Building Necessary Capabilities (Influence and Change 5 of 10)
Posted by Tim on May 10, 2011
How do You Get to Carnegie Hall? (Practice!)
You have a change in mind. You’ve identified the key behaviors that will enable this change, and the right people are excited to starting doing what it takes to enact these behaviors.
But they don’t know how.
In order for people to enact key behaviors, they must be capable of doing so, and they recognize that they are capable. Many changes require people to start doing things that they aren’t capable of doing today. This can create a significant roadblock in any change effort.
How to we build the necessary capabilities in people? Can we send out a memo, provide some training classes, and hope for the best? Let’s start with the research.
Is it possible to become great (or even just passably good) at something if we’re born with no skill in that area? Previous research in psychology and similar fields suggested that this was the case, and the general perception was that our fates are determined to a large degree by the traits with which we are born.
However, more recent research shows that deliberate practice, not inborn traits, plays a larger role in success within most performance areas. More specifically, the capacity to learn and deliberately practice a set of behaviors has proven to be a core capability that determines success. Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck calls this a “growth mindset,” meaning that people who are willing to learn and practice new skills show markedly better performance in many areas. The growth mindset is contrasted to the “fixed mindset,” which subscribes to the belief that our capabilities and performance are dictated by a set of inborn traits. The fixed mindset has been found to lead to performance stagnation, because people with this mindset tend to resist leaving their comfort zones, choosing to instead stay within the confines of tried and true behaviors and habits.
The aspiring influencer leverages this knowledge by helping the appropriate people build the capabilities needed to enact the key behaviors. By making the desired key behaviors explicitly clear and helping individuals to learn and practice them, influencers create a situation in which people can see for themselves that they are capable of enacting the key behaviors. Remember, personal experience is the single most powerful factor in shaping people’s belief of whether or not they can do something.
(1 of 10) Decrypting the “Impact Gene”
(2 of 10) Find the Behaviors that Matter
(3 of 10) Communicate Key Behaviors
