Influencer Series 17

Influencer is open to current Rice University employees. If you’re not a current Rice University employee, but are interested in taking the class, contact Marie Wehrung at learn@rice.edu for assistance.

Most chronic problems – from implementing a new process to a delayed project to ingrained cultural challenges – no matter how different they may appear at first glance, are actually the same problem. That’s right; most problems that resist our best attempts at solutions and then persist for years on end do so because we lack influence. More specifically, we lack the ability to change human behavior.

Odds are, when you examine your list of concerns, you’ll discover the problems that plague your organization (be that your team, department, division/school, or Rice as a whole) the most and persist for the longest do so because one or more human beings continue to behave in ways that perpetuate the problem. Unfortunately, most quick fixes don’t work because the problem isn’t fed by a single cause.

The good news is that one set of influence strategies can enhance your ability both to motivate and enable your workforce to change.

The Influencer Workshop teaches a step-by-step approach for changing the behavior of teams and organizations:

1. Identify clear, measurable, time-bound results that reflect what you really want.
2. Identify vital behaviors.
3. Diagnose the six sources of influence behind existing behaviors.
4. Select and implement strategies aimed at each source of influence.

Through hands-on exercises and video case studies of modern-day change agents, you’ll learn how to use six sources of influence to overcome your most persistent challenges. Influencer Training will teach you how to:

• Diagnose the web of causes behind any problem behaviors and create powerful strategies for driving change.
• Identify a handful of high-leverage behaviors that, if changed, will lead to desired results.
• Rely less on formal authority and more on ways to motivate and enable others to alter their behavior.
• Use the powerful Influencer model to develop and apply robust behavior-change strategies to anything from small- to large-scale cultural transformations.

Research shows that those who follow the Influencer model are ten times more likely to succeed at producing rapid and sustainable behavior change.