Influencer: The New Science of Leading Change, Second Edition

by Joseph Grenny

This knee-jerk response to coerce others into embracing our version of right living rarely works. In fact, the more we push others to comply, the less it works. This is particularly true with individuals who are addicted to their wrong behavior. They have already suffered through the impassioned speeches of their loved ones, listened to the clever podcasts from the experts, and squirmed in their pew as their minister has harangued them for their self-and other-defeating actions. And yet they continue in their weak and evil ways.

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...

For example, Ralph Heath, now president of Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, was tasked by the company to move the fifth-generation F-22 fighter jet from drawing board to production floor in 18 months. To do so, he had to engage 4,500 engineers and technicians and change their view of what it took to invent things. Heath had to convince them that results mattered more than ideas (a tough sell with engineers) and that engineering needed to bow to production (an even tougher sell). So Heath didn’t sell; he listened. He spent weeks interviewing employees at all levels. He tried to understand their needs, frustrations, and aspirations. When he finally began sharing directives, he framed them in ways that honored the needs, concerns, and goals of those he had interviewed. His influence didn’t result from merely confronting problems but from listening to people and then framing the change process in their terms. The now legendary turnaround of the F-22 began when Heath helped people discover what they really wanted and how it related to corporate objectives—rather than simply issuing orders.

What William Miller teaches us is that a change of heart can’t be imposed; it can only be chosen. People are capable of making enormous sacrifices when they have the agency to act on their own. For instance, healthcare professionals have known for decades that if you give patients control of their own IV-administered painkillers, they’ll use less than when the painkillers are provided by a nurse. Give people a choice, and they’ll step up to the plate. On the other hand, they’ll resist compulsion on pain of death. Try to keep drugs from them, and they’ll demand more.

Ginger Graham, the CEO of the medical devices company Guidant, learned this in a crisis. After the company introduced a new cardiovascular stent, sales went through the roof. Graham described this scenario in her April 2002 article for the Harvard Business Review titled, “If You Want Honesty, Break Some Rules.” Almost overnight, good news turned into bad news as demand for the stent far outstretched supply. And all this hit as the holidays were approaching. Executives figured that just meeting demand until new sources of production could come online would require three-shift workdays and seven-day workweeks. Graham could have simply mandated the work and required people to fill their obligations, but she knew that wouldn’t work. Not only was it unfair to the employees to force this family-unfriendly schedule on them when they deserved time off, but it would also provoke resentment and just might hurt productivity. So instead, Graham asked for help. At an all-company meeting, she praised the work that had brought about the wonderful success. She shared the sales data. She read success stories from doctors who were using the stent to avoid bypass surgery and save patients’ lives. ...

That learning which thou gettest by thy own observation and experience, is far beyond that which thou gettest by precept; as the knowledge of a traveler exceeds that which is got by reading. —Thomas à Kempis

For example, healthcare safety expert Dr. Don Berwick once taught at a Harvard seminar for CEOs of some of the largest hospital systems in the world. The list of attendees was a literal Who’s Who of patient safety. These leaders were sipping lattes, jotting notes, and in other ways having a delightful seminar experience as they examined ways to improve the overall healthcare experience—including eliminating costly hospital errors. And although it was a stimulating intellectual experience, Berwick had seen this happen so many times before that he knew the stimulating-lecture format would influence no one. All would return home, say they had a great time, e-mail their notes to their management team, and generate no real change. “Then I had an idea,” Dr. Berwick told us. “On the spur of the moment. I said, ‘Look, before you come to the session next month, find an injured patient, someone who was harmed while in your hospital. And you investigate the injury. Do not delegate it. You find out what happened and come back and report it.’” Berwick was unsure what would happen. Would the CEOs complete the assignment? Would they return with diagrams or data dumps? Or would it awaken passion? Berwick’s answer was emphatic: “Unbelievable!” he said. “I didn’t know this would happen, but these people came back—I’m talking three-piece suit, high-end executives—and one by one they choked up and cried as they told their stories. They described the illusions they had about their systems and ...

What happened here? Like all of our influencers, Berwick operated on the belief that the problem with these leaders was not some moral deficiency. These were mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters—all of whom were capable of caring about human pain and suffering. However, the healthcare world around them shielded them from the human pain and suffering caused by the current behavior of their employees. Pain, suffering, and depravation had been turned into numbers, statistics, and charts—which sometimes inform but never inspire. So what did Berwick do? Dr. Berwick trusted that if he set senior leaders loose inside an experience that would allow them to connect with the human consequences of their hospital’s current behavior, they would truly care. Transform numbers into names, statistics, faces, and charts into human conditions, and everything would change. What seemed like an interesting abstraction would become a moral imperative. And it did.

Personal experience can be an equally important way to remove fears that keep people from doing the right thing. As you encourage others to create their own direct experiences—taking field trips, interviewing similarly addicted people, and so forth—it can be tough to get individuals to take that first step. This is true for a couple of reasons. First, people tend to resist new behaviors because they’re crystal clear about what they’ll lose by changing but uncertain about what they’ll gain. Like it or not, when it comes to change, humans tend to overvalue what they’re losing while undervaluing what they gain. So we don’t eagerly embrace the verbally recommended strategy. This cognitive limitation is worsened by the fact that we humans are notoriously bad at predicting how we’ll feel in new circumstances—for example, predicting what will make us happier. In fact, psychologist Daniel Gilbert has made a career out of demonstrating that human beings are downright awful at predicting their own likes and dislikes. For example, most research subjects strongly believe that another $30,000 a year in income would make them much happier. They feel equally strongly that adding a 30-minute walk to their daily routine would be of trivial import. Yet Dr. Gilbert’s research suggests that the added income is far less likely to produce an increase in happiness than is the addition of a regular walk.

Silbert could spend a lot of time lecturing about the Delancey vision. “Trust me,” she could say, “you’re gonna love it. By the time you’re out of here, you’ll have a high school diploma. You’ll be literate. You’ll have gone to concerts and museums. You’ll have mastered three different trades and tried a dozen others. You’ll have a whole new set of friends. Just sign here.” Right. These arguments are easy to make but hard to sell because they involve verbal persuasion, and the people you’re talking to are very unlikely to understand the language you’re using. You’re describing activities and outcomes for which they have no frame of reference, and you’re then asking them to make immediate sacrifices (no gang, no drugs, no freedom) in order to achieve them. It won’t work. It can’t work.

Bandura’s strategy began with the “in between” influence technique everyone had been searching for. He provided a secondhand experience by asking subjects to watch a research assistant handle a snake. He invited subjects to watch from the doorway of the room—or if that was still too difficult, to watch through glass—as the assistant walked into the room containing the snake, took a look at it, opened the terrarium, petted the snake, and finally removed the boa and placed it on his or her lap. After the subjects watched someone else handle the snake, Dr. Bandura invited them to have a direct experience. First they would simply walk into the room. But this wasn’t enough to put everyone at ease. Some of the subjects asked for protective gear—hockey goalie gloves, a baseball catcher chest protector and mask, and so on. Now, dressed like samurai warriors, subjects entered the room and stood next to the enclosed tank. Gradually, after several tries they worked up to removing the terrarium cover and then quickly retreated from the room. No harm done. After a bit more experience, they finally touched the snake. Later still they touched the snake without gloves and so forth. Eventually subjects sat in the room by themselves with the six-foot boa constrictor draped across their lap. And now for the real miracle: the entire process took only three hours! People who had been debilitated most of their lives by a paralyzing fear were completely cured in a single morning. And the results...

Take note of the influence technique we’ve just seen demonstrated. Subjects couldn’t be talked into the room with the snake in order to create direct experience (without kicking and screaming), but they did choose to watch someone else interact with the snake. For the typical phobic, it was as if it were happening to them personally. The person was right in front of them, they couldn’t deny what was happening, and the experience felt real and vibrant (many subjects actually hyperventilated). In short, Bandura had found the in-between tactic. He learned to create a vicarious experience, and through this method he helped subjects to the point where they could create direct experience and eventually become cured.

Over the years I have become convinced that we learn best—and change—from hearing stories that strike a chord within us.… Those in leadership positions who do not grasp or use the power of stories risk failure for their companies and for themselves. —John Kotter

we know with a certainty because Twende na Wakati was the first controlled national field experiment in history. Since the Dodoma region of Tanzania was excluded from the evening radio broadcasts, researchers could explore the effect of the vicarious models offered over the radio. From 1993 to 1995 all regions experienced a variety of HIV/AIDS interventions, but only half were exposed to the radio drama. In their award-winning book Combating AIDS: Communication Strategies in Action, renowned social scientists Everett Rogers and Arvind Singhal report that one-fourth of the population in the broadcast area had modified its behavior in critical ways to avoid HIV, and they attributed the change in behavior to the influence of the program. The impact was so remarkable that the controlled experiment had to be stopped after two years in order to make the intervention available to everyone. Within a year, similar results were seen in Dodoma. Rogers and Singhal proved with rare scientific certainty that exposing experimental subjects to believable models through powerful stories affected not only their thoughts and emotions but also their behavior. People who tuned in to Twende na Wakati were more likely to seek marital counseling, make better use of family planning, remain faithful to their spouses, and use protection than were their neighbors who didn’t listen to the serial drama.

twende na wakati

Change agents don’t use stories to aim vicarious models only at audiences in the developing world. Readers may not be aware of how effectively the same methods have been deployed in the United States. Before David Poindexter (the founder and former president of Population Communications International) and his colleagues exported serial dramas to Africa, Poindexter met with Norman Lear—producer of popular TV sitcoms such as All in the Family and Maude. As part of their agenda to reduce population growth, Poindexter, Lear, and others routinely injected family planning messages into their programming. It was no coincidence that in 1972, with 41 percent of those watching TV in America tuned in to his show, Lear created an episode (“Maude’s Dilemma”) in which the star—a middle-aged woman—announced that she was considering an abortion. This was the first time this topic was inserted into a primetime plot line, and it wasn’t included by accident. Love it or hate it, it was part of a systematic plan of using compelling stories (complete with vicarious models) to influence social change. And according to public opinion surveys, it did just that, as have dozens of other programs that have since made use of poignant stories.

compelling stories and vicarious models

Here’s what’s likely to happen when Biff seems disengaged in the vital behaviors. His supervisor walks over to him and says, “Hey Biff, a few minutes ago a young mother walked into our patio area holding the hand of her three-year-old daughter. She set her daughter up on a chair and walked to the window to order their food. While her back was turned, her daughter began sweeping her hand back and forth across the table that was smeared with ketchup from a previous guest. Then she began licking her hand.” At this point, Biff cringes. He doesn’t even wait for his boss to finish the story—but instead, he rushes to grab a rag and begins wiping down the tables. What happened here? The supervisor made a connection. Rather than relying on verbal persuasion to nag, guilt, or threaten, she created a vicarious experience. She told a story that helped awaken Biff to the moral content of his actions. And that changed everything.

appeal to nobler motives

In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun. You find the fun, and snap! The job’s a game. —Mary Poppins

It turns out that one of the keys to personal motivation lies in a force just barely outside the activity itself. It lies in the mastery of increasingly challenging goals. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a researcher at Claremont Graduate School, has devoted his career to what he has come to call “flow,” or the feeling of enjoyment that comes from losing yourself in an engrossing activity (something, he suggests, we all should be seeking with dogged determination). Dr. Csikszentmihalyi has discovered that almost any activity can be made engaging if it involves reasonably challenging goals and clear, frequent feedback. These are the elements that turn a chore into something that feels more like a game.

flow, reasonably challenging goals and clear and frequent feedback

Consider the elements of an enjoyable game: Keeping score: This action produces clear, frequent feedback that can transform tasks into accomplishments that, in turn, can generate intense satisfaction. The designers of many of today’s video games have an intuitive feel for Dr. Csikszentmihalyi’s research and have used it to create games that call for highly repetitive activities that end up being amazingly addictive as individuals strive for that next level of achievement. Competition: Seeing numbers does more than provide data. It imbues the data with meaning: Am I doing better than before? (And certainly better is good.) Am I doing better than others? This element is more questionable (it can lead to unhealthy rivalry)—but to be honest, competition, especially with oneself, can help people take satisfaction from what would otherwise be a repetitive task. Constant improvement: As you walk into fitness centers across the country, you’ll note that many of the facilities’ walls are papered with charts. A closer look reveals that each chart displays various members’ personal progress. Some track weight. Others track measurements. Others track body mass indexes, bone densities, resting heart rates, and a whole host of other health indicators. As you listen to experts talk with their clients—poring over the charts in detail—you’ll often hear the word “slope”: “The actual numbers,” experts explain, “aren’t as important as the overall slope. In what direction are you heading? You ...

To turn this around, influencers learn to help others love what they currently hate by allowing them choices, creating direct experiences, telling meaningful stories, and turning the tedious into a game.

It’s a funny thing, the more I practice the luckier I get. —Arnold Palmer

When leaders and training designers combine too much motivation with too few opportunities to improve ability, they rarely produce change. Instead, they create resentment and depression. Influencers take the opposite tack. They carefully invest in strategies that help increase ability. In so doing, they avoid trying to resolve ability problems by simply piling on one more motivational technique.

many of the stories Henry has been carrying in his head since he was a young man may be equally wrong. When his mother once told him that he wasn’t exactly a gifted speaker and later when his father suggested that leadership “wasn’t his thing,” Henry believed that he hadn’t been born with “the right stuff.” He wasn’t born to be an elite athlete; that’s for certain. Later he learned that music wasn’t his thing, and his interpersonal skills weren’t all that strong. Later still he discovered that spending in excess, getting hooked on video games, and gorging on Swiss chocolate were his thing. But none of this is going to change because Henry, like all humans, can’t fight genetics. Fortunately, Henry is dead wrong. Henry is trapped in what Carol Dweck, a psychologist at Stanford, calls a “fixed mindset.” If he believes he can’t improve, then he won’t even try, and he’ll create a self-fulfilling prophecy. But Henry is in luck. Genes don’t play the fatalistic role scholars once assumed they played in determining physical prowess, mental agility, and yes, even self-discipline. Characteristics that had long been described by scholars and philosophers alike as genetic gifts or lifelong personality traits appear to be learned, much the same way one learns to walk, talk, or whistle. That means that Henry doesn’t need to accept his current status. He can adopt what Dweck refers to as a “growth mindset.” Henry simply needs to learn how to develop a set of high-level learning skills and...

Mischel was interested in learning what percentage of his young subjects could delay gratification and what impact, if any, this character trait would have on their adult lives. Mischel’s hypothesis was that children who were able to demonstrate self-control at a young age would enjoy greater success later in life because of that trait. In this and many similar studies, Mischel followed the children into adulthood. He discovered that the ability to delay gratification had a more profound effect than many had originally predicted. Notwithstanding the fact that the researchers had watched the kids for only a few minutes, what they learned from the experiment was enormously telling. Children who had been able to wait for that second marshmallow matured into adults who were seen as more socially competent, self-assertive, dependable, and capable of dealing with frustrations; and they scored an average of 210 points higher on their SATs than people who gulped down the one marshmallow. The predictive power was truly remarkable.

In 1965, Dr. Mischel collaborated on a study with Albert Bandura that openly challenged the assumption that will was a fixed trait. Always a student of human learning, Bandura worked with Mischel to design an experiment to test the stability of subjects who had delayed gratification. In an experiment similar to the marshmallow studies, the two scholars observed fourth-and fifth-graders in similar circumstances. They placed children who had not demonstrated that they could delay gratification into contact with adult role models who knew how to delay. The greedy kids observed adults who put their heads down for a nap or who got up from the chair and engaged in some distracting activity. The original “grabbers” saw techniques for delaying gratification. And to everyone’s delight, they followed suit. After a single exposure to an adult model, children who previously hadn’t delayed suddenly became stars at delaying. Even more interesting, in follow-up studies conducted months later, the children who had learned to delay retained much of what they had learned during the brief modeling session. So what about those hardwired genetic characteristics or traits that had predicted so much? The answer to this important question is good news to all of us and most certainly offers hope to Henry. When Mischel took a closer look at individuals who routinely held out for the greater reward, he concluded that delayers are simply more skilled at avoiding short-term temptations. They didn’t me...

Psychologist Anders Ericsson has offered an interesting interpretation of how those at the top of their game get there. He doesn’t believe for a second that elite-level performance stems from zodiacal forces or, for that matter, from enhanced mental or physical properties. After devoting his academic life to learning why some individuals are better at certain tasks than others, Ericsson has been able to systematically demonstrate that people who climb to the top of just about any field eclipse their peers through something as basic as deliberate practice. We’ve all heard the old saying that practice doesn’t make perfect; perfect practice makes perfect. Ericsson has spent his life proving this to be true. While most people believe that they are born with inherent limits to their athletic ability, Ericsson argues that there is little evidence that people who achieve exceptional performance ever get there through any means other than carefully guided practice—perfect practice. His research demonstrates that prowess, excellence, elite status—call it what you like—is not a matter of genetic gifts. It’s a matter of knowing how to enhance your skills through deliberate practice.

Ericsson has described how dedicated figure skaters practice differently on the ice: Olympic hopefuls work on skills they have yet to master. Club skaters, in contrast, work on skills they’ve already mastered. Amateurs tend to spend half of their time at the rink chatting with friends and not practicing at all. Put simply, skaters who spend the same number of hours on the ice achieve very different results because they practice in very different ways. In Ericsson’s research, this finding has held true for every skill imaginable, including memorizing complex lists, playing chess, excelling at the violin, and conquering every extant sporting skill. It also applies to more complex interactions such as giving speeches, getting along with others, and holding emotional, sensitive, or high-stakes conversations.