MINDSPACE
MINDSPACE is an acronym for nine psychological (and largely unconscious) mechanisms or “nudges” that can influence our behavior. The nine are: Messenger, Incentives, Norms, Defaults, Salience, Priming, Affect, Commitment and Ego. This framework is used primarily by governments in the crafting of public policy aimed at influencing the behavior of citizens – for example smoking cessation, healthcare adoption, exercising more, making more effective retirement decisions and so on. However, I think there is big opportunity for leadership coaches to apply these techniques to help their clients become more effective.
Here is a summary of each of the nine elements:
Messenger (and the message)
When we are trying to influence employees’ behavior during change and transition, the source of information – the messenger – is both critical and complex; probably more so than most change leaders realize. For example, studies conducted and described by the social psychologist Elliot Aronson show that – largely unconsciously – we tend to believe and trust information from people we like irrespective of their level expertise. Likeability (or lack of) is a big influencing lever (as we are seeing play out in the Presidential elections right now). However, when the topic is complex, like healthcare choices, technical issues or retirement finances, people are influenced more by messages delivered by those considered experts. But, paradoxically, we are also less likely to listen to or believe an expert if we don’t like them (again, most of us are not aware of this influence and do not admit to it). And how about this fickle research finding: People are also more influenced by a message from an attractive person even when the message has nothing to do with being attractive (and this is despite people saying that they would never be influenced by something as absurd as how good-looking a person is. But they are!). To make things more complex, research suggests that when a leader uses an emotional appeal (especially if there is an element of fear in the message) versus a factual appeal, we are more likely to be influenced – despite the fact that the basic appeal is exactly the same, like “sign up for healthcare”. We are more heavily influenced by emotion versus pure fact.
If you are involved in organizational change management, you have undoubtedly been involved in the communications aspects of developing a change plan. Change leaders tend to build out communications spreadsheets with stakeholder audiences, messages, messages/media, timing and the like, but seldom include psychological considerations. Change leaders and coaches could add a great deal of leverage and influence to their communications by considering some of these psychological nudges.
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