Two weeks ago I went along to another APM event – this time it was the Yorkshire Branch meeting held at Leeds University. I was there to support John Thorpe who delivered our first roadshow talk on the current marketplace (I’ll have some stuff to share on this – hopefully next week !)
The main meeting featured a presentation from Richard Pound of Grahame Robb Associates about a model called The Influencer Model ™ which can be particularly useful as a practical tool to influence others to change their behaviours. He opened by telling us that the key to ensuring that the changes were long term and sustainable was about using the right kind of “influence” that really does change human behaviour – in other words not mere persuasion tactics or punishment/ reward.
The Influencer Model ™ consists of three parts:
- You need to ask yourself the question “what do you want to achieve?” and there needs to be specific measurable results that will indicate that you have achieved them
- Find the Vital Behaviours – you need to identify which vital behaviours are needed – ideally there may be only 1 or 2 things that people need to do differently to bring about the biggest stepped change
- Use the six sources of influence – a simple 3×2 matrix that enables you to motivate and bring about change
The 3×2 model works on the premise that people do things for two reasons – motivation (because they want to) and ability (because they can). This forms the top two columns. The three parts of the model; personal, social and structural make up the rows.
For example box 1, personal motivation – to get people to start doing something they don’t want to we have to make it more desirable to them and therefore they become personally motivated to do it all the time. This is an interesting concept because alot of people’s motivations are different, their personal beliefs and values are the things that make up their motivation. It’s difficult to motivate people directly because of this so one solution would be to find a way to make it more personal, sometimes seeing the consequences of not doing something is often enough to change behaviours (just think about the speeding kills adverts). In change projects I’ve been involved with in the past one particular approach worked quite well – introducing a role playing board game which allows the users to walk through the new process that was being introduced company wide. It not only allowed the users to visualise the new process but allowed them to work through it, highlighting potential issues along the way. It was certainly one way to try and personally motivate over 1500 employees in one go!
I’m all for giving the nod to someone else when I come across something on the web when it’s well written and has enough detail to be useful so on that note head over to J. D Meier’s blog called Sources of Insight and he has three brilliant posts that cover the The Influencer Model ™ really well (be sure to check out the training posts at the bottom too)
Richard shared a video at the end of the presentation to show the six sources of influence in action – using 12 children’s love of cupcakes and their reluctance to wash hands – the video takes you through each of the six parts of the model. This should come in handy for some parental influencing too!
Image woodleywonderworks
