Making People Change

You can’t make people change. You can influence people to change. Force creates resistance, force with a threat applied can create compliance but people will not change, they will just comply in order to avoid the negative outcome, but when you are not there or the negative outcome is removed, they will revert to what they know and understand.

Imagine walking down a path in the woods, you come to a fork in the road, one of the paths is familiar and easy, it has its difficult bits but you have been there before and know your way about. The other path is muddy, full of broken rocks, there are ferocious dogs and shadowy figures hanging around in groups, jeering at you. There are dark places which might conceal dangerous drops that you are not equipped to cope with, the path might be twice as long as your usual one or not even go to where you want to get to. Which path would you choose?

No, don’t tell me, let me guess.

Those obstacles on that dark and scary path are human fears. The unknown, the unfamiliar, the frightening, the different. If you can deal with people’s fears so that the path is not scary any longer, people are more likely to choose it. If you make it attractive, it becomes even better, if you plant obstacles on the other path then people are less likely to choose it. Of course you have to know what they find attractive and what they are afraid of.

On the other hand, if you just tell them that they have to go down the dark way, you need to make your threats bigger then the threats of the unknown. You need bigger and more ferocious dogs, perhaps the threat of taking their children away will do it – if they believe you! Perhaps you could show them the dogs are real by taking them to conference?

To get people to change, you have to understand their fears, you have to join with them, connect with their goals and fears, help them to overcome their fears. What you really have to do is to walk down the path with them. Explore it bit by bit until their confidence grows and they take off running.

You can’t do any of this by judging, arguing, instructing, disagreeing, dictating.

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