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Vital Behaviors

"A few behaviors can drive a lot of change" (Influencer, Pg. 23)

Influence geniuses know that enormous influence comes from focusing on just a few vital behaviors. When you identify and yield changes in just a handful of high leverage behaviors, even the most resistant, pervasive, and profound problems will change for the better.

To help you identify the vital behaviors linked to the problems you are facing, we've compiled the contemporary advice and research of experts and practitioners who are learning each day which behaviors lead to the greatest changes.

Read their practical suggestions by clicking a category of interest below:

Business	Education
Heathcare	Weight Loss

Business

According to a study done by VitalSmarts and The Concours Group, 72 to 91 percent of major corporate projects fail. The study found root causes for breakdown and the vital behaviors needed to significantly reduce the project failures.

Vital behaviors include holding “crucial conversations” around the following five topics:

1. Fact-Free Planning
2. Skirting
3. Team Failures
4. Project Chicken
5. AWOL Sponsors

Education

According to Dr. Ethna Reid and the thousands of hours she and her colleagues have spent conducting best practice studies, there are eight vital teaching behaviors to ensure success among students. They are as follows:

1. Reinforce correct responses and positive behavior
2. Elicit rapid overt responses
3. Closely monitor students’ responses
4. Increase rate of responses among all students
5. Expect learning mastery (83 to 100 percent accuracy)
6. Reteach when students fail to learn
7. Model for students during instruction
8. Teach reading, writing, listening, and speaking in all fields

Healthcare

Each year in our hospitals, one in twenty patients will be given the wrong medication, 3.5 million will get an infection from someone who didn’t take proper precautions, and 195,000 will die as a result of mistakes made during hospital stays. The American Association of Critical-Care Nurses and VitalSmarts released a study called Silence Kills which has shown vital behaviors that dramatically reduce such mistakes in healthcare.

Vital behaviors include holding “crucial conversations” around the following seven topics:

1. Broken Rules
2. Mistakes
3. Lack of Support
4. Incompetence
5. Poor Teamwork
6. Disrespect
7. Micromanagement

Weight Loss

According to the National Weight Control Registry, the following three behaviors have been found to be the most important to losing weight and keeping it off:

• Exercise at home
• Eat breakfast every morning
• Weigh yourself more than once a week

Find out more:

• National Weight Control Registry: www.nwcr.ws
• Jane E. Brody. “Personal Health: Weight Loss Is Possible,” New York Times. Sept 16, 1997