A little romance and fear in a manager’s life

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In their book “Yes! 50 scientifically proven ways to be persuasive“, Noah J. Goldstein, Steve J. martin and Robert B. Cialdini describe the six principals of persuasion: 

1. Reciprocation – we feel obligated to return favours performed for us.
2. Authority – We look for experts to show us the way.
3. Commitment / Consistency – we want to act consistently with our commitments and values
4. Scarcity – the less available the resource, the more we want it.
5. Liking – the more we like people, the more we want to yes to them.
6. Social proof – we look to what others do to guide our behaviour.

In a recent article in the May issue of the “Inside Influence Report” called: “Follow The Crowd? Or Go It Alone?” Steve Martin describes a new experiment aimed to test the effects emotions have on the Scarcity and Social Proof principals, especially fear and romance. The claim is that potentially, experiencing great fear or a romance just before being persuaded using either Scarcity or Social Proof can increase the effectiveness of the persuasion effort. They found that there is relationship between the four, but not equal. This is how they summarized the findings:

In summary, the study showed that fear can lead to messages using social proof as potentially being more persuasive than messages that use scarcity information. However feelings of romance would cause the opposite to be the case

This got me thinking on the importance of communication for managers and leaders. I wrote on this subject a number of times before, communicating accurately, is one of the biggest challenges of managers and leaders. Thus, every tip we can get could be important.

By now you are probably asking what does that have to do with us? Fear? Romance? All very nice and dandy, but not very practical. I beg to differ.

First, I urge you to read the last paragraph of the article. Describing different implications for marketers, salespeople and managers.

Second, I want to remind you that a great deal of what managers and leaders do is tell a story. For example, there is no doubt that the story being told today, in the midst of the global financial crisis is one of fear. But after that story, or together with that story, we want to motivate and persuade to action. Knowing which persuasion tactic to employ is crucial, if we want to be able to influence our employees and followers.

Elad

Iconoclast

Photo by Ilan Sharif

I just finished reading a very interesting book called “Iconoclast” (read more about the term iconoclasm), by Gregory Berns. The book describes what is unique about people who do things that others say can’t be done. By using case studies of remarkable people from all fields of society, sports to business, science and space flight  to human rights, and combining it with new research about the way the brain works, Berns makes a compelling argument about what makes these people so unique. This basic theory is that iconoclast can be distinguished by three traits: a perceptual system that allows him to see differently from other people, the ability to conquer fear of the unknown and social intelligence to sell ideas to other people.

As usual, a few thought about this book:

1. I think tis books amplifies two messages I deal a lot with here in this blog. The first one is the importance of the comparative advantage and use of the uniqueness of strengths. As it turns out, even those people who have one of the traits of an iconoclast don’t hold all three of them. This means, that they need to corporate. They need to find someone who can complete what they lack in order to do things that can’t be done. This means that one of the most important things you can do is concentrate on your strengths and find someone else to take care of your weaknesses.

2. The second one is the importance of leadership. I already mentioned that I strongly believe that the most important role of a leader is, as Markus Buckingham describes it, to create a clear picture of the future. Because most people are afraid of the future and afraid of the unknown. The people who succussed in doing things that other thought were impossible, were not deterred by the uncertainty the future holds. They managed to overcome their fear. As a leader, your role is to help people do just that. To complete the picture, check out item number one. Maybe your ability to as a leader to make the future less frightening will be just what others need in order to bring their iconoclast ability of perception to reality.

3. One of the biggest problems iconoclast face is the ability to persuade others of their ideas. We all know this. Great inventions and discoveries take a long time to come about, many times because the guy who thought about them just has to wait for the entire current community to die or leave. In the book, Berns says that an iconoclast has two options. Either try to persuade the early adopters, which means you have to find the right way to reach them, or make your idea more compatible with present ideas. This is a known trick in presentations – if you are having a hard time explaining something new, use something old. If any of you ever saw the TV show “Numbers” you recognize the great use of everyday concepts to explain complicated mathematical ideas. This is just the same. It is what the authors of “Made to stick” call: the curse of knowledge. Your own knowledge does not allow you to see how other people who don’t know what you know think. When you are presenting something, think what your audience already knows and use that concept to explain yours.

4. Finally, reading about so many people who took the current reality and just smashed it, is inspiring. These people disregarded what everybody said and changed most of our lives. Each and every one of you can do that every day. It is simple. Just like Tim Berners Lee says in his TED talk: it is time for you to become the sort of person who just does things which will be good if everybody else did them.

5. Even if you don’t do anything ground breaking, the ride a good enough reason.

Elad

can you learn how to presude?

Photo by Neuibe

A few days ago I finished reading “The 7 triggers to yes – the new science behind influencing people’s decisions” by Russell H. Granger  (you can check out the book’s site here). In the last few weeks, I hit the jackpot with all the books I read and recommended them here on this blog. Unfortunately, with this book, I can’t do that. Well, it is not that it is a bad book. I just think it will be helpful to specific people.  I guess this needs a little pit of explaining…

I bought this book because its title and description led me to believe that I will learn a lot about the science behind people’s decisions. Lately, I have been reading some fascinating books about this subject (like the amazing “YES!” and Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman’s book (with co-authors) “Rationality, Fairness, Happiness”) and I wanted to know more about it. What I discovered, is that the book doesn’t actually describe the science behind people’s decisions. It only explains that there is science. If you compare this book to “YES!” which actually describes many of the experiments behind the rules for persuasion, than you discover that this book only promises explanations, but does not supply them.

Like previous books I wrote about here, this book tries to break the conventional wisdom that great arguments persuade.  To put it in general terms the book main thesis is that most of time, most of the people, don’t make decisions which are based on their intellect but make decisions based on their emotions, and then, justify them with their intellect. So, if you want to persuade, you need to use people’s emotions and not apply to their logic. The main idea in the books id derived from a statement by Dr. Richard Restak, Neuropsychologist and author of “The Secret Life of the Brain“, saying: “We are not thinking machines – we are feeling machines that think“.  The book claims, that by understanding this concept (which is based on brain research which is described shortly) and by using 7 triggers (Friendship, Authority, Consistency, Reciprocity, Contrast, Reason Why and Hope), you can become a master persuader.

The reason I cannot recommended this book to everybody is that it tries to convince the reader that anybody can be a master persuader by following the process described in the book using the 7 triggers. I was not persuaded. I just don’t believe that everybody can learn to excel at anything. I believe, like Marcus Buckingham claims in his book, “First, breaking all the rules” that people are different and there is a limit to what they can learn. I expected that a book based on brain research will take into account the fact that each of us develop mental pathways (that can actually be seen of on our brains) that create recurring behaviours. These behaviours are our talents or our strengths.  This means, that even if I used all the process described in the book, I will never be a master persuader.  This is due to the fact that I just don’t have the inherent ability to use these processes, because this ability requires a talent to communicate with people, to learn about them and then use this knowledge a talent I don’t have and that no matter how hard I try, I will never excel at.

The books tries to tell us that persuasion is a key component of many leaders describing people like Donald Trump, Bill Gates and Lee Iacocca who used their persuasion skills to accomplish great things. I think this just proves the opposite. These people had the basic talent to do it naturally without learning about the 7 triggers. If they had learned the the 7 triggers, they would have been able to enhance their abilities. People like me, who are not conversationalist, who find it hard to chit-chat with other people, who don’t naturally learn about other people, will never be able to use the concepts of the book.

So, it is not that you can’t learn anything from this book or that you can’t improve some of your persuasions skills and techniques after reading it. But, if you (or somebody you know) have great communication skills, which enable you to learn a lot of information about other people in short periods and are able to use it, this book can really make the difference. It will give you (or whoever you buy it for) the ideas, skills and triggers to transform from a natural good persuader, to a master persuader.

Elad