good morning or afternoon or evening depending upon when you're watching this it's just a thrill to be with you there's not a group in the world that I'd rather try to contribute to the influence of than the people assembled here and participating wherever you may be leadership leadership is intentional influence yesterday bill described how leadership means getting people from A to B well that can't happen unless people change their behavior and here's the problem so often we think about leadership just as a motivational aspect in fact it's far more than that our ability to be effective as leaders isn't just about motivating it's also about us acquiring competence to do so courage is an important component as bill described yesterday inspiration and vision are essential but unless that translates to changed behavior we fail so what you and I need to be doing if we want to be effective leaders is studying from those who understand influence let's take a look at a few if you want to understand influence you need to understand how things like this are happening so human beings spend three billion hours playing online games every week why because whoever's designing those games understands influence unless you and I unpack what it is about that activity that is engaging people to the tune of three billion hours per week we won't be able to do our job as well second example 7 million people in the United States one in 34 are incarcerated or under the supervision of the correctional system why because influence systems are driving that behavior we aren't locking more people up today far more people up today than we did 50 years ago because people are different it's because the influence environment you and I inhabit has changed profoundly unless you and I understand how it's changed and learn to use that in favor of people's positive change we won't be true leaders worldwide obesity as we know has doubled since 1980 now why are people eating differently that's a behavior that's an action leadership is intentional influence and those who want us to eat more who have economic incentives to do that have developed wonderful strategies to help this to occur on a more positive note smoking rates at least in the United States have dropped from 44 percent to 21 percent since 2008 why that's because there are people who understand influence if you can cut smoking in half there must be something for you and I to learn as influencers embedded in that that wonderful outcome so so here's the deal we know how to get people to log in lock up eat up but not light up we figured out how to do that and so you and I ought to be taking lessons from this important field of social science because after all leadership is intentional influence so let's take a look at our track record from from an evangelical perspective in 2007 sixty-one percent of Americans said religion is losing influence well if we're moving to videogames and out of church pews there's a reason for that and you and I ought to understand the mechanics of that eighty percent of people say I know a Christian and yet only 15 percent say they behave differently now we can have lots of doctrinal discussions and many of you are the experts on that but from a social science perspective I would say if our religious experience isn't translating to different habits and behaviors then we aren't leaders we haven't influenced so what can we learn about influence I'm going to take you on a journey through the social sciences I'm going to try to share with you a way of thinking about this class of problems that we call influence problems and what I hope to accomplish in the brief time we have together is to give you a repeatable learn about intentional way of designing influence strategies whether it's to improve safety or customer service or client mention in your business or whether it's to help people put religious concepts into practice and translates translate them into the fruits of a religious experience in our lives I want to do that by anchoring it to a real story so let's take on an influencer problem this is a woman named Jane and jeti somebody I met in the Mathari slum about five years ago this is one of the most dangerous slums in the in world in the entire world in Nairobi Kenya Jane's story Jing was walking me through the Mathari slum and showed me the about 15 by 15 foot little hovel that her her family grew up in she described how at age 10 she had six siblings and to parents all in this 15 by 15 foot little tin shack with a leaky tin roof she said as she started to approach puberty her father began to sexually assault her so he had a terrible decision to make do I stay here and put up with this or do I throw myself out into the open world we have no means of support she chose to leave she said they're their options depending on your sex and the Mathari swamp if you're a young man you usually go into fest if you're a young woman the only real viable option at least from her perspective is the sex trade so here she is a 12 year old girl having been sexually assaulted exiting this 15 by 15 foot slum dwelling and choosing to become a sex worker because no other options were available she said now I had two potential strategies one was to ply my trade with the tourists where the fees could be a little bit higher the other was to stay closer to home but within a couple of years I had a couple of children as a consequence of my work and had to worry about childcare so I wanted to stay closer to home I want to tell you my friends that that I wept openly in the middle of the Mathari slum when I asked her about the economics of that decision it turned out that her choice to stay in the slum meant that she was selling sex services for 25 cents 25 cents I have two daughters and it just broke my heart to think that anyone's daughter would ever have to make that choice now what shook me to the core then was pulling the lens back and realizing that in just a Nairobi area there are 800,000 James so let's take this on for a moment let's say you wanted to influence change you wanted to help the James of the world let's just say that was the problem you wanted to take on well the question becomes how would you influence her prospects now we're not going to quibble about this but I'll share with you some research that suggests that if we could get Jane to practice one simple behavior regularly it would profoundly change her life that vital behavior as we call it is making and keeping weekly commitments to increase her income and savings so if we could just engage her in that activity regularly what we know is not only do her financial prospects improve but her sense of Worth or psychological well-being the safety of her children or sexual autonomy her health status many different things improve if we can engage her in that one regular behavior so now step back your influencers how would you do that how would you help 800,000 Jane's get engaged in that kind of behavior this is where influence comes in now I'm going to move that aside for a moment then we'll revisit it a number of times I want to take you to some laboratory experiments so that we can develop a model a way of thinking about influence so at our labs a couple of years back we brought a whole bunch of munchkins together a bunch of kids 6th and 7th graders we want them to be old enough to understand money and be motivated to some degree by it so we brought a number of children into the lab and we gave them an opportunity to earn $40 by completing 4 simple tasks 10 dollars each over a period of 10 minutes so easy money simple tasks brief amount of time and we hoped that they would save their money to go do something useful with it later in order to help them save their money we asked them to anchor their commitments to some goal so listen in as they describe what they want to do with their money well I'm watching Gav she's college way with christmas comes early so they got a goal right they've all got something to anchor their there their intentions now the question is how do they do now remember for easy tasks ten minutes forty dollars the only temptation we offer them was the opportunity to buy things at what we called our change anything store so we set up a little table and we had goods price at five to ten times what these kids knew you would pay in the store so not a temptation at all you'll see for example a candy bar available for ten dollars right or a tiny little hard candy for two dollars so all these kids knew this was not a particularly good deal how do they do in dealing with that modest temptation let's have a look bummer well let's look at the statistics out of a potential $40 in savings the average person took home $13 not a good outcome we were absolutely blown away they spent like crazy in fact some of the kids went into debt in a 10 minute period of time now you and I can sympathize so the question becomes why why now here's the problem you and I particularly with a religious perspective so often believe that the reason people do what they do is because they lack commitment they lack resolve we describe these as personal motivation problems this is a naive view of the view of the world and in fact what it causes us to do is when somebody fails we deliver another sermon which often isn't what's needed so Jane makes a commitment to make in to making keep small commitments to improve our incomes and savings and she fails what do we do do we give her a motivational talk well we do if we don't understand influence so what I want to do is unpack that experience I want to pull back the curtain and show you what we did to these kids but first I want you to test whether they were aware of what we did so we asked them to explain their failures listen to their explanations I'm not sure if I can answer that question neither am i all right so this other baffled you know why did I do this I wanted to save and I've got no money left you know what happened to me well here's what happened and this is where you need to start taking notes because there were intentional influence systems put in place the same that Jane is subject to as she goes out to try to keep the commitments she made to increase her income and savings first of all as each of the kids came in we gave them a taste of their favorite candy we did what psychologists call putting them in a hot mode we wanted them in a hot impulsive mode so we just gave them a little taste here's a free sample of what you have available on the table second we gave them no skills so we put them into novel circumstances and we didn't skill them up to deal with some of the novel challenges that they faced third we subjected them to social influence so you'll notice how the model is organized these are the repeatable learner belén tensional sources of influence they embody all of what the social sciences have been repeatedly demonstrating for the past 70 years about why you and I do what we do a large reason is because we're socially motivators socially enabled in fact to the degree that you and I are naive about how profound these sources of influence are let me show you how modest the intervention was from a social perspective all we did was get accomplices Confederates in at least to the control condition to come in and make a small statement a small suggestive statement to the subject at the point that they were observing the store now there's a lot Antonio that's it that's it a guy in a red shirt saying dude right that's all it takes source fine we tried to manipulate structural incentives as well all we did here would say just spend as much as you want will deduct it from your earnings later we gave him a credit account game a credit card would that make a difference six we surrounded the room with decorations the decorations were pictures of children enjoying candy just gave him a few little cues and what happens $40 goes to 13 in 10 minutes now this wouldn't be particularly compelling unless we had an experimental condition right so as good scientists in the room what you ought to be asking is all right well if you change those would behavior change well let's do it so let's on the first case from a personal motivation perspective let's not put them in a hot mode no taste of the candy we're going to remove that second well just give them a 60 second little practice opportunity for how to keep track of your savings and spending so you can keep a mental tally third and fourth we'll ask those accomplices those Confederates to take a different role just give them a different phrase to use probably be a good idea again modest little adventure kid I've never met babbling about saving his money would it have an influence on me source 5 we're going to take them off the credit account and pay them in cash that way as they surrender the cash they'll experience the loss and 6 we're going to take down the wallpaper so what happens if all of those change let's have a look now anecdotally it looks like things were much different let's look at the data so where's the kids in the first condition walked out with $13 those in the second condition walk out with 34 this isn't a modest difference this is a 270 percent different you know in academics we can get a PhD for finding a 5 to 10 percent difference in behavior this is huge shifts so if we've got 800,000 James that we want to influence how do we think about that problem here's the take away leadership is intentional influence what we know is that if you amass a strategy that includes all six of those sources of influence people change that's how it works the reason this wonderful gathering that you're a part of it's been so phenomenally successful is because whether intentionally or not or whether through trial and error it's become a wonderful expression a brilliant expression of every one of these sources of influence in your outreach your ministry your leadership in your businesses to the degree you include the same will succeed to the same degree so what I want to do is walk you slowly through how to think better about each of these sources of influence now we're going to move quickly so don't panic if you don't feel like you deserve a PhD in each of these areas by the time we're done what I'm hoping this does is invite you into more intentional learning about each of these sources of influence and an opportunity for you to go back to your business and back to your back to your churches and examine your ministries your outreach your worship experience from a perspective of all of these sources of influence and see to what degree some are missing now I'll anchor this in our story of James part of what took me to Nairobi was studying this organization our organization started by Ingrid Monroe called Johnny Bora it's been phenomenally successful in working with over 250,000 James and helping them change their lives in a substantial way now the first problem you've got if you're trying to do that is the personal motivation problem here's the issue personal motivation problems are those where the good behavior feels bad and the bad behavior feels good which is almost every problem in the world so the problem you and I are up against is influencers is the bad stuff often feels personally gratifying satisfying pleasurable to people whereas the good stuff feels like sacrifice burden struggle effort and if that's what you're up against as an influencer my question to you is how do you think about solving that problem well let's take a case in point a friend of mine Brian Wansink I did a little experiment on Halloween the holiday in the United States where we give out candy to children pandemonium on his front porch he put a big bowl of delicious candies chocolates and and and yummy flavors of every sort next to that bowl he placed a bowl of apples and he allowed the children with no human present to choose which of those two they would like in the control condition isn't it embarrassing on Halloween you have control conditions is what social scientists do in the control condition the the two platters were set there and only nine percent of the kids fewer than one in ten took the apples probably because their parents were watching the other ninety one percent did the normal thing they took the candy so here's the question how would you in a non coercive way influence more children to take the apples here's the problem you and I tend to believe that behavior has intrinsic emotions associated with it feelings and sentiments experiences it doesn't bad behavior can feel good or bad good behavior can feel good or bad your job as an influencer is to help the good stuff feel pleasurable and the bad stuff feel bad it's to make the world right how would you do that but let's look at what Brian did in the experimental condition he did one simple thing that shifted the number of kids that took the apples to 48 percent over five times more kids took the apples what did he do you put a picture of Batman on the front porch with a little sign under it that said what would Batman eat five times more kids take the apples what does this teach us what influencers understand is that people can profoundly change the way they feel about almost any choice choosing to stay chaste choosing to go to church choosing to contribute tithe choosing to be faithful to your spouse choosing to go the extra mile for a customer those can feel intrinsically pleasurable if they're framed the right way your job as an influencer is to influence the frame make sure that we don't just teach principles and abstract ideas connect them to people's values second help people frame the specific choices they're making in godly ways or moral ways or value-based ways that's your job if I see this as a choice of being like Batman I feel differently about eating that Apple and it tastes different than if I see it as an issue of doing what my mom told me to do the two are significantly different so what do they do at Johnnie Bora Jane comes in and they don't say you need to save money and you need to increase your income they ask Jane what's your aspiration what's important Jane without making eye contact looking at the ground embarrassed to even admit that she had a dream this big said I would like a dignified home for my children I would like a safe place with a roof that doesn't leak and a separate bedroom and a place to go to the bathroom indoors that's my dream now when Jane begins to work on increasing income and increasing savings it's anchored to that a colleague from Yale the in Karlin found that if you ask people to start a savings account they don't save nearly as much as if you call it a new roof or a new home account just the frame changes my experience of the behavior so that's the first task now there's lots to learn about how you can help people feel a sense of connection and motivation about behaviors but we need to move on second the second domain opens up a whole world particularly from those of for those of us that teach in a religious context that are influencing their I want you to just experience something this is a young girl by the name of Xia Thierry she's 10 years old and she's about to go down her first 40 meters ski jump ten years old fortunately for us she has a helmet cam on so you and I get to live the experience with her I want you to listen to that experience and then ask yourself from an influence perspective what just happened and why is it so profound okay have a look [Music] he goes something organic can do this I'm gonna I'm gonna jump oh my Peas with the mouse forever there is no water no snowplows is great anybody okay boss straight you go faster a man hung over a little bit dozen anything anything not much three messages longer which is longer this longer just a bigger twenty that's all good for me okay good [Music] [Applause] [Applause] now what happened there clearly that was influence but but what was going on what happened is the one thing that you and I are the most naive about as influencers what we understand is that motivation is a big part of change but we missed the entire right side of the model what you and I don't get is ability as a profound factor in influence in fact those whom we've studied across the world over the past 30 years who are the most effective at influence start on the right and move left they don't start with motivation inspiration they start with ability they start with skills they start with removing barriers that's where they begin and then they move left yesterday pastor bill talked about Joshua's Prayer be strong and courageous well you know what God did for Joshua prior to putting him in that circumstances in those circumstances he had him spend 40 years with Moses learning watching studying developing skills what did he do for Moses he had him raised in Pharaoh's Court where he learned to understand how to administer large and complex operations integrating lots and lots of people skills are a substantial part of influence and there throughout the Bible when we start to open our eyes to how God influences people's change but you and I tend to believe that motivation and inspiration is what's required what happened was via via had the perfect enabling the the perfect efficacy experience if you and I want more influence we need to involve people in far more experiences of deliberate practice what's deliberate practice this is hands-on practice under realistic conditions the practice setting has to approximate the real world here's the problem I sit in your sermon I get lots of great ideas but you know what here in church does not resemble the real world and when I go back home and my kids are out of control and my wife resents me for travelling too much I'm not trying to be too real here and I'm in an emotionally bad place and I'm about to lose my temper and be a very bad father or husband that's the real world and if you want me to increase my capacity to practice healthier behavior what you have to do is help me practice under fairly realistic conditions via have the chance to do it in small bites with a lot of feedback and coaching for brief periods of time that's the ideal context for skill acquisition organizations that thrive that do a tremendous job developing a healthy culture spend an enormous amount of time with coaching and feedback under fairly realistic conditions so the big point here is open up the whole right-hand side of the model what is Jame Bora do they have classes they don't just say you need to increase your income and your savings they teach about financial literacy but not just about cognitive elements they teach about emotional control impulse control and goal-setting and and how to shift your emotions in crucial moments so Jane gets the opportunity not just to build aspirations but to develop the skills to achieve those next sources of influence let's take on another problem go to a whole different domain state of Washington put in brand new high occupancy vehicle lanes right lanes that you can only go in if you have how many people in your car two or more let's read the sign good so you can only use those lanes you have two or more people the problem was that within just a couple of weeks after announcing the new lanes they found that at least one in five cars were cheaters people with how many in the car just one so the question for them as influencers was how would you change that behavior you and I tend to lean on coercive sources we tend to say more cops right public executions bigger fines you know that's the way to do this well they didn't have the money or the political power to pull something like that off so they came up with a modest little intervention and embedded in it is a powerful lesson that in spite of the brief time will focus on it I hope you'll extrapolate on it reflect on it and carry it home owes the intervention they wrote three letters just wrote three letters and then post it a sign the sign said report HOV Lane violations by dialling nine to one hero you gotta love it don't you yeah I mean there's a whole discussion we can have about that but let's look at the driver perspective so here's what happened I'm driving on the freeway I've got three people in my car but you're up ahead of me with only one so I call this number and I report your license plate they figure out your address and they mail you letter number one letter number one is accompanied by what they call an educational brochure and the essence of the letter is one of your fellow Washingtonians hates you no it doesn't say that but you and I know how it would feel the letter says essentially somebody spotted you in the HOV Lane you had only one in the car apparently you don't know how to read so here's a brochure to educate you about and that was all it was there was no threat there was no fine there was nothing else just a letter now if people reported a second time they got a second letter this day at this time from the Department of Transportation the third time from the State Patrol but again never with a fine never with a threat only a reminder that somebody saw you now let's break this down because it worked it worked the number of of Lane violators dropped by 80% in a matter of weeks so what's going on here well the first time I'm driving along right I look over there and that Lane is going so fast and I think that would be so fun right so I move over there and I'm moving along at 10 miles an hour during my life is good but then I get this letter in the mail oh right now the next time I'm on the freeway and I'm looking over there guess what new thought is in my mind yeah they're watching me I've reframed this from an economic or a strategic decision - what - a social one - a social one people don't like me when I do this and those are the people right there so what happens behavior shifts now if you look at the six sources of influence you'll notice three and four talk about social motivation and social ability you have to learn to employ these in a business context we do the worst thing in the world we take people out of their social setting out of their team away from their boss drop them into a training experience give them lots of great ideas and then put them right back into the same social system guess what happens and they don't use anything the same can happen with our church experience with our worship experience we're in a wonderful supportive social setting here but then you get picked up and dropped out somewhere else what a hurt pastor bill described yesterday that I think is profound and important an expression of this is this notion of having section pastors in developing social capital and finding ways to encourage and support each other on a continuous basis what do they do at Johnnie Bora well we don't just invite Jane in we surround her with friends and coaches she's got colleagues who are equally interested in increasing incomes and savings how does that work well one of them she sat next to was this woman her name is Mary moody Mary moody is an entrepreneur extraordinaire I put her up against any of our Silicon Valley pros she was in the middle of the Mathari slum had no income for children to support her husband had abandoned her and she finally started thinking of herself as a business person in the in the context of what Johnny Bora did with her so she said I need a business idea she looked around realized everybody else is selling mangos and bananas I can't do that I need to differentiate myself so she also needed to do it on very little Capital she looked around and found that the people that were were killing chickens to sell their meat would always cast off the head and the neck they pulled the neck meat out but there was a little pile of chicken heads and necks that were just cast off she approached those people and said could I have those they said yeah take them away save us the trouble of carrying them off ourselves she asked what about the nth rolls do you need those no no have Adam she carries off entrails chicken heads and necks she purchases a few pots and pans with a loan that she gets from a microcredit organization she cooks up some potatoes and some onions some spices and throws in the ntral for a little extra protein then she stuffs that in the neck sews it up boils the entire thing and has a portable highly nutritious protrude protein rich food that you can eat out of the beak it was brilliant it was brilliant any of you ever use a PEZ dispenser you know it's kind of I don't know kind of like that but I said do you make a profit at this she said oh yes I do I said what are your coffee said loaded costs she has the skills she sells every one of these that she can make every day she sells them like hotcakes and they taste like chicken right and and that's who jean is sitting next to and can other people like that think about what kind of influence that would have now wrapping this together the last two sources of influence structural motivation we have to look at the effect of incentives and I don't have time to talk in detail about that but Johnny Bora understands this there are incentives for getting loans for increasing your savings you can get a better state or a better interest rate if you have a larger amount of savings available if you've repaid a number of loans then you're also able to acquire greater credit with the organization so their incentives for increasing income and savings another supportive influencer strategy finally the sixth source of influence I want you to experience so take on this influencer problem I want you to imagine that you are going to try to come up with a way of influencing people in Las Vegas to use the stairs rather than the escalators so first we're going to show you the video of the control condition so we put a time-lapse photography system at the bottom of the escalators and stairs I want you to count up over a period of an hour how many people take the stairs hello at least going up how many get a couple okay so a couple so that's our baseline the question is how would you influence them to take the take the stairs rather than the escalator now I hope what starts to happen as you let this idea fit in your mind if you learn how to take apart influence problems you ask yourself could we could we develop a personal motivation strategy and frame it differently could there be a skill issue could we use social influence or incentives but what we did was more modest than all of those all we did was install a cue most people when making a decision like this follow the crowd and earn a fairly mindless State we wanted to jar them into alertness and just give them a chance to make a choice so at the bottom of the escalators and stairs we posted a sign that said want to burn seven calories and then put a little arrow to the left watch what happens [Music] and that remarkable just a sign you know who would have thought you and I are so naive sometimes about what shapes our choices just having pictures of candy on the wall just having a kid in a red shirt say dude you ought to buy a lot these little ings nudge us in ways that you and I grossly underestimate what's the sixth source of influence it's the influence of space data Hughes tools processes environmental factors the space we inhabit affects our choices look at the design of your home if you want to understand why your kids play more video games and read fewer books look at how the house is designed you know what's enshrine what's at the center what's convenient what has comfortable chairs associated with it there are structural factors that influence our choices and you and I need to learn how to use these to make bad behavior harder and more conscious and good behavior easier and more obvious cues tools surroundings again take a look at the Willow Creek process that you're embedded in here how many cues and tools and reminders have been made accessible on Facebook and Twitter and and with tangibles so much of that is a really critical part of the success of this effort so what does Johnny Borah do they create a different environment they have little centers in the middle of the Mathari Selam little islands of isolation and separation the Jane can experience but they also use other little tactics and tools I can tell you Jane was profoundly affected the first time she brought home a passbook a savings passbook and the physical act of going in and having her savings incremented and watching that increased cues and reminds and enables her to continue to engage in that kind of activity record-keeping is a huge part of their influence strategy so what's the point the point is this these six sources of influence aren't something you and I get to vote on as leaders they are just there they work either for us or against us and if your influencer strategy involves just motivating people to go change but leaves the other five untouched that they're working against you rather than for you and you will lose people won't change that's why we have three billion hours spent on video games because people have figured out how to get all six in fact we published one of our studies but demonstrated that when people use all six your odds of success don't go up modestly like the difference between thirteen dollars and savings and thirty-four they go up a thousand percent the odds of success go up tenfold you want to change the world learn how to change behavior learn how to do it the way jamii Bora does I spent that day with Jane we walked through her old home and stomping grounds it was one of the most dispiriting experiences I'd ever had just thinking about the pain that humanity was experiencing in this one place and realizing it was just one of many but later that afternoon we had a different experience an experience that was one of the most heartening one of the most exciting that I've ever experienced we went to her new home it was dignified it was safe it had a roof that didn't leak it had a bedroom for her and a different one for the children and in fact it had an open area where her four employees work on a daily basis we brought her some housewarming gifts and we celebrated the moment with her and I asked her Jane what was it like I said two days ago when you moved in the first moment you stepped across that threshold and she started to tear up she was overwhelmed with emotion she said I dropped to my knees and I said dear God when did a woman like me ever get a house like this and then I looked up at a little tin sign on her wall that expressed the same way she had God can it says bless you from nothing to something and while touched by the sentiment I had kind of a silent rejoinder I thought oh no Jane you're wrong you were always something all you needed was the influence environment to allow you to realize and express that that is our job as leaders leadership is intentional influence I hope this discussion with you today blesses and enhances your capacity to exercise that for the wonderful goals that you have thank you very much [Applause]