You Can Be an Influencer – Part IV: Do You Use the Most Powerful Form of Influence?
– Influencer: The Power to Change Anything
Influence is the power to produce effects on the actions, behaviors and opinions of others. We want the results of our influence to be for good and not for bad. Many times when we desire to influence, it is because we see the behaviors in ourselves or others that are unproductive. But what is the major obstacle that keeps us from change? Often it is a lack of connecting to our values.
As people, we tend to be non-reflective and disconnected with our daily activities. This is the power of habit, where we do automatically without actually being fully aware. Scholars, such as Michael Davis, Ellen Langer and Patricia Werhance, refer to it by different names of “microscopic vision, mindlessness or lack of moral imagination.” But ultimately it leads to a disconnect with our moral compass.
As leaders, the priority of being connected to our moral compass is even a higher responsibility. Often, because leadership is about multiplication and our decisions have an impact on many. An example of this is Robert Lund, senior engineer, with his decision whether to allow the space shuttle Challenger to be launched. His staff had warned him that no one knew how O-rings would respond to low temperatures.
Picture with me, Lund is in a launch meeting and being asked his thoughts on the stability of the O-rings. As he was trying to decide what stand to take, his supervisor tells him to take off his engineering hat and put on his management hat. His decision making transformed from “torturing over moral issues to managing uncertainty.”
The book, Influencer, goes on to say, “So, here is the challenge influencers must master. They must help individuals see their choices as moral quests or as personally defining moments, and they must keep this perspective despite distractions and emotional stress.” So, how do we do this? First, we need to understand how we mentally disconnect from our moral compass.
Moral Disengagement
Psychologist Albert Bandura has defined four mental processes that allow people to disconnect from their moral compasses. They are: moral justification, dehumanization, minimizing and displacing responsibility.
Leaders can especially become susceptible to these moral disengagement processes when they become too focused on numbers and outcomes and lose focus on people. For example, when hospital executives look at safety data, it can be easy to see it with detachment. Seeing only numbers is a form of dehumanizing the people behind the numbers. It can be easy to justify an outcome, such as cost savings which will allow the hospital to help many more people (moral justification) than dealing with the costs of promoting safety. It can also be easy to minimize numbers, such as thinking this will impact only a few people. Or we can displace responsibility by seeing it as someone else’s fault, and therefore I don’t need to do anything about it.
Now, after reading the previous paragraph, beware of pointing fingers and labeling executives as cold hearted people. This in itself is moral disengagement. One of the foundational causes of lack of teamwork and silos in organizations is moral disengagement. For example, have you ever called the people in accounting “bean counters?” Have you called engineers “gear heads” or used any language that states “us versus them?” The use of labels is a very common form of dehumanization.
How to Overcome Moral Disengagement
The only way to overcome losing our moral compass is to reconnect. We need to take time to reflect and view our situations also from a moral perspective. Dr. Stanton Peels through his research has found that the single most important variable to being able to give up long-lasting bad habits is the ability to connect to broader values.
If you want to encourage collaboration and team work, confront people about using labels. Holiday World is a local theme park in my region that has won many awards and is well-respected. I recently heard the owner, Mrs. Koch, speak and attribute their success to living out the Holiday World values. The first value she mentioned was that “we respect the individual.” How employees speak to each other and to customers is held to high standards.
Another way to combat moral disengagement is given by Dr. Berwick, who has a passion for hospital safety. His example is described in the book, Influencer. He has hospital executives personally investigate a safety issue that has impacted a patient. This causes the executive to connect to the people behind the numbers. When you are susceptible to the mental process of dehumanizing, take time to step back from the details and strategy of the job and focus on seeing the individual people.
Finally, it is important to encourage people to connect with each other. The most powerful way to influence another is to listen. We need to replace judgment with empathy and lectures with questions. By skillfully asking questions you can help another person determine what is most important to them. Ask people about their values. Often as they talk through their values, it will point them to the better choice.
The book, Influencer, gave an excellent example of this. Ralph Heath is president of a company who had to bring about a large cultural shift. “Heath had to convince them that results mattered more than ideas and that engineering needed to bow to production. Tough sell. So Heath didn’t sell; he listened. He spent weeks interviewing employees at all levels. He tried to understand needs, frustrations and aspirations. When he finally began issuing orders, he framed them in ways that honored the needs, concerns and goals of his colleagues. His influence didn’t result from merely confronting problems, but from listening to people.”
Summary
A key to influencing people is to develop trust and respect. We can point out behaviors that others need to change, but will they listen to us and make the effort to change? Just this past week, I was talking with the president of a very large company. He stated that being aware of his own behaviors was most important because how he behaves trickles down and impacts the whole culture of the organization. Keeping aware of his behaviors is a top responsibility for him.
Regularly take time to reflect on when you morally disengage. Here are some questions to ask yourself:
- With moral justification, do you ever justify a behavior to get an action you want even though it might hurt some people in the process?
- Then do you dehumanize people by calling them by a “label” instead of by their name?
- Do you ever minimize a lie by seeing it as a “white lie?”
- When a problem occurs at your work, do you say it is someone else’s fault verses jumping in to help find a solution?
Next, take time to listen to others. The most powerful form of influence is when people connect to their own values and make a choice themselves.
Please feel free to share your ideas on the Imajine Unlimited Facebook page or email me.