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Podcasts

PE 9: Make them Believe You

By Jack Malcolm / 3.5.2018 / No Comment

So far in this series about the psychology of persuasion, we’ve talked about the first three things that happen in a persuasive communication effort. You’ve made a first impression, grabbed their attention, and delivered your message so that they could understand exactly what you intended. So, we have the communication part covered, but now we turn to the persuasive part. There are three aspects that I will cover in this and the next two podcasts. First, will they believe you? Second, can you influence their decision? Third, will the take action?

If you want people to believe you, content is definitely king, but it doesn’t rule by itself. Let’s suppose you’re presenting an investment proposal to a roomful of decision makers. It could be an internal presentation to your C-Level, or maybe a sales presentation. You put together a slide deck filled with charts, tables and hard data, and you present an airtight case. Will it be enough?

The answer is—it depends. Someone may question your sources, someone may agree on the facts but draw different conclusions from yours, someone might sense a little uncertainty in your voice and someone might not like the fact that your shoes aren’t shined. Of course, they won’t mention anything like the latter two reasons if they run you down, but things like that do make a difference.

There’s a lot going on in the listener’s mind as they’re judging your credibility. They’re consciously paying attention to your content while at the same time forming unconscious judgments about whether to trust you. And everybody is different. Some are like Spock and can set aside “feelings” while others won’t even try to follow your logical arguments—they just know they can trust their gut.

So obviously you would prefer to be as strong as possible in both the material and the source. I’m going to start with what types of material people find to be the most credible, and then look at the personal qualities that they perceive while judging whether to believe.

Content

We have to start here because content is king. And keep in mind that this podcast is about business communication, so we have to operate within the presumption that there is an objective standard that’s going to be applied. In this case, bottom line profit. Besides, your most important persuasive communication opportunities will be with high level audiences, so you generally have more sophisticated listeners who have a higher “need for cognition”.

Here’s a rough hierarchy of they types of evidence that people value:

Empirical data such as statistics and metrics – most business decisions are held to an objective standard.
Personal observation – if you’re the only one who has been on the scene, they have to believe you.
Appeal to authority- borrow credibility from someone with greater credentials or experience.
Social proof – if other companies are doing it, we’d better not get left behind.
See for yourself – make it concrete and visible.
Causation and common sense – even if it hasn’t been done before, show that it’s plausible.
Because I said so – Trust me, I’m an expert. (Only works when you already have credibility.)

Personal Credibility

Besides Content, there are four other C’s of personal credibility:

Credentials – what are your qualifications and experience?
Clarity – are you candid and direct, and do you have a command of the facts?
Confidence – do you believe in your own proposal without being overconfident?
Concern – do you care about what’s in it for me?

Uncategorized

Dare to Understand

By Jack Malcolm / 3.2.2018 / No Comment

Pick up any newspaper or browse the internet or TV and it’s almost impossible to escape the sense that the world is falling apart before our eyes. War, terrorism, violent crime, environmental catastrophe, starving children, flu epidemics, opioids, poverty. It’s not your imagination, either. A study using sentiment mining to analyze the tone of New York Times articles from 1945 to 2005 shows a significant downward trend, and I suspect it has gotten worse since then. With all that, how can you avoid being depressed and pessimistic about the state of the world?

It’s actually not that difficult, if you follow the trend lines instead of the headlines, according to a hugely important new book by Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism and Progress. Read this book if you want to be not only smarter but happier.

If you complain about the state of the world, think about it this way: if you could choose any other time in history into which to be born, which would you choose? If you chose any time before about 1800, chances are 9 out of 10 that you would be born into extreme poverty, and you would have had a 30% chance of dying in infancy. You would almost certainly have been born under an authoritarian government, and you probably would have experienced crushing hunger many times in your life.

The headlines are scary, but the trend lines clearly and unequivocally show that the world has gotten better, and continues to get better, in nearly every meaningful way. We are wealthier, healthier, safer and freer than ever in our history.

Feel free to disagree with that last statement, but you would be wrong. Just look at the data. There are 75 graphs in the book to support the case. In my view, this is the most important of all[1]:

As you can clearly see, for almost two millennia after 1 CE, world GDP barely budged, began nudging upward around 1600, and then took off exponentially beginning in the 19^th century.

The other graphs in the book tell the tale of clear improvement in other aspects of human flourishing, but the reason I say this is the most important graph is twofold. First, although money may not buy happiness, it certainly makes it much easier to solve problems that cause unhappiness. It buys scientific research, technology, aid to the poor, infrastructure, and institutions, which is why life span is way up (from 29 to 71.4), poverty is way down from 90% to 10%), transportation is safer (motor vehicle accident deaths per million miles down 96%), great powers almost never go to war anymore, diseases are being eradicated, and even quality of life is rising.

Second, the chart is so absolutely unambiguous that, clearly something happened to cause what some call the Great Escape. That something, according to Pinker, was the combination of four ideals:

Reason: we must hold our beliefs accountable to objective standards. We must dare to understand.

Science: the refining of reason to understand the world.

Humanism: privileges the well-being of individuals over the tribe, race, nation or religion.

Progress: which is not merely technical, but includes intellectual and moral. (Yes, that’s right. Our IQs are actually increasing, and our attitudes toward violence, racism…are changing rapidly)

There are people who disagree with Pinker here. I’m not one of them, although I think he only got four out of five right. What’s missing is at least a chapter explicitly giving credit to free markets. The book does state that in several places, but it’s mostly just in passing. I suspect Pinker felt he was picking enough fights with the “intelligentsia” of both the left and right and decided to stay away from that live wire.

But of course it’s not all good news. We still run the risk of nuclear war, inequality, while less than it has been historically, feeds on ubiquitous media and rising expectations and continues to stoke resentment, and we face tremendous danger from climate change. But human ingenuity can solve even those difficult problems—as long as reason and science are allowed to flourish. If we concentrate on policies to keep making the pie larger instead of fighting over slices, we’ll continue to have the resources to address the significant problems we still face.

The real danger we face, and the reason I urge everyone to read this book, is that relentless pessimism can put us on course to kill the geese that keep laying golden eggs. If everyone thinks things are getting worse, they are more likely to turn to seductively simple solutions such as populism, nationalism, and religious extremism, all of which have a dampening effect on the geese.

The irony is that those who are pessimistic about the world are optimistic about themselves. Most people polled feel they will be better off in the future, but their country will be worse off. Why does this “optimism gap” exist? Part of the problem is that our standards have risen. News events that horrify us today would have gone unnoticed just several decades ago. Because bad stuff makes the news while quiet consistent improvements don’t. When’s the last time you saw a headline about 137,000 people escaping poverty yesterday? (Which would have been true every day for the past 25 years.) and of course, availability bias guarantees that we remember the sensational anomalies.

Besides, being negative makes us sound smarter. As Matt Ridley said, “If you say the world has been getting better you may get away with being called naïve and insensitive. If you say the world is going to go on getting better, you are considered embarrassingly mad…If, on the other hand, you say catastrophe is imminent, you may expect a McArthur genius award or even the Nobel Peace Prize.” [2] As Pinker puts it, optimists always sound like they’re trying to sell you something.

In that last point, he’s definitely right. I‘m a long term optimist[3], and I am trying to sell you something: buy this book, read it, and spread the news as far and wide as you can. You’ll be doing yourself, your friends, and the world a huge favor.

[1] Source: Our World in Data website. This site contains many of the same graphical arguments Pinker makes in his book and is well worth visiting.

[2] The Rational Optimist, Matt Ridley, p. 280. Also an excellent book if you want to read more.

[3] See my post: The Power of Positive Pessimism

Podcasts

PE 8: Help Them Understand

By Jack Malcolm / 2.28.2018 / No Comment

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

There are an unlimited number of wrong ways your message can be taken, and only one right way. So, you must ensure that you are crystal clear in what you’re trying to convey, first in your own mind and then in the mind of the listener.

In this podcast, I talk about why understanding is critical, and then go into the science of what is going on in the listener’s mind as they receive information; finally, I suggest techniques and tips to ensure that you won’t be misunderstood.

Understanding is important because it’s a crucial step in delivering value to the other person—transferring knowledge they can use. Second, it’s also persuasive, because our minds equate simplicity with truth. If it’s easy to understand it feels right.

There is a lot going on in both minds when two people communicate. First, you have to turn the ideas in your brain into words and coherent sentences. Next the listener captures the incoming information through two channels, the auditory and phonetic. Second, they must process the material; most of the mental work of understanding takes place in working memory, which is a mental “scratch pad” where you interpret the information, retrieve knowledge and existing models from your long term memory, figure out how to connect what you’re hearing and seeing with what you know, and finally store it for future use.

There are five ways to ensure that you are clearly understood:

Meaning before detail: give them the big picture so they can orient themselves.
Provide clear structure: so they can follow your logic and organize incoming detail.
Feed the information at the right pace: don’t overload or underload working memory.
Use simple language: pretentious language actually makes you sound less intelligent.
Adjust to your audience: Start with what they know, and monitor their reactions.

Book reviews - General business books - Leadership Communication

Book Recommendation: Counter Mentor Leadership

By Jack Malcolm / 2.26.2018 / No Comment

Kelly Riggs, author of Quit Whining and Start Selling, has teamed up with his son Robby to write Counter Mentor Leadership, which is a timely book on how to lead in today’s 4-Generation workplace. I personally can’t imagine how a father-son relationship could survive writing a book together, but they have somehow managed to pull it off.

I definitely recommend it as an excellent book on leadership, although I say that for different reasons than they would claim, which I will get to in a minute.

The first two sections of the book set the table by describing how today’s workplace has changed, and why leadership may be more challenging than ever. Their premise is that today’s BOSS (Boomer, Old-school Supervisors) leadership model is not effective with KIDS (Know-it-all Digital Self-promoters). Boomers, according to them, still practice the old Taylorian model of command and control management and so they’re out of step with the demands of today’s workplace, with its new technology, distractions, pace of change and complexity.

The main course of the book is section three, in which they introduce their COUNTER Mentor leadership model. The acronym describes the seven tasks of a leader:

Communicate desired outcomes
Own the relationship
Understand different perspectives
Negotiate the obstacles
Teach essential skills
Execute
Review results

The prescriptions comprise solid, common sense advice for leaders. As with most leadership advice, it’s things you more or less know already but don’t do enough of. Rather than go into detail for each of these parts of the model, let me address two key points that fit the persuasive communication theme of my blog.

First, I strongly agree with Communication as not only the first piece of the model, but as the only one that merits more than 1 chapter—four chapters, in fact. As I’ve put it before with maybe just a light touch of exaggeration, leadership IS communication. As the book puts it, “everything you do is communication, and your people soak it up like a sponge.”

Second, the charge to understand the perspectives of others is absolutely critical.[1] R&R tell us that “understanding is critical to developing a relationship, and relationship is the key to trust.” The key takeaway I got from this is that both sides demand respect, but they define respect differently, which is why open conversations to understand each other’s points of view is essential. The best tool for this is the Counter Mentor 1-on-1 Meeting, which is like a sales call plan for coaching.

As I mentioned earlier, my reasons for recommending the book may differ from theirs. First, while I agree that the Taylorian model doesn’t work, that’s not exactly a new idea. Douglas McGregor called the old style Theory X and the new style Theory Y in his book, The Human Side of Enterprise, in 1960, while a few years’ worth of boomers weren’t even born yet. If bosses are still practicing the old school management today, in my view it’s a personal problem, not a generational problem.

Besides, speaking of generational conflict, we’ve always had generational differences in the workplace. (Remember the song, Signs with its lines, “Long-haired freaky people need not apply” and “Imagine that! Hah, Me working for you!”) I suspect that today’s millennials will become tomorrow’s BOSSes when they get older and get more control.

But those two quibbles are actually good reasons to buy this book and apply its lessons. People constantly need to be re-reminded of old truths, and millennials who take these lessons to heart may avoid the fate of becoming BOSSes as they grow older (yes, it’s going to happen to you before you know it—one day you’ll look in the mirror and see your Mom or your Dad).

So, yes, you need to apply the lessons in this book, but not just because there are 4 generations in the workplace. The leadership model applies regardless of the age of the participants on either side of the equation.

As Kelly and Robby stress, it’s all about respect, no matter how old you are. And I guess that’s how father and son managed to write a book together.

[1] Although they don’t specifically address it in the book, different perspectives also arise from increased diversity and cultural differences, which makes this more important than ever.