The 6 Sources Directors' Cut

The Six Sources of Influence

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2

3

4

5

6

PERSONAL

SOCIAL

STRUCTURAL

MOTIVATION

ABILITY

Just try it

Take a field trip

Hold a 'reverse' field trip

Tell meaningful stories

Make it a game

Allow for choice

PersonalMotivation

Focus on a discrete skill

Show a model

Learn soft skills

Hold up a mirror

Hold mini sessions

PersonalAbility

Engage opinion leaders

Make a sacrifice

Create coaching relationships

Build new norms

Pair people up

Social Motivation

Draw on the wisdom of the crowd

Create coaching relationships

Social Ability

Engage opinion leaders

Pair people up

Use Rewards That Reward

Use Rewards Third

Use Moderation

Tap into Loss Aversion

Link to Natural Consequences

Link Rewards to Behaviors

Structural Motivation

Automate

Place visual cues

Provide job aids

Change the data stream

Make it a Prominent Option

Provide the right tools in the right places

Structural Ability

A furniture company wanted their salespeople to develop better customer-service skills, so they filmed interactions, invited salespeople to score their performances, and worked to get better.

A group of senior executives were driven by production numbers, which they reviewed weekly. When issues of morale arose, they were concerned, but only after it was too late. They also valued customer satisfaction, but they never talked about customers or did anything to improve customer relations—until they lost a client. To change their narrow focus, they changed the data stream. Now the executives review customer and employee data alongside production data, and they respond better when customer or morale issues arise.

• Do they enjoy doing what has been asked?
• Does performing the task in and of itself bring them satisfaction?
• Do they take pride in their work and their work habits?
• Is the required task boring, noxious, repetitive, physically or mentally exhausting, or painful?
• Are they doing the wrong thing because they enjoy it more?

Diagnostic Questions

A leader wanted to help a team member say no to requests that didn’t relate to his primary job responsibilities. The employee often struggled to turn down requests, so she helped him see how this behavior could jeopardize a promotion he wanted. She didn’t threaten him but rather pointed out how developing this vital behavior would naturally lead him toward his goals.

At the start of each day, in a brief stand-up meeting, a sales team rehearsed conversations they commonly experienced with clients.

In 1968, the submarine Scorpion disappeared in the North Atlantic. The U.S. Navy had a search area some twenty miles in diameter and thousands of feet deep. After the Navy had searched fruitlessly for months, a scientist named Dr. John Craven assembled a diverse group of experts. He introduced several scenarios and asked them to guess how likely each scenario was. He then synthesized those guesses to pinpoint a location. No one individual proposed this location, but the Navy ended up finding the Scorpion 220 yards from where the group said it would be.

A new leader inherited a cynical workforce who had recently experienced some hard times. He needed to earn the employees' trust before he could get them engaged and talking openly. He publicly apologized for what they were experiencing and spent many weekends visiting people in their homes, connecting and listening to them. Within months, he had their support.

• Will doing the right thing cost them money?
• Does doing the right thing put their career or job at risk?
• Does doing the right thing put better jobs, assignments, or working conditions at risk?
• Does doing the wrong thing bring them more money, enhance their career, or give them better assignments or working conditions?

Diagnostic Questions

One leader wanted to build a greater passion for workplace safety, so he took his team on a field trip to visit a former coworker who had been injured on the job. This man and his family were struggling to make ends meet. The team spent the day fixing the roof of the family’s mobile home, building a swing set for their children, and laying sod in the yard. Team members came face-to-face with the consequences of poor workplace safety. This visit not only helped the worker and his family but also transformed the team’s commitment to workplace safety. For this group, safety rules became more than rules; they became moral commitments.

• Are others withholding information
• Do others provide them with the resources they need?
• Are others providing help when needed?
• Have others provided adequate permission or authority?
• Am I doing something that inhibits them from succeeding?
• What help or resources should I be giving that would make it easier for them?

Diagnostic Questions

Leaders in a school district have second-year teachers mentor first-year teachers. Why second-year teachers instead of senior teachers with more experience? Second-year teachers are much closer to the experience that first-year teachers face.

One hospital worked to get more physicians to properly sanitize their hands. When administrators “caught” physicians using the disinfectant, they gave them a modest gift card to a local coffee shop. That’s it. This incentive helped improve compliance in that particular facility from 65 percent to 80 percent.

• Do they have accurate and complete information?
• Are they able to perform the mental tasks?
• Are they able to perform the physical tasks?
• Are they doing the wrong thing because they don’t feel more capable in this than in doing the right thing?

Diagnostic Questions

Leaders at a hotel wanted guests to reuse towels to save water. They posted two different messages in rooms: one that connected to their impact on the environment (“help us save the environment”) and one that connected to social proof (“almost 75 percent of guests help”). Guests who stayed in rooms with the sign about social proof reused their towels at a significantly higher rate.

In one software organization, all engineers work in pairs when they code. This seemingly expensive strategy translates into improved quality, productivity, and culture. For virtual teams, consider how you can pair people up. For example, colleagues could connect via video-conferencing software and work on projects together.

The director of a correctional school knows she is asking a lot when she asks new students who have been living on the streets, using drugs, and getting arrested to “just try” studying for the high school certificate exam or cleaning up their personal space. She also knows that getting students to “just try” something, without asking for a long-term commitment makes it easier for them to get started with the lengthy process of changing their lives.

Leaders at a hospital wanted their physicians to improve hand hygiene. They determined that nurses could help this initiative by speaking up whenever they saw a physician fail to wash. They further clarified “speaking up”: “When you see a physician fail to wash in or out, remind them.” Practicing this simple, specific skill over and over helped them move their compliance from 50 percent to 90-plus percent.

Leaders in a school district have second-year teachers mentor first-year teachers. Why second-year teachers instead of senior teachers with more experience? Second-year teachers are much closer to the experience that first-year teachers face.

A manager wanted to improve quality and productivity at his manufacturing plant. He decided to have two groups co-lead the initiative: supervisors and union-elected officials. The supervisors were formal leaders; the union officials were opinion leaders. Once he got the union leaders on board, the training took off as no other course had. The officials had a kind of credibility that the supervisors didn’t.

Leaders at a restaurant wanted to remind their employees to thoroughly wash their hands after using the restroom, so they posted a sign in the bathroom that read: WASH YOUR HANDS LIKE YOU JUST CUT HABANERO PEPPERS AND HAVE TO TAKE OUT YOUR CONTACTS.

Leaders at a hospital wanted to help people develop healthy eating habits, so they started by changing drink displays in their cafeteria. Originally, there were three main refrigerators filled with soda. The researchers added water to each of those units and also placed baskets of bottled water throughout the room. As a result, the number of soda sales dropped by 11.4%. Bottled water sales increased by 25.8%.

A group of students at Yale University were given information about the horrific consequences of tetanus and the ease of getting vaccinated at the campus health clinic. Almost all said they’d get vaccinated, but only 3 percent did so. Another group received the same information—as well as a map with the health center circled. They were also asked to schedule their visit to the health clinic and determine which route they would take. Students in this group were over nine times more likely to get vaccinated than those in the other group.

At one mining company, employees were rewarded with fun experiences for doing vital behaviors. For example, they were invited to see a gold pour—where leached gold is converted into gold bars. This was an exciting and rewarding experience for employees who rarely witnessed the process.

When a small medical-device company launched a new lifesaving device, demand skyrocketed. The CEO gathered her employees and asked them for ideas about how to meet demand. Employees identified how they could restructure their workload to meet the new demand, as well as several ways management could support them. Employees reported being much more committed because they had been given a choice in how to meet the demand.

An employee was struggling to understand the feedback she’d been given about her interpersonal skills, specifically how she handled disagreement. Her manager invited her to observe a skilled colleague in some challenging meetings. Afterward, the two of them talked about how the colleague responded to differing opinions. Seeing an example proved invaluable, and the employee began to change her behavior.

University fundraising call centers are tough places to work. The work can feel boring, and turnover is high. One university wanted to change this, so once a month, they asked scholarship students to come in and share their stories with employees. After starting this new tradition, the employees spent 142 percent more time on the phone and brought in 171 percent more revenue.

When one Swedish subway station turned a normal staircase into a “piano staircase,” where stepping on a stair produced a sound, they found that 66 percent more commuters took the stairs.

The CEO of a children’s hospital noticed his people were experiencing “change fatigue” from too many acquisitions, personnel changes, and government rule changes. He wanted to remind them how special they are and how special their contribution is to saving lives. He could have lectured them, but, instead, he invited them to experience an actual incident. He told a powerful, true account of a team coming together to treat a premature baby whose life hung in the balance.

Leaders at a manufacturing facility wanted employees to use ladders when fixing equipment and not climb on the equipment itself. To encourage and enable this behavior, they changed the environment. They installed permanent ladders on some equipment and placed ladders throughout the facility so they were readily accessible.

• Is the required task part of their current job description or role?
• Are there policies, rules, or procedures that make the desired behavior difficult or impossible?
• Are there bureaucratic steps or barriers that hinder them?
• Do they have the equipment or tools they need?
• Is the physical environment a help or hindrance?
• Do they have access to the information they need?
• Are they getting adequate performance feedback?
• Are their goals and priorities clear?

Diagnostic Questions

A manager wanted to improve quality and productivity at his manufacturing plant. He decided to have two groups co-lead the initiative: supervisors and union-elected officials. The supervisors were formal leaders; the union officials were opinion leaders. Once he got the union leaders on board, the training took off as no other course had. The officials had a kind of credibility that the supervisors didn’t.

Trucks used at an open pit mine were equipped with navigation systems that measured speed, acceleration, and braking. The drivers were grouped into five-person teams. A team’s score consisted of whatever the worst score was for a driver on their team. Teams with scores above a certain level won small weekly prizes. This highly successful incentive system tapped into both personal pride and peer pressure, not just rewards.

Researchers worked with people who smoked and wanted to quit. They were asked to deposit what they would have spent on cigarettes into a bank account and were told they would lose this money if they failed to stop smoking. Subjects exposed to this financial loss were 30 percent more likely to stop smoking after six months than those who were not. Loss aversion was identified by behavioral economists Tversky and Kahneman.

One team used an app that plugs into their collaboration platform, that creates random virtual meetings between colleagues to foster connection and community.

In a study involving elementary students, kids who exhibited “proactive aggression” attended a class in which they learned to take care of babies. They learned how to read emotions, play with the babies, and calm and cheer them. Eighty-eight percent of participants decreased their aggressive behavior over the school year, compared to only 9 percent in a control group.

• Does doing the right thing draw no attention or even disdain from the people they care about?
• Are their coworkers pressuring, embarrassing, or provoking them into the wrong behavior?
• Is their boss giving other tasks a higher priority or not supporting the right behavior?
• Does completing the job put them at odds with their family and friends?
• Am I doing something that discourages them?
• Am I failing to do something that would encourage them?

Diagnostic Questions

In one software organization, all engineers work in pairs when they code. This seemingly expensive strategy translates into improved quality, productivity, and culture. For virtual teams, consider how you can pair people up. For example, colleagues could connect via video-conferencing software and work on projects together.

Consider this poor example: A call center paid employees based on the number of calls they handled rather than on good customer-service behaviors. The result? Employees rapidly churned through calls, often without ever resolving the customer issue.