How to Get Employees to Do What You Want
We just finished the book “Influencer: The Power to Change Anything” by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, et. al. The authors lay out a simple formula to create useful shifts in people’s behaviors and perspectives. It is an excellent read for business owners to improve their understanding of human behavior and glean useful techniques to manage and run their business.
This book is a continuation of previous books and approaches focused on how to influence others, which include Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” as well as NLP – Neuro Linguistic Programming and numerous motivational speakers, such as Zig Ziglar.
Human nature tends to resists change. We take the path of least resistance. Even if it means we repeat the same bad behavior. Unfortunately many approaches society currently takes to change behaviors, such as overeating, or drug use, fail to resolve those issues. A drug addict destroying his life will continue that behavior even if it means death. Why?
The Carrot or the Stick
The first concept is that the traditional approaches that focus on the carrot (positive motivation) or the stick (negative reinforcement) don’t work for most people in the long term. Any employer can testify that punishment is rarely successful in changing a bad employee’s behavior. Although praise works better, over time it tops off and become non-effective.
What is the difference between a non-leader and a successful leader? A true influencer knows how to break through a person’s natural resistance to change.
The authors outline the eight steps to influence other people. These include:
Change the Way You Change Minds. What is your current approach to influencing others? If it is not working, change your approach. Do you use talking points or memos to get your points across? Or do you use stories and metaphors, which are much more successful.
Make the Undesirable Desirable. Find a way to get everyone to align with your vision and the key values to make your business successful. Go beyond business motivations and appeal to employees’ sense of higher purpose. Clarify how humankind improves a little bit due to the success of your business.
Surpass the Current Limits. Employees thrive with a challenging environment. Create challenges that will force employees to expand beyond their current limits through training and coaching. Provide feedback against standards that were previously clearly defined.
Social Motivation. Harness peer pressure to exploit influential champions within the group. Identify opinion leaders and get them involved in encouraging others to make changes. Persuade the most resistant and involve them in the change process. The rest will follow.
Strength in Numbers. Develop a situation in which people help each other. Create true teamwork, which promotes support to resolve obstacles to success. Encourage everyone to provide constructive feedback to management.
Structural Motivation – Rewards and Motivation. Design a system that includes rewards while demanding accountability. The concept is to align an employee reward system to the results they produce. Make sure any incentives used are tied directly to behaviors that matter and encourage desired results.
Change the Environment. Wherever possible, change the physical environment to make new behaviors almost unavoidable by moving people or things closer together or farther apart to get results. Use reminders, such as regular communications and metrics that keep the need for change visible and in front of their minds. Make sure that information about progress towards change is objective, accurate, timely and visible.
The authors of “Influencers” weave in various stories throughout the book that demonstrate how “true influencers” successfully impact massive amounts of people to change behaviors. These include stories from changing the behavior of sex workers in Thailand in order to reduce the spread of AIDS, to an organization in San Francisco that is successful in mainstreaming criminals while being self-sufficient, to a program that gave doctors a $10 Starbucks card to sterilize their hands.
Conclusion
The elements to successfully lead and influence people are not new. The problem is that our society has incorporated many non-successful approaches at the same time. There are many current theories and books in alignment with “Influencers.” Thus there are many other options that should match your style if this book falls flat for you.
Visit the website www.vitalsmarts.com for more information from the authors, which includes free resources and influencing assessment tools.
Also, contact Oak & Associates for your personal review of your agency’s management and operations or for information about how to improve your business.
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