I find it ironic that when I ask leaders—even good ones—what constitutes leadership, I often get vague, disparate, and vapid responses. You’d think this educated and successful population could offer crisp and concrete definitions of their own crucial work. Instead, you hear a dozen tangents of real leadership like energizing, visioning, pathfinding and modeling.
Fortunately, not all leaders are missing the mark. I once met a leader who has a concrete expression of leadership on the tip of his tongue. Tim Tassopoulos, EVP of Operations at Chick-fil-A, says it this way: leadership is intentional influence. I couldn’t agree more.
For more than 30 years my colleagues and I have helped leaders increase their capacity for influencing change. But it came as a surprise that prior to helping them learn how to influence, we had to draw their attention to it as their core work.
Tim, on the other hand, understands that success comes down to whether one of his 50,000 front-line associates with a few discretionary minutes decides to lean against a wall or clean tables. Tim’s success or failure as a leader does not come down to whether he is charismatic, visionary, or inspirational, but to whether people behave in ways that improve results. Period.
Given that few leaders can even define leadership, it’s no surprise their performance is mediocre at best. We studied the successes and failures of more than 1000 leaders from 50 global companies to influence strategically critical behavior change in their companies. We were stunned to discover that fewer than one in 20 had any evidence of success in spite of their belief that change was crucial. As we combed through the data, some key insights emerged that helped us understand why so few leaders either grasp or exert influence well:
1. Leaders act as if it’s not their job to address entrenched habits
Most leaders put a great deal of time into crafting strategy, selecting winning products, and engaging with analysts, shareholders, and major customers. But few realize the success or failure of their grand schemes lies in influencing the behavior of the people who will have to execute on the big ideas—their employees.
By contrast, the most influential leaders—the 5 percent who succeed at changing behavior—spend as much as half of their time thinking about, and actively, influencing the behaviors they know will lead to top performance. The 95 percent who dither and fail tend to delegate what they dismiss as “change management” to others.
2. Leaders lack a theory of influence
Very few leaders can even answer the question, “How do you change the behavior of a large group of people?” And yet, what they’re ultimately paid to do is align people to execute on decisions. Imagine discovering, just as the anesthesia is taking effect, that your heart surgeon—the one hovering over your chest with a scalpel—is working off a “gut hunch” about how to conduct a bypass. Unless leaders become articulate about a repeatable and effective way to influence behavior—they’ll continue to rack up predictably high failure rates at leading change.
3. Leaders confuse talking with influencing
Many leaders think influence consists of little more than talking people into doing things. It’s no wonder most influence efforts start with slide presentations or rallies. But profound, persistent, and overwhelming problems demand more than verbal persuasion. Anyone who’s ever tried to “talk” a smoker into quitting knows there’s a lot more to behavior change than words (see our BS Guys video).
4. Leaders believe in silver bullets
When leaders actually attempt to influence new behavior, they commonly fall into the trap of thinking deeply ingrained bad habits can be changed with a single technique.
They host star-studded retreats and hand out inspiring posters and think people will line up for change. Still others believe it’s all about incentives and so they tinker with the performance management system or tie new behaviors to executive bonuses. The research shows that when leaders rely on just one simple source of influence (like training or incentives or verbal persuasion) to drive change, they almost always fail.
Over the past 30-plus years, my colleagues and I have sought out and studied a different kind of leader. We’ve tried to find those who had remarkable abilities to influence change—rapidly, profoundly, and sustainably.
We’ve studied the methods used by one remarkable influencer who, with no formal authority, changed behavior in thousands of U.S. hospitals. We’ve looked first hand at one influencer who saved five million lives from AIDS by influencing behavior change in a country of 60 million. We worked with a CEO who, within 12 months, influenced deeply entrenched habits in employees with an average of 26 years tenure.
What we’ve learned is that when you know what you’re doing, change can happen relatively quickly. And it all starts with gaining greater clarity about what leadership really means, then finding a way of thinking about the fundamental principles of influence.
This article is published in collaboration with LinkedIn. Publication does not imply endorsement of views by the World Economic Forum.
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Author: Joseph Grenny is the Co-chairman of VitalSmarts.
Image: A Businesswoman is silhouetted as she makes her way under the Arche de la Defense, in the financial district west of Paris, November 20, 2012. REUTERS/Christian Hartmann.