Changing Minds within a Culture

Getting people to change their minds is harder still when you’re working with large groups.

Judith E. Glaser, author of The DNA of Leadership, tells us that culture represents how work gets done: how you make decisions, how you treat customers, how you complete projects on budget, how you reward effort for excellence and innovation, how you develop employees to more productive.

Cultural situation awareness begins with capturing accurate and deliberate business intelligence using the very best diagnostic measurements and precision tools.  Today, the Internet allows management to know 'what's happening now' across the enterprise.  Since people represent 50-80% of organizational costs and are a flexible resource through learning and innovating, engaging them for enhanced productivity is why effective leadership matters.

Leaders will experience greater success when they follow five key approaches:

 

1. The Power of Stories

 

Stories can be a key element in changing minds. In a story, you have a main character, ongoing activities to achieve a goal, a crisis, and a resolution.

 

Leaders must analyze the current situation, determine what needs to change, create a convincing narrative, and present it to those whose minds they hope to change.  Success depends on the narrative’s effectiveness, whether it is convincingly conveyed, and how leaders embody the presentation.  The more personal and authentic the story, the more people will identify with common themes.

 

2. The Power of Variety

 

One’s level of familiarity with a concept determines how we successfully process and accept it.  Delivering the same content in multiple forms is a powerful way to change people’s minds.  People must not only hear the message, but also see it—often in the form of images, graphs, and diagrams.  Using more than one delivery method gives people an opportunity to form mental representations in their preferred learning mode.

 

3. The Power of Resistance

 

  When it comes to changing someone’s mind, Howard Gardner, author of Changing Minds: The Art and Science of Changing Our Own and Other People's Minds (Harvard Business School Press), says, “The biggest mistake people make is not understanding the other’s resistances.”  Each of us has ingrained beliefs, and we’re committed to maintaining our opinions.

 

What never works when trying to change someone’s mind is a direct assault on his or her point of view.  When you go in determined to change someone, you’re triggering defensiveness.  Even the most eloquent argument is likely to fail if you lack insight about the person you’re trying to sway.  Once you understand someone’s resistance, you can try to find a common solution.

 

4. Appealing to Emotions

 

Emotional persuasion isn’t taught in business schools, nor does it come easily.

 

According to Dr. George Lakoff, a professor of linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley, “Concepts are not things that can be changed just by someone telling us a fact. We may be presented with facts, but for us to make sense of them, they have to fit what is already in the synapses of the brain. Otherwise, facts go in and then they go right back out. They are not heard, or they are not accepted as facts.”

 

Because of the way the brain learns, messages have a better chance of being retained when our emotional centers are engaged. When individuals experience a positive emotional resonance with the person trying to change their minds, they’re more easily persuaded—a phenomenon that can occur even in the absence of reasonable facts to support change.

Albert Einstein once said, "We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles but no personality. It cannot lead; it can only serve."  Leaders know and science has discovered emotionality's deeper purpose: the timeworn mechanisms of emotion allow two human beings to receive the contents of each other's minds.