Shaping Minds, Guiding Choices

Four years later, I’m bringing back a classic topic and one we all need to know about. Do you know that we all use some form of manipulation daily with every encounter, some less harmless than others? Think about it. In the articles, we will dive into the psychology behind the power of manipulation and persuasion. As much as we might think we are being manipulative while being persuasive, it’s a lot more complex yet simpler than you might think.

-              Manipulation: A malicious attempt to influence someone in an unethical manner.

-              Persuasion: To have a target comply with your belief or gain their help (neither ethical nor unethical).

This article right here, we’ll be filling in some blanks as we go along. We will work on effectively using tools to help persuade our target to do something we want. I hope you all are ready; you might want to print this one out. Here’s the scenario: We are looking to expand with our business partner, but they have been a little skeptical about working on opening a new location for the business. Your current locations are doing well, your financials are in the black and you think it’s time. As the financial advisor on the team, you know that another location will increase profits, allow more jobs, and create more traffic. You set up a 1:1 meeting to discuss the next steps with a throughout business plan to open the new location. What is the best approach?

Step 1: We need to first try to make our business partner have the same “mindset” as us when it comes to wanting to make a “risky” move. To activate this “mindset”, we need to prime their mind, attitude, and perspective into thinking in the same direction – to influence their perception and behavior. Since our brains are full of interconnected webs of knowledge, we need the spread of activation to help lead our thoughts in the “right” direction.

We all make decisions based on past situations we’ve experienced. The power of this method is to help encourage more accurate judgment. People don’t always have time to do intensive research, so they lean on these past decisions to help make future decisions – this is called anchoring. Extreme anchors can backfire.

When our brains are in a healthy state, high expectations are associated with pleasantness – neural activity. Expectations are powerful in trying to mold perception and they can also influence behavior. We all have tendencies to get confirmation about anything that is told to us, so our “high” expectations are and will be met. 

a.         What is the Scheme (the mindset you want your target to have)?

b.         How can you prime your business partner (get them into a good mood, talk about the current business success, talk about something new in your personal lives or that you tried recently)?

c.          What are your anchors?

d.         Tell them the positive aspects of your partnership and how you both have thrived.

Step 2: Body language is important in any kind of situation. It allows us to know where someone’s head is at if they are listening if they are interested, and more. It can be inconsistent with our inner attitude. We would change our behavior to match our discomfort. A way to get people in a better mood is to suggest this attitude change. Get someone to admit out loud they are in a good headspace or happy in general – toy with their minds, and they will feel obligated to comply with this new mood they admitted to having.

a.         How would you approach your business partner?

b.         What would change their mood if they were in a bad mood?

Step 3: Social norms are put in place to make us feel as if we “must” belong and that certain situations should play out in certain favors. But why do we do it? It’s a subconscious decision we make that we naturally just fall into the path of “fitting in”. We want to identify these social norms and behavioral groups so that we can identify with someone, relate to them, to have something in common – we can use this to gain someone’s support and persuade them to agree with us.

Knowledge is power. We might not always believe what we believe in after we learn new information about those topics. We might tend to believe we are now “incorrect” and want to understand what other beliefs are. There’s another side to this – normative influence. This is where we feel pressured to believe in others because we fear social rejection – an embarrassment for contributing “false” responses, not asking questions because we are unclear of how to feel, what to do, or say and we might make a plea that it was just plain stupid, or we weren’t thinking when answering.

Social norms are not set in stone. We all crave balance. We want people to give and respond to us the same way we do – the seesaw effect. This is where unsolicited favors and compliments come in. These two techniques can tilt this “seesaw” into our intended direction. We feel obligated to return the favor when someone does something random and nice for us and who doesn’t like affirmation? Your likability might skyrocket, and you are one step closer to your intended goal – expectations, expectations.

Opposites don’t attract. In business, we have visionaries and we have executioners. We want to be with someone or around someone who identifies with us, and who connects with us. We want to feel that attraction, connection, a bond because that’s what we want deep down inside, not to argue about nothing and constantly disagree. These small or large similarities can guide the behavior you want, and it is appealing and less threatening. When you have too many dissimilar bonds, you tend to be more cautious of what you might say or do. Find a way to relate to this person, find something to talk about that will get the conversation moving and flowing naturally. You cannot just want to talk about what you want; it’s going to end up being a one-sided conversation.

a.         What do you and your business partner have in common?

b.         Do you tend to agree or disagree?

c.          What social groups do you BOTH belong to?

d.         What do you know that you tend to teach your business partner and vice versa?

Step 4: Who hates to repeat themselves? I do. Sometimes it’s a good thing. The more we get accustomed to a habit, behavior, or action; we tend to lean toward that. When familiarity is stimulated, appeal and likability will increase in your favor – it becomes a positive light, or negative. When we repeat ourselves, others become subconsciously aware and think about what we did or told them on their own without even knowing sometimes – it triggers the cognitive response altering their meanings and associations with the stimulus.

How we process information can be slow or fast based on the amount of information that we connect with. If we like what we see or hear, we will process it faster and slower if we don’t. The night before, give your business partner some information about what you intend to tell them, show them, or do for them – give them a hint. Once that is done, when they wake up, there is a higher chance that they will remember and lean towards that idea, they might even bring up that same idea before you two meet.

Tell people the positive and the negative. It’s more realistic and honest. Put your ideas in a good light but also tell some of the things that might have them think twice – positive topics should be first and/or last to make them more memorable and the negative in the middle so that those are what they might stray away from. Yes, they would know the negative but at least they might brush that to the side because they are too busy focused on those good-hearted topics. Remember to keep in mind the mood that you want your target to be in – happy, positive, appealing, open-minded.

a.         Do you tend to repeat yourself? How often?

b.         What ways can you persuade your business partner repeatedly, in a timely manner, to think about expanding the business?

c.          Do you two know how to resolve conflicts both individually and as a team when it comes to business plans and decisions?

d.         How can you use those negative items on your list and make them positive items?

Step 5: Now that we have molded the mindset of our business partner, got them to change up their body language and behavior, found out and pinpointed our similarities, and given repeating stimuli to keep their attention, we can dive into the big question – but not just yet.

 The way we process information is either with strict evaluation and intensive research or we lean on the attractiveness of the person and how well WE KNOW they already know the topic and who they are (to us) in general – systematic processing versus heuristic processing.

Motivation and ability are at high alert here. Not all the time do we care about what someone is trying to tell us, we might not have time to stop and listen – give all our attention, sometimes we don’t know too much about that topic – intellectual capacity. Other times time, distractions, and likability, attractions play a HUGE part in decision making.

 Here is where we grab the attention of our business partner. Tell them what to look forward to with this new expansion, what it can mean for the brand, themselves, the people, and more. Get emotional with them, and open your heart – that might do the trick too.

 DO NOT SUGARCOAT. Tell them what the deal is. You might not be the best partner all the time, you might have your down days, and you might hate them some days and love them the next. Tell them all these things. No one likes to be led on and then BOOM – the switch-up is real. Their perception of you is important because they are already in business with you, they already know the person you are, use that to your advantage – you have some level of authority here.

a.         What more can you offer? What are you bringing to the table for the next steps in your careers?

b.         How will you motivate their decision?

c.          Are you going to catch them at a time when they need to sit down and think long and hard about what you are telling them or at a time when they are in a rush and cannot listen to all that you want/need to say?

Step 6: Rewards and incentives can drive behaviors to our intended goals. We perform behaviors that get enforced with rewards in the end and we fail to follow up with those that will result in punishment. Rewards and incentives in certain situations might be thought of as negative – you wouldn’t tell someone you like to work with them and that you would like to bribe them to keep an irregularity pushed under the rug to keep things flowing. We should be genuinely motivated to want to help fulfill a task because we are interested and not use external reasons – intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation.

Subconsciously we would take the smaller incentives because we tend to want to fulfill tasks because we enjoy the idea of helping, we enjoyed what someone told us about the task, or because we are just doing it out of the kindness of our heart – but yes, sometimes we do things because of the size of the reward. This contributes to congruent attitudes and behaviors that will turn into a personal desire to make these decisions to participate in what was asked of us.

 Social incentives like words of affirmation are the go-to. Monetary incentives are only good for business transactions. Don’t try to mix the two because you might end up ruining that social relationship you worked so hard to build.

 GIFTS ARE NICE TOO. Give incentives to promote competence. Try to give rewards to those who are doing an amazing job at what they are trying to change in their lives, do better in, and have an overall increase in growth.

 Give options and limit the options that are given. Try to have the target think they are in control of their own decisions, but you limit their options in your favor.

a.         Give them the choice of moving forward with expansion or not. Would you mind continuing even without expanding? What does this mean if you do not expand? Does it hurt you both in any way?

b.         What are the rewards/perks of expanding?

c.          What kinds of incentives will you be using?

Step 7: AND THERE YOU HAVE IT! We are finally to the end. We are going to wrap up all the information given and your responses and ask our business partner to consider expanding to another location.

Control your body language. Remember to say things to make them open-minded to this idea of change. Use “we”, “us”, and “together”. Give lots of information – throw a little confusion in there to make them ask you some questions to clarify. Repeat, repeat, and repeat. Tell the positive and the negative but emphasize the good. Give them choices but JUSTIFY yours.

Do you think you can now persuade them and get them on your side? Do you know what you are going to say to them? Did this help clear your mind and give you the confidence you needed? I hope so! Check out Methods of Persuasion by Nick Kolenda. This amazing book dives into all the psychology behind these methods, topics, and ideas about the rules, history, and applications of persuasion.