tend to believe that behavior has intrinsic emotions but it doesn't. Your job is to make the good stuff feel pleasurable. What influencers understand is that people can change the way they feel about almost any choice. Your job is to influence the frame.
How to Influence--
--Don't just teach abstract principles; connect to values
2) Personal Ability --The influence of skill (helmet cam on 10-year-old girl attempting her first 40 meter ski run) The most effective influencers start with developing skills and THEN work on motivation. Skills are a substantial part of influence.
--involve people in far more deliberate practice.
--the practice setting must approximate the real world
--small bites with a lot of feedback and coaching
--intense focus for brief periods
--immediate feedback
3) Social Motivation -- how to get people to comply with driving lane laws (sign 'Report HOV Lane Violations 921-HERO')--sent brochure to those reported; 2nd violation another reminder; 3rd another reminder = number of lane violators dropped by 80% -- social motivation of being watched by others shifts behaviors
--use the influence of others through modeling, praise, helping and enabling
--social support--replace companions with better role models
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4) Social Ability -- see above
5) Structural Motivation -- incentives for getting ahead
6) Structural Ability-- How to influence people to use the stairs rather than the escalator? (installed a cue to help them make a choice "Want to burn 7 calories?" and this raised the rate of those taking the stairs. --the effect of signs, design, data, cues, tools and other influences
positive effect of things like passbooks for savings.
These six things work either for us or against us. Those who used six sources of influence were TEN times likelier to produce profound behavior change.
(return to story of Jane and see the result of her change--a new home she had saved for and a place for her four employees to work--sign on the wall read "God can bless you from nothing to something")
Leadership is intentional influence.
Learn how to take apart these influence problems and learn to make good choices easier and obvious and bad behavior harder and conscious.
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