Social Engineering Blogs

An Aggregator for Blogs About Social Engineering and Related Fields

Influencers from Around the World – A Short Course in Human Relations

This month our Influencers from Around the World guest post comes from someone who is familiar to long-time readers of Influence PEOPLE – Anthony McLean. Anthony is Australia’s one and only Cialdini Method Certified Trainer (CMCT®). He heads up the Social Consulting Group where he teaches people about the principles of influence. I encourage you to reach out to Anthony on LinkedIn and Twitter to learn more from him.Brian Ahearn, CMCT® Chief Influence Officer influencePEOPLE Helping You Learn to Hear “Yes”. A Short Course in Human RelationsA past participant of the Principles of Persuasion Workshop sent me the important message below. His name is Peter, and he pointed out “There’s plenty of ‘POP’ in this.” Of course he was right.Let’s break it down one line at a time and let me show you why there is so much of Dr. Robert Cialdini’s Principles of Persuasion in this short piece.The six most important words – I admit that I was wrong.In the Principles of Persuasion Workshop we teach the Principle of Authority which says we look to those with extra knowledge or wisdom on a topic to guide our thinking when we are not sure what we should do. As part of being an Authority you must be seen as credible and one of the most important elements to being credible is being trustworthy. If I was to try to take advantage of you, I would never admit a mistake, let you know I got something wrong or was lacking in some area of my product or service. But an Authority never hides from weaknesses. They admit when they are wrong. Why? Because they know how to make it better. So remember, it’s a mistake to hide a mistake. Admit it, and admit it quickly, then set about explaining how you intend to make it right. If you don’t, one of your competitors will highlight it and then your credibility is gone.The Five most important words – You did a great job.Everybody likes to be told they have done a great job. These five simple words go a long way to triggering the Principle of Liking. Praise is something that when given genuinely and selectively is a truly valuable tool in building, repairing and maintaining relationships with others. Therefore don’t throw praise around all of the time so it becomes common and of little substance. Give your praise when it is deserved, make it specific and give it genuinely. If at work delivering praise directly is inappropriate consider influencing the influencers and deliver the praise indirectly to the person’s boss, colleague or friends and allow them to deliver the message for you.The four most important words – What do you think?On the face of it you may ask, how does this question relate to persuasion? The answer is, all too often people make statements but they don’t ask questions. Firstly this is poor form because it is more aligned to ordering rather than engaging and, secondly, when you make statements you remove one very important element from the interaction – the ability of someone to commit to something. The Principle of Consistency says we encounter personal and interpersonal pressure to remain consistent with previous commitments or decisions we have made. If you ask me a question and allow me to answer, it provides me the opportunity to make a commitment; publicly voicing my ideas and actively committing toward a course of action. In your next meeting, think about the questions you ask. Craft well-constructed questions and give others the opportunity to answer them. Telling someone what to do or making statements does nothing to engage their intrinsic motivators to drive the situation forward.The three most important words – Could you please…This line is an interesting one, firstly because the Principle of Reciprocity says we are obliged to give back to those who have given to us first. A nuance to the principle is, if you are struggling to build a relationship with someone, ask him or her to do you a favor. In doing so they need to have a shift in thinking because we don’t do things for people we don’t like.  Therefore by asking them to do you a favor moves them in your direction ever so slightly and allows for a relationship to commence. The second point I would make is to refine the statement. “Could you” and “Can you” are permission statements. They seek to gain permission or acknowledgement. The problem is if I say to my eight-year-old son, “Could you clean up your room?” and he says, “Yes,” is he actually committing to clean his room or is he just saying, “Yes I can, but no I won’t.”?Therefore in seeking to gain a commitment to trigger the Principle of Consistency. ask people active questions that gain a commitment such as “Will you…” then wait for the answer.The two most important words – Thank you.Thanking someone is not only polite, it’s an important element in building and maintaining healthy relationships. Therefore when someone does something that you appreciate be sure to tell them and acknowledge their contributions. Doing so invests in the relationship and can trigger the Principle of Reciprocity.The other thing is when someone thanks you for something you have done you must learn to accept genuine thanks differently. If someone delivers a heartfelt thank you and you say “no problem” or “I would have done it for anyone” you are devaluing the relationship. You are in effect saying, “You are not that important to me and neither is this relationship.”Therefore, from now on listen for genuine thanks from others and recognise it as an opportunity to acknowledge the relationship you have and highlight that it is not over. Anything you say will be better than “no problem,” but you must do a better job of accepting thanks when it is genuinely given.The most important word – We.The fastest and easiest way to describe a relationship is through the pronoun “we.” It highlights you are working together and you have things in common. Listen to when people use “we” in a conversation and they may just tell you when they start to see you are in a functional, working relationship with them, all through the use of the word “we.”One word of warning though; don’t use “we” too early in a relationship or with someone you have just met to describe the two of you – it can come off as not genuine and a tactic rather than a true reflection of your relationship with the person. Let the relationship build and use “we” when appropriate to do so.The least important word – I.The biggest mistake I see when reviewing emails, copy and websites for clients is the text is all about the persuader and not about the person or group they are seeking to persuade. A very simple test is to do a word search and see how many times you use “I” as opposed to the other person’s name or even the words you, your or yours. If you talk about yourself more than the other person or group of people you have missed the mark.The other thing is they should always appear in your email before you do. I am not talking about their name in the greeting but in the first line. If you start off with,Hi Brian,  I want to write you about the new product I am bringing to the market….This is wrong – it’s all about you. Instead put them and their needs first. Such as:Hi Brian, It was great to have met you at the conference and to listen to your thoughts on the new policy change impacting our organisation. You may be interested in a new product we are launching. Based on your comments I think it will help you…..Therefore for a bunch of short sentences I will paraphrase my friend Peter and say, “There is a lot of POP in them!” Anthony McLean, CMCT

The 7 Most Common Persuasion Mistakes

When I work with students in the Principles of Persuasion workshop we talk about three kinds of persuasion practitioners: bunglers, smugglers and detectives. Here’s a quick synopsis of each:Detectives are folks who understand the principles of influence and look for genuine opportunities to use them in order to create a win for themselves as well as the person or people they seek to influence.Smugglers are individuals who also have some understanding but they look for shortcuts through manipulation. They find it easier to distort the truth or lie outright in their use of the principles of influence so they can get what they want no matter the cost to others. Bunglers are people who don’t understand the persuasion process or principles and therefore miss opportunities to be more effective when it come to persuasion. Or, they might intuitively know a few things about the principles but don’t understand how to effectively use them. Unfortunately the vast majority of people fall into this category and they make predictable mistakes.In this post we’ll look at some of the most common mistakes people make when trying to persuade others. No offense, but if you find yourself doing these things, you’re bungling away persuasion opportunities.Validating undesirable behavior. There’s a lot of bad stuff that happens in society. For example; too many kids try cigarettes and cheat in school; far too many people don’t vote; violent behavior seems to be on the rise, etc. When you talk about what many people are doing – consensus – you tend to validate the bad behavior. This can cause more people to do the very thing you’re preaching against! Instead, you want to point out good behavior you want people to emulate. This approach was validated in the last two presidential elections where people were told to get to the polls early because record turnouts were expected. Those turnouts materialized. Highlighting gain instead of loss. I’ve shared in recent posts about homeowners who, when told about energy saving recommendations, were informed they would either save $180 by implementing the energy saving ideas or that they would lose $180 if they failed to implement the ideas, the latter of which is an application of the principle of scarcity. Everyone I share that study with correctly guesses more people in the “lose” group made the necessary changes. And they’re correct — 150% more people in the lose group chose to incorporate the energy saving ideas. Despite intuitively knowing this, most people still go out and talk about all the things someone will gain, or save, by going with their idea. Perhaps they fear coming across as negative but they’re failing to apply the most persuasive approach and they won’t hear yes as often.Confusing contracts with reciprocity. Reciprocity explains the reality that people feel obligated to return a favor. In other words, if I do something for you you’ll feel some obligation to want to do something for me in return. An example would be; I’ll do A and I hope you’ll do B in return. This is very different than entering into a contract – I’ll do A IF you’ll do B. Quite often you can engage reciprocity by doing or offering far less and still get the same behavior in return. Mixing up positional authority with perceived authority. Believing you’re an authorityis far different than other people perceiving you to be an authority. Sometimes others need to know your credentials. When people rely solely on their position to gain compliance it will never be as effective as it could be if they engaged people in the persuasion process by highlighting their credentials. It’s one thing for me to do something because the boss says so versus doing the very same thing because I see the value in doing so because an expert convinced me.Failing to connect on liking. Effective persuasion has a lot to do with relationships built on the principle of liking. It’s not always enough that someone likes your product or service. Quite often the difference maker is whether or not they like you. It doesn’t matter if you’re a salesperson, manager or someone else, spending too much time describing ideas, products, services, etc., without getting the other person to like you is going to make persuasion harder. And here’s the gem – make sure you create time to learn a bit about the other person so you come to like them and you’ll be amazed at the difference it can make!Telling instead of asking. Telling someone what to do isn’t nearly as effective as asking because asking engages consistency. This principle tells us people feel internal psychological pressure as well as external social pressure to be consistent in what they say and do. By asking and getting a “Yes” the odds that someone will do what you want increase significantly. In the POP workshop we talk about a restaurant owner who saw no shows fall from 30% to just 10% by having the hostess go from saying, “Please call of you cannot make your reservation” to asking, “Will you please call if you cannot keep your reservation?” The first sentence is a statement but the second is a question that engages consistency. Failure to give a reason. When you want someone to do something, giving a reason tagged with “because” can make all the difference. As I’ve share with State Auto claim reps, “Can you get me your medical records?” will not be as effective as “Can you get me your medical records because without them I cannot process your claim and pay you?” This approach was validated in a copier study where 50% more people (93% up from 60%) were willing to let someone go ahead of them in line when the person asking gave them a reason using the word “because.”So there you have some of the most common persuasion mistakes. By pointing them out hopefully you’ll change your ways if you’ve made these mistakes before. If you’ve not bungled like this then hopefully you’ll avoid these mistakes now that you’re aware of them.Brian Ahearn, CMCT® Chief Influence Officer influencePEOPLE Helping You Learn to Hear “Yes”.

Words Make a Difference in Persuasion

What’s in a word?  In the field of persuasion there are many things that continue to amaze me.  For instance, the subtly of the language we use and the enormous impact it can have on the behaviour of others, is one.  From Dr Cialdini’s research we know small things make a big difference and words do make a difference.

For example, if someone was wanting to cut into a line of people waiting to use a photocopier they will be much more successful if they use the word “because” during their request such as,

Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I have to make some copies?

A beggar is more likely to increase the money given to them by adding,

of course it is up to you.

Charities are able to increase the donations given by adding

even a penny will do.

There are many examples I could continue to cite but this week I want to discuss one word that has been used incorrectly and it demonstrates a misunderstanding of the research.  Recently I read an article that referenced Dr Cialdini’s work and at the outset the author referred to “likability”.  Under this banner they outlined the Principle of Liking before proceeding to the other principles.

The issue for me is, “liking” and “likability” are not the same thing and in my opinion “likability” is not what Dr Cialdini had discovered or reported on.  The difference while subtle is enormous.

Likability means “readily or easily liked”.  It means that you are able to be liked.  In my opinion this is very passive and relies on the first rule of sales “to make the customer like you” which we know is impossible – you cannot make someone like you!

The Principle of Liking creates the environment and executes the tools to show someone else that you are like them and in fact you like them.

This is an important but subtle difference.  You cannot make someone like you, but you can show them that you like them.

For me:

Liking is active, whereas Likability is passive.
Liking relies on the persuader to make the first move.  Likability encourages them to sit back and wait.
Liking is about drawing the similarities, shared goals, and praiseworthy activities to the surface – likability is letting someone else do it for you.

It is a subtle but important distinction in my eyes because you may be likable but this does not mean you are executing the Principle of Liking in order to build, repair or maintain relationships.

What do you think…

I welcome your comments about whether words make a difference because your comments are important and even if you are low on time, even a couple of words will do.  But of course it is totally up to you!

 

 

The post Words Make a Difference in Persuasion appeared first on Social Influence Consulting Group.