Influencing: What Does it Take to Really Change Someone's Behaviour?

What’s for Dinner?

We have a bit of a standing joke in the house, where, if I’m going to the shop and I ask my husband what he might like for dinner, he always replies,

Fish.

I’ve asked if it’s a habit response, the Pavlovian reply to a standard question, but he says, no, it’s that he really likes fish.

No Thanks…

Until we watched Seaspiracy a couple of weeks ago, after which he told me,

I’m never eating fish ever again.

Now, this isn’t a post about eating or not fish, or to advocate for a solution to the global debacle that is commercial fishing, but to look into that moment when someone’s mind changes and notice that what happens on the outside is not in direct proportion to what happens on the inside.

It won’t surprise you smart people when I share that most of us who hear a good idea, or even a bad idea, don’t take action.

I’m firmly in that box with the fish question. I found myself creating an internal complicity after my husbands definitive statement.

Well, maybe I could buy this kind of fish, or that kind of fish. What about that line-caught salmon I so like from Canada? Hmm, let me think on it some more.

I know quite a bit about the economic and other forces behind the industry, and which countries are leading this rape of the seas, and so my idealistic (imaginary) solutions might go in a certain direction of global policy. I’m not going to share that here but just know that I have plenty of personal opinions, as many of us do.

So What?

So what does that matter? I didn’t change my behaviour right there and then, and my opinions probably won’t change your behaviour.

At a personal level I might have, and still might, carry on eating fish.

But I caught myself in my musings in the days after his statement, and decided, for now, until we revisit the question, I will not eat commercially caught fish.

So, you see, I changed too, but the moment of change and the conditions for change were different.

Does it Matter What We Do?

It’s a separate discussion, I think, whether it matters what we do, and where ‘action’ starts, and I do think there is much more to do than the decision of one person out of 8 billion choosing not to be part of a system.

There’s a zeitgeist, in my opinion, and policy can follow the mood of the moment, as much as it can be led by an idealistic individual.

The Moment of Change

What I think is more interesting, in this context, and in the context of any behaviour change you want to influence, for yourself or within your organisation, is to see that for one person to change, they have to see something for themselves.

They have to have an insight, a realisation, an instant change of the wiring of habits and patters so that the new action is obvious and the old action makes no sense at all.

Three of us watched the documentary.

My husband’s perspective is pretty clear. He saw something, it changed him.

I’m in the,

Oh, this is a tragedy, I wonder what I should do about it?

Which might be somewhere between 30% and 60% of us according to surveys I looked at none of which I felt were robust enough to cite.

Our son continues to eat fish and continues to berate the capture of the environmental sector by commercial interests so as to steer our perspective away from where large-scale change would actually make a difference.

I get his point of view, and agree with him, but I don’t see it has to be either/or, and am happy to support my husband while continuing to share my personal opinions until the next action crystallises for me, if it ever does.

I like to be as honest as I can be with myself about how likely I am to get involved in the ‘big issues’, and, honestly, I don’t know if this is the one that will have me marching in the streets. Not yet anyway.

Maybe ‘Influence’ Isn’t What You Think It Is?

When we know what we are looking for in the person we are in relationship with in our work, and, let’s assume we don’t want to or are not authorised to resort to bullying or regulation, we have to know what we are looking for.

Influence is not about how good our arguments are, nor even how much someone agrees with us, but are about looking out for a real, actual, insightful change. When we know this is the game, then this is what we work towards, and why would we stop before we see it begin to be actioned in front of us or even in us?

More data, more stories, more experiences, all of that might help, but also, in our small sample of three, only one was moved to insightful, instant change by the movie.

Be aware that you can only create the conditions for change, and then you have to wait and see whether the change is activated.

But knowing that instantaneous change is not only possible, it’s actually the norm, and that someone needs only to see something for themselves, might just shape how you go about creating impact in the world.

With love,

Cathy