Leader as Influencer

Scope
• Leadership is Influence
• The Three Keys to Influence
Focus and Measure
Find Vital Behaviours
Engage Six Sources of Influence
 Leadership is Influence
• Leadership is the capacity to influence others to
change behaviours to achieve result

 Influence is the ability to create changes in human

behaviours.
 It is different from persuasion and it is not about applying
verbal tricks or stealthily exerting one’s will over the other

 Influencers are leaders who understand how to create

rapid, profound and sustainable behaviour change.
 Behaviour is KEY to Success

 Analysis reveal that the key to success has

little to do with pep talks, bribes or sermons.

Success relies on the capacity to

systematically create rapid, profound, and
sustainable changes in a handful of key
behaviours.
 Outstanding Influencers
Dr Wiwat Rojanapithayakorn
“Saved over 5M Thai citizen from contracting HIV/AIDS from a
position of no or little power by influencing the behaviour of 60M
fellow Thai citizens”
Dain Hancock
“ President of Lockheed Martin Aeronautics influenced remarkable
behaviour change across a cynical and resistant 13,000 workforce
helping him land a $1trillion contract”
Ethna Reid
“Routinely enters school that are last in their district in reading
comprehension and she propels them to the top in less than a
year”
 There are others who have eradicated a disease, saved thousand
from dying from hospital errors and turned convicted felons into
productive citizens
 Influencers exist and what they know and do is learnable
Three Keys to Influence

Focus and Measure

Find Vital Behaviours

Engage Six Sources of Influence

 Focus and Measure
 Articulate goals clearly
 Clear goals at compelling target have enormous impact on behaviour
 Engage more than simply the brain
 Engage the heart
 Causes the blood to pump more rapidly, the brain to fire and the muscle to
engage
 Ensure clear, consistent and meaningful measures to track the
efforts
 Result remain as ideas unless it is measured.
 Abstract outcome must be operationalized into something that can be
measured
 Measure should be frequently assessed to drive behaviour
 Use Good Measures
 Good measures not only inform but also drive behaviour
 Measure the the behaviour they influence
 Measure the right thing and do it frequently
 Focus and Measure
Three Mistakes that Undermine Influence
1. Fuzzy, uncompelling goals
“Begin with vague sense of what to achieve”
2. Infrequent or no measures
“Rarely develop credible measures against which to
match to match the intentions”
3. Bad Measures
“Folks who fail often drive the wrong behaviour by
measuring the wrong variables”
 Find Vital Behaviours
Focus on high leverage behaviour that
drives results
Focus on two or three vital behaviours that
produce the greatest amount of change
Four (4) Vital Behaviours Search Strategies
1. Notice the Obvious
2. Look for Crucial Moments
3. Learn from Positive Results
4. Spot Culture Busters
 Notice the Obvious

Look for behaviours that are obvious but

underused
Behaviours that lead directly to desired result
Underused because the behaviour can be difficult
Or unpleasant
These are behaviours already discovered by expert
Determined through quick search because there is
already consensus from experts
 Look for Crucial Moments
Times when behaviour put success at risk.
Times or circumstances when these failures happen.
Times when choices either lead towards great results
or the opposite .
Ways in finding crucial moments:
 Look for failure mode
 Look for times or circumstances when these failures happen
 Look at your own and subordinate behaviours during this
crucial moments
Learn from a Positive Deviant
Distinguish behaviours that set apart positive
deviants.
o Those who live in the same world but produce much
better results
Find individuals who have found a way to succeed
despite a change in condition.
o Ask members of the standard community and the positive deviant to
observe each other behaviour and see the difference of what they
are doing during crucial moments.
Have these vital behaviours adopted across the
population.
 Spot Culture Busters
 Find behaviours that reverse stubborn cultural
norms or taboos.
 Confront unhealthy behaviours openly.
 Help someone to step-up to some crucial
conversation.
 Influence people to speak up about emotionally
or politically risky issue.
 Collect or gather stories to uncover the norms.
Engage Six Sources of Influence
Personal Motivation
(1)
Personal Ability
(2)
Social Motivation
(3)
Social Ability
(4)
Structural Motivation
(5)
Structural Ability
(6)
 Personal Motivation
Helping people love what they hate and do
what they don’t want to do
 People often make poor choices because they prefer the short
term benefits of their bad behaviour over the long term
benefits of doing the right thing.
 While watching others not doing the right thing while
repeatedly doing the wrong thing, ask: Do they enjoy it?
Four (4) tactics to help people love what
they hate:
 Allow for choice
 Create Direct Experience
 Tell Meaningful Stories
 Make it a Game
Tactics in Personal Motivation
Allow for choice
Give people a choice and they will step up
Swapping coercive method with personal choices open up
the possibility of influencing even the most addictive
behaviours
Achieve through motivational Interviewing which is the
skillful use of open and non-directive question.
o Asking thought-provoking question and listening while others
talk will allow them to discover on their own what they must
do.
o Gain access to one of the most powerful human motivations:
the power of the committed heart
A change of heart cannot be imposed, it can only be
chosen.
Tactics in Personal Motivation
Create direct experience
• One of the best tactics for engaging personal
motivation is direct experience.
• Letting people feel, see, and touch things for
themselves
• Developing ways of helping connect people
experientially with the consequence of their choices.
• Direct experience is the powerful way to help people
connect to genuine human consequences.
• This make people find moral significance in vital
behaviours and begin to feel differently about new and
better behaviour.
Tactics in Personal Motivation
Tell meaningful stories
• Ignoring the power of stories risk failures for companies and
people
• Story telling can be a powerful tool in anyone’s influence
repertoire when used in combination with other influence
methods.
• Create vicarious experiences through telling compelling
stories
Make it a game
• Transforming neutral or detestable vital behaviour into
something that is enjoyable.
• Transforming unpleasant behaviour into something
enjoyable is turning it into a game.
Tactics in Personal Motivation
Make it a game
• Elements of enjoyable game:
– Keeping the score
» Produces clear and frequent feedback that can transform
tasks into accomplishments and create intense satisfaction.
– Competition
» Competition especially with one self can help people take
satisfaction from what would other wise be a repetitive task.
– Constant improvement
» The actual number is not as important as the over-all slope
in what direction you are heading.
– Control
» Create and record measures over which individual has
complete control
 Personal Ability
• Help people do what they can’t.
– When trying to understand why others don’t do what they
should do, ask: Can they do it?
• They have to have the skills, talent, and understanding
required to enact each vital behaviour or they’ll fail.
– Invest in strategies that increase abilities
• Psychologist Anders Ericsson stressed that people at
the top of any field outperformed their peers through
basic as deliberate practice.
– His research revealed that prowess, excellence, elite status
is not a matter of genetic gifts but a matter of knowing
how to enhance skills through deliberate practice.
 Techniques in deliberate practice that
strengthens Personal Ability
Demand full attention for brief intervals
• Requires complete attention
• Does not allow for day dreaming, functioning on auto-pilot
only partially putting one’s mind into the routine.
• Requires steely-eyed concentration watching exactly what is
being done, what is working, what is not and why

Provide immediate feedback against a clear standard

• Provide the chance for people to see how well they are
doing against the standard.
• Immediate feedback coupled with complete concentration
accelerates learning
Techniques in deliberate practice that
strengthens Personal Ability
Break mastery into many goals
• Setting small goals and meeting them up enable one to
focus on something they could see and control
Prepare for setbacks; build in resilience
• People need to learn that efforts , persistence and
resiliency are eventually rewarded with success.
• As learners overcome more difficult tasks and recover
from intermittent defeats, they see that setbacks are
not permanent roadblocks
• This rather signal that they need to keep learning
• Need to interpret set back as guide and not as break
 Prowess is Practice
• Many persistent problems occurs due to lack of skills
aggravated further by lack of deliberate practice.
– This is seen to be the case rather than from a genetic
curse, lack of courage or character flaw.
• Self-discipline viewed as character trait and elite
performance linked to genetic gifts all stem from the
ability to engage in guided practice of clearly defined
skills.
• Learn to practice the right actions and you can
master everything.
 Social Motivation
• Involves providing encouragement by others
– Need to examine the social side of influence by asking: Do
others encourage them to enact the wrong behaviour?
• Use the power of social influence to support change
by ensuring that the right people provide
encouragement, coaching, and even accountability
during crucial moments.
– Social Influence is the deeply felt desire to be accepted,
respected and connected to other human being
– Persuasive power of people who made up the social
network is the a powerful source of influence.
 Three Best Practices that Help Magnify
the Power of Social Support
1. The Power of One or Magnifying Social
Influence by means of sacrifice and symbolic
action.
2. Magnifying social influence by partnering
with opinion leaders.
3. Applying powerful principles for engaging
everyone in changing existing social norms.
 The Power of One
• One respected individual can create conditions that compel
people to act in certain ways.
• To harness the immense power of social support be the one
respected individual and model the new and healthier vital
behaviour
• Three best practices in setting positive example
1. Lead the way
• Create social support through your own actions
• Ask yourself, why people should believe and follow you
2. Be credible
• Generate clear, unambiguous evidence that they can believe you.
3. Sacrifice
• To make new vital behaviour seem more credible sacrifice time,
money, ego and other priorities
 Engage Formal and Opinion Leaders
• Formal Leaders
– Influence of formal leaders can have remarkable influence on
the behaviour of those in their sphere of influence
– It is essential to engage the chain of command
– Spend time with this leader to ensure that they are using their
social influence to encourage vital behaviour
– Develop specific plans for formal leaders to ensure they
regularly teach, model, praise and hold those for whom they are
responsible accountable for behaving in new ways
• Opinion Leaders
– Socially connected and respected, smarter than average and
tend to be open to new ideas.
– Always engage the opinion leaders.
– Spend disproportionate time, listen to their concerns and build
trust with them.
– Be open to their ideas and rely on them to share your ideas
 Creating New Norms
• The greatest barriers to any change project
lies in unhealthy norms
– When behaviour seen as bad is seen as normal
behaviour to everyone then there is trouble.
• Direct action to create a new sense of normal
is needed to create change
• There are two methods to create new norms:
1. Make the undiscussable discussable
2. Create 200 percent accountability
 Make the Undiscussable Discussable

• Unhealthy norms are almost always sustained by

culture of silence.
– No one talk about the issue despite behaviours carry
an enormous cost.
• Break the code of silence about the problem by
bringing the issues out in the open.
– Changes in behaviour must be preceded by changes in
public discourse
• In changing the old norm, the old norm and the
new norm must be discussed or talked about
 Create 200 percent Accountability

• Create an environment in which everyone is

responsible not just to enact the vital
behaviours but to hold others accountable for
them as well.
 Social Ability
• Involves providing assistance
– To examine this source of influence, ask: Do others
enable them?
• Enlisting the help of others
• Enhancing the ability to work in concert
• Providing concrete assistance during crucial
moments in order to help people change
• Enlisting the power of social capital
– Social Capital is the profound enabling power of an
essential network of relationship
 Building Social Capital by Providing
Assistance
• While vital behaviours are enacted by
individuals and often done in private, an
enabling group of individuals can make an
enormous difference in influencing change.
• Always consider ways to ensure that
individuals have sufficient social support to
step up and succeed in crucial moments
When to provide assistance to bring about
challenging changes
• When others are part of the problem.
• When you can’t succeed on your own
– Interdependence
– Novelty
– Blind spots
– Group solidarity
 When others are part of the Problem

• When behaviour is created by a group, the group

would have to be involved in changing it.
– Turn a me problem into a we problem
• Find a way to include everyone who was creating
the problem in solving the problem.
– If bad behaviour is reinforced by a web of players all
the players have to be engage in influencing change.
• Provide assistance by turning enablers into
helpers
 When you can’t succeed on your Own
• If people around are creating or contributing to the
problems playing the role of enabler, co-opt them, instead
of attacking them.
– Turn a me problem into a we problem.
• Provide assistance to help people turn vital behaviours into
productive habits.
• Enlist Social Capital which could be of best use on the
following conditions:
– Interdependence
– Novelty
– Risk
– Blind spots
– Group solidarity
 Interdependence

• Develop people’s ability to work as a team

• This requires people to work in concert
• This arises when people cannot succeed on his
own.
 Novelty

• Multiple heads can be better than one when

times call for novel solutions.
• People has to work in teams, think in teams,
meet and brainstorm in teams.
• When problems call for creativity and multiple
views to come up with creative solution place
people in teams.
 Risk
• Person facing the biggest risk is the one working the
hardest to provide assistance to influence change
during crucial moments.
– Risk may be reduced through a social system relying on a
web of relationship.
• Highlight the importance of person’s ability to form
connections with others (NQ)
– Successful persons have network of people they can go for
expertise as well as they can trust for sensitive requests.
• To lower risks turn more experienced employees into
coaches, trainers, instructors, and mentors.
 Blind Spots
• The need for feed back from third party.
• Seek real time feedback from expert.
• This may involve using real time coaches, call-
in advisers or consultant.
 Solidarity
• Giving up to the larger cause and act for the
good of everyone else.
• What is good for individual may not be good
for the collective whole.
 Structural Motivation
• Don’t role out the power of “things” play in encouraging and
enabling vital behaviours.
– Power of things: rewards, perks, bonuses, salaries, etc
– To check for this source, ask: Do rewards and sanctions encourage
them?
• Involves changing the economy
– Using incentives to change the economy
• If bad behaviour is deeply entrench, it may be possible that the
current economic system people live in is positively encouraging
what we do not want.
• Use Incentives wisely
• Forms of Incentives
– Positive - Extrinsic Rewards
– Negative - Punishments
 Use Extrinsic Reward Third
• In a well-balanced change efforts influencers do the
following:
1. Ensure that vital behaviour connects to intrinsic
satisfaction
• Rely on personal and social motivators as first line of attack
2. Line up social support
• Have social motivators carry the bulk of motivational load
3. Use extrinsic rewards
• Make sure extrinsic motivators are immediately linked to vital
behaviours.
• Link reward to vital actions you want to see repeated.
• When it comes to extrinsic rewards, less is often more
• It is best to reward behaviours not only outcome.
 Use Incentives Wisely
• Don’t use incentives to compensate for failure to
engage personal and social motivation.
• Incentives or rewards should be gratifying and
are tied to vital behaviours.
• Some pointers in the giving of reward:
– If done right, less is more
– Reward vital behaviours, not just results
– Reward right results and right behaviours
– Reward vital behaviour alone
– Watch for perverse incentives
 If done right less is more
• If the groundwork for personal and social
motivation has been laid down, reward need not to
be very large.
• In providing supplemental reward to shape
behaviour it’s often the thought not the gift that
counts
• The thought behind the incentives carries symbolic
significance and taps into the variety of social forces
that carry a lot of weight.
• Symbolic award take enormous value if personal
and social motivation has been done
 Reward vital behaviours, Not just
Results
• Reward small improvement in behaviours
along the process.
• Don’t wait until people achieve phenomenal
results
 Reward right results and right
behaviours
• It is horrifying to discover having inadvertently
rewarding behaviours that ultimately hurt the
company and morale.
• This happens when result are rewarded
without giving any thought to the behaviours
that drove them.
 Reward Vital Behaviour Alone
• Rewarding result can be unwise if unable to
observe people’s action.
• It is important to remember that behaviour is the
one thing people have under their control.
– Results vary with changes in the market and other
external variables.
• Continuously observe and reward behaviour that
support valued processes.
– Rewarding the process or the actual steps people
follow, results will take care of themselves.
 Watch for perverse incentives
• There are reward system that by design
motivates the wrong behaviour.
– Sometimes people are out of touch of the
message they are sending that they inadvertently
reward the wrong behaviour.
– It is a case of rewarding A, while hoping for B.
 Administering Punishment
• Punishment can create all sorts of serious and
harmful emotional effects if it is loosely
administered.
– Compliance may be gain but only for a short term.
– It should be administered carefully.
• If this is the option, the following may be
undertaken:
– Before Punishing place a shot across the Bow
– When all else fail, punish
 Placing a shot across the Bow
– Let people know what is coming before imposing
punishment.
• Provide clear warning on negative things that will
happen to them should they persist in their current
behaviour.
– Don’t administer punishment yet.
• When all else fails and gratification with wrong
behaviours remain unchanged then make judicious use
of discipline.
 When all else fail, Punish
• There are times that punishment become the
option.
– Judicious use of discipline should be undertaken
when wrong behaviour still continue to prevail.
• When people are not punished for violating
core values in the organization that value loses
its moral force
– Holding people accountable is a powerful message
that the core value has to be observed.
 Structural Ability
• Involves changing the space
– To examine this source, ask: Does this environment enable them?
• Be environmentally competent by being aware of the impact of the
physical space and the things that occupy it on human behaviour.
– Things can either enable or disable performance.
– Things involve non-human forces such as the world of buildings, space,
sound, sight, etc
– The profound yet unnoticed effect of things in the communities is
explained by George Kelling “ broken windows” theory of crime which
argued that disorderly surroundings send out an unspoken but
powerful message that encourages anti-social behaviour.
• Reasons that things are not put into good use:
1. Powerful elements in the environment remain invisible to us which
affects much of what we do yet we often fail to notice its profound
impact.
2. Rarely know what to do about the impact of environment on us.
Becoming Environmentally Competent
1. Learn to notice
• Notice the impact of physical environment that surround us.
• Watching for silent forces around us will make us better prepared to
deal with them.
• Take a closer look at the physical world of people
• Search for subtle features from the environment that are silently
driving us to behave in certain ways
2. Make the invisible visible
• Provide actual cues in the space around you to remind people of the
behaviour you are trying to influence.
• The visual cue trigger the consciousness of people that instruct them
to follow certain kind of behaviour.
• They make decision through awareness implied by the visual cues.
3. Mind the data stream
• Critical data changed how people thought and behaved
• Putting data in front of people influence their behaviour.
• The data have to be fresh, consistent and relevant if they are going to
have much an impact.
• Data gathering and publishing reinforce vital behaviour.
Becoming Environmentally Competent
4. Space, the final frontier
• Study on propinguity or physical proximity reveals that the
frequency of human interaction is largely a function of physical
distance.
• Given the impact of proximity, some leaders rely on the use of
physical space to enhance interaction.
5. Make it easy
• Change things to make right behaviour easier to enact and make
the wrong behaviour difficult.
6. Make it unavoidable
• Enabling behaviour work best when you can alter the physical
world in a way that eliminates human choice entirely.
• Not merely making good behaviour desirable make it inevitable.
• Structure, process, procedure come into play
• To make good behaviour inevitable is to structure it in the daily
routine