The Art of Influence

Published in

10x Curiosity

5 min readDec 7, 2018

Trust and influence — tips to improve your effectiveness.

Trust between people is an interesting concept that can be hard to pin down. It is different between sets of individuals — just because you and I get along, doesn’t mean that I automatically have a good relationship with others in your circle. This is because the interactions we have with each other are different and even the same interactions can be perceived differently. The concept of the “Trust Battery” made popular by Shopify founder Tobi Lütkehelps explain this. Before you know someone your trust battery is at 50%. Then with each interaction your battery goes up or down, your job in being effective is to continually charge your battery with those you are working with .

Trust plays a big role in how effective you can be in a role, without it there is very little chance that changes you need to make will be taken on board by others. Relating to this is the work of Robert Cialdini, who’s book “Persuasion” is one of the authoritative texts on the aspects of human interaction that involve influencing others.

Cialdini discusses six shortcuts as universals that guide human behavior, they are:

Reciprocity
Scarcity
Authority
Consistency
Liking
Consensus

Understanding these shortcuts and employing them in an ethical manner can significantly increase the chances that someone will be persuaded by your request.

This excellent summary video takes you through them:

Summarising the 6 points from excerpts on Cialdini’s website and book (unless otherwise referenced)

Reciprocity

People are obliged to give back to others the form of a behavior, gift, or service that they have received first.

So the key to using the Principle of Reciprocity is to be the first to give and to ensure that what you give is personalized and unexpected. — Cialdini

Scarcity

People want more of those things they can have less of BUT It’s not enough simply to tell people about the benefits they’ll gain if they choose your products and services. You’ll also need to point out what is unique about your proposition and what they stand to lose if they fail to consider your proposal.

This draws strongly on the loss aversion cognitive bias. Richard Thaler writes of this in his book “Nudge”

People hate losses (and their Automatic Systems can get pretty emotional about them). Roughly speaking, losing something makes you twice as miserable as gaining the same thing makes you happy. In more technical language, people are “loss averse

Authority

People follow the lead of credible, knowledgeable experts. It’s important to signal to others what makes you a credible, knowledgeable authority before you make your influence attempt. Of course this can present problems; you can hardly go around telling potential customers how brilliant you are, but you can certainly arrange for someone to do it for you. And surprisingly, the science tells us that it doesn’t seem to matter if the person who introduces you is not only connected to you but also likely to prosper from the introduction themselves.

Consistency

People like to be consistent with the things they have previously said or done.

Consistency is activated by looking for, and asking for, small initial commitments that can be made. So when seeking to influence using the consistency principle, the detective of influence looks for voluntary, active, and public commitments and ideally gets those commitments in writing.

People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come into the mind of others. Pascal — Brain Pickings

Interestingly and different from the reciporcity effect, because of peoples desires to be consistent once they have done a favour for you, they are more likely to do another one in future — it would create an uncomfortable cognitive dissonance to not do so. This is the so called Benjamin Franklin effect:

Benjamin Franklin, after whom the effect is named, quoted what he described as an “old maxim” in his autobiography:

“He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged.”

As Seth Godin points out, culture is built around consistency…

“People like us, do things like this”

Liking

If people like you, they are more inclined to say yes to you.

What causes one person to like another? There are three important factors.

We like people who are similar to us, we like people who pay us compliments, and we like people who cooperate with us towards mutual goals.

So to harness this powerful principle of liking, be sure to look for areas of similarity that you share with others and genuine compliments you can give before you get down to business.

Consensus

People will be guided in their own actions by the actions of people around them.

Rather than relying on our own ability to persuade others, we can point to what many others are already doing, especially many similar others.

Daniel Pink outlines an alternate set of notes on persuasion in his book “To Sell is Human”

Pink explains how three fundamental human qualities — attunement (the ability to take another’s point of view), buoyancy (remaining resilient in the face of rejection), and clarity (helping others make it through the “murk of information”) — lie at the heart of persuading, influencing, and moving people.

Finally you can see a great summary infographic from Entrepreneur here.

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Get in touch… — linktr.ee/Tomconnor