Influence for empowered volunteers

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Influence is a concept that is in every persons life, and every empowered volunteer must understand this and how it applies to their situation.

Cultural influence drives our economy and our lives to a great extent. Teens revel in the newest and latest imagery for their “generation”. Slang, dress, and even sometimes purchasing power through their parents influenced by marketing provide trends. Vampires and zombies are an example that has shown up in movies, teen clothing choices, books, and of course TV shows.

The caption of Lenard Nemoy from Star Trek fame reflects a huge influence of the culture of science fiction, followed closely by Star Wars. These influences are being felt to this present day.

Political influence has a harsher history for most people. This idea brings up images of politicians in rooms behind closed doors making deals that will not be fully understood by the general public until it is too late.

How does the empowered volunteer influence his group or an individual for the greater good of the charity or the group supporting the charity? Is there a pattern or script to use so that success can be predicted? Strangely, there is.

In the book, “Influencer, the New Science of leading Change”, by a group of authors is identified a system and a process for influencing others. Joseph Grenny, Kerry Patterson, David Maxfield, Al Switzler, and Ron McMillan combined to write this book, in this case a second edition published in 2013.

“Influencers do three things better than others. They are clearer about the results they want to achieve and how they will measure them. They focus on a small number of vital behaviors that will help them achieve those results. They overdetermine change by amassing six sources of influence that both motivate and enable the vital behaviors.”

From the book the authors reflect on the 80-20 rule, where twenty percent of the factors needed to influence the changes will produce eighty percent of the desired results. This high leverage focus helps to keep the momentum going.

The six sources to engage are, personal motivation, personal ability, social motivation, social ability, structural motivation and lastly structural ability.

For some people reading this the information will not resonate. It may sound like too much work to do. But many people structure their campaign or project with these steps in mind, more or less. It is a process and thus it can be learned. That is the point.

An example from the book is how the authors suggest going about getting someone with a fear of something to take the action and see success from that, building on the successes until their behavior is sufficiently influenced that it is essentially modified or changed for the better.

The authors cite studies and data, but in a nut shell the idea is that nothing succeeds like success. So the influencer must have the person undergoing the change see small successes that drive the actions towards the goal that is desired.

How is this done?

“You achieve this by providing short-term, specific, easy, and low-stakes goals that specify the exact steps a person should take. Take complex tasks and make them simple; long tasks and make them short; vague tasks and make them specific; and high-stakes tasks and make them risk free.”

Some of this is very common leadership training and you may recognize my attempts for providing these concepts in earlier posts. When I suggest that there is no pressure in asking someone to join a group since no money is changing hands or other patterns of responsibility I am attempting to make the process “risk free” as one example.

One note here, these concepts are not some vague form of college professors book written without knowledge of the real world. These concepts were developed and proven in one of the most difficult cultural behavior change environments that we have in America, criminal release programs that wanted to rehabilitate and reform prisoners released back into society. The success rate is very impressive.

Dr. Mimi Silbert has been using these concepts to make positive behavior changes for released inmates for many years now, with great success, according to the authors.

The authors use many examples for their premise of influencing leaders. One of the ideas they suggest and which readers of this blog will recognize is “social capital” and how to use it effectively. This idea, that many people are better at projects and issues than just one, with reciprocal social engagements between people leading to more social trust and deeper levels of influence, allows for greater good projects and impacts than any one person could achieve.

The empowered volunteer must look to the future as well as focus on the day to day engagement of building the membership of the group.

Setting up these influencing factors as you build up your social skills recruiting new members will impact your future in huge ways. Use the empowered volunteer position as a stepping stone to further your skill building and you will benefit greatly, possibly even in your employment some day.

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