The April “Influencers from Around the World”
post comes to us from Seoul, South Korea, thanks to my good friend Hoh Kim. Hoh
and I earned our Cialdini Method Certified Trainer® designations together in
2008. Hoh is an incredibly intelligent individual and an expert when it comes to
ethical influence. I encourage you to check out his website, The
Lab h,
and his blog, Cool Communications. Hoh is also on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter so reach out to connect with him.

Brian Ahearn, CMCT® 
Chief Influence Officer

influencePEOPLE 
Helping You Learn to Hear “Yes”.

“Tiny Habits” and Principle of Consistency

Many of you may have heard about a recent
bestseller, The small Big, by Steve
Martin, Noah Goldstein, and Robert Cialdini. I recently co-translated this book
into Korean language and it is now in Korean bookstores too. Big differences
influencing others can come about from small changes. The “small big” principle
also applies when I want to create a new habit. Recently, I participated in a
program called “Tiny Habits for Work” by Liz Guthridge. Liz uses “tiny
habit” methods created by Dr. B.J. Fogg. The program was interesting and
quite useful. Let me introduce what I learned from the program about “tiny
habits” as it may be quite useful for you too.

When a new year starts, we normally think
about creating a new habit such as to stop smoking, eat less, exercise more,
read more, etc. Normally, in the first week of January, our motivation to try
new things is quite high, but then doesn’t last long. Probably, by the end of
January, we return to “normal state.” Motivation is not reliable, and you
should not try things based solely on your motivation. So what we have to try are
“tiny habits.” According to the handout of the program, tiny habit
can be defined as follows: 1) you do at least once a day; 2) that takes you
less than 30 seconds; 3) that requires little effort.

Then, there is a recipe for tiny habits. You
need to combine “anchor” behavior (which you already established and do every
day) and new “tiny habits.” Liz recommended I come up with three tiny habits,
and here they are:

— AFTER my feet touch the floor, I will state
my one big intention for the day.

— AFTER I hang up the phone, I will take
three deep breaths.

— AFTER I lay down at night, I will think of
one thing about work for which I’m grateful.

Do you get the idea? You link new “tiny habits”
to behaviors you naturally do every day. Some of the other examples given were,
“After I get in the car, I will think of one thing I can do differently and
better at work today” and “After I walk through the office door, I will smile
at the first person I see.”

Among the three tiny habits, the second tiny
habit didn’t work well. I kept forgetting it. So, Liz shared an explanation with
me. As I would take too many calls, it might be hard to do every time. That being
the case, we looked to see if I could change to something I do once a day such
as “AFTER I return to office from a lunch time…”

While participating in this program, I thought
about the principle of consistency. When influencing
others, it often is useful to leverage small commitment. The tiny habit method
is also in line with the “foot-in-the-door” technique. You start small (tiny
habit), and if you can do the tiny habit continuously then you can move to a
bigger habit.

We are already into April so perhaps it is
good time to reflect our New Year’s resolutions. If there’s something that didn’t
work out as planned, perhaps you might be interested in trying the tiny habit.
By the way, among the six principles of influence, the principle of consistency
has an important difference from other five principles. It is about
self-persuasion.

Hoh Kim

Founder, Head Coach & Lead Facilitator,
THE LAB h

Address: THE LAB h, 15F. Kyobo Bldg. Jongno 1,
Jongno, Seoul 110-714, Korea

E-mail: hoh.kim@thelabh.com

Phone: 82-2-2010-8828