Ways of changing people

There are many reasons why we would want to change a person, maybe they have a specific character trait which is incompatible with a team, or maybe they are just very pessimistic, and you want to make them more optimistic. Perhaps they are somebody who is very divisive, or maybe they are difficult to deal with. In some other cases maybe you just want them to be hardworking, like a leader might want others to be a certain way.

Personally, in the corporate space, I like when people have a certain work ethic which permits us all to be efficient at what we do. The question I want us to answer today is how we can influence others into changing hopefully into something better.

As you may have noticed already, it can be very difficult to influence people and get them to change their character, especially when they are already of age and settled into very bad habits. Leaders have a hard time influencing others despite what you might think, most people are very resistant to change. It takes a lot of energy and effort to get people to change even from habits they know are destructive to them, complacency is way more comfortable. When you aren’t a leader, this is way more difficult because you have no authority over those people, so there is no incentive for them to listen or obey you.

Why are people so difficult to influence

There is a certain level of autonomy everybody must have which comes with being self-confident about most things in general. Once people know something and are comfortable with the level of information they have, it becomes very difficult to convince them of something else. We are all victims to this, even when you are trying to change a person you should ask yourself whether you aren’t the one who should rather change, else you fall into hypocrisy.

Once you are convinced that it's up to the other person to change, then you can move to the next step. People generally don’t change when they don’t have an incentive to do so, what is in it for them? A child has to obey his parents if he wants their love, a worker has to obey the boss because they want the salary, we all have to follow the law to stay out of prison etc*. In all of what shapes our character, there is always an incentive we are after.

Create an Incentive

You must create a compelling incentive when you want a person to change their character, it can’t just be you giving them an instruction else even if they do change, they’ll eventually revert to what they know. For the character change you want to see in them, there must be a permanent incentive they obtain which maintains such a character. You can’t just ask a person to work extra hours, which will entail for them waking up earlier and going back late, without changing or adding to the incentive they already have. This is just a sure way to make their character way worse, but by providing to them an incentive they value, they’ll be ready to do just that. It can either be a deterrent or something they actually look forward to.

Its for this precise reason parents have a hard time educating their kids, they don’t have any incentive to provide to them (at least not much the kids can comprehend) which leaves them with very little to work with.

Leading by example

One effective way you get to change people is leading by example and showing them how it is done. It will be blatant hypocrisy to ask people to do something that you wont do yourself so by showing how its done and promoting whatever change you want to see, you get to inspire others to follow in your footsteps especially when they see those actions providing value to them. That's why leaders usually have great influence on others, because their lives are open to the public, everybody can see what they do and what the effects those actions produce for them.

Its one thing to tell a person the right thing but its another thing to show a person the right thing.

Another aspect of leading by example which makes it very compelling is the tribal mindset, everyone likes to be part of something, either a social group or a movement. What leaders do is create this environment where everybody has a part to play and to be part of that group you will have to follow those rules. This means the leader decides what character trait everyone must have in order to preserve their spot, for the good or for the bad.

Rewards

Our society is a merit based one where we trade actions for value, basically everything we do is a trade of one thing for another, so we intrinsically understand the concept of reward. One way you get to change people is by rewarding them for doing the right things while reprimanding them for doing the wrong ones. This is the most common mechanism used in our society, things like “thank you”, “please”, “congratulations”, adulation etc. are all reward systems aimed at promoting a certain character.

This method can either be done slowly or much more aggressively by increasing the reward incentive. When you want to use this method, you have to ensure that the person receives and acknowledges the value from the reward, you cant change a person’s character if they don’t find any value from the reward you offer.

Encouragements and Empathy

Clear communication is a prerequisite to understanding and also taking action so that goes without even saying, now people also need a level of motivation and encouragement to pull through difficulties. Like a student having a hard time understanding a specific lesson would be revitalized to push to the end through some encouragement and motivation, people also like being encouraged to change. It rarely works to just impose change on people through force or compulsion but with some encouragements and empathy, when the change is a necessity then people are slowly going to accept and transition to it. Aside from this, you will need for the solution to be an inescapable one for most people to even consider going through the hard struggle of learning it.

Compulsion

By making change an unavoidable path you can effectively push people to it, of course this isn’t going to be applied to every circumstance but there are definitely instances where this is pertinent. For example, when change is a matter of life or death, in such a situation you can’t leave it to the opinions of people. In this case the incentive is much more of a deterrent than a reward, the best example being the law we all have to abide by. Left to everyone’s opinion we would all have our own version of the law and choose the ones we wish to follow, but by making it compulsory for everyone and putting an effective deterrent which is jail time, this shapes the character of everyone effectively around it.

Conclusion

There are other ways of changing people, some of which are less ethical, methods like; manipulation, playing on their psychology, authoritarianism and many more. All these methods are circumstantial, based on factors like the people you are trying to change, the environment you are found, your level of influence on them etc. The efficiency of each method would depend on these factors heavily. Make use of these techniques to change people positively.