Dynamic Yale professor rewrites the rules of persuasion in this breakthrough pop psych book – think Dale Carnegie for do-gooders or Quiet meets Robert Cialdini ’s Influence.
“Once upon a time, on an auspicious day in history, you were
born— influential. In fact, influence was your only means of
survival. You had no sharp teeth or claws to protect you. You
couldn’t run away or camouflage yourself. You didn’t seem that
smart yet, but you had an innate ability to express your desires,
connect with other human beings, and persuade them to take
care of you. Which they did, day and (sleepless) night, for years.
When you learned to speak, you expressed yourself more
precisely, using your words to become even more influential.
You told people what you wanted and what you absolutely did
not want. NO! You learned quickly that life could be negotiable
and began asking for later bedtimes, more television, your favorite
treats. You were like a tiny carpet merchant in a Moroccan
bazaar. Wielding influence was as automatic as breathing.
You were growing physically stronger too, but your greatest
strength was the power to persuade people to take action on
your great ideas.
Interpersonal influence is our human advantage, passed
down in our DNA. It is what allowed our species to band together,
work together, and span the globe. It will remain our
advantage in an increasingly digital world, for as long as people
are in charge. It has given you the success you already have,
and it’s the path to what you’re still hoping to do. It’s the love
you’ll share in this life and the legacy you’ll leave behind when
you die.
But things aren’t that simple, are they? Even though you
know that all this is true, influence got more complicated as
you grew up. While your childhood sphere of influence was
expanding, you were also being taught to be obedient and play
nice. To comply with norms, rules, parents, and teachers. You
were discouraged from being “bossy” or demanding. You were
taught to work hard in order to be deserving, wait your turn,
not make waves, not take up too much space. Advocating for
other people was okay, but doing it for yourself was boastful.
The influence you had once enjoyed no longer felt so natural,
and you began to have mixed feelings about it.
When people are asked if they’d like to be more influential,
they say yes— because influence is power. Being influential
gives us the ability to create change, direct resources, and move
hearts and minds. It acts like gravity, pulling us together into
relationships. It’s a path to happiness; to prosperity that’s meaningful,
durable, and contagious.
But when people are asked about influence strategies and
influence tactics, they describe them as “manipulative,”
“sneaky,” and “coercive.” The whole idea of influence has been
corrupted by tacky, greedy people using tacky, greedy tactics to
sell used cars, to promote sponsors’ products on social media,
and to get us to buy now, while supplies last! Even some of my
favorite influence gurus like Robert Cialdini and Chris Voss encourage
us to use “weapons of influence” for “beating our opponents.”
Marketers (I’m one of them) refer to customers as
“targets,” like a pickup artist or a con artist might. Academic
researchers (I’m one of them, too) have called study participants
“subjects” and their experiments “manipulations.” Transactional
influence treats people like objects.
These tactics might be standard for sales and marketing, but
they just don’t work in most everyday situations. They don’t
work with your boss, your colleagues, your employees, your
friends, or your family. If you want to build a relationship, and
maintain one, you can’t use the same tricks you’d use to sell a
car. Even business success ultimately depends on long- term relationships
in the form of referrals, word of mouth, customer
loyalty, and employee retention. You want people to be happy
to say yes both today and in the future.
When you become someone people want to say yes to, you
are heavily rewarded. Money might not be your top priority,
but it helps you get other things done, and it can be a benchmark
for influence. It’s no coincidence that jobs relying on interpersonal
influence are well compensated. Top salespeople
make more money than their CEOs; lobbyists earn more than
the politicians they influence. Becoming more influential pays
other tangible dividends too— doctors who communicate better
are far less likely to be sued for malpractice regardless of
their patients’ outcomes, and executives who are trained to
communicate get rated as better leaders.
People who shift from transactional, win- lose influence to
the personal, mutual influence you’ll be rediscovering in this
book can reap intangible rewards like becoming a better friend,
a more trusted adviser, and a more engaged partner and parent.
“Even those of us who are comfortable influencing people in some domains tend to feel helpless in others.”
We can rekindle the childhood spark that had us dreaming,
asking, advocating, negotiating, and persisting without second-guessing
ourselves. We can see faces light up when we share a
great idea or propose something crazy that just might work; we
can shake on deals we were embarrassed to even dream of;
we can enjoy the comfort and freedom that come from success;
and we can sigh in relief as our resistant boss, employee,
child, parent, partner, or friend smiles, and says, “Okay, let’s
do it.”
Maybe you already feel influential, say, with customers. But
even those of us who are comfortable influencing people in
some domains tend to feel helpless in others. I’ve worked with
CEOs who were afraid to ask their teenage daughters to clean
up their rooms, Wall Street traders who felt awkward trying to
get a busy bartender’s attention, rising politicians so uncomfortable
“dialing for dollars” that they had to switch careers,
and famous activists willing to be jailed for the rights of others
who felt their throats close up when trying to advocate for
themselves.
I find that kind people are particularly reluctant to try to
influence others because they don’t want to manipulate anyone.
And smart people are more likely to misunderstand the
way influence works. So if you’re a kind, smart person, you
have a double liability that keeps you from being as influential
as you could be. But as you shift your perspective and practice
some new tools, you’ll find some of these obstacles melting
away.
Here are ten misperceptions we’ll explore.
1. Pushy = influential.
Actually, the opposite is true. Being influential requires
being influenceable. And making people comfortable saying
no makes them inclined to say yes.
2. If they understand the facts, they’ll make the right decision.
Because the mind doesn’t work the way we think it does,
facts are far less persuasive than we think they are. We’ll
explore how decisions are really made and you’ll learn
more effective ways to encourage other people to make
good choices.
3. People act on their values and their conscious decisions.
We all want to act on our values and conscious decisions,
but the gap between our intentions and our behavior is a
vast abyss. Changing someone’s mind doesn’t necessarily
mean you’re influencing their behavior (which is the goal).
4. Becoming influential involves persuading disbelievers and
bending resistant people to your will.
No, the success of your great idea depends on enthusiastic
allies. Your efforts to find, empower, and motivate them
will go much further than your efforts to overcome people’s
resistance.
5. A negotiation is a battle.
You might assume negotiations are adversarial, but most
people are just trying not to be suckers. The more experienced
a negotiator is, the more likely they are to be
collaborative— which makes them more successful.
6. Asking for more will make people like you less.
How they feel about you depends more on how you ask
than how much you ask for. And when both parties (including
you) are happy with how things work out, they’re
much more likely to follow through.
7. The most influential people can get anyone to do anything.
This isn’t how it works, which is a good thing, both for
them and for you.
8. You’re a good judge of character and can spot a con a mile
away.
Unfortunately, we’re all terrible at lie detection. But I’ll
show you some red flags to watch for so you can protect
yourself and others from people who would use influence
to harm you.
9. People don’t listen to people like you.
A voice might be telling you that to get other people’s attention,
you’d have to be more extroverted, or older, or
younger, or more attractive, better- educated, more experienced,
the right race, or a native speaker. In this book,
you’ll learn to speak so other people listen— and listen so
they’ll speak.
10. You don’t deserve to have power, or money, or love— or
whatever you secretly wish for.
I won’t try to persuade you that you deserve to be influential;
I don’t even know what that would mean. What I do
know is that influence doesn’t flow to those who deserve it
but to those who understand and practice it. And soon, that
will be you.
Being bad at something you care about— and having to
study and practice, and work hard at it— might not seem like a
gift. But when your skills improve, you’ll know exactly how
you developed them, and you can replicate the process and
even teach it to other people. I know this from personal experience.
Extracted from Influence is your Superpower by Zoe Chance, out now.
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