Interviewing an Influencer

I interviewed Zachary Sheaps. He is a secretary for the Minority Association of Pre-Medical Students (MAPS) as well as the secretary for the Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity. Zachary is a junior on the pre-med track striving to pursue a career in chemical research. We talked for about 20 minutes about his aspiration and his attempts to influence others within his organizations, whether successful or not.

I chose to interview Zachary because of his position within these organizations. I believed that he would give a different perspective on influence as a student leader as opposed to being a professor or staff. It's a little different attempting to lead and influence your peers when you both are experiencing the same thing and one or is in a position of power over the other. I was also curious to see how an influence attempt would be more of a power struggle or if it was an influence over time.

As a secretary, Zachary records necessary discussions and information that will help the organizations function and move smoothly. He described a time when he attempted to influence his peers within his fraternity by addressing some of the behavior that they were exhibiting. He said he pulled his peers aside and told them that their behavior was unacceptable and explained to them why their behavior needed to change. His goal in doing this was to hold his peers accountable so that the organization overall would be represented properly. He said, "My responsibility is to make sure the organization is at its best and when I see people not doing that, I'm not doing my job." (Zachary Sheaps) When asked if the influence attempt worked, he said he didn't believe it did because the behavior of the students didn't change. Thus I concluded that a behavior change was the way of measurement for this attempt. I thought that this was interesting because, depending on the behavior, it is hard to stop immediately. He later said that he realized that his approach might have needed to change or that this is something that he would have to address multiple times in order for a change to be seen. The attempt wasn't memorable in his eyes. He said that he believes what he said was heard but the importance of it wasn't understood.

He confessed that he believes that the reason the influence attempt didn't work was because his actions didn't mirror what he wanted his peers to do. He recognized that if he was going to call people out on the wrong that they did, he would have to do the right thing as well. From this he concluded that by changing his actions others might change and it helped to some extent.

From this interview, I saw that Zachary was originally trying to use power instead of influence and it didn't work because he wasn't practicing what he was preaching. However, in the long run, if he begins to incorporate the messages from How to Win Friends and Influence People, more people may listen.