Page 139 - The Power to Change Anything

128 INFLUENCER

simple; long tasks and make them short; vague tasks and make
them specific; and high-stakes tasks and make them risk free.
If you want to see how to put short-term, specific, easy, low-
stakes goals into play on a much grander scale, take a look at
our friends at Delancey Street. The entering criminals and soci-
etal castoffs that Dr. Silbert works with are typically illiterate
and completely unskilled. Not only do they not have job
expertise or academic talent, but they also lack interpersonal
and social survival skills.
So what do you do when you have to teach residents
dozens or even hundreds of skills? You eat the elephant one
bite at a time. You select one domain, say a vocational skill such
as working in a restaurant, then choose a small skill in that area.
For example, on the very first night you teach the nervous new-
comer how to set a table—maybe just the forks. Then, this
novice who is very likely to be suffering from drug withdrawal
along with culture shock and other physical and emotional
problems practices placing the fork until he or she gets it right.
Next comes the knife.

Prepare for Setbacks; Build In Resilience

As important as it is to use baby steps to ensure short-term suc-
cess during the early phases of learning, if subjects experience
only successes early on, then failures can quickly discourage
them. A short history of easy successes can create a false expec-
tation that not much effort is required. Then if subjects run into
a problem, they become discouraged.
To deal with this problem, people need to learn that effort,
persistence, and resiliency are eventually rewarded with suc-
cess. Consequently, the practice regime should gradually intro-
duce tasks that require increased effort and persistence. As
learners overcome more difficult tasks and recover from inter-
mittent defeats, they see that setbacks aren’t permanent road-
blocks, but signals that they need to keep learning.