Influencer: Vital Behaviors and Six Sources of Influence, and What the Research Says

What the book argues

Influencer: The Power to Change Anything is by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, David Maxfield, Ron McMillan and Al Switzler. McGraw-Hill published it on September 21, 2007 (Open Library, n.d.-a). A second edition, Influencer: The New Science of Leading Change, followed in 2013 (Open Library, n.d.-b; Bookshare, n.d.), and the authors' company, Crucial Learning, calls Crucial Influence the updated third edition of the book (Crucial Learning, n.d.-a).

The second edition's description says it combines the insights of behavioral scientists and business leaders (Bookshare, n.d.). The authors' company sets out the method's two main ideas. First, clarify the vital behaviors, the few behaviors that directly drive results (Crucial Learning, n.d.-a). Second, bring six sources of influence to bear on those behaviors (Crucial Learning, n.d.-b).

In my words: most change efforts pull one lever, usually a message or a training course. The book asks you to name the two or three behaviors that matter and then pull every lever you have on them at once.

Who it is for

Leaders responsible for a change that depends on many people doing something differently, such as a new safety practice or a new way of serving customers. It is more of a method than Switch, which covers similar ground more lightly. It is less suited to changes that are mainly about structure or strategy.

What the research says

I found no controlled test of the book's model in the evidence I use. Two of its ideas have field evidence.

Respected peers went with a better rollout in one bank. Lam and Schaubroeck (2000) compared three matched bank branches. According to their abstract, one branch used frontline opinion leaders as service-quality leaders after training; a second used randomly chosen frontline staff; and a third had no frontline leaders. Service effectiveness was rated highest in the opinion-leader branch, and the random-leader branch improved more than the branch with none. Three branches is a small design, so this is one comparison, but it supports the book's use of social influence.

Changing the default changed behavior in one firm. Rigtering, Weitzel and Muehlfeld (2019) ran a randomized experiment with 647 consultants at one firm. Making an internal idea competition opt-out rather than opt-in roughly tripled the number of people who submitted ideas (26 against 9), with no detectable drop in quality, though only 35 people submitted in all. That is a structural lever working where a message alone might not.

A direct request from the top cut turnover in one chain, with a trade-off. Friebel, Heinz and Zubanov (2022) ran a field experiment in a retail chain in which the chief executive asked store managers to do what they could to reduce staff turnover. According to the abstract, turnover fell by about a quarter for nine months, but store sales did not change, which the authors read as the gains from more time on staff being offset by less time on customers and goods. In this one chain, asking managers to focus on one thing moved it, and their time came from somewhere else.

Where the evidence is thin

The six-source model has not been tested as a whole in the evidence I use, and the studies above each test one lever in one organization, and the bank study compares only three branches. I also could not find a current publisher's page for the book, so its description here comes from a library record and the authors' company.

How it maps to the Unfrozen Loop

This mapping is my judgment. Choosing a few vital behaviors and trying them with the people who do the work is Start it close to the work, the part of the Unfrozen Loop where the manager leads the rollout with the team and trials it small. Working through respected peers is a form of Make sense together, top included. And the retail result is a warning for The middle's own weather: a new behavior asked of managers can take time from something else. See also the encyclopedia entry on the change agent.

What I take from it

The book's most useful discipline is the first step: naming the few behaviors that matter before launching anything. For your next change, write down the two behaviors that, if people did them every day, would make the change succeed. Then ask who on the team others already copy, and start with them. For a lighter book on the same ground, see Switch, and for the conversations that come with it, Crucial Conversations.