Start With The Believers

Photo by Lindsay Doyle on Unsplash

I was having a conversation the other day about what it takes to drive change within a community and the person I was chatting with made an interesting point. 

She said that people often think that, in order to shift behaviors, we need to focus on those who don’t believe and are diametrically opposed to our ideas.

After all, if you can convert a naysayer, then you’ve unlocked the template for success. Rinse and repeat.

The reality, she suggested, was that this is a far harder path to pursue. The value for effort trade-off isn’t a good one. 

Better instead, to focus on those who believe already. Give them the tools, give them the training and enable them to succeed. In doing so, you begin to seed the right stories within that community. 

In other words, those who’ve achieved success will share those stories with others. 

At the same time, those around them (the ‘lesser believers’ if you will) will see their success and ask what and how. 

And when you have enough of those stories going round, others will want to emulate them, to become successes in their own right. 

Slowly but surely, then, the nonbelievers will come around. Because they’ll see that this is, indeed, the right path. 

It’s a good idea, one worth remembering. A reminder that the best path to success isn’t always the most obvious one.