Influencer Book Notes - Chapter 5: Surpass Your Limits: Personal Ability

Chapter Five:  Surpass Your Limits:  Personal Ability

Shift from.... Shift to.....

• making the simplistic assumption that people don't change because they don't want to change (what Lee Ross calls the fundamental attribution error to understanding that to change people need both motivation and deliberate practice in the new behavior (i.e. "perfect practice makes perfect")
• assuming I should know something because I attended the training to don't assume that knowing the content and doing it are one and the same.
• combining too much motivation with too few opportunities to improve ability (which we know doesn't produce change, but instead creates resentment and depression) to making sure the participants have authentic opportunities for deliberate practice with immediate feedback while the professional learning is occurring.
• thinking I wasn't born with the 'right stuff' otherwise maintaining what Carolyn Dweck labels a "fixed mindset" about my own abilities to believing I can learn how to develop a set of high-level learning skills and techniques that influence masters use all of the time; or what Dweck calls a "growth mindset".
• excusing my bad behavior as a lack of 'will power' to practicing the more 'growth' mindset phrase that much of will is skill... I can learn specific learn-able techniques or behaviors that will make me skilled at avoiding short-term temptations.
• putting in the time (years of experience) and claiming that makes me skilled to engaging in deliberate practice which means I want to be more like the Olympic hopeful skaters and spend more of my practice time working on skills I have not yet mastered; such as interpersonal skills and presentation skills.
• avoiding feedback to seeking feedback to ensure I am using immediate feedback against a clear standard to ensure my practice is perfect.
• doing what I have always done and calling it practice to breaking the outcome I want to achieve into discrete, manageable, meaningful skills/behaviors that will allow me to engage in deliberate practice.
• daydreaming, functioning on auto-pilot, or only partially putting my mind to the routine when I practice to demanding full attention for brief intervals by maintaining a steely-eyed concentration as I watch to ensure I know exactly what the models (teachers) are doing, what is working, what isn't working and why it either works or doesn't work.
• interpreting setback as "brakes" to interpreting setbacks as guides (build in resilience)
• letting my emotions (or amydala brain) rule in cases that are cognitively complex to process information in a cool, calm, collected and reasoned way (IN OTHER WORDS THINK BEFORE I SPEAK WHEN MY EMOTIONS ARE RUNNING HIGH!)
• allowing my instincts and intuition to define my actions and reactions to influencing my brain and behavior to practice transforming the difficult into the easy, the aversive into the pleasant, and the boring into the interesting.  I can do this by engaging in ongoing self debate, deliberation and justification to practice the skill psychologists call cognitive reappraisal.

Chapter Five: Personal Ability Summary (copied in entirety from pages 135 - 136)
When it comes to complex tasks that matter a great deal to you in your quest to resolve persistent problems, don't suffer from arrested development.  Demand more from yourself than the achievement levels you reach after minimum effort.  Instead, set achievement levels you reach after minimal effort.  Instead, set aside time to study and practice new and more vital behaviors.  Devote attention to clear, specific, and repeatable actions.  Ensure that the actions you're pursuing are both recognizable and replicable.  Then seek outside help.  Insist on immediate feedback against clear standards.  Break tasks into discrete actions, set goals for each, practice within a low-risk environment, and build in recovery strategies.  Finally, make sure that you apply the same deliberate practice tactics to physical, intellectual and even complex social skills.  Many of the vital behaviors required to solve profound and persistent problems demand advanced interpersonal problem-solving skills that can be mastered only through well-researched, deliberate practice.

With instinctive demands and quick emotional reactions, don't let the "go" system take control from your "know" system unless you're facing a legitimate risk to life and limb.  To regain emotional control over your genetically wired responses, take the focus off your instinctive objective by carefully attending to distraction activities.  Where possible, completely avoid the battle to delay gratification by making the difficult easy, the averse pleasant, and the boring interesting.  When strong emotions take over because you've drawn harsh, negative conclusions about others, reappraise the situation by asking yourself complex questions that force your frontal lobe to wrest control away from the amygdala.

Remember the good news here.  Overcoming habits or developing complex athletic, intellectual, and interpersonal skills are not merely functions of motivation, personality traits, or even character.  They all tie back to ability.  Develop greater proficiency at deliberate practice as well as the ability to manage your emotions, and you significantly increase the chances for turning vital behaviors into vital habits.

Sharing my Notes from Chapter 4 of the Influencer Book as a Way to Start the New Academic Year

Chapter 4:  Make the Undesirable Desirable (Personal Motivation)

Shift from.... Shift To....

• stop asking "how can I get people to do things that they currently find loathsome, boring, insulting or painful?" to asking " how can I change how humans (myself and others) experience a behavior?  In specifics "how can I change the meaning of a behavior itself from loathsome to gratifying; from pleasurable to disgusting; or from insulting to inspiring?
• using perks and wisecracks to finding ways to make the activity itself more inherently attractive (in other words find the diamond in the rough or the pearl amongst the swine).
• fixating on my likes and dislikes to focusing on understanding where my likes and dislikes come from so I can transcend and transform.
• a fixed mindset about myself and what motivates me to a growth mindset about my intrinsic motivation.
• classical conditioning (aka Pavlov's salivating dogs) to direct experience with the phenomena (the classic 'try it you'll like it' mentality.
• telling people how to change behavior to modeling how I changed my behavior
• saying this is really hard! to making it a game so others can enjoy the "flow" or the felling of enjoyment that comes with losing yourself in an engrossing activity.  WHERE AN ENGROSSING ACTIVITY = any activity that has reasonably challenging goals and clear, frequent feedback.
• relying solely on direct experience and games to creating new motives by:

1. connecting to a person's sense of self like the Russian mathematician who solved the Poincare Conjecture;
2. engaging in moral thinking unlike Robert Lund the engineer who 'put on his manager hat' to make a decision to launch the Challenger; 
3. connecting behavior to moral values which is how Mimi Silbert maintains decorum at the Delancey center by using a clear moral code of family, home, beliefs, actions, reasons for our actions, mentoring others and taking responsibility for the actions of others;
4. spotlighting human consequences by striking one-word labels the minimize a group's humanity such as "bean-counters", "gear heads", "corporate", "the field", "them" and "they" and replacing those labels with actual names of people.
5. winning hearts by honoring choice like William Miller did by finding out that successful counselors helped patients figure out what they wanted rather than what their fed-up friends wanted out of life AND that you can influence even a resistant group of people if you are willing to surrender control.

Chapter Summary (excerpted from pages 108 - 109)

Helping people extract instrinsic satisfaction from the right behavior or feel displeasure with the wrong behavior often calls for several influence strategies.

1. With individuals who believe that the required behaviors won't be pleasurable, simply immerse them in the activity.
2. As you experiment with new actions, focus on the sense of accomplishment associated with the result.  Reveal in achieving for the sake of achieving.  Tap into people's sense of pride and competition.  And when it comes to long-term achievement, link into people's view of who they want to be.
3. When dealing with activities that are rarely satisfying or unhealthy activities that are very satisfying, take he focus off the activity itself and reconnect the vital behavior to the person's sense of values.  Don't be afraid to talk openly about the long-term values individuals are currently either supporting or violating.
4. As people slip further into inappropriate behavior - even causing severe damage to themselves or others - help them reconnect their actions to their sense of morality by fighting moral disengagement.  Don't let people minimize or justify their behavior by transforming humans into statistics.
5. Finally, when facing highly resistant people, don't try to gain control over them by wowing them with logic and argument.  Instead, talk with them about what they want.  Allow them to discover on their own the links between their current behavior and what they really want.

In short,  as you think about the problems you're trying to resolve, don't be afraid to draw on the power of intrinsic satisfiers.  As Don Berwick so aptly stated: "The biggest motivators of excellence are intrinsic.  They have to do with people's accountability to themselves.  It's wanting to do well, to be proud, to go home happy having accomplished something."  Berwick recognizes that people have a powerful desire to do what's right.  Harnessing that intrinsic desire is a far more powerful influence tool than using extrinsic rewards or even exacting punishments.

Sharing My Notes on the Influencer Book - Chapter Three: Change the Way You Change Minds

Chapter Three:  Change the Way You Change Minds Summary (page 71 - 72)

People will attempt to change their behavior if (1) they believe it will be worth it, and (2) they can do what is required.  Instill these two views, and individuals will at least try to enact a new behavior or perhaps stop an old one.  To change one or both of these views, most people rely on verbal persuasion.  Talk is easy, and it works a great deal of the time.  However, with persistent and resistant problems, talk has very likely failed in the past, and it's time to help individuals experience for themselves the benefits of the proposed behavior.  It's time for a field trip.

When it's impossible to create an actual experience, it's best to create vicarious experiences.  For most of us, that means we'll make use of a well-told story.

Stories provide every person, no matter how limited his or her resources, with an influence tool that is both immediately accessible and enormously powerful.  Poignant narratives help listeners transport themselves away from the content of what is being spoken and into the experience itself.  Because they focus on the simple reality of an actual event, stories are often more credible than simple statements of fact.  Finally, as listeners dive into the narrative and suspend disbelief, stories create an empathetic reaction that feels just as real as enacting the behavior themselves.

Tell the whole story.  Make sure that the narrative you're employing contains a clear link between the current behaviors and existing (or possibly future) negative results.  Also make sure that the story includes positive replacement behaviors that yield new and better results.  Remember, stories need to deal with both "Will it be worth it?" and "Can I do it?"  When it comes to changing behavior, nothing else matters.

Khan Academy and the mythical math cure

Khan Academy and the mythical math cure

Chapter Two Notes from the Influencer Book

For Chapter Two I have just copied the summary verbatim.  I would be interested in any comments that come to your mind as you read this summary.

Erica

 

Chapter Two (Search for Vital Behaviors) Summary (page 43 - 44)

Search for Behaviors:  Take care to ensure that you're searching for strategies that focus on behavior.  Don't let experts pass off outcomes as behaviors.  You already know what you want to achieve:  not you want to learn what to do.  Be leery of vague advice.  If you can't immediately figure out what the expert is telling you to do, then the advice is too abstract and could imply a number of possible behaviors - many of them wrong.

Search for Vital Behaviors:  Master influencers know that a few behaviors can drive big change.  They look carefully for the vital behaviors that create a cascade of change.  No matter the size of the problem, if you dilute your efforts across dozens of behaviors, you'll never reach critical mass.  If your problem is common, odds are the research has already been done for you.

When behaviors must be customized to your personal or local circumstance, look for vital behaviors by studying positive deviance.  Look for people, times, or places where you or others don't experience the same problems and try to determine the unique behaviors that make the difference.

Search for Recovery Behaviors:  People make mistakes, and yet find some way to quickly get back on track rather than sink further into despair.  Henry, for example, learned that failure to follow his dietary plan one day should cue him to look for where he went wrong and then to take corrective action - and not to take the one-time failure as a sign that he won't be able to succeed and that therefore he should give in to his cravings.

Until Henry identified this and similar recovery behaviors, he was constantly taking two steps forward, followed by three steps back.  Now when he runs into a problem, he stops his backward fall by using his mistake as a data point for learning and not as an indicator that he ought to give up.  Recovery behaviors make up an important part of every change master's influence strategy.

Test Your Results:  Finally,  if you've conducted your own research and found candidates for what you think are high-leverage vital behaviors, test your ideas.  Implement the proposed actions and see if they yield the results you want.  Don't merely measure the presence or absence of the vital behaviors; also check to see whether the results you want are happening.

To make it easy to both surface and test vital behaviors, conduct short-cycle-time experiments.  Don't hypothesize forever or put massive studies into place.  Instead, develop the habit of conducting rapid, low-risk mini experiments.

Whether you conduct best-practices studies on your own, search for positive deviance, conduct mini experiments, or simply look for those who have already identified the vital behaviors for you, the point is the same.  Don't glance around, take the first piece of advice from a friend, or rely on a hunch.  Instead, follow the lead of influence geniuses everywhere.  Conduct a genuine search for vital behaviors.  If you don't, it won't be long before you'll be searching for serenity.

Using my Blog to Log my Notes from the All Agency Book Study on the book titled: Influencer: The Power to Change Anything (Introduction)

Notes from the book titled:  Influencer:  The Power to Change Anything by Patterson, Grenny, Maxfield, McMillan, and Switzler

Part One:  The Power to Change Anything, which is addressed in Chapters 1 - 3

My Insights:  I decided to record a set of Shift From and Shift toward statements to capture my thoughts as I read:

Shift From.... Shift Toward

·       Wisdom to know the difference to wisdom to make a difference

·       Lack of skill to effect change to developing the skill set to make change happen

·       Seeking solace to seeking a solution

·       Carping to talking

·       Making threats to offering incentives

·       Saying 'things' need to change around here to identifying exactly what needs to be changed

·       Focusing on random behaviors to using data to identify the vital behaviors (where vital behavior = a handful of high-leverage behaviors)

·       Confusing outcomes as behaviors to understanding that behaviors are the things you do to get the outcomes you want.

·       Punishing negative behaviors to rewarding positive behaviors

·       Long lectures, which allow learners to struggle and repeat mistakes to rapidly altering between teaching and questioning (testing) to make immediate corrections.

·       Focusing on change behaviors to focusing on changing mindsets first then suggesting behavior changes that will work (address the two vital questions "Will it be worth it?" and "Can I do it?"

·       Telling and lecturing to a set of steps that progress from vicarious to direct experiences

·       Telling irrelevant, data laden stories to telling a good story where good story  = telling the whole story + clearly linking current behaviors to existing negative results + positive replacements + dealing with the two vital questions Will it be worth it?" and "Can I do it?"

·       Persuading others to helping people experience the world as I experience it

·       Telling my stories to telling the stories of students and teachers

Favorite Quote = "Personal experience is the mother of all cognitive map changes." (Page 51)

Chapter Summaries as a Friendly reminder of the contents of the book!  Chapter One:  You're an Influencer (there was no summary provided so I decided to type the final passage which had the subtitle: What This Means to You

There's good news in all of this.  Since our ineffectiveness at influencing others stems from simple inability rather than a character flaw or lack of motivation, the solution lies in continued learning.  We can become powerful influencers.  We don't have to wait for everyone else to miraculously change.  We won't have to constantly seek serenity.

It also means that the changes we need to make won't be too intrusive.  We don't need a lobotomy, a pep talk, or an infusion of tenacity.  Instead, we simply need to expand our self-image by seeing ourselves as influencers; it's the one job that cuts across every domain of our life.  In addition, like any dedicated person, we need to study the works of the influencers who are already good at the job.  As we learn the strategies influencer masters have been implementing for the past five decades, we'll be in far better shape to take on the profound and persistent problems that have been plaguing us for years.

Notice that we have used the word "strategies".  We've chosen the plural because there is no one strategy - no silver bullet- for resolving profound, persistent, and resistant problems.  When it comes to the problems that have us stymied, it takes an entire set of influence methods.  We'll help you create your own set of tools by sharing the strategies used by every influencer we have studied.

These influence strategies, by the way, are value-neutral.  They can be used either to break or to cause a heroin addition.  They can be used either to create or destroy a customer-driven corporate culture.  Naturally, the influencers we studied routinely aimed their strategies as deserving, even noble causes.  But not everyone does or will.  We knowingly share the powerful methods of the world's best influencers as a way of making them both accessible and transparent.  To the degree that people understand these new strategies, their ability to make their own life better grows exponentially.  To the degree that people understand the forces that are already influencing their behavior, they are more empowered to choose their response.

Any one of the influence strategies we explore, combined with what you already know, could be enough to put you on the road to creating lasting change.  Put into play several methods, and your chances for improvement only grow.  Find a way to combine all the methods, and you'll be able to create changes that most of us have only been able to imagine.

So join us as we do our best to answer:  How can I learn to change anything?

January ends!

January is a blur to me, however I want to take a moment and reflect on some of the highlights of this month before the dawn of February crosses my car dashboard tomorrow morning (providing I can see the dawn through the impending snow storm).  My one wish today is that I would wake up to this view tomorrow....

This has been an intense month of activity both for district work as well as for AEA work.  This month I:

• facilitated kit training on 4 MS FOSS units (Earth History, Weather and Water, Planetary Science and Chemical Interactions).  The impact of this time commitment is that I know that thousands of students will have a rich experience in science as their middle school teachers implement these kits over the next few years.
• co-facilitated the EiE kit training with Nannette.  The impact of this time commitment was that for a full day 8 teachers were engaged in active learning about a how the Engineering is Elementary kits can provide students with the opportunity to learn about STEM careers and the Engineering Design Process.
• designed, planned and delivered a full day of learning for the CCSD Cadre teachers on the Iowa Core Characteristic of Effective Instruction topic:  Assessment for Learning.  The impact of this was that I personally had the opportunity to coach with the HS and 5th/6th grade science teachers as they worked to embed the strategies of clear learning targets, success criteria and concept-based instruction into their current practices.
• designed, planned and co-facilitated a morning of professional learning for the Marion ISD K-12 vertical science team.  The impact of this was that we had a chance to reconnect and share ideas about effective instruction in science including a focus on AfL, Alignment and Tech Integration.  Another bonus was that through these relationships the 6-8 grade teachers are implementing more of the VAST MS kits and their students and principal, Amy Johnson are both very pleased with the results.
• provided instructional coaching to 6 teachers around their professional learning goals.  The impact of this was to deepen their understanding of the big ideas of their science curriculum and how best to help students achieve the learning targets through the use of effective feedback and/or performance based assessments.   An additional benefit was that I had the opportunity to practice my instructional coaching skills; which is my 2011-12 professional growth goal area.  I look forward to more opportunities to continue this type of support.
• enjoyed the ongoing privilege to provide support to Nannette as she uncovers the complexity of the job as Teacher in Residence.  The impact of this is sometimes hard to measure on a day to day basis ~ but my heart was warmed when Janine informed me that my support is appreciated.  Thanks for those kind words, Nannette.  I sometimes feel as though I am really letting you down when you need a cheerleader and I am focused on other work.

There were many more smaller tasks this month that all add up to a full, rich tapestry of days, minutes, hours and weekends of work.  My greatest hope is that the impact of this work/time will reach every learner ~ no matter if they are 60 or 6.

Good night to January, 2011.... on to February!!!

Google Science Fair Experiment - Extended

Check out all of the Web 2.0 tools on this site:  "'Cool Tools for Schools'."

A New Year and a New Appreciation for EiE

Wow!  What a start to the year 2011 I have had....gone are the days when I came back the first week of January and have a quiet week of organizing emails and files in order to prep for the 'spring rush'.  Instead these past two years my calendar shows a full week of professional development inservices and teacher collaboration opportunities during that first week of January.  I credit dedicated teachers who want to start the new year with a renewed focus on teaching in ways that ensure all students are learning. 

And with that thought I am inspired to write about the experience I had co-facilitating with Nannette today!

Today Nannette and I had the pleasure of planing an all day Engineering is Elementary kit training session targeting the CSI/OSO mini-grant teachers but including the new education leader for the Cedar Rapids Science Station and a classroom teacher who wishes to embed an EiE unit within her elementary science class.  We used the Professional Development Guide which was developed by the authors of the EiE program, the Boston Museum of Science.  It was a very helpful guide and allowed us to focus on the following important goals for the day....

EiE Goals:
Goal 1:  Increase children’s technological literacy.
Goal 2:  Increase elementary educators’ abilities to teach engineering and technology to their students.
Goal 3:  Modify the educational systems to include engineering at the elementary level.

Inservice Goals:  EiE Professional Development activities are designed to support educators who will use the EiE curriculum materials by developing their:

• knowledge of the structure and types of learning activities within one EiE unit as a model for all EiE units;
• confidence in teaching engineering;
• understandings of engineering as a career field, and of the Engineering Design Process (EDP), including how to apply the EDP to solve technological problems;
• appreciation for the types of teaching approaches and learning experiences that best serve engineering education.

Today we will:

• Develop a common definition of science, engineering and technology and how they relate to each other.
• Review the objectives of EiE units and the common 4-lesson structure.
• Experience the Engineering Design Process found in all EiE units.
  .

Essential Question(s):  How can implementing EiE units help students see themselves as engineers?

To accomplish these goals, Nannette and  I modeled all 4 lessons PLUS the prep lesson in the EiE kit titled:  Catching the Wind:  Designing Windmills.  In this unit the story focuses on Leif and his friend/cousin Dana learning about mechanical engineering as they using the EDP (Engineering Design Process) to catch the wind to help save Dana's fish (think windmill and paddle wheel).

If you want to learn more about EiE - please watch this embedded video from the Museum of Science in Boston....

Nannette,  as a friendly reminder can you draft a Google Form to collect feedback from our participants?  You might want to use the VAST Academy feedback questions as a model and then please add two open ended questions.

1. +  = please share what worked well today/ what supported your goals for attending / what aspects of the day that specifically helped you meet the goals established for today.
2. Delta = please share what changes you would recommend help the facilitators plan for the future.

When you finish the draft of the Google Form; please share it with me and I will offer feedback.

Thanks for sharing this opportunity to co-facilitate this EiE kit training with you and with the teachers!