When using an analogy, you have to think more than one step ahead

You know how those Viagra commercials show you how wonderful life is with their drug: with virile types driving big trucks or couples lounging in an outdoor bathtub? Right after those scenes comes the disclaimer that tells you about the risks you run when you use the wonder drug.

This article is the disclaimer. So far, I’ve written about how powerful analogies can be in your presentation, but you do run risks when you deploy that “perfect” analogy. After all, persuasion is a two-way street, and your audience may not passively sit there and accept what you’re selling. You may be so focused on getting your chess pieces into position to attack your opponent that you overlook the danger to yourself. Any time you decide to use an analogy to dramatize of support your proposal, you run several risks:

They may shoot down your analogy. In 1988, Dan Quayle was debating Lloyd Bentsen in the Vice-Presidential debate. Quayle tried to defuse concerns about his youth and inexperience by pointing out: “I have as much experience in the Congress as Jack Kennedy did when he sought the presidency.”  Bentsen replied: “Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.”

Many analogies seem to fit so well that you take it for granted they will be accepted without argument by your listeners, but be prepared in case someone in the audience tries to show that the analogy does not apply.

They may turn your analogy against you. Your listeners may accept the analogy but point out a different lesson from it. For example, the story above made the point that an opponent may crush your analogy. But someone could weaken that analogy I used above by pointing out that the Bush-Quayle ticket actually won.

This points out the danger of falling in love with your own analogy; you see its beauty but may be blind to its weaknesses. Listeners who are opposed to your idea are going to be much more objective and may bring to mind other details about the source analogy that are just as important. Every analogy is going to have differences as well as similarities, and you can count on listeners to point those out. Here’s an example of someone trying to use an analogy to sell a new concept, from the movie Jurassic Park:

Dr. Hammond: All major theme parks have had delays. When they opened Disneyland, nothing worked.
Dr. Malcolm: But. John. If the Pirates of the Caribbean breaks down, the pirates don’t eat the tourists. 

They may counter with a stronger analogy. You see this all the time in the Sunday morning news shows where competing experts debate some pressing international question. One may bring up WWII to urge that we stand up to an aggressor nation, and the other will counter with the specter of Vietnam.

 “Pressure-test” your analogy. As with anything else you put into your presentation, spend some time considering the opposing point of view. It will help strengthen your arguments and you might even learn something that will improve your proposal. Put yourself in the position of a skeptic and try to poke holes in your own analogy, and then come up with answers to those counters. In Quayle’s case, Bentsen was expecting the Kennedy analogy; if it was that obvious to the opposition, Quayle’s handlers should have anticipated his reaction.

If you’re going to use a story, research it to get all the facts, because the part that you remember is only a small part of the entire story. When I thought of the analogy contained in the Dan Quayle story, I did not automatically think focus on the fact that Quayle did, after all, win the election.

Other articles in this series:

Analogies Are Powerful

How Analogies Help Sell New Concepts

How to Select the Right Analogy

Don't take the first one off the top

It’s generally easy to come up with an analogy to describe or support a concept you’re presenting; our minds are steeped in analogies, which is why so many of them may easily come to the surface. But you can usually improve on the first analogy that comes to mind. Here are some suggestions for choosing just the right one:

• Decide the main point
• Find the right balance between familiarity and novelty
• Test it for weaknesses

Decide the main point. Every situation can be superficially compared to others in different ways. If you want to find the analogy that gets your audience to see your point immediately, you must first be clear in your own mind what that essential point is. Once you do, it acts as a quality filter: just the process of distilling down to key words will activate your imagination and bring better analogies to mind.

Find the right balance between familiarity and novelty. Make it familiar to the audience, but not too familiar. The idea has to be something they will immediately recognize and pay attention to—if it’s familiar, they will recognize it, but if it’s too familiar they won’t pay much attention.

So many analogies are so commonly used that they become what Douglas Hofstadter calls “banalogies”—barely registering in our minds when we hear them.[1] It’s ironic that people who urge us to be more creative can’t think of a better analogy than “thinking outside the box”. Honestly, do you envision a box in your mind when you encounter that phrase?

You have to dig deep. In my own experience, it’s easy to come up with an adequate analogy quickly, but a really compelling or specific analogy takes time. Memory is like a t-shirt drawer: the ones you wear all the time always get put back in on the top, so you use them more often. The most common analogies are always at the top of your memory, and you have to dig down to the bottom to pull up one of the less common ones. The less common ones are more likely to capture the audience’s attention. Memory is also capricious: focusing hard on finding the right analogy doesn’t always work immediately, so if you prepare early by writing a rough draft and then set it aside, better ideas bubble up later—often when you’re thinking of something else.

At the other end, sometimes analogies fail because they don’t make sense to the audience. At the very least, they should be relevant to the culture and even the age of your listeners. Because so much of the training I do is overseas, I’ve developed an awareness of how much of what we say contains references to things in the US that others don’t relate to, especially our sports. Also, as time goes on I find that audience members are getting younger every year, and many of them don’t understand the references I make to TV shows or music that may have been popular before they were even born! I was once brought up short in a training class when I compared presentation structure to a newspaper article, only to be reminded by one of the younger attendees that many people under 30 never read a newspaper.

So what’s the best way to find the right balance? Make it personal, local and timely. You can make it familiar and unique by choosing an analogy that is special to them, perhaps from their own business environment. I knew a salesperson who was selling cellular service to the Michelin plant in South Carolina. When the purchaser said he did not see much difference between the various carriers, she said she understood because she had trouble distinguishing between brands of tires. She further went on to say that there are clear differences if you are willing to look beneath the surface. You can also compare the decision you are asking them to make to a similar one they already have made. Either of these require research, but it pays off many times over in credibility.

For added impact, try to find an analogy that will resonate emotionally as well as cognitively. If you compare it to something that they have strong feelings for, the emotions evoked will attach themselves to your idea as well. One of the best ways is to tap into how they see—or want to see—themselves. For example, at one of my clients, I train their engineers in selling techniques. Because some engineers find selling distasteful, I show how selling is like engineering in certain ways, especially when viewed as a problem-solving exercise.

You especially need to consider using an analogy when referring to numbers. Some numbers needed for business presentations are either so large (billions of dollars of revenue) or so small (Six Sigma quality means 3.4 defects per million), that they are difficult to put into human perspective.[2] Numbers also need to be placed in the proper context to be understood. Steve Jobs was once asked by a reporter how he felt about the fact that Apple’s market share was “stuck” at 5%. Jobs replied: “Our market share is greater than BMW or Mercedes in the car industry.”[3] With one analogy Jobs put the number into context and also compared apple favorably to two well-respected brands.

Test if for weaknesses. Because every situation is different, no analogy is perfect. You have to watch for unintended effects, which is important enough to consider in the next article of this series.

Other articles in this series:

Analogies Are Powerful

How Analogies Help Sell New Concepts

It's like a horse, only different

In Part 1 of this series, we saw how analogies can play a central role in persuasive business presentations. We’ll develop that thought further in this article by considering how analogies can make it easier for your audience to accept the change you are trying to sell.

In view of the constant change and relentless innovation of today’s economy, one would think that getting people to accept new ideas is easy, but in fact anyone trying to convince someone else to accept a new idea faces three tough obstacles to gaining acceptance. First, the more different something is, the harder it is to understand. Second, our minds prefer the comfort of the familiar and assign greater weight to risk in the risk/reward calculation. Finally, we don’t like being told what to do.

Any one of these obstacles can be poison for your presentation, but the antidote to all three is an apt analogy.

Analogies make things easier to understand. You can’t persuade others if they don’t understand what you’re saying. The mind learns by relating new information to existing information structures, and if you’re presenting highly technical information or introducing a new product that is different from anything the audience is used to, you can save a lot of explanation by building off what they already know. How would you describe a zebra to someone who has never seen a horse?

Analogies also make concepts easier to understand by helping the audience filter out all the relevant information and get to the heart of the matter.

Finally even when your audience totally gets it, the success of your implementation will likely depend on their being able to get additional buy-in from others in their organization. A compelling analogy will arm them with an easy-to-remember message to take to their internal stakeholders.

Analogies reduce perceived risk by making new things seem more familiar. The old saying that familiarity breeds contempt is usually not true. We gravitate toward, and prefer, what is familiar to us. The decision to try something new always involves a mental struggle between risk and reward. Any time we consider something new, whether it’s a product or an idea, we have to contemplate leaving the safety of the familiar for the opportunity of the unfamiliar. If the concept is too different, it’s likely to be dismissed without even giving equal time to considering its benefits.

Evolution is easier for most of us to handle than revolution. Analogies, by definition, work by comparing a new situation to something more familiar. When Apple first came out with a graphical user interface, they could have gone in virtually an infinite number of directions, but they chose to make something completely different seem like something very old and familiar by giving us a “desktop” with which to work.

An analogy lets the decision maker have their cake and eat it too. It provides a safe base in their mind from which they can explore new opportunity.

Analogies lower resistance to your message. As kids, anytime my mother told me something was good for me, I would automatically determine not to like it. Most adults haven’t outgrown that tendency toward reactance, which is why sometimes trying to teach or to sell the benefits of a new idea can backfire if you try too hard. As Churchill said, “I am always ready to learn, but I do not always like being taught.”

As I mentioned in my previous post, analogies, once implanted, work below the level of consciousness to guide the search for information and to bend the stream of thought into a certain direction. The analogy plants itself in the mind and the audience member’s mind does the rest.  In fact, it has been demonstrated that the target audience has a better comprehension of product benefits when the detailed information is left out.[1] It’s like a joke: if you have to explain it, it’s not funny.

Analogies can be fruitful

I’ve written before about how useful analogies can be to make your presentation memorable, but if you want to build a powerful presentation, analogies are useful for much more than decoration—they can serve as its very foundation, and make your presentation much stronger as a result.

In fact, while stories are getting all the press nowadays, analogies are really doing most of the work. They’re far more common and more effective in getting your points across. Most stories are actually vehicles for conveying an analogy.

Analogies are inevitable. They influence what we perceive and what we remember. They are useful mental shortcuts that we take when we encounter new and unfamiliar situations that require a judgment or decision. Instead of starting from scratch when we encounter an unfamiliar situation that requires a judgment or decision, we search our experience for similar situations. Analogies help us understand, organize and make sense of incoming information.

In fact, analogy is the foundation of learning from experience. People with more experience have a richer store of analogies to draw from, which is what enables them to rapid right decisions without having to agonize over every detail.

We always see more—and less—in a situation than is there. Our minds see more because we look for patterns and then fill in the gaps with what’s not there. We also see less because we filter out information we consider irrelevant. Analogies

Once we choose an analogy, it leads us to focus on certain aspects of the situation and ignore others. Actually, we often don’t consciously choose analogies—sometimes they choose us, implanting themselves stealthily without our knowledge. Research indicates that “resistance is futile”: implanted analogies can affect our memories so that we may remember things in the presentation that were not actually there.[1]

Business is full of examples of how a powerful analogy can make the difference in important decisions. In 1997, Intel was opposed to developing a low-end chip for PCs because they thought it would cheapen the brand. But in a training seminar, Harvard professor Clayton Christensen explained how established steel companies ignored low-end products like rebar, providing an opening for minimills. By establishing themselves on the low end, they were then able to move up the value chain and seize the high end. That analogy turned Andy Grove’s thinking around, and it began promoting its Celeron processor.[2]

Analogies carry special weight in business presentations because the senior decision makers you want to influence cut their teeth on them—the case study method used in business schools is nothing but analogical thinking on a large scale. As they gain experience in their careers, they are stuffing their minds with analogies that they draw on when they make judgments about new situations.

If you can find the right analogy that resonates with them, you can short-cut a tremendous amount of detail and context and have the inside track on a favorable decision.

I will write much more about analogies in future posts, but for now here is a list of all the benefits that analogies can provide for persuasive communicators:

• Focus attention on certain aspects over others—influence belief
• Transfer emotion—improve motivation
• Make things easier to understand—improve understanding; make things more concise
• Make the message more vivid—improve memory
• Make the message more interesting—improve attention
• Lower resistance to your message
• Lower perceived risk by making new things seem more familiar

Our instincts—and our compensation plans—pressure us to make the most persuasive and confident arguments that we can devise, get from Point A to B as surely and efficiently as possible, and shorten that sales cycle. We focus on the key decision maker in the room, marshal all the facts on our side, and prepare carefully to crush any objections from any potential blockers.

We want to make the sale, we want to be right, and we want to “win”. Books that teach presentation skills (including my own) emphasize this.

But the problem with this “Always Be closing” approach is that even if your proposal is absolutely perfect in every way for the client, there is a high probability that it may lead to an unsustainable agreement, one that will be implemented improperly or incompletely. That can lead to a lot of value being left on the table for the client, customer dissatisfaction, and big demands on your time down the road.

In my own sales experience, I can admit to deals I sold because I won over the decision maker, but then had to contend with lower level people who were less than enthusiastic in their efforts to support the training, if not downright hostile in some cases. And I’m not alone: In his book, Why Decisions Fail, management professor Paul Nutt documents a study of more than 400 important corporate decisions over 20 years, in which he found that over half failed, mostly because of errors in the early process—errors tied to settling too fast on the first acceptable quick fix.

The process of decision making is often more important than the content of the contending arguments. Processes that widen the search for alternative early in the process, take into account political factors, and think realistically about implementation challenges are much more likely to succeed. In short, they will be sustainable. Paying attention to the process is especially important when you’re dealing with complex projects that carry important results for the client and have a wide span of impact within the organization.

What makes for a sustainable agreement?

People will buy into an agreement for two broad reasons: either it aligns with their self-interest or it is perceived as fair.

Integrative proposals. Any time a company makes an investment decision it is allocating resources, and causing more work or risk for various parties within the organization, so objectively there are winners and losers. But with a little imagination, it’s sometimes possible to make the pie a bit larger and give more to all concerned.

Sense of fairness. People are realistic and are team players, so they will get behind agreements that hurt their individual interests—as long as they perceive that the process to reach that agreement was fair. It’s called procedural fairness: did the process allow them to voice their disagreement and be heard, or did they feel like they were railroaded into it? Was there serious attention paid to diverse points of view? Were all reasonable alternatives given a fair hearing?

How do you adapt your presentation preparation, content and style to achieve it?

During the preparation phase:

Spend time truly understanding all points of view; reach out to potential blockers as well as your allies and champions. Strategically, you run the risk of tipping them off and giving them time to organize opposition, but here’s what you get in return:

• You make people feel included in the decision, which increases the chance for shared ownership.
• You give people time to grow used to the idea.
• You might actually learn something that will help you improve your proposal.  As Nutt says, at this stage “Doubt can be a powerful force pushing you to think more clearly about what is needed.”

During the presentation:

Show both sides. Intelligent audiences are more swayed by two-sided arguments that demonstrate that you’ve thought about more than just your own interests. Acknowledge different concerns and interests.

Be prepared to show your thinking. I often warn people away from providing too much context, because it takes a lot of time. But sometimes you have to show the background, context and how you arrived at your ideas, especially when you have a lot of analyticals in the audience. (Or at least be prepared with backup material in case you sense it’s necessary.)

Make it more interactive. People need to feel that they’ve been heard to perceive the process as fair, so encourage questions from the audience. Ask a lot of questions—in fact, if you sense that someone is holding back, you can call on them by name. Of course, this means that you have to pay close attention to audience response. By showing that you’re not afraid of dissenting points of view, you’re setting an example of open-mindedness, and they may return the favor.

During Q&A:

If you haven’t already done so in an interactive presentation, build plenty of time into the agenda for discussion so that everyone who wants to comment can feel that they’ve had a fair shake.

Don’t be afraid of getting disagreement. In fact, you should be more afraid if no one disagrees, because it may mean that they’re just biding their time to sabotage you later. If there is going to be opposition, it’s best to get it out in the open.

Be prepared to “negotiate”. Ideally, you would like to be able to integrate opposing viewpoints into a perfect solution for everyone, but this is not always realistic. If you think ahead, you can have some minor modifications or concessions in your proposal in your back pocket that you can trade for agreement.

Winners drink from both

Which of these teams would you rather be on?

The first is famous for taking on highly dangerous and seemingly impossible challenges. Its individual members are known for their high self-confidence, tough-mindedness, and indomitable wills. They are the ultimate can-do optimists.

The other team obsesses about planning; they envision everything that can possibly go wrong, they build in as much room for error as possible before they try anything, and they do everything they can to stack the odds in their favor before acting. Call them the ultimate pessimists.

Most people, especially readers of this blog, would choose the first. After all, optimism is practically a religion in America. The idea of a positive mental attitude has become so ingrained in American thinking that it verges on political incorrectness to question it. You can never win an argument with someone who says that you can do anything you set your mind to, because they take it on faith. A positive attitude is often based on faith and emotion, and anyone who points out practical deficiencies and obstacles is seen as lacking in the right stuff.

But when you take a closer look at what the experts say about it, the picture that emerges is a bit more complicated. In fact, the descriptions above both describe the same team: US Navy SEALs. It turns out that optimism and pessimism are not polar opposites—they can coexist in the same person or team at the same time, and the right mixture at the right time can be critical to your success.

Optimism and pessimism are not opposite ends of a spectrum. They can coexist in the same person at the same time

In The Positive Power of Negative Thinking, Julie K. Norem tells us that optimism and pessimism are not actually opposites, as two points on a straight line. Think of each characteristic as being at right angles to each other, as in each axis of a graph. In this way, it’s possible to understand that high (or low) levels of both optimism and pessimism can coexist in one person at the same time.

Combine these two attributes, and you’re at the top right of the scale. You have big-picture optimism, but fine-detailed pessimism. You have high confidence not because you ignore the dangers, but precisely because you acknowledge and respect them, and then do everything possible to avert, mitigate, or deal with them. And because you’ve thought about them, your mind is better prepared because you’ve probably mentally rehearsed the situation already. Norem calls this defensive pessimism, but I prefer the term positive pessimism.

The right mixture at the right time can be critical to your success

If you think of a competition or major undertaking as a process, there are three distinct phases. The first is the decision whether to play. The second is the preparation. The third is the actual performance.

Whether to play: You have to be optimistic to take on the challenge.

Most people will not undertake something challenging unless they think they have a chance of succeeding. Po Bronson in his book, Top Dog: The Science of Winning and Losing, tells us that optimists lose more often, for two reasons. First, they take greater risks, and second, they are much less realistic in assessing their own abilities. (Which is one reason you see people make complete idiots of themselves on shows like American Idol.) But optimists also win more, because they compete more often, which is why an unknown long-shot from Illinois to run for president and actually win.[1]

Yet at this stage some negative thinking can also help. Negative thinking is about realizing that it’s not true that you can do anything you set your mind to. Accepting your limitations frees you to focus on the things you can do, and developing those strengths you do have. A positive thinker will take a bad shot in hopes of making it; a negative thinker will help the team by passing to someone who is open or who has a better chance of making it. A coach, or any other leader, will work with the limitations of his individuals to form a better team.

Pessimism and negative thinking during the preparation phase can increase your chances for success.

Bobby Knight, in his book, The Power of Negative Thinking, makes a strong case to counterbalance the idea that you should always be positive. Although the common wisdom tells us that you can’t be a winner without positive thinking, Knight’s lifetime winning record in NCAA basketball history, adds weight to his views.

One of Knight’s themes is that determination and a positive attitude are no substitute for hard work, preparation, and planning. He quite correctly attacks the “don’t worry, be happy” school of success. He tells us that in his experience more most basketball games are not won, they are lost. In other words, mistakes do more to determine the loser than positive thinking and desire and will to win determine the winner.

Negative thinking is similar to Andy Grove’s philosophy that only the paranoid survive. It’s about being fully aware of all the things that could go wrong, and then preparing so that they don’t, or so that you can overcome them when they do happen.

Ironically, when pessimists do their job right, no one notices. Heidi Grant Halvorson tells the story of the Mars Climate Orbiter which missed its target by 100 kilometers, costing NASA $125 million. The fault was traced to a unit conversion error: the NASA engineers worked in metric and the Lockheed Martin worked in English units. Potential errors such as this are caught all the time by people who pay close attention, but “No one says ‘Way to convert those units from inches to centimeters, Bob.  You just saved us $125 million dollars and a boatload of humiliation.  You rock!’”[2]

During the “game”, it pays to think positive. Playing not to lose can actually decrease your chances of winning.

Once all the preparation is over and you’re in the arena, it’s time to trust your training and preparation and focus all out on the positive aim of winning.

As Bronson says, “The hallmark characteristics of playing to win are an intensification of effort and continuous risk taking. The equivalent for playing not to lose is conservatism and trying to avoid costly mistakes. Under intense pressure, though, having a strategy of avoiding mistakes leads, by itself, to more mistakes. This is the paradox of playing not to lose.”

As evidence, he cites these extraordinary statistics from professional soccer matches that end in penalty kicks to determine the winner. In soccer, the true odds of making a penalty kick are 85%. Yet, when kickers are in the position where their kick will win the match, they make it 92% of the time. When they have to make the last kick to avoid a loss, they make it 62% of the time.

Positive pessimism is not an oxymoron—it’s a highly adaptive, effective and professional response to difficulty and risk. Positive pessimism does not let anxiety prevent action—it harnesses anxiety to produce positive action, when it’s applied at the right time.

In the huge majority of cases, however, the best way to learn from them is to figure out what not to do. An email I received this morning is a case in point.

Ironically, it’s from a company that purports to improve my marketing and help my company “GET NOTICED!”

“My company (deleted) specializes in getting attention for our clients. Clients like, Google, ESPN, Intel, Intuit, Discovery Channel, etc., but our services and solutions work for any size company.”

There are four things right off the top of my head that I can find wrong with this message:

1. They clearly know nothing about my company.
2. If they did, they would know it is microscopic compared to those cited, so why in the world would I be interested in the same thing that they use? If they were smart, they would have at least checked out my web site, combed through their customer list, and put in some names that would at least have a realistic chance of getting my attention.
3. If they’re doing things for those guys, whatever they’re selling  would be way out of my price range.
4. It also sends the message that if I hire them, I’ll be competing with some very important clients for their attention and best work.

Attention marketers: anything you send to me may be used in my blog for teaching purposes—usually as a cautionary example of what not to do. I may even start leaving in your names, just so you can GET NOTICED!

The premise of the book is quite simple: the world comprises three types of people: givers, takers and matchers. Which type tends to be most successful? Although we’ve all been raised on the homily that it’s better to give than to receive, the bad news is that the left side of most bell curves is populated by givers, those who contribute more to others than they expect in return. Quite simply, they do less for themselves, people take advantage of them, and they are prone to burnout.

But the real surprise is that the right side of bell curves is also a givers’ neighborhood. Combining extensive research with inspiring examples, Grant shows us how and why successful givers do well for themselves at the same time that they contribute so much to others. Successful givers approach four principal aspects of relationships differently. The four aspects are networking, collaborating, developing talent and communicating.

Successful givers are excellent networkers, but so are a lot of takers and matchers. The difference is that successful givers proactively do things without expectation of return, creating goodwill and possibly setting an example that may be contagious. One of the excellent tips in this chapter is the suggestion to revive dormant connections. The benefit is that when most people tap into their network for help, their strong ties are trusting and disposed to help, but their weak ties have more diverse information. People you haven’t talked to in a long time combine the assets of strong ties and weak ties.

Givers are also excellent collaborators, quick to help others in a team environment and without spending too much time worrying about who gets credit. They tend to demonstrate what the National Outdoor Leadership School calls expedition behavior, putting the needs of the mission and the team ahead of your own. In the long run, this behavior increases their prestige and the willingness of others  to help them when they need it.

Givers are also excellent at spotting talent, because they’re not worried about creating rivals who may outshine them. Also, because they tend to assume competence and talent on the part of others, they may be generating self-fulfilling prophecies. I found this chapter to be rather long on anecdote and thin on evidence, but the next chapter made up for it.

For me the meatiest chapter covered the successful practices that givers follow in communicating with others, in presenting, selling, and negotiating. Successful givers ask more meaningful questions and have an effective mix of confidence and humility in their advocacy. They also tend to be good at perspective-taking, which is the cognitive equivalent of empathy: instead of feeling what the other person is feeling, they are adept at thinking what they’re thinking. In studies, people with high empathy do worse in creating value, because they are more apt to give the other person what they want. Those high in perspective taking are better at coming up with creative ideas to give both sides more of what they want.

The second section of the book is for those who are too giving, and tend to fall at the bottom of the success distribution because they get taken advantage of and exhaust their energies serving others rather than themselves. The key insight is that self-interest and other-interest are not opposite points on a single line; they are separate axes on a graph. Those who give too much have a high score for other-interest, and a low score for self-interest. Successful givers are at the top right of the graph, combining a high other-focus with high self-interest. As a result, they are in better control of their giving, seeing it as a positive choice rather than an obligation, and being more proactive in allocating their  giving time and energy.

If you get inspired by Grant’s book, what you’ll really want to know is how to become a more successful giver. The Catch-22 is that giving has to be sincere it it’s to work, and if you try to make it strategic it’s not sincere. I do think, however, that if you begin changing your behavior for strategic purposes, and start doing more for others, two positive things may happen. First, regardless of the motive, you’re contributing to the sum total of benefit and happiness. Even more important is that your attitude may begin to catch up with your actions. The mind does not like cognitive dissonance, so if we’re acting in a giving manner we will begin to see ourselves more as givers, leading to a virtuous circle. The book finishes with ten suggestions for becoming more of a giver—I’ll keep you posted on how it works.

The one weakness in the book is that in some of the chapters, as mentioned above, there was less evidence than it seemed on first reading. You get pulled in to the inspiring stories, but on closer reading you don’t find enough evidence to be able to make up your mind whether those examples are the rule or the exception.

Despite this, the message in Grant’s book is so powerful that I give it five stars. But it’s not a gift—it’s truly earned. The book itself is a gift to anyone who reads it, and to countless others who may be on the receiving end of their stepped-up giving.

Having been a commercial banker before making the switch to sales training in the early 1990s, I was acutely aware that the participants in the classes I facilitated had far more experience in high-tech complex sales than I did. I tried to compensate by downplaying my lack of experience and stressing other credentials.

I very quickly found out, however, that most people saw right through my little charade, although there were two different reactions: some thought it made me look defensive while others perceived me to be arrogant.

But I also discovered that as long as I was competent in the topic I was teaching, they did not care how much experience I had. Going further, I saw that being completely open about my weaknesses would actually make me more credible in the audience’s view.

Grant calls it the pratfall effect, citing a study in which an audience viewed a tape in which a candidate for a spot on a Quiz Bowl team spilled coffee on his suit. Those candidates who came in with a high score on their qualifying exam were viewed more favorably after the clumsy incident, while those with a low score were viewed less favorably.

The point is that expressing vulnerability to an audience can make them like you more, if they have already seen other signals of your competence. If they don’t see you as competent to begin with, vulnerability or imperfection will give them another reason to like you less. But if they see you as competent, imperfection humanizes you and makes you seem like a regular person.

Although Grant does not say it, it appears to me that it’s another manifestation of confirmation bias at work. The vulnerability that you show, perhaps by admitting to a weakness, works in the direction to further confirm whatever impression they have already formed.

The interesting paradox is that being self-deprecating can pump up your persuasive power, but you have to earn the right to be self-deprecating. Otherwise, it can come across as false modesty, which is perceived as another form of arrogance. It reminds me of a wonderful quote by Golda Meir:

“Don’t be so humble. You’re not that great.”

In my own situation, the audience had already received signals of my competence: the first was the fact that their company had hired ours to conduct sales training, and the second was that usually their boss or another respected authority figure would introduce me.

There’s another dynamic at work. If you’re making a strategic sales presentation, you are likely presenting to high-ranking individuals who control the purse strings that will determine your fate. In the subtle dynamic of interpersonal relationships, they see themselves as high-status individuals compared to you. Trying to come across as too perfect may challenge their status, while a little humility on your side can put them at ease and makes them more favorably disposed to listen.

If you do reveal a weakness, it should be about something over which you have no control. In my own case, I could not go back and change my past, so it was OK to be candid about it. On the other hand, if you apologize up front because you did not have time to fully prepare for the presentation, your listeners will probably punish you for it. It will sound like an excuse and will prime them to look for additional flaws.

But I decided not to do that. Instead, I am going to let you make the decision totally on your own, using some of the techniques outlined in the book.

The Heaths tell us that bad decisions are all too common in business and personal decision making. 40% of senior level hires by companies don’t work out within 18 months, 83% of mergers don’t create value for shareholders, and  personally we all make bad investment and relationship choices all the time.

While incomplete information is sometimes to blame, the process used for making the decision is about six times more important. To put it bluntly, our processes for deciding are usually wrong, and they cite four main villains: narrow framing, confirmation bias, short-term decision making, and overconfidence. Our brains are simply not optimally wired for making complex decisions. We can’t eliminate our biases, but we can plan for them and try to counteract them.

To counteract these villains, there are four steps we should apply that encompass a number of specific tactics to improve our outcomes. The steps are described in the acronym WRAP:

• Widen your options
• Reality-test your assumptions
• Attain distance before deciding
• Prepare to Be Wrong

Let’s apply some of their suggestions to the momentous decision: should you buy the book?

Widen your options. First, the question asked immediately above is the wrong one. Too often we turn decisions into either/or choices, which automatically shuts down the spotlight of our attention and closes out other options. The real choice is: how should I invest $14.97 and the time it will take to read the book? You could buy other books that might be more useful and/or more fun to read, or you could spend the money on a twelve-pack of Heineken and save the reading time. (Although I don’t recommend this technique just before making an important decision.) There’s no guarantee that any of the other choices will be better, but one study showed that “whether or not” decisions failed 52% of the time, compared to 32% for those where two or more alternatives were considered.

Reality-test your assumptions. When you consider whether to read a book, you might read some of the reviews on Amazon. If you’re leaning toward purchasing this book, you will note that there are 50 reviews, averaging 4-1/2 stars. There is only one 1-star review. Check it out, at least for a disconfirming opinion. I don’t agree with the reviewer (in fact, I note that he did not even finish the book), but some of his criticisms contain some truth.[1]

Another technique is to zoom out and then zoom in. Zoom out means to consider the base rate. I’m assuming if you’re considering a book on improving decision making that you hope it will improve your life in some way. In this case, I’m guessing the base rate (the percentage of people who read a book and actually make positive changes as a result) is probably quite low. But then, you zoom in and consider what factors might make you more successful than the base rate. The fact that you’re reading this suggests that you’re a person who is seriously interested in personal growth and self-improvement, so your chances of getting practical benefit from the book are probably quite good.

Attain Distance before Deciding. This suggestion goes against my own self-interest, because if you click on the link above to buy the book, I will earn about 28 cents. But, you really should not decide immediately. Put some time between the stimulus and the response and you can take the short-term emotion out of it. Another great technique is to consider whether you would recommend that your best friend buy this book if she were considering making a life-changing decision. Somehow we can think more objectively about others’ choices than about our own.

Prepare to Be Wrong. Despite following the first three steps, you can never guarantee that your decision will be the right one, so one technique you can use is taken from the world of investing. It’s called “bookending”. Rather than trying to predict what a stock’s price will be in the future, “bookend” a range from reasonable worst case to reasonable best case. Then, gauge where on that spectrum the current price lies. Closer to the left means high upside and closer to the right means high downside. For this decision, I can’t see a reasonable scenario where applying these techniques will worsen the quality of your decisions, so the downside is that you spend $15, and either don’t like or don’t apply it. The upside is that you keep your company from making a multi-billion-dollar mistake and become a hero.

Of course, some of your life’s decisions are much more important than the trivial example I’ve cited here, and that’s when a sound process for making decisions can make a real difference. There’s a lot I’ve left out, but hopefully you have enough of a flavor of the techniques in the book to make the right decision. Of course, the Catch-22 is that if you’re good at making decisions, you don’t need this book!