I received a very interesting question from a reader whose career is being held back by procrastination. Have you had the same problem? And if so, what have you done that has helped you overcome procrastination? I’ve had the same challenge and look forward to blending your best practices with mine.

Share your suggestions by posting a comment below!

Thanks in advance!
Joseph

Dear Crucial Skills,

I need to improve my writing skills, but I’m too busy writing to take the time. My job is in marketing and I write position papers, sales materials, and product descriptions. My long-term goal is to write a nonfiction book, but I don’t have time to take a writing class. Being a better writer will launch my career and get me closer to achieving my dream. Help!

Writer’s Block

  Dear Writer’s Block,

Fortunately, there is a lot you can do to improve your writing skills without enrolling in a regular class. The time it takes to become a better writer is not driven by the number of hours spent in a classroom, but by the number of hours spent in deliberate practice. Mounds of recent research shows the predictor of mastery of almost any skill you can imagine—surgery, writing, mountain unicycling, chess, public speaking—is not some genetic endowment but rather the number of hours you spend in a very specific kind of practice.

A classroom can be a useful place to get deliberate practice, but unfortunately, many teachers get in the way of this process as much as they enable it. So don’t despair that you can’t take the time to head to night class right now. You can still get started. Here’s what you have to do to use deliberate practice to accelerate your progress toward your dream.

1. Break the skill into small parts. In other words, don’t practice “writing,” practice a specific aspect of writing that you think is important to your advancement. For example, you may decide that your use of language is too dull and you want to spice it up. The subset of “writing” you want to work on is using more vivid language, metaphors, or engaging prose. Later, you could pick another sub-skill of writing, but find one place to begin.

2. Practice in short, intensive intervals. The great thing about deliberate practice is that it doesn’t take long periods of time. In fact, if you’re doing it right, you can’t really practice for more than an hour or so at a time. I once watched world-class dancers from the Royal Ballet in London working on some of the discrete parts of a particular dance. Rather than practice the entire performance, they worked on one 30-second segment that was giving them challenges over and over again. They also forced themselves to quit and take a break after about 20 minutes of very intense practice.

You should do the same by creating a small, structured practice opportunity. For example, decide that each day, you will write a one-page essay on something that happened at work. You’ll take some anecdote from your day and bring it to life such as: “Strategies I used to keep alert during a two-hour project review.”

3. Get feedback against a clear standard. In order to turn practice into deliberate practice, you need clear and immediate feedback. The Royal Ballet dancers didn’t simply go through their routines again and again, they had a coach—a master dancer—who literally stopped them after a single jump and gave immediate feedback about the angle of their head or the bending of a wrist. They immediately did the jump again and you could see instant progress. Far from being disruptive, this kind of real-time feedback allowed them to analyze and adjust their performance far more rapidly, resulting in substantial improvement.

You can do the same with your practice. I encourage you to get a coach—a trusted friend who is also a good judge of writing—who will read your one-page paper and be mercilessly honest with you about verbiage that is trite, clumsy, or uninteresting, and tell you when you have nailed it. After you receive feedback rewrite that single page—focusing on one specific aspect of your writing—and watch how quickly your skills improve. I had just this kind of coach early in my writing career. His name is Kerry Patterson, my long-time friend and coauthor. Go find your Kerry!

Many people want to be writers. The difference between those who become good writers and those who don’t is summed up by a sign a colleague kept in his office—Writers write.

Don’t wait for a sabbatical, a class, or until some other grand moment arrives. Just start deliberately practicing. Today!

Best wishes,
Joseph

Dear Crucial Skills,

I have found that applying the concepts in Crucial Conversations works well, and that the ability to convey an important crucial message and maintain relationships is very helpful in the work setting; however, I sometimes struggle with the concern that I am “sugarcoating” an inherently tough message. How can I “make it safe” even when the results of the conversation will most likely be negative, such as talking about serious performance issues, letting an employee go, etc.?

Signed,
Straight Talk

  Dear Straight Talk,

What a great question! Your question shows you are right on track with trying to achieve the essence of dialogue—absolute candor coupled with absolute respect. Far too many times people go through Crucial Conversations Training and emerge with a dangerous misconception. They believe the point is to be “nice.” And for them, “nice” means understating their point.

We once gave managers a test of their crucial conversations skills. We asked them to imagine a friend handed them a brief passage from the friend’s forthcoming book. We gave them an actual passage to read, then asked them to write their thoughts about the writing, and of their friend’s intention to quit her job and become a full time author. The passage they read was so bad that they were merciless in describing their opinions of it. “Drier than dirt!” or “Pointless” were common characterizations. When asked about the friend’s prospect for improvement, they typically said, “You can’t get there from here. Whoever wrote this has no hope of improving enough to make a career of this!”

Then we asked them to practice giving their feedback to another person in as effective a way as they could. The results were shocking. After writing “Drier than dirt” they would say, “This could use some improvement.” After writing “No hope of a career!” they would say, “It could take a lot of work!” Can you see what’s going on here? They’re making the classic “sucker’s choice.” They fundamentally believe that, if they were completely candid, they would destroy the relationship—or irreparably harm the other person.

The most important challenge Crucial Conversations offers the world is the challenge to find a way to do both—to be both 100% honest and 100% respectful.

Now with that as your goal, there are two things to keep in mind as you measure your crucial conversations progress:

Volatility is not honesty. Some people think that if their affect doesn’t match their message, that they’ve sold out. It could be that you are doing a terrific job—and are not sugarcoating—but that in the past you were more vociferous, loud, and demonstrative. Now you worry that without the added volume, people might mistake your message. If that is the case, worry no more. The show of emotion many people use during their crucial conversations often undermines their message rather than enhances it. It can come across as an attempt to control or manipulate others and distracts from the power of the message itself. That’s not to say the ideal is to be emotionally flat. All I’m suggesting is that excessive emotion is not a measure of candor—it’s crossing a line into something else. You can say it respectfully and somewhat calmly, and have all the power with none of the defensiveness.

The measure of success is not that they like—or even agree with—the message. You ask, “How can I make it safe when the result of the conversation is going to be negative?” That very question demonstrates a misunderstanding of this key point. Dialogue does not mean everyone is happy at the end. It just means they are able to hear you and understand your point of view—and in the end, see how a “reasonable, rational, decent person” might think what you think—even if they disagree. There are times when your conversation might lead someone to revise their view of themselves, their world, etc. and that revision can be painful. They may want to deny the truth of what you share for a period of time in order to forestall the painful revision, but if the conditions for dialogue are present in the conversation, you’ll significantly increase the likelihood that they will eventually get there.

Years ago, I had a crucial conversation with an employee where my message was, “You’re fired.” I sat down with my employee and explained the facts of the situation. He had committed a crime. It was just before the Christmas holidays and I was sick at the thought of how his dismissal would affect his family. I was also in agony over the effect his criminal proceedings would have on him and his family. But the truth was the truth. I laid out the facts and asked him if there was any other reasonable way to interpret them. His shoulders slumped and he confessed to what he had done. I told him I was letting him go as a result of that offense. And then I added, somewhat choked with emotion, “I am sorry. I love your family and I know this will break their hearts. I will help in any way I appropriately can through this.” I then elaborated on some ways I thought I could help. He went to jail. His family suffered. And yet a year after he got out of jail, I was happy to receive a note from him thanking me for how I handled things and reporting on the better direction of his life.

He did not like my message. But he heard it. And because he felt safe with me—felt I cared about his interests and cared about him—he was more capable of contemplating what I was sharing with him. That’s the measure of whether we get it right.

Best wishes to you in your ongoing effort to do the same!
Joseph

Dear Crucial Skills,

When one of my managers comes to me with a problem that involves another department, I have taken the stance that he or she should work it out with the other party. If they cannot work it out on their own, I offer to sit down with both of them. However, I know at least one manager who thinks I should intervene on his behalf and probably sees me as passing the buck. Do I need to explain the value of resolving the issue independent of my judgment, or am I passing the buck too soon?

Signed,
Carry Your Own Water

  Dear Carry,

First, let me tell you that, in principle, I think you’re doing exactly what a leader should do. In most organizations, leaders enable their employees’ weakness at holding crucial conversations by allowing them to escalate far too many issues. The measure of a high-accountability organization is NOT—as most leaders think—the quality of downward (boss-to-direct report) conversations that get held, but the quantity of horizontal (peer-to-peer) conversations that get held. Building a culture where people are both willing and able to address crucial issues is the essence of a high performance team.

Now let me play devil’s advocate.

There are times when it is your job to hold a crucial conversation on your employee’s behalf. Here are two I can think of:

When the solution requires resources or authority unavailable to the employee. For example, if a colleague chronically fails to perform and key contributors to the problem are policies, new software, overtime approvals, or other things the employee cannot address, it may be wise for you to at least participate in the conversation—and possibly lead it.

However, I encourage you to use a policy I learned from Tom O’Dea, a colleague at Sprint—he called it Mutually Agreed Escalation—that is, both parties have to discuss the decision to escalate, and cooperate in doing so. This will help you assure the employee has dealt with any elements of the concerns he or she should deal with at his or her own level and only involves you in those issues you should uniquely address.

When it is a “relationship” conversation. In our book, Crucial Confrontations, we describe three levels of conversations you need to have:

• Content: An immediate problem that is generally occurring for the first time.
• Pattern: A problem that is becoming chronic.
• Relationship: A more fundamental challenge dealing with competence, trust, or respect—and generally calling for a change in relationship if a solution cannot be developed.

One of the best practices I’ve seen leaders use is to teach this concept to employees and help them understand that it is their responsibility to deal with content and pattern problems. The first time something happens, they should address it at their level. If—after receiving assurances it will not happen again—it happens again, they should address the pattern. However, if they have candidly addressed the problem at those two levels and do not see appropriate change, then they should escalate the problem. However, in the healthiest of situations, they should also notify the other person(s) when they have the pattern conversation that if the solution does not work, they will need to escalate to find some other answer. That lets the other party understand all of the consequences of noncompliance—hopefully adding motivation to follow through—and avoids the accusation that they are simply pulling a power play when they later escalate the problem to you.

For example, let’s say I have a colleague who is supposed to fill out patient reports before the end of his shift to ensure we have safe handoffs. I notice that on occasion, he fails to do so, so I have a crucial conversation with him. Things are good for a couple of weeks, then it begins again. So I raise the issue of the pattern and check to see if a larger solution is needed. At the end of this conversation I add, “Great, it sounds like we have something that works—but if we can’t reach a solution on our own, I think we should talk about this with our managers. Do you feel the same way? Or is there something else I should do if this doesn’t work?” This statement puts the responsibility where it belongs—on the other person—lets the other person know what can be done at your level before escalating, and helps him or her see your point of view in needing to escalate after this attempt.

Good luck in your wise effort to create a culture of candid and crucial conversations.

Joseph

Dear Crucial Skills,

I have a longtime friend who is an Operation Iraqi Freedom veteran, experiences combat stress, and has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. He was being treated at a Veterans Affairs hospital and things seemed to be going well. But recently, I’ve seen a change and increased symptoms—angry outbursts, avoidance, etc.—and can even see the strain reflected on his face. I tried to gently tell him I was worried about him and he told me he’s fine and “not going to group hug therapy.” And now that he knows I’m concerned, he is avoiding me.

I know many of the veterans who finally get appropriate help do so under extreme duress. Do you have any suggestions on how to broach this with my friend and let him know he should think about modifying his approach to managing his condition?

Signed,
PTSD & Me

Dear PTSD & Me,

I asked for some extra advice on your question from my father—a WWII and Korean War Veteran with a PhD in counseling who still helps dozens of vets from the past seventy years of conflicts, even at age 84. Yes, I’m proud of him. I want to be sure I don’t speak beyond my competence in your very sensitive situation with one of our beloved servicemen—so I forwarded your question to him.

He suggests your friend’s delay in getting help is quite common. There are a host of “stories” he may be telling himself in order to justify delay—anything from minimizing the symptoms, trusting time will heal all wounds, doubting the efficacy of treatment, or fearing a loss of self-esteem by admitting he has a mental health problem.

The line you walk in this crucial conversation is determining when you are exerting influence and when you are provoking resistance. Push too hard and your friend will resent your intrusion on his autonomy. Say too little and you’re enabling his illness and unwittingly prolonging his suffering. Each of us is likely in a similar situation with one or more loved ones. Here are some thoughts to keep in mind as you find the balance between influence and patience:

Make it about him not you. When someone ignores counsel, it’s easy to take it personally. You can tell you’re taking it personally when you start feeling hurt and angry rather than concerned and fearful. It’s so easy to begin with well-intended motives, but let them drift into a desire to control others—without even being aware of the seismic shift. Keep focused on what you really want, “For my friend to be as happy as he can be on the time schedule of his choosing.”

Make it safe. Make your motives crystal clear—and don’t just create present safety—create it for the likely future conversations you’ll hold. If your friend is resistant to being treated, get ready for the long haul. When you have your crucial conversation with him, anticipate the likely need of periodic conversations until he concludes he is ready to take action. If this were a dear friend of mine, here’s how it might sound. Please adapt to your own level of relationship and verbal style.

“Hey bro—I want to talk to you again about getting checked for PTSD. Would you please tolerate me for the next two minutes so I can make my pitch? If you think I’m full of it at the end, please know that I am okay with that. Even if you disagree with me, I just want to be sure you know that the only reason I’m bringing it up is because I love you. Also, I want to warn you in advance that if I continue to see things that make me think a real friend should speak up, I’ll probably bug you again. Is that cool?”

Your goal here is to clear a path for future conversations while asking permission to have this one. And of course if he says, “Back off!” you are obligated to do so. But even in doing so, I would make the following statement:

“Okay. I’m sorry to come across as crowding you—but I want you to know I am concerned and if you ever change your mind about involving me, I am here. Until you give me that permission, I’ll honor your request to leave it alone.”

Your goal here is to make sure he interprets your silence in the next few weeks not as agreement that there is no issue, but as respect for his autonomy. Of course, you should break this agreement if he begins to do something that puts himself or others in harm’s way.

Share facts not judgments. If he allows you to have this conversation, watch to see if your words sound like judgments or threats, or make him feel guilty. If so, you’ve crossed over to controlling rather than influencing. “You’re blowing it, dude” or “Your family can’t take any more of this” are attempts to coerce him not influence him. If he is defensive at this point, you cannot motivate him. All you can do is help him find his own motivation to get attention. An attempt to rush it will cross the line into provoking resistance rather than exerting influence.

When you hold a crucial conversation with your friend on this topic, come armed with a handful of the most persuasive facts you can find to help your friend self-discover the need to be treated. For example, you could share that:

Psychological injuries are common. A recent study showed more than one in five Iraqi war veterans received psychological injury.
Typical symptoms include . . . The Nebraska Government has a brief self-survey on their Web site—you could pick the two to three symptoms which are most akin to what you see in your friend and use them for reference in your conversation.
Treatment can help. Often people avoid taking action not because they aren’t motivated, but because they doubt the efficacy of solutions. So they try to cope with things as they stand. A brief factoid sharing the percentage of people who see reduced symptoms after a couple of sessions might give him more confidence in trying a new treatment. It could be that his mental image is of laying on a couch for five years regurgitating pain with no real benefit.

Invite dialogue about his views. The only way to help a resistant person find motivation to change is to help him or her discover his or her own reasons. You could open that possibility by ending this little monologue with a statement like, “Are things working out the way you’d like lately? If so, then I’m off base. If not, let’s talk about what’s going on, what you don’t like, and what it might cost you in the future if it continues or escalates. We don’t have to have that conversation now—but I’m here when you want to have it.”

I hope something in what my father and I have said provides a useful direction for you and for him. You have my heartfelt and sincere best wishes for your positive influence on this good man.

Warmly,
Joseph

Dear Crucial Skills,

My father-in-law is a very powerful person and I don’t feel comfortable speaking honestly about anything with him. If I ask him a question about an issue I want to resolve, he announces his opinion then cuts off any discussion by saying, “Well, that’s how life is sometimes” as he stands up to leave.

I think he is very wise and would like to learn from him, but I can’t get him to engage in any kind of dialogue. As a result, I leave feeling like I don’t exist and that he thinks he knows all. My husband seems to take after him so I feel like I’m in a communication desert all by myself. Do you have any suggestions?

Sincerely,
Craving Communication

  Dear Craving,

I would have given a different answer twenty years ago than I will today. I’m still very much a believer in people’s potential to change. However, some life experiences with a wonderful variety of loved ones have led me to conclude that everyone is a package. Myself included. We all have idiosyncrasies, habits, and proclivities—some of which are the source of our genius and some of which drive everyone around us batty. And sometimes, the genius and the quirkiness flow from the exact same attribute.

I say this as prelude because, while I will advise you to hold a crucial conversation, I will also encourage you to work on yourself first. Clarify your motives before even attempting the conversation. If your motive is to “fix” or “change” your father-in-law, you’re more likely to be disappointed than effective. If instead your goal is to share feedback then accept his freedom to accommodate or ignore it, you will not only come across entirely differently (i.e., not needy or pushy), but you will be more likely to have influence. Ironically, if your motive is to control, you not only fail to gain control, but you lose your influence. If you give up trying to control others, you gain influence in the bargain.

With that said, here is some advice about how to hold the conversation itself.

Hold the right conversation. Often, we fail at the outset because we dive into the wrong topic. For example, we talk about content—what just happened—when we want to talk about a pattern—something that happens regularly. This could happen in your case because you address something your father-in-law just said to you when your real issue is a pattern of these sorts of comments over time. Your goal needs to be to have a pattern conversation. And that calls for a special approach.

Timing is everything. Don’t wait until you’re bugged to talk. That’s what most of us do with our pattern conversations. We wait for yet another instance of someone behaving badly then we pounce on it; not to address what just happened, but to dump our laundry list of grievances from ages past. If you want to talk about a pattern, pick a time that is not clouded with a recent transgression. It not only helps you be in a proper mindset, but it helps avoid giving the other person an opportunity to make excuses about the pattern by pointing to special issues in the present instance. For example, your father-in-law might say, “I had to walk out just now because I have a conference call in half an hour!”

Make it safe. You have all the right information in your question to create safety at the beginning of this conversation. Read it again. You clearly care about your father-in-law. You respect him. You want something from him that he is likely to feel flattered giving, so that’s what you need to make clear as you start.

For example, you might say, “I’d like to talk about some ways I could have a better relationship with you. I value the relationship we have, and I’d like to be even closer and more comfortable. I admire you, sometimes to the point of feeling intimidated around you. I also see you as a great source of wisdom, something I’d like to take advantage of even more than I do now. And yet, there are some things in how we interact that don’t work for me. I’m hoping it is okay to share how I see it and find out how either you, or I, or both of us could communicate better.

Ask permission. One of the best ways to ensure others feel safe is to sincerely ask for permission before launching into the crucial conversation. If your father-in-law might be uncomfortable with this level of communication, it is all the more important to help him feel in control by asking his consent before launching into your concerns. All you need do is add, “Would that be okay?” to the above monologue.

Change media. Judging from your description, it may be that your father-in-law will be too uncomfortable to have this conversation face-to-face. If that is the case, you may want to try mixed media. If you choose to write a letter, I would make the same “make it safe” statement from above then add, “I think the best way to express some of what I wanted to say is in writing—so I’ve written this out. But my hope is that we can discuss it afterward if you’re comfortable doing so. If not, then I understand and will be fine keeping things the way they are now.” You’ll notice that the last phrase tests whether you have surrendered your hope of controlling him or not. Be sure you have or your words will ring hollow.

I hope these ideas help. It sounds like you’ve fallen into the same pattern with your husband, so I hope these suggestions are a step toward creating the relationship you clearly want to have with him as well.

Sincerely,
Joseph

Dear Crucial Skills,
I have some very tough news to deliver and would appreciate your help. My colleagues and I have to tell some good performers in our company that pay increases are only going to a select few of the highest performers. I know they’ll feel the compliment is disingenuous and will wonder why they weren’t one of the few who got the increase. Any advice?

Sincerely,
Can’t Spare a Dime

  Dear Can’t Spare,
Yikes. This is not a fun conversation to have. All of us who have had to disappoint, fire, or critique a dear colleague sympathize with you. When my partners and I looked at the gloomy economic predictions for 2009, we faced some similarly uncomfortable conversations. We did not know what the year would bring, but felt a need to be honest about the prospects while expressing optimism about our incredible team’s capacity to rise to the challenge. We held everyone’s wages flat for the first half of the year while we leaned into the headwinds hoping—and working—for the best.

Your message is even trickier because you have some discretion to offer increases. It’s easier to say, “No one gets a raise” than it is to say, “We’ve singled you out as someone specially qualified to not get a raise!”

Here’s how I would approach that tender message.

Why before what. Don’t share the policy until you’ve outlined the principles. Be sure you, as a management team, have made principle-based decisions; then share the principles. For example, you might say, “One of our principles in determining increases is that we must be market-competitive. Our only hope for getting through tough times is keeping the team together, and the truth is some positions are at greater risk of turnover due to wage discrepancies than others. It would be bad for all of us if we failed to address that and lost precious capacity in those priority areas. This is NOT about who we value more, it is a simple question of externally determined economics.”

Don’t say it if you don’t believe it. As you share the principles behind the policies, be sure you keep your integrity in check by describing only those that have been consistently applied. If, for example, you have cut special deals with certain people that violate principles you are comfortable stating publicly, then do not claim you have been consistent. If you do so, you will certainly be found out and will violate trust in a way you are unlikely to recover from.

Invite feedback without compromising authority. After sharing your principles and your policy, invite feedback. Be clear that the decision is already made and that it could not be made by consensus, but demonstrate your willingness to learn by allowing people to share how they see things similarly or differently. Don’t put yourself in a position of trying to convince anyone you’re right. Rather, begin by saying, “I’d like to just listen to your views. I know I won’t satisfy many of you, so I’m not going to try to make excuses or explain this away. But I care about your opinions and I’d like to hear them if you want to share. Perhaps, at a minimum, they may influence our decisions in the future.”

Acknowledge disagreement. It is likely that, following your candid description of principles, reasonable people will disagree—especially if the principles mean they get the short straw. Few people listen to such a description and conclude, “I see now that I am worth less than others. I am happy that they got the increase.” Your goal is not to garner applause. It is more modest. Your goal is to build trust by sharing your thinking and listening to that of others. After sharing the principles and policy, just listen. Acknowledge views that have merit without suggesting you’re revisiting the decision. Remind them this is a leadership decision and involved tough tradeoffs.

Ask for the long-term view. Conclude the discussion by orienting your employees to the future. Apologize for any hurt or disappointment you’ve caused, but do your best to engage them in contributing in a way that makes the pie bigger for all in the future.

Good luck with this very crucial conversation.

Joseph

Did you already blow your New Year’s resolution? You’re not alone. It turns out that fewer than one in twenty of us succeed at changing a longstanding habit that has kept us from advancing our career, improving a relationship, getting healthier, or becoming financially fit.

Generally, our change plans fall into one of two traps:

The Willpower Trap—Most of us fail to change because we believe the best predictor of our capacity to change is the quantity of willpower we possess. This common approach to change is all about learning to deny ourselves of a “thrill.” After a few weeks of torture, we succumb to temptation, conclude we lack the fortitude to make it stick, and fall back into bad habits until some life crisis forces us to get back on the cold turkey treadmill.

The Magic Bullet Trap—When we finally give up on willpower, we hope we can kill bad habits with a single new pill, surgery, gadget, or fad. For example, a friend loses weight, and we buy the same diet book. A neighbor gets out of debt with a new iPhone app, so we download it too. It’s only a matter of months before we’re back to bad habits and looking for the next quick fix.

The problem with the magic bullet approach is that it assumes one simple change will get us to overcome deeply intractable patterns of behavior. These change strategies fail because there isn’t one reason we’re doing what we’re doing—there are six sources of influence that shape our choices. Unless we address all six sources, we’re as likely to win at change as a person in a one-against-six tug-of-war.

Luckily, there’s a better way to influence personal change than either willpower or magic bullets. In fact, there’s a way to design personal change that makes you ten times more likely to succeed. This method is based on three simple but powerful ideas that help you understand and engage all of the sources of influence that affect your choices:

Escape the willpower trap. The first step to succeeding at change is realizing the problem is not that you lack will; it’s that you’re blind to the many forces that shape your behavior, and you’re outnumbered six to one by the forces you aren’t taking advantage of.

Become the scientist and the subject. Most of us shop for magic bullets as though someone else might have figured out the key to changing you. They haven’t. No one knows all of the unique dynamics that affect your relationships, career, finances, or health. You’ll have to embark on a scientific study of your own behavior to discover the key to changing you. The science of personal success teaches you an easy way of both understanding and engaging all six of the sources of influence that lead to rapid, profound, and sustainable change.

Turn bad days into good data. When you fail to change, the problem is not you—it’s your plan. When things don’t go well, the science of personal success helps you analyze what was missing from your plan, add it to what you already knew, and move forward to predictable success.

Change literally becomes inevitable when all of the sources of influence that provoke you into bad habits are turned in your favor. It’s time to leave behind failed dependence on willpower or magic-bullet solutions. The dismal record of those approaches speaks for itself. By learning the new science of personal success, it becomes possible to change anything.

Dear Crucial Skills,

I live in a very nice, quiet, upscale suburban neighborhood. A new family recently moved into one of the homes and is doing some things that distract from the value of the neighborhood. We have covenants that restrict what is permitted, but enforcing them could be difficult and possibly costly. How can I approach my neighbors personally and express my concerns without making an enemy out of them?

Sincerely,
Not in My Backyard

  Dear Backyard,

This will be the shortest answer I’ve ever written. Not because the issue isn’t crucial, but because your options are limited. I say this because I feel your pain!

With that said, here’s how I would approach this situation.

Talk to the right person. If you have a Home Owner’s Association, the association should inform your neighbor of the rules and the penalties for breaking these rules. They should then hold your neighbor accountable. If they aren’t doing this, your conversation should be with the association.

Do your research. You mentioned that your community has covenants, but you need to be sure the covenants are in force. Just because they are in the original neighborhood documents doesn’t mean they’ve been enforced over time. And if they have not been enforced, they may have no legal validity today.

Build the relationship first. If possible, you should build a relationship with your neighbor before you confront him or her about his or her distracting behavior. If your first conversation with the neighbor is about his or her transgression, it will be harder to create safety. To the degree you can help your neighbor unpack boxes, mow his or her lawn, or provide any other kind of assistance, he or she will be less likely to hear your concerns as attacks and characterize you as an enemy and more likely to actually change his or her behavior.

Be direct and polite. If there is no enforcement body and it’s up to you to speak up, then do so. But work on your story first. See them as reasonable people with different habits and perhaps no understanding of your covenants. Do whatever it takes to feel respectful and caring toward them before opening your mouth. Be friendly and polite, but don’t water down your message. If your bottom line is that this is a rule and they have to follow it, say that. For example, “Hey Pat, there’s a goofy thing in our covenants that you may not know about. Trust me, this isn’t a persnickety neighborhood and we’re glad you’re here, but I thought I should let you know before you get too settled so you’ll know how to address it . . .”

Finally, you should decide if this is important enough to you to deal with legally should they refuse to comply—or whether after your attempt at a crucial conversation you prefer to let it slide.

Good luck with your conversation. I’d tell you about mine but I worry about 140,000 of my closest friends finding out!

Joseph

Dear Crucial Skills,

It’s my job to influence the people in our company to improve quality—both of incoming raw material and of our outgoing products—and it’s hard.

We’ve got all the “head” stuff right—technical expertise and good quality tools—but we don’t have the heart. And to make it even more difficult, the people I need to influence don’t report to me and are too busy meeting other goals. So I can’t get them to commit to our quality goals—or worse, they commit with their mouths but then don’t deliver. Please help!

Signed,
Sick of Sigma

  Dear Sick,

This is a classic influence problem. And most companies never see it that way.

During the 80s, my partners and I worked with many of the storied U.S. manufacturers who lost their way because of poor quality. We saw stark differences in those who developed a true culture of quality and those who simply went through the motions. Much of that experience informed our writing of Influencer: The Power to Change Anything. Our hope in writing that book was to help leaders become conscious of the fact that leadership is skillful influence. It is the fundamental work of leaders to influence the behavior of people in an organization (it is not the role of HR, the quality department, the ethics department, etc.). And sadly, far too few leaders 1) realize this is their job or 2) have the skill to do so.

So congratulations on the fact that you don’t suffer from problem #1! However, it sounds as though your organization may have a chronic case of problem #2.

Few leaders have an articulated and systematic way of thinking about the insightful question you raise—how do I influence the behavior of a handful, a few hundred, or many thousands of people?

So let me frame your challenge in this way: your job is to influence the influencers. Your job is not, as you said above, to influence the people in your company. You can assist leaders in doing this, but attempting to do it yourself will only lead to frustration and failure.

Here are some suggestions for influencing the influencers:

Help leaders make a connection. Most leaders don’t care about influencing behavior because they don’t see its relevance to results. We’ve worked with some pretty cynical leaders over the years who dismiss influence work as “soft stuff,” but that attitude changes the instant they come to see a connection between behavior and the results they are sworn to achieve.

Too often, those of us who try to influence these influencers make vague arguments about empowerment, teamwork, trust and so forth that require leaders to make a leap of faith in some philosophical argument in order to engage in leading change. That leap isn’t necessary when they can see how concrete, specific, and measurable behaviors are the root of their frustrations.

For example, in one large manufacturing area we found an executive who was a little more accessible than others and we asked him to join us in interviews with the five departments in his factory that consistently produced the highest quality output as well as five average teams. We conducted hour-long focus groups in each of these teams to elicit the behaviors the team thought were helping or not helping.

At the conclusion, it was clear to this executive that one of the most damaging behaviors in the mediocre teams (and even more so in the poor performing teams) was a lack of peer accountability. He heard story after story of peers witnessing others shipping poor quality goods or skipping quality processes without so much as raising a finger, let alone a concern, and left a zealot about changing this behavior. Once he saw the connection between concrete “vital behaviors” and his critical results, he was spurred into action.

Focus on results. Your job is to help leaders see the connection between behavior and results. If you do this right, your senior leaders will begin to realize you have “mutual purpose.” They’ll see you aren’t just nagging them about quality, but that your interest is in improving results overall. Never let yourself get pigeonholed into a smaller agenda than that of the larger enterprise or you’ll lose influence with those you most need to engage. Always present your proposals in a way that demonstrates how your entire motivation aligns with that of your senior leadership team.

Influence with data. So let’s say you’re trying to involve some more accessible leaders in exploring the relationship between behavior and results—and they aren’t biting. You’re framing everything you present in terms of enterprise interests—and it’s still not working. You don’t have the formal authority to compel anyone to pay attention to your objectives. What can you do?

The best strategy you can use is to influence with data. Leaders’ mental agenda is set by the “data stream” they live within. The kinds of reports, measures, and indices served up to them regularly determine what they think about. That’s why leaders appear to have different “values” than frontline workers. Those on the front line accuse leaders of only caring about the bottom line, while those at the top can sneer at the frontline workers who don’t see the “big picture.” This predictable conflict doesn’t happen because DNA is different at the top than at the bottom. The problem isn’t one of IQ or values. It’s one of data. Senior leaders receive a steady stream of enterprise level data. Those on the front line are influenced by data about product, schedules, rework, or other in-the-trenches concerns. So if you want to change someone’s mental agenda, change the mix of data they receive.

One of the best examples of influencing without authority I’ve seen was led by Donald Hopkins—a brilliant but humble MD who wanted to get the attention of heads of state in twenty countries in order to eradicate Guinea worm disease. Most of these leaders didn’t care a whit about the Guinea worm because it was a rural disease. These leaders saw, thought, and cared most about urban issues—where the bulk of their populations lived. So Hopkins had to get their attention. He started by developing a nationwide measure of Guinea worm infections. When it appeared to be one villager here and another there, the scale was hidden. But when the president of Nigeria, for example, saw that there were 3.5 million infections each year in his country. He began to sit up. Then when he saw that his country was doing worse at addressing this than neighboring countries, he began to lean forward. From there, Hopkins was able to suggest ways he could influence change and remove this awful scourge.

I hope some of these ideas are useful as your work to influence your influencers. Your role is crucial in your organization—and influence is your primary skill set!

Best wishes,
Joseph