Habit #5 is Influence

Pull the string, and it will follow wherever you wish. Push it, and it will go nowhere at all.—Dwight D. Eisenhower

Leadership is getting someone to do what they don’t want to do, to achieve what they want to achieve.—Tom Landry

The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority.—Ken Blanchard



Leadership is about influence, not power. Highly-effective leaders know how to tap into the hearts and minds of their followers. If you stand and look over the shoulders of those you supervise, you’ll never get people who care about their jobs. We do not preach the old “carrot and stick” approach to influence. Rather, we will teach you how to get intrinsic, true, inner motivation.

 According to the old-school organizational cliché, what gets rewarded gets done. So, many organizations offer rewards such as profit-sharing, bonuses, employee of the month programs, prizes, and special parking spaces to influence employees. These are classic examples of extrinsic or token rewards. Extrinsic rewards can significantly lower intrinsic motivation and can create reliance upon the rewards. In situations that are already intrinsically rewarding, the addition of extrinsic rewards may reduce the effectiveness of the intrinsic rewards. Extrinsic rewards are effective in teaching a rat to run a maze, but are not effective in influencing staff performance.

Rewards fail to make deep lasting changes because they are aimed at affecting only what people do and not at what they think and feel. If employers want to do nothing more than induce compliance in employees, then rewards may be a valid practice. If employers want staff members to be self-disciplined, self-motivated workers, then rewards are worse than useless; they are counterproductive.

Our philosophy is that what is rewarding gets done. We know that we can never pay people enough to care—to care about the children, families, supplies, schools, or even the bottom line. Highly effective leaders tap into peoples’ hearts and minds, not merely their hands and wallets. Highlighting the intrinsic rewards of our work rather than focusing on rewards creates higher levels of commitment. Human organizations, be they homeless shelters, schools, or child care programs, can give employees the opportunity to make a difference to society, to facilitate the positive development of children, to prevent juvenile delinquency, to develop productive citizens, and in the long term to make healthier families and healthier communities possible.


Learning is Influence


People have an intrinsic desire to learn. Learning is intrinsically rewarding, but when you extrinsically reward learning you devalue that behavior. In studies of parents who reward good grades or remove privileges for bad grades, their children become less interested in learning and are less likely to succeed in school. These observations about basic principles of human motivation apply to adults as well as children, both of whom are driven by intrinsic desire to learn. Being challenged to learn and do better than we’ve ever done before compels us to grow – that’s influence.


Pleasure is Influence


People find things intrinsically motivating if they derive pleasure from the experience and pleasure from using their skills. For leaders to influence others, they must find opportunities for people to solve problems, make discoveries, explore new ground, and have fun.


Try This: Double Your Pleasure


Make a list of the pleasurable experiences people have at your organization. What is fun? Now ask other employees to create a list. How do your lists compare? Think of ways to add more pleasure and fun.


Acknowledgement is Influence


Influential leaders can provide feedback and coaching to enhance their influence. Showing genuine concern and respect for those doing the work boosts intrinsic motivation.


Imagine you are in your work setting and your supervisor approaches you and says, “Excuse me, do you have a moment? I’d like to talk to you.” What would be your first thoughts? Yep, what did I do now, what am in trouble for? When supervisors only provide positive feedback and acknowledgement during a staff meeting or at an annual evaluation, when it is “planned” acknowledgement, it seems fake. Effective leaders carefully observe their followers and seek out opportunities to provide on-the-spot feedback. Spontaneous and unexpected acknowledgement and appreciation for good work and for effort in and of itself is effective for developing intrinsic motivation. In fact, personal congratulations rank at the top of the most powerful non-financial motivators identified by employees.


Try This: Acknowledge Effort


Think about how often people are appreciated in your organization. Find at least three more ways employees can be acknowledged for their work. Make sure to acknowledge effort as well as success and help create a climate where everyone, not just the leader, acknowledges each other.


Relevancy is Influence


Imagine that we put up a painting, and around it is an old beat-up scratched frame. Does the frame influence your perception of the picture? We suspect so. Now imagine, instead of that old frame we put up a brand new, beautiful frame lighted just right. Does that influence your perception? Again, we suspect so, although the painting never changed. Frames are how we choose to look at something. We learn from our experiences, yes, but what we learn depends upon the frame we put around it. Frames establish relevancy. They answer the question of “what’s in it for me?” WIIFM?


Framing is a great tool for influencing people. If I command someone to do something, I might get obedience, but not influence because there is no relevancy. If we want our leaders to attend a training event, we might say, “I know that your weekends are precious to you, but licensing requires that you all get twenty-four clock hours of training per year. This Saturday there is a training event and it is mandatory, so don’t be late, and don’t forget to get a signature on your certificate to prove that you were there.” Wow, wouldn’t you be excited to be at that training? No?


What if we framed it like this? “I have noticed that the children in your program sometimes misbehave and this stresses you out. I’ve got good news for you. We’ve found someone who conducts a great training on guidance. In just one day you can learn some skills that will reduce your stress, make your job easier, and get the kinds of behavior that makes you truly LOVE working with these kids!” Better right? It is still the same training event, but with a different frame.


Framing can work with employees, bosses, even spouses. If you can’t positively frame something you want your leaders to do or learn, reconsider whether you need them to do it. If it is important to do, then find a frame that fits! Think about the person and what is relevant to them, not how it is relevant to YOU.

Our older daughter was a little afraid of the water. We planned to take a vacation one summer to spend some time with friends who happen to have a lake house: jet skis, motorboat, a dock to jump off of into the lake. We thought it was important for her to learn how to swim. When she’d try to put her head under water, typically only part of her face would get wet. We enrolled her in swimming lessons. She was in the pool with a group of six-year olds. Her swimming teacher was a young man.


He began the class by saying, “Okay kids, it is really important for you to learn what I’m going to teach you in this class.” I grinned really big and looked at Chelsea and said, “Cool—he’s about to FRAME it!” Chelsea said, “You are such a dork!”


The swimming teacher continued, “The reason it is so important for you to learn what I’m going to teach you is that at the end of this class there will be a test. If you don’t learn this then you can’t pass into the more advanced class next summer.”


I shook my head in disgust. He missed a great opportunity to establish relevancy.


When we got home, Chelsea and I put a new frame around the lessons. “Madison, we’re going to the lake house this summer. Last summer when we went there you had to wear the life jacket all the time. It was big, bulky, and smelly. You couldn’t go on the boat or the jet skis or do a lot of the things you wanted to do because you couldn’t swim. You were afraid of the water. We were thinking that if you learned to swim really well, you wouldn’t be afraid, you wouldn’t have to wear the life jacket all the time, and you’d have more fun in the water! How does that sound to you?” That summer the little girl who would only dunk part of her face under water was jumping off the dock, laughing and squealing and having fun with the other kids.


Discussion Questions


1. How does your team view staff learning? What systemic changes can you predict will result from team learning? If your whole team learns more about _____, it will result in _____, which will lead to _____, and ______.


2. Think about your day-to-day work environment. What does it look and sound like? Is pleasure a part of the culture of your organization? Is laughter frequent?


3. How often do you provide sincere, spontaneous acknowledgment to your leaders? How often does your boss provide you with positive feedback? Do you think more genuine and specific acknowledgment and feedback would affect your own motivation?


4. Think about a typical task you ask your leaders to do or a task that you wish your leaders would do more of.  The work can be the whole job or individual tasks. Make sure the frame answers the question “what’s in it for me?” (WIIFM).