For years, my friend Rick never really cared about the plight of orphans in Kenya. He knew that more than 15 million children there suffer from the effects of extreme poverty, and he had the financial means to make a difference. But it didn’t matter.
Then the missions pastor at Rick’s church invited him on a “scouting” trip to investigate possible partnerships for the church. Rick reluctantly agreed. Two weeks later, he called to tell us about it. With great emotion, our usually stoic friend talked about the beautiful children living in the slums of Nairobi. He sold his beloved Camaro and gave the money to a children’s relief organization. Rick’s wife wondered what had happened to her husband.
Rick was a changed man, and the principles behind what happened to him—and what must happen for any individual or organization to change—are the subject of Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard by Chip Heath and Dan Heath.
In Switch, the brothers Heath argue that all change is a matter of behavior, not mindset. “For anything to change, someone has to start acting differently,” the professors assert. The problem is that human beings experience a continual tension between what they know they should do, and what they want to do. We know we should eat healthier, yet we want the potato chips beckoning from the pantry. We know about orphans in Africa, yet we are not motivated to take action.
Borrowing an analogy from the book The Happiness Hypothesis, Heath and Heath describe this tension as a conflict between an Elephant, our emotional side, and its Rider, our rational side. “Perched atop the Elephant, the Rider holds the reins and seems to be the leader. But the Rider’s control is precarious because the Rider is so small compared to the Elephant.” But get the two to work together and clear the way for them to succeed, and change comes easily. Heath and Heath explain the three steps to lasting change.
Direct the Rider. Instead of focusing on what isn’t working in your organization and the myriad reasons why, simply investigate what is working and clone it. Then provide a specific plan of action for the first few critical moves. Finally, make sure you are always providing a vision of where you are going.
Motivate the Elephant. The Elephant is powerful, but he is motivated by emotions, not by rational thought. Most people, including ministers, think that change happens in this order: analyze-think-change. But the Heaths argue that the real sequence of change is see-feel-change. Once you tap people’s emotions, break the change down into manageable steps.
Clear the Path. The final step is to clear the Path; that is, make the new behavior as easy to implement as possible. The way to change behavior is to change the situation. But the situational change should also enforce new habits, because habitual behavior is not taxing to the Rider.
Many ministry leaders still believe that the best way to enact change is simply to convince congregants of the need for new behavior—to reason with the Rider without dealing with the Elephant or the Path.
In their research, the authors discovered three surprises about change that run counter to common ministry leadership assumptions.
Surprise #1: What looks like a people problem is often a situation problem. Perhaps the problem is not with the people in your congregation, but with the systems that reinforce their behaviors. What are you doing to enable the very behavior you are trying to change?
Surprise #2: What looks like laziness is often exhaustion. If new behaviors are too taxing, they stand little chance of developing into habits. Are you asking too much at once?
Surprise #3: What looks like resistance is often lack of clarity. Often change doesn’t happen because people aren’t given crystal-clear direction. Do you really know where you’re going, and do the people in your ministry know the next personal step to get there?
Five years after his first trip to Africa, my friend Rick has now given and raised thousands of dollars to aid children in Kenya. A few weeks ago, his wife boarded a plane to Africa to finally see for herself. A few days later, she wrote me about her experience of the smiles and hugs and songs of dozens of joyful orphans in Nairobi. Now I’m just waiting to see the “For Sale” sign in their yard.
Angie Ward is a Leadership contributing editor living in North Carolina.
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