Influencer: The New Science of Leading Change, Second Edition

by Joseph Grenny

Dr. William Miller is an influence expert who has found a way to help addicts want to change without so much as a whisper of lecture. He knows how to transform from a lecturer who’s trying to instill moral uprightness in others into an alarm sounder who helps awaken others from their moral slumber. Dr. Miller stumbled onto this extraordinary technique by asking a simple research question: “What’s better for addicts—more therapy or less?” Mental health professionals held their collective breath as he tallied his data, then went into paroxysms of denial when he announced that the length of time therapy lasted was irrelevant. Next he asked, “Is there one therapeutic technique that works better than others?” He found that the method didn’t matter much either. After offending almost everyone in his field by undermining the apparently irrelevant distinctions upon which people build careers, Miller stumbled onto an interesting finding. He found a distinction that did matter. It had to do less with what the counselor did than with what the counselor didn’t do. A reigning but inaccurate assumption in counseling—as evidenced by the TV gurus we referred to earlier—is that confrontation motivates change. Miller learned that forcing people to face their demons—and their friends, colleagues, and therapists who hated those demons—didn’t work. In fact, in one study, he found that confrontation actually increased alcoholic bingeing. This led Miller in a different direction. He began to exp...