Page 274 - The Power to Change Anything

Become an Influencer 263

For instance, when it comes to your own health care,
here’s an interesting best practice. It’s wise to talk with your per-
sonal physician with the idea that any lingering symptoms you
experience might have more than one underlying medical
cause. Recent research into how doctors think reveals that
patients who say, “Yes, it sounds like I might have X, but could
there be something else going on as well?” are more likely to
resolve their overall health problems than those who hold to
the belief that if they treat one source of the problem, they will
be fine.
Left to our natural tendencies, most of us make poor use
of the vast array of the tools that can help improve performance.
When it comes to complex interpersonal skills, we rarely think
to make use of deliberate practice. For instance, in the fields
of leadership and interpersonal influence, students are rarely
taught specific behaviors that they can then rehearse while
receiving detailed feedback from a trained coach. In-
stead, students are taught “from the neck up” a set of ideas that
rarely leads to changes in behavior.
The ability to withstand yearnings and temptations is rarely
viewed as a skill. Instead, the ability to overcome enticements
is routinely attributed to inherent, DNA-driven personality
characteristics. Consequently, almost nobody actually practices
methods for delaying gratification. When people don’t believe
that the ability to withstand cravings is skill based, they rely on
every source of motivation imaginable. Eventually their
inevitable failure leads to depression and helplessness rather
than a search for newer and better skills.
Social capital also remains a largely untouched resource for
enabling change. Often we’re led to believe that battles need
to be won within the confines of one’s own heart. Heroes have
first and last names, not collective descriptors such as “team”
or “group.” Consequently, asking for help is seen as a weakness
rather as than a savvy strategy. Master influencers know better.
They identify those who need to be added to the change effort