Mentoring My Brother: A Journey in Personal Finance and Self-Esteem

The relationship influencing example I chose to chronicle for this assignment was the decision to mentor my younger brother in the areas of personal finances and self -esteem. Without knowing it at the time, I managed to use the influencing strategies of Personal Motivation, Personal Ability and Structural Motivation. By offering the necessary encouragement and ongoing support, my brother was able to harness his work ethic and find his personal motivation to change. This was followed up by informal lessons on the power of good credit and how easy it is to get on the right track. We set up a timeline with various goals (credit card approval, raising credit score to 600, starting a retirement plan etc.) Although the goals in and of themselves

These goals were purely quantitative in nature with associated timeframes for each goal. When deciding on a relationship influencing example for this assignment, I thought applying the “influencer” strategies to my personal life seems so trivial in comparison to the examples in the book. Then I read that “the Influencer Change Model is about changing behaviors to achieve measurable results. And you change behavior by changing motivation and ability across personal, social, and structural aspects.” (The Influencer) This is precisely the approach I took, again, not know anything about influencer

Conversely, we all have the ability to influence change. The key for my brother was to tap into his personal motivation, the fact that he wanted start a family one day and that would take getting his financial house in order. It’s not enough to tell someone how to fix their credit or manage their finances, you must uncover the personal motivation for the change for it to have any lasting or real effect. It was critical that I create an environment that allowed my brother to have personal involvement and accountability, yet still be able to teach him new skills. I was not going to do the work for him, it’s akin to hiring someone else to do your pushups. In the end we managed to uncover the real motivation for him wanting to change and utilized personal ability and structural motivation to provide the framework. I’m happy to say that my brother is recently engaged and well on his way to financial