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I don’t know about you, but I’m going to miss The Mooch. He packed more communication lessons in a shorter time than anyone I’ve ever seen.

There’s an old saying: “No man is completely useless. He can always serve as a bad example.” So, in that spirit, let’s see what we can learn from Anthony’s spectacular flameout:

·         The danger of information compulsion. Tom Wolfe coined the term, which is the overwhelming need that people have to tell you something you don’t know, especially when it helps to puff up their own importance. Good listeners know that simply remaining quiet can yield amazing amounts of information from those who suffer from it.

·         Impression management is not inauthentic; it’s smart. Nowadays, it’s popular to tout the value of being authentic, and letting your true self come out to others. Yet, when your true self is vain, profane and vindictive, you might want to think about toning it down a bit. It’s called calculated authenticity, and it’s essential, especially when you’re in the public eye.

·         Flattery has its limits. Flattery can be surprisingly useful, as I wrote in my last two blog posts, but apparently even Donald Trump has his threshold of embarrassment.

·         Nothing is private anymore. Scaramucci claimed that he thought his conversation with Ryan Lizza of the New Yorker was off the record, which Lizza disputes. Regardless, it’s extremely prudent to assume the mike is on at all times.

·         Prepare, prepare, prepare. The most effective communicators know precisely what they want to accomplish and how they want to say things when they go into a sales call, which is essentially what a media interview is. His indiscretion was not as serious as Gunter Schabowski’s, which essentially opened up the Berlin Wall, but it was close.

·         Choose your timing. It was probably not coincidental that all of this was happening when Scaramucci’s divorce was being finalized. I doubt we’ll ever know if he was thinking at full capacity, but he might have waited to let things settle down a bit before reaching out to the media.

·         If you don’t have something good to say about someone, don’t say anything at all.

Looking back at what I’ve written, I’ve written blog posts about almost every one of the lessons that The Mooch should have learned. Maybe if he had been a regular reader of this blog, he would still have a job today!

I was initially appalled when I watched the recent cringeworthy video of Donald Trump’s cabinet meeting, where hugely powerful and successful men and women competed to see who could offer the highest (or lowest, depending on your point of view) form of flattery for their boss.

That was my personal reaction, but my professional reaction was totally different. As distasteful as it may have appeared, it was actually a brilliant display of persuasive communication skill. Think about it this way: if your goal is to advance the interests of the department you head, you need the support of the President. If you’re the only one in the room not competing to outdo the others in compliments, what do you suppose are your chances? (And don’t forget that each of these people is quite accustomed to being on the receiving end of flattery from their subordinates—they know it works.)

Trump’s apparent craving for flattery is probably extreme, but research has shown that flattery works with just about everyone. Stanford professor Jeffery Pfeffer says that “The surest way to keep your position and to build a power base is to help those with more power enhance their positive feelings about themselves.”[1] Jennifer Chatman of UC Berkeley says, “People who bring positive information, that stroke the boss, that make the boss feel good about the decisions he or she has made, that build up the boss’ confidence, those people are going to do better.”[2]

The reason it works is that a person hearing something nice about themselves can either a) believe that the other person is only saying it to curry favor, or b) believe it’s true. The problem with accepting A is that it requires you to think less well not only of the person saying it, but of yourself. Through the magic of motivated reasoning you are much more likely to choose B. And besides, as this recent article indicates, the really powerful may actually be incapable of reading your true intentions (not that you would tell them)!

It also works because it makes the recipient like you better. Robert Cialdini cites a study in which men received comments about themselves (some only praise, some negative comments, and others a mixture) from a person who needed a favor. Those who received only praise reported liking the commenter better, even when they knew they needed a favor and the praise was untrue.[3]

That last statement shows that there’s not much risk of a backlash if your flattery is over the top. In her research, Chatman looked for the point at which flattery becomes less effective, and was not able to find it. Flattery is that powerful, which is why Machiavelli explicitly warned leaders against its power over five hundred years ago.

Flattery isn’t just for managing upward within your organization. It can be useful in sales calls or presentations, especially to get the audience more favorably disposed to your message right at the beginning.  Keep in mind that a sales pitch can be ego-threatening to the buyer, because in effect you’re telling them that they’re doing something wrong and they need to change. Soften the blow by stroking their ego at the beginning, to get them more favorably disposed toward your idea and to you personally.

So, go ahead and be a suck-up. If you read this article, you are clearly too smart to let flattery work on you, but you are also too smart to pass up the use of this extremely powerful tool, even if you find it distasteful. But just in case, my next post will address how to do it without being a complete suck-up.

[1] Jeffrey Pfeffer, Power: Why Some People Have It and Others Don’t, p. 31.

[2] Workers’ “Sucking Up” Bad for Business: Experts

[3] Robert, Cialdini, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, p. 176.

“When I left the dining room after sitting next to Mr. Gladstone, I thought he was the cleverest man in England. But after sitting next to Mr. Disraeli, I thought I was the cleverest woman in England.”

If someone asked about the impression you made on them, would they describe you as a Gladstone or a Disraeli? We all know people like Gladstone who strive to be perceived as the smartest or most important person in the room. If that’s what you care about, stop reading now. But if you care more about getting things done through others, you should instead strive to make them feel ten feet tall.

I submit that this is especially important in today’s flatter organizations that proclaim that hierarchies are dead, that ideas are judged on their merits regardless of who brings them up. Especially when markers of status are less overt, we pay close—albeit unspoken—attention to subtle signals of our relative ranking.[1] It’s hard-wired into our brains through millennia as social animals, and no amount of corporate feel-good fables will erase it. So, one of the best ways to grow your personal influence, paradoxically, is to give it up when communicating with others.

William James said, “the deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.” We all crave the comfortable glow of being respected and appreciated by others; when we get it, we feel good. So why not try to make others feel important? It costs us very little and means so much to them. Besides the fact that it’s the right thing to do, it makes practical sense to make others feel good about themselves when talking to us. Feeling good makes people more open-minded, more willing to listen and consider new ideas, and of course when people like us, they are much more likely to be persuaded.

The flip side of that argument, of course, is that when they feel put down, underappreciated or in a “one-down” position, they are less likely to go along. Even worse, the negative feeling can be far stronger than the corresponding positive. As in so many aspects of human nature, bad is stronger than good, and the threat to one’s self-importance is felt more intensely than the reward. According to David Rock, “the threat response is often triggered in social situations, and it tends to be more intense and longer-lasting than the reward response.” In fact, studies using functional MRIs have shown that the feeling of being excluded activates the same response in the brain as physical pain. And, when people feel threatened, their attention narrows and they are less open to new ideas. It can also feel very unfair, and people are quick to punish those they perceive as acting unfairly, even at a cost to themselves. , and Finally, if they associate you with pain, how likely are you to influence them?

Of course, most of us don’t go out of our way to alienate others, but we may do so inadvertently through inattention. And even when we don’t mess up, we may not take full advantage of ways to make the other person feel good about themselves. So it’s critical that you do everything you can to a) prevent negative feelings and b) foster positive feelings.

Prevent the bad – Don’t diminish their importance

Don’t ignore them. While this may sound obvious, it’s easy to make people feel ignored. How many times have you checked your phone while talking to someone? When meeting someone at a function, do you scan the room to see if there is someone more important to talk to? When giving a sales presentation, do you focus all your attention on the decision maker and overlook others in the room who may influence the final decision?

Don’t cross the line from confidence to cockiness, or assertiveness to aggression. This is especially important when making a first impression, because people tend to notice warmth before competence, in as little as a tenth of a sentence.[2]

Be careful about giving advice. You may think that useful advice is a gift to the other person, but keep in mind that they “pay” for the gift by granting you superior status; in other words, at that moment, they have to at least symbolically put you in a dominant position.

Foster positive feelings – Put them on a pedestal

Get to know them before you meet them. Show that you consider them important enough to prepare for.

Be present. Especially in this distracted age, full attention is the highest compliment you can pay anyone. The great thing about being present is that it’s a gift that gives back: it makes them feel important and they see you as more charismatic, according Olivia Fox Cabane in her book, The Charisma Myth.

Let others talk, and listen actively: face them squarely, don’t interrupt, encourage them to talk, and respond appropriately.

Be more interested than interesting. I got this phrase from Mark Goulston’s excellent book, Just Listen. His advice is to treat a conversation not as a tennis match in which you want to return serve with a stronger point of your own, but as a detective game in which you earn points by learning as much as you can about the other person. Follow the 51+ rule: meet them more than halfway; be curious about them…

Make them feel like an expert. Everyone knows more than you about something; find out what it is and ask them about that. Solicit their advice, and pay attention to what they say. Even when challenging their thinking by delivering new information, you can say something like, “You’re the expert in your business; how would you see this idea applying to your operations?”

One last thought: I am not advocating servile sycophancy that insincerely tells the other person only what they want to hear. The crucial point is that you must genuinely strive to find in others that which sets them apart and makes them distinctive—otherwise it can backfire on you. But when it works, it’s like a magic see-saw that elevates both sides at once.

[1] Most people tend to have an intuitive sense of this, as illustrated in research by Alison Fragale, which found that emails to peers used more deferential language than even emails to superiors.

[2] See Compelling People, by John Neffinger and Matthew Kohutt, p. 12.