Influence: You don’t have to be famous to make change.

A new study in the journal Nature Communications finds that as popular as social influencers seem to be, when it comes to changing someone’s behavior by example, they aren’t actually that effective.?

“When social influencers present ideas that are dissonant with their followers’ worldviews —say, for example, that vaccination is safe and effective —they can unintentionally antagonize the people they are seeking to persuade,” says Damon Centola, Elihu Katz Professor of Communication, Sociology, and Engineering at Penn, “because people typically only follow influencers whose ideas confirm their beliefs about the world.”

One of five relationship management competencies in Daniel Goleman’s framework of Emotional Intelligence, Influence is the ability to have a positive impact on others in order to gain their support.?

Many associate Influence with status.

But in truth, you don’t need to be Beyonce, Tony Robbins, or that person on Instagram with 100K followers to influence change.?

While popularity and privilege certainly dictate who has power and who has access to a large audience—humility, authenticity, and consistency play an even more critical role in our ability to convince and persuade others .

Centola’s research looks at the power of networks, and shows us that ”every network has a hidden social cluster in the outer edges that is perfectly poised to increase the spread of a new idea by several hundred percent.” Centola says “These social clusters are ground zero for triggering tipping points in society.”

Understanding how people embrace change and the psychology of why they reject it allows us to Influence more effectively.?

This makes me think of The Rogers Adoption Curve , a useful way to understand a group's openness to new ideas.?

By dividing adopters up into five groups—innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards—Roger’s curve helps us understand the different psychologies that determine the rate of buy-in.

When it comes to influence, we know that our early adopter has a tolerance for risk, is often informed, and likes to be a social leader. In contrast, the laggards rely mostly on their friends and neighbors for information.

Rogers model also proposes a five stage approach to the diffusion of new ideas:

1. Knowledge – learn about the idea
2. Persuasion – become convinced of its value?
3. Decision – commit to adoption
4. Implementation – put it to use
5. Confirmation – evaluate it's effectiveness and either keep or get rid of it

For the person seeking to Influence, 1, 2 and 3 are where the work is.

After all, we have entire brain mechanisms devoted to evaluating risk based on past experiences, filling in holes in understanding, and affirming our own biases.

We also have stress, anxiety, fear, ego and all the other things that prevent us from staying open to new ideas.?

The better we can educate, explain, and draw connections between the value of our ideas and the values of our audience, the more adeptly we can prevent potential adopters from launching to “confirmation" too soon. ?

This not only takes Empathy — a critical competency for understanding the values and world views of others— but it takes Self-Awareness and Emotional Balance to communicate clearly and stay focused on the true purpose of what we want to achieve.?

Famous or not, understanding how Influence works and the competencies we need to achieve it, can positions us to being more effective in persuading others.

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