Leadership Is Intentional Influence: How to Create Lasting Behavior Change

The job of a leader is to answer two questions: What should we do, and how do we get people to do it?

Most leaders implicitly understand and often have ample training to address the first question, but they lack the skills to answer the second. How about you? Have you ever lamented a lack of teamwork, execution failures, or other chronic problems but refused to try another corporate program to change things because none of the previous ones ever worked? Are you like many leaders who are comfortable changing processes or issuing policies but baffled about how to fundamentally influence the behavior of people in a rapid, sustainable way?

One of the greatest capacities we possess is that of influencing behavior. And yet many of us struggle to influence others for good when it matters most. Leadership isn’t simply about crafting inspiring visions, developing breakthrough products, or detailing business growth plans. Leadership is about mobilizing others to achieve the vision, build the product, or enact the plans. At the end of the day, leadership is intentional influence. If behavior isn’t changing, you aren’t leading.

However, human behavior can’t be altered with a singular strategy; instead, it’s governed by six sources of influence. Leaders who know how to leverage these sources in favor of winning behaviors are exponentially more successful at securing change and achieving results.

Here are a few things you can do:

• First – clarify the results you want to achieve, along with a way to measure them.
• Second – search for and identify a handful of the high leverage, or what we call vital behaviors, that if changed, will lead to those results.
• Third – open your eyes to the six ways your organization is perfectly designed to create the unhelpful behavior you’ve currently got. Unless and until you can recognize all six of those categories of influence, you will be ineffective at changing that behavior.
• And last – marshal those same six sources to both motivate and enable people to change.

By following these four steps you’ll experience fewer false starts, fewer failed change efforts and markedly better results.

In this session, you will learn:

• Why leadership is intentional influence—the ability to change behavior and execute strategy
• The power behind focusing on vital behaviors
• To understand why people do what they do so you can help them execute effectively
• How to turn new behaviors into powerful social norms