Changing attitudes

Last week I asked a group of manager's what they would like as main theme for our last session in the current series, as often happened they wanted to learn more on how to change people's attitudes. The will to manipulate and the need to lead is an interesting frontier to explore.
Photo by Napalm Filled Tires Flickr CC

When is leadership manipulation?

Eisenhower is said to have defined leadership as:

...the ability to persuade someone to do what you wanted them to do because they wanted to do it.

When that happens, performance improves, productivity increases, and both parties win.

Other say that you motivate someone when you persuade them to do something which is good for them, and to manipulate is to persuade them to do something that is good for you. I find the border very thin and that good ethics are a must, especially if you have a strong effect on others.

We don't know when we change attitude

Guy Kawasaki wrote an interesting post on the Open Forum where he concludes that we don't know when we change, but we do with time. He talks about the classic 1973 study by Goethals and Reckman, where participants where divided into two groups, in favor and against bussing. A year later the groups where rejoined and in each of them a "confederate" was introduced, armed with arguments for the other group's stand point. The results were astonishing - both confederates managed to change their groups attitude and participants could not say when it had happened.

Mr Kawasaki suggest the following four articles for further studies:

1. "The Hidden Workings of Our Minds"


2. "What We Don't Know About Shopping, Reading, Watching TV and Judging People"


3. "When We Are Fools to Ourselves"


4. "At the Heart of Attraction Lies Confusion: Choice Blindness"

Reframing

We tend to judge others harsher than ourselves, Bertrand Russel said:

“I am firm, you are obstinate, he is a pig-headed fool.”
“I am righteously indignant, you are annoyed, he is making a fuss over nothing.”
“I have reconsidered the matter, you have changed your mind, he has gone back on his word.”

These are all examples of how we can express the same thing with different attitudes. When someone has a strong conviction it can be very useful to ask why the person feels that way, exposing the assumptions and then discuss the data and not the opinion.

Everyone has a right to their opinion, but data are universal and impartial. Discussing facts have a tendency to bring the discussion away from the emotional and into the the more "adult" exchange of ideas, true dialogue.

If you know your data and have the passionate drive needed to dialogue with everyone in your organization, you have the basis for an open and participative leadership that will bring productivity and prosperity to the common effort.