Note From Jim: Ron, this advice is priceless. Thank you!!!
by Ron Ashkenas
12:00 PM November 20, 2012
Excerpts:
It's also a good reminder that "thankfulness" and "appreciation" are important managerial behaviors in effective organizations — behaviors that need to be fostered throughout the year, not just when there's a holiday.
[First] Interpersonal appreciation is the day-to-day ability to genuinely and graciously thank other people for what they do.... all of us need affirmation and positive feedback, at least occasionally... without some measure of day-to-day appreciation it's difficult to build relationships and trust, which are essential to a well-functioning workplace.... The challenge though is how to make the process of giving thanks more routine, so that it occurs without a reminder.
The second type of thanksgiving is appreciating how effectively your organization solves problems and gets things done. Many managers have a tendency to focus on the things that are not working well, the shortfalls and the misses. On the other hand, much of the power and potential in organizations is revealed by its success stories. By identifying these vignettes and shining a spotlight on them, managers can help to tease out important lessons, reinforce innovation, and unlock tremendous value.... an approach called positive deviance shows that finding people who succeed, when everyone else is struggling, can be a key to large-scale innovation.
... perhaps if all of us were more thankful and appreciative throughout the year, we'd have much more to be thankful for.
***Ron Ashkenas is a managing partner of Schaffer Consulting and a co-author of The GE Work-Out and The Boundaryless Organization. His latest book is Simply Effective.
***Access Article, HBR Website and Great Content: http://blogs.hbr.org/ashkenas/2012/11/make-it-a-habit-to-give-thanks.html?referral=00563&cm_mmc=email-_-newsletter-_-daily_alert-_-alert_date&utm_source=newsletter_daily_alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=alert_date
Showing posts with label Psychology of Influence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Psychology of Influence. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
Thursday, October 25, 2012
How to Increase Business Using Goals - Influence At Work - Steve Martin
Influence At Work - October 2012
By Steve Martin, CMCT
Excerpts
...the Small-Area Hypothesis.
Put another way, at the beginning of a task people were more motivated to continue working towards that task when their attention was focused on the smaller number progress made so far, “You are already 20% of the way towards your goal” compared to “You have 80% of the way to go.” But when progress passed the half-way mark people were more motivated to complete the task when their focus shifted from the now larger progress they had made to the smaller progress that remained, “You have 20% left to achieve your goal” compared to “You are 80% of the way to achieving your goal”.
So when seeking to persuade people to keep committed and consistent with a task or goal that they are working towards it appears that the science is telling us that we can increase our effectiveness by focusing their attention on the ‘small area’ whether that represents progress already made or progress that is remaining.
Practical Application: This Small-Area Hypothesis suggests that regardless of where a particular customer is on that reward journey, focusing on the small area will help frame subsequent actions as being more impactful in achieving that goal, potentially leading to more participation, adoption of new products, and increased spending over time.
Managers too might find focusing on the small area a useful way to keep staff motivated towards reaching sales and performance targets. In the early stages, providing feedback along the lines of “one week in and you have already achieved 15% of your quarterly target” and as target attainment gets closer “only 10% of your target to go now”.
And when it comes to motivating ourselves, recording the small area as evidence of our progress towards a symbolic and specific goal should also prove useful. For example, a personal weight-loss or fitness program should be recording progress by emphasizing whichever is smaller: the weight we have already lost or how much we still need to lose to reach our desired goal.
Access Source And Its Great COntent: http://www.influenceatwork.com/inside-influence-report/
By Steve Martin, CMCT
Excerpts
...the Small-Area Hypothesis.
Put another way, at the beginning of a task people were more motivated to continue working towards that task when their attention was focused on the smaller number progress made so far, “You are already 20% of the way towards your goal” compared to “You have 80% of the way to go.” But when progress passed the half-way mark people were more motivated to complete the task when their focus shifted from the now larger progress they had made to the smaller progress that remained, “You have 20% left to achieve your goal” compared to “You are 80% of the way to achieving your goal”.
So when seeking to persuade people to keep committed and consistent with a task or goal that they are working towards it appears that the science is telling us that we can increase our effectiveness by focusing their attention on the ‘small area’ whether that represents progress already made or progress that is remaining.
Practical Application: This Small-Area Hypothesis suggests that regardless of where a particular customer is on that reward journey, focusing on the small area will help frame subsequent actions as being more impactful in achieving that goal, potentially leading to more participation, adoption of new products, and increased spending over time.
Managers too might find focusing on the small area a useful way to keep staff motivated towards reaching sales and performance targets. In the early stages, providing feedback along the lines of “one week in and you have already achieved 15% of your quarterly target” and as target attainment gets closer “only 10% of your target to go now”.
And when it comes to motivating ourselves, recording the small area as evidence of our progress towards a symbolic and specific goal should also prove useful. For example, a personal weight-loss or fitness program should be recording progress by emphasizing whichever is smaller: the weight we have already lost or how much we still need to lose to reach our desired goal.
Access Source And Its Great COntent: http://www.influenceatwork.com/inside-influence-report/
Saturday, August 25, 2012
Commitments, Towels, and “Two for One” Influence - Inside Influence Report
Thursday, 23 August, 2012
by Steve Martin, August 2012
Excerpts:
Guests who made a specific commitment at check-in were more likely to reuse their towels than the guests who made a general commitment (66% v 61%). Perhaps more interesting was the finding that guests who did make specific commitments to reuse their towels were also more likely to adopt other environmentally protective behaviors that were consistent with that initial commitment. For example they were more likely to turn off the lights, turn down the air conditioner unit and switch off the TV when leaving their room.
This latter finding might be an especially important insight to those of us who have the challenge of influencing multiple related behavior changes in others, highlighting a potential two-step approach. Step one will be to ensure that the initial commitment you seek is a specific one. Step two will be to arrange for the environment where that commitment will be enacted to include cues that could trigger other related and desirable behaviors consistent with that initial specific commitment.
This is consistent with Cialdini’s research showing in order for commitments to stand the best chance of being lived up to they need to be owned by the person making them, as well as being action-orientated and public. Accordingly, when persuading others to live up to their commitments a detective of influence will make arrangements for those commitments to be volunteered as well as stated specifically before providing ways for their target to publicly signal them too.
Access Article, Content Source And Other Great Stuff: http://www.influenceatwork.com/inside-influence-report/
Thursday, June 14, 2012
Building Trust Through Skillful Self-Disclosure - Harvard Business Review
Building Trust Through Skillful Self-Disclosure - Lynn Offermann and Lisa Rosh - Harvard Business Review
by Lynn Offermann and Lisa Rosh
11:37 AM June 13, 2012
Excerpts:
Psychologists have long known that self-disclosure is one of the hallmarks of intimate relationships. Revealing your motives, intentions, goals, values, and emotions, can increase liking and feelings of intimacy. There is considerable evidence that leaders who disclose their authentic selves to followers can build not only trust, but generate greater cooperation and teamwork as well. Yet successful and strategic self-disclosure is a leadership competency that many leaders have yet to acquire. Used incorrectly, or in the wrong corporate environment, self-disclosure can backfire.
Access Source, Article And Other Great Stuff: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/06/instantaneous_intimacy_skillfu.html?referral=00563&cm_mmc=email-_-newsletter-_-daily_alert-_-alert_date&utm_source=newsletter_daily_alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=alert_date
by Lynn Offermann and Lisa Rosh
11:37 AM June 13, 2012
Excerpts:
Psychologists have long known that self-disclosure is one of the hallmarks of intimate relationships. Revealing your motives, intentions, goals, values, and emotions, can increase liking and feelings of intimacy. There is considerable evidence that leaders who disclose their authentic selves to followers can build not only trust, but generate greater cooperation and teamwork as well. Yet successful and strategic self-disclosure is a leadership competency that many leaders have yet to acquire. Used incorrectly, or in the wrong corporate environment, self-disclosure can backfire.
Access Source, Article And Other Great Stuff: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/06/instantaneous_intimacy_skillfu.html?referral=00563&cm_mmc=email-_-newsletter-_-daily_alert-_-alert_date&utm_source=newsletter_daily_alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=alert_date
Monday, March 5, 2012
How Companies Learn Your Secrets - New York TImes Magazine
By CHARLES DUHIGG
Published: February 16, 2012
Your shopping habits reveal even the most personal information — like when you’re going to have a baby.
Charles Duhigg is a staff writer for The Times and author of "The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business," which will be published on Feb. 28. Follow him on Twitter and on Facebook.
Editor: Joel Lovell
----------------------------------
EXCERPTS:
...the science of habit formation has become a major field of research in neurology and psychology departments at hundreds of major medical centers and universities, as well as inside extremely well financed corporate labs. “It’s like an arms race to hire statisticians nowadays,” said Andreas Weigend, the former chief scientist at Amazon.com. “Mathematicians are suddenly sexy.” As the ability to analyze data has grown more and more fine-grained, the push to understand how daily habits influence our decisions has become one of the most exciting topics in clinical research, even though most of us are hardly aware those patterns exist. One study from Duke University estimated that habits, rather than conscious decision-making, shape 45 percent of the choices we make every day, and recent discoveries have begun to change everything from the way we think about dieting to how doctors conceive treatments for anxiety, depression and addictions.
This research is also transforming our understanding of how habits function across organizations and societies.
Researchers have figured out how to stop people from habitually overeating and biting their nails. They can explain why some of us automatically go for a jog every morning and are more productive at work, while others oversleep and procrastinate. There is a calculus, it turns out, for mastering our subconscious urges. For companies like Target, the exhaustive rendering of our conscious and unconscious patterns into data sets and algorithms has revolutionized what they know about us and, therefore, how precisely they can sell.
Inside the brain-and-cognitive-sciences department of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are what, to the casual observer, look like dollhouse versions of surgical theaters. There are rooms with tiny scalpels, small drills and miniature saws. Even the operating tables are petite, as if prepared for 7-year-old surgeons. Inside those shrunken O.R.’s, neurologists cut into the skulls of anesthetized rats, implanting tiny sensors that record the smallest changes in the activity of their brains.
This process, in which the brain converts a sequence of actions into an automatic routine, is called “chunking.” There are dozens, if not hundreds, of behavioral chunks we rely on every day. Some are simple: you automatically put toothpaste on your toothbrush before sticking it in your mouth. Some, like making the kids’ lunch, are a little more complex. Still others are so complicated that it’s remarkable to realize that a habit could have emerged at all.
The process within our brains that creates habits is a three-step loop. First, there is a cue, a trigger that tells your brain to go into automatic mode and which habit to use. Then there is the routine, which can be physical or mental or emotional. Finally, there is a reward, which helps your brain figure out if this particular loop is worth remembering for the future. Over time, this loop — cue, routine, reward; cue, routine, reward — becomes more and more automatic. The cue and reward become neurologically intertwined until a sense of craving emerges. What’s unique about cues and rewards, however, is how subtle they can be. Neurological studies like the ones in Graybiel’s lab have revealed that some cues span just milliseconds. And rewards can range from the obvious (like the sugar rush that a morning doughnut habit provides) to the infinitesimal (like the barely noticeable — but measurable — sense of relief the brain experiences after successfully navigating the driveway). Most cues and rewards, in fact, happen so quickly and are so slight that we are hardly aware of them at all. But our neural systems notice and use them to build automatic behaviors.
Habits aren’t destiny — they can be ignored, changed or replaced. But it’s also true that once the loop is established and a habit emerges, your brain stops fully participating in decision-making. So unless you deliberately fight a habit — unless you find new cues and rewards — the old pattern will unfold automatically.
Habits never really disappear.”
Some of the most ambitious habit experiments have been conducted by corporate America. To understand why executives are so entranced by this science, consider how one of the world’s largest companies, Procter & Gamble, used habit insights to turn a failing product into one of its biggest sellers. P.& G. is the corporate behemoth behind a whole range of products, from Downy fabric softener to Bounty paper towels to Duracell batteries and dozens of other household brands.
Andrew Pole was hired by Target to use the same kinds of insights into consumers’ habits to expand Target’s sales. His assignment was to analyze all the cue-routine-reward loops among shoppers and help the company figure out how to exploit them.
In the 1980s, a team of researchers led by a U.C.L.A. professor named Alan Andreasen undertook a study of peoples’ most mundane purchases, like soap, toothpaste, trash bags and toilet paper. They learned that most shoppers paid almost no attention to how they bought these products, that the purchases occurred habitually, without any complex decision-making. Which meant it was hard for marketers, despite their displays and coupons and product promotions, to persuade shoppers to change.
But when some customers were going through a major life event, like graduating from college or getting a new job or moving to a new town, their shopping habits became flexible in ways that were both predictable and potential gold mines for retailers. The study found that when someone marries, he or she is more likely to start buying a new type of coffee. When a couple move into a new house, they’re more apt to purchase a different kind of cereal. When they divorce, there’s an increased chance they’ll start buying different brands of beer.
Consumers going through major life events often don’t notice, or care, that their shopping habits have shifted, but retailers notice, and they care quite a bit. At those unique moments, Andreasen wrote, customers are “vulnerable to intervention by marketers.” In other words, a precisely timed advertisement, sent to a recent divorcee or new homebuyer, can change someone’s shopping patterns for years. And among life events, none are more important than the arrival of a baby. At that moment, new parents’ habits are more flexible than at almost any other time in their adult lives. If companies can identify pregnant shoppers, they can earn millions.
Using data to predict a woman’s pregnancy, Target realized soon after Pole perfected his model, could be a public-relations disaster. So the question became: how could they get their advertisements into expectant mothers’ hands without making it appear they were spying on them? How do you take advantage of someone’s habits without letting them know you’re studying their lives?
[My chocolate chip cookie habit].... When I started interviewing experts in habit formation, I concluded each interview by asking what I should do. The first step, they said, was to figure out my habit loop. The routine was simple: every afternoon, I walked to the cafeteria, bought a cookie and ate it while chatting with friends. Next came some less obvious questions: What was the cue? Hunger? Boredom? Low blood sugar? And what was the reward? The taste of the cookie itself? The temporary distraction from my work? The chance to socialize with colleagues?
Deciphering cues is hard, however. Our lives often contain too much information to figure out what is triggering a particular behavior. Do you eat breakfast at a certain time because you’re hungry? Or because the morning news is on? Or because your kids have started eating? Experiments have shown that most cues fit into one of five categories: location, time, emotional state, other people or the immediately preceding action. So to figure out the cue for my cookie habit, I wrote down five things the moment the urge hit:
Once I figured out all the parts of the loop, it seemed fairly easy to change my habit. But the psychologists and neuroscientists warned me that, for my new behavior to stick, I needed to abide by the same principle that guided Procter & Gamble in selling Febreze: To shift the routine — to socialize, rather than eat a cookie — I needed to piggyback on an existing habit. So now, every day around 3:30, I stand up, look around the newsroom for someone to talk to, spend 10 minutes gossiping, then go back to my desk. The cue and reward have stayed the same. Only the routine has shifted. It doesn’t feel like a decision, any more than the M.I.T. rats made a decision to run through the maze. It’s now a habit. I’ve lost 21 pounds since then (12 of them from changing my cookie ritual).
-----------------------------------
570 Comments
Access Full Article: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.html
Published: February 16, 2012
Your shopping habits reveal even the most personal information — like when you’re going to have a baby.
Charles Duhigg is a staff writer for The Times and author of "The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business," which will be published on Feb. 28. Follow him on Twitter and on Facebook.
Editor: Joel Lovell
----------------------------------
EXCERPTS:
...the science of habit formation has become a major field of research in neurology and psychology departments at hundreds of major medical centers and universities, as well as inside extremely well financed corporate labs. “It’s like an arms race to hire statisticians nowadays,” said Andreas Weigend, the former chief scientist at Amazon.com. “Mathematicians are suddenly sexy.” As the ability to analyze data has grown more and more fine-grained, the push to understand how daily habits influence our decisions has become one of the most exciting topics in clinical research, even though most of us are hardly aware those patterns exist. One study from Duke University estimated that habits, rather than conscious decision-making, shape 45 percent of the choices we make every day, and recent discoveries have begun to change everything from the way we think about dieting to how doctors conceive treatments for anxiety, depression and addictions.
This research is also transforming our understanding of how habits function across organizations and societies.
Researchers have figured out how to stop people from habitually overeating and biting their nails. They can explain why some of us automatically go for a jog every morning and are more productive at work, while others oversleep and procrastinate. There is a calculus, it turns out, for mastering our subconscious urges. For companies like Target, the exhaustive rendering of our conscious and unconscious patterns into data sets and algorithms has revolutionized what they know about us and, therefore, how precisely they can sell.
Inside the brain-and-cognitive-sciences department of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are what, to the casual observer, look like dollhouse versions of surgical theaters. There are rooms with tiny scalpels, small drills and miniature saws. Even the operating tables are petite, as if prepared for 7-year-old surgeons. Inside those shrunken O.R.’s, neurologists cut into the skulls of anesthetized rats, implanting tiny sensors that record the smallest changes in the activity of their brains.
This process, in which the brain converts a sequence of actions into an automatic routine, is called “chunking.” There are dozens, if not hundreds, of behavioral chunks we rely on every day. Some are simple: you automatically put toothpaste on your toothbrush before sticking it in your mouth. Some, like making the kids’ lunch, are a little more complex. Still others are so complicated that it’s remarkable to realize that a habit could have emerged at all.
The process within our brains that creates habits is a three-step loop. First, there is a cue, a trigger that tells your brain to go into automatic mode and which habit to use. Then there is the routine, which can be physical or mental or emotional. Finally, there is a reward, which helps your brain figure out if this particular loop is worth remembering for the future. Over time, this loop — cue, routine, reward; cue, routine, reward — becomes more and more automatic. The cue and reward become neurologically intertwined until a sense of craving emerges. What’s unique about cues and rewards, however, is how subtle they can be. Neurological studies like the ones in Graybiel’s lab have revealed that some cues span just milliseconds. And rewards can range from the obvious (like the sugar rush that a morning doughnut habit provides) to the infinitesimal (like the barely noticeable — but measurable — sense of relief the brain experiences after successfully navigating the driveway). Most cues and rewards, in fact, happen so quickly and are so slight that we are hardly aware of them at all. But our neural systems notice and use them to build automatic behaviors.
Habits aren’t destiny — they can be ignored, changed or replaced. But it’s also true that once the loop is established and a habit emerges, your brain stops fully participating in decision-making. So unless you deliberately fight a habit — unless you find new cues and rewards — the old pattern will unfold automatically.
Habits never really disappear.”
Some of the most ambitious habit experiments have been conducted by corporate America. To understand why executives are so entranced by this science, consider how one of the world’s largest companies, Procter & Gamble, used habit insights to turn a failing product into one of its biggest sellers. P.& G. is the corporate behemoth behind a whole range of products, from Downy fabric softener to Bounty paper towels to Duracell batteries and dozens of other household brands.
Andrew Pole was hired by Target to use the same kinds of insights into consumers’ habits to expand Target’s sales. His assignment was to analyze all the cue-routine-reward loops among shoppers and help the company figure out how to exploit them.
In the 1980s, a team of researchers led by a U.C.L.A. professor named Alan Andreasen undertook a study of peoples’ most mundane purchases, like soap, toothpaste, trash bags and toilet paper. They learned that most shoppers paid almost no attention to how they bought these products, that the purchases occurred habitually, without any complex decision-making. Which meant it was hard for marketers, despite their displays and coupons and product promotions, to persuade shoppers to change.
But when some customers were going through a major life event, like graduating from college or getting a new job or moving to a new town, their shopping habits became flexible in ways that were both predictable and potential gold mines for retailers. The study found that when someone marries, he or she is more likely to start buying a new type of coffee. When a couple move into a new house, they’re more apt to purchase a different kind of cereal. When they divorce, there’s an increased chance they’ll start buying different brands of beer.
Consumers going through major life events often don’t notice, or care, that their shopping habits have shifted, but retailers notice, and they care quite a bit. At those unique moments, Andreasen wrote, customers are “vulnerable to intervention by marketers.” In other words, a precisely timed advertisement, sent to a recent divorcee or new homebuyer, can change someone’s shopping patterns for years. And among life events, none are more important than the arrival of a baby. At that moment, new parents’ habits are more flexible than at almost any other time in their adult lives. If companies can identify pregnant shoppers, they can earn millions.
Using data to predict a woman’s pregnancy, Target realized soon after Pole perfected his model, could be a public-relations disaster. So the question became: how could they get their advertisements into expectant mothers’ hands without making it appear they were spying on them? How do you take advantage of someone’s habits without letting them know you’re studying their lives?
[My chocolate chip cookie habit].... When I started interviewing experts in habit formation, I concluded each interview by asking what I should do. The first step, they said, was to figure out my habit loop. The routine was simple: every afternoon, I walked to the cafeteria, bought a cookie and ate it while chatting with friends. Next came some less obvious questions: What was the cue? Hunger? Boredom? Low blood sugar? And what was the reward? The taste of the cookie itself? The temporary distraction from my work? The chance to socialize with colleagues?
Deciphering cues is hard, however. Our lives often contain too much information to figure out what is triggering a particular behavior. Do you eat breakfast at a certain time because you’re hungry? Or because the morning news is on? Or because your kids have started eating? Experiments have shown that most cues fit into one of five categories: location, time, emotional state, other people or the immediately preceding action. So to figure out the cue for my cookie habit, I wrote down five things the moment the urge hit:
Where are you? (Sitting at my desk.)The next day I did the same thing. And the next. Pretty soon, the cue was clear.....
What time is it? (3:36 p.m.)
What’s your emotional state? (Bored.)
Who else is around? (No one.)
What action preceded the urge? (Answered an e-mail.)
Once I figured out all the parts of the loop, it seemed fairly easy to change my habit. But the psychologists and neuroscientists warned me that, for my new behavior to stick, I needed to abide by the same principle that guided Procter & Gamble in selling Febreze: To shift the routine — to socialize, rather than eat a cookie — I needed to piggyback on an existing habit. So now, every day around 3:30, I stand up, look around the newsroom for someone to talk to, spend 10 minutes gossiping, then go back to my desk. The cue and reward have stayed the same. Only the routine has shifted. It doesn’t feel like a decision, any more than the M.I.T. rats made a decision to run through the maze. It’s now a habit. I’ve lost 21 pounds since then (12 of them from changing my cookie ritual).
-----------------------------------
570 Comments
Access Full Article: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.html
Saturday, February 4, 2012
Influence PEOPLE: 700,000 Great Reasons To Use Yellow Sticky Notes
Monday 1/30/2012
by Brian Ahearn
EXCERPTS:
Yes: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive, the authors (Cialdini, Goldstein, Martin) cite two studies on the use of yellow sticky notes to show how they engage people and can increase the response rate. In both studies, when a sticky note with a hand written message was attached to a survey cover letter, the response rate to the survey more than doubled when compared to just sending out the survey cover letter
Why does the sticky note with the short message work so well? Because of reciprocity; the principle of influence that alerts us to the reality that people feel obligated to give back when they sense someone has done something for them. Using a sticky note with a handwritten message takes extra time and personalizes the request. Consciously or unconsciously, recipients of the survey responded to that small act in a big way. After all, it’s hard to deny a doubling of the response rate in two separate studies.
Brian Ahearn - Columbus, Ohio, United States - I’ve been in the insurance industry for more than 25 years and have been a part of the State Auto Insurance Group since 1990. A Chartered Property Casualty Underwriter (CPCU) and Competent Toastmaster (CTM), I've been involved in the development and delivery of sales training programs for more than 15 years. In addition to training I'm a sales coach for a dozen regional vice presidents across the country. The focus of my sales training and coaching revolves around ethical influence and persuasion. Having trained under Robert Cialdini, PhD, I'm currently one of only 27 Cialdini Method Certified Trainers (CMCT) worldwide. There’s more than 60 years of behavioral science research to back up this claim - there are scientifically proven ways to get people to say “Yes” to you when you make a request. My goal is to help you understand how to apply that science so you can enjoy more success at work and home.
Access Source And Its Great Content: http://www.influence-people-brian.blogspot.com/2012/01/700000-great-reasons-to-use-yellow.html
by Brian Ahearn
EXCERPTS:
Yes: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive, the authors (Cialdini, Goldstein, Martin) cite two studies on the use of yellow sticky notes to show how they engage people and can increase the response rate. In both studies, when a sticky note with a hand written message was attached to a survey cover letter, the response rate to the survey more than doubled when compared to just sending out the survey cover letter
Why does the sticky note with the short message work so well? Because of reciprocity; the principle of influence that alerts us to the reality that people feel obligated to give back when they sense someone has done something for them. Using a sticky note with a handwritten message takes extra time and personalizes the request. Consciously or unconsciously, recipients of the survey responded to that small act in a big way. After all, it’s hard to deny a doubling of the response rate in two separate studies.
Brian Ahearn - Columbus, Ohio, United States - I’ve been in the insurance industry for more than 25 years and have been a part of the State Auto Insurance Group since 1990. A Chartered Property Casualty Underwriter (CPCU) and Competent Toastmaster (CTM), I've been involved in the development and delivery of sales training programs for more than 15 years. In addition to training I'm a sales coach for a dozen regional vice presidents across the country. The focus of my sales training and coaching revolves around ethical influence and persuasion. Having trained under Robert Cialdini, PhD, I'm currently one of only 27 Cialdini Method Certified Trainers (CMCT) worldwide. There’s more than 60 years of behavioral science research to back up this claim - there are scientifically proven ways to get people to say “Yes” to you when you make a request. My goal is to help you understand how to apply that science so you can enjoy more success at work and home.
Access Source And Its Great Content: http://www.influence-people-brian.blogspot.com/2012/01/700000-great-reasons-to-use-yellow.html
Monday, January 23, 2012
What's Your Influencing Style? - Harvard Business Review
Chris Musselwhite and Tammie Plouffe
2:45 PM Friday January 13, 2012
by Chris Musselwhite and Tammie Plouffe
Comments (27)
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Effective leadership today relies more than ever on influencing others — impacting their ideas, opinions, and actions. While influence has always been a valuable managerial skill, today's highly collaborative organizations make it essential. Consider how often you have to influence people who don't even report to you in order to accomplish your objectives. Success depends on your ability to effectively influence both your direct reports and the people over whom you have no direct authority.
Have you ever thought about how you influence others? The tactics you use? We are all aware that people use different influencing tactics, but did you realize that we each naturally default to the same tactics every time? Or that the tactics we default to are also the ones to which we are most receptive when being influenced?
It is these preferred tactics that define our influencing style. Analyzing the different influencing tactics, researchers have identified up to nine primary influencing tactics. In our quest to further understand personal influencing styles, we did additional research to build on the existing knowledge base. From our research, we've identified five distinct influencing styles: rationalizing, asserting, negotiating, inspiring, and bridging.
You may have an idea what your style is just from hearing these labels, but the most accurate way to identify your style is with an influence style indicator — a self-scoring assessment that classifies your style based on answers to questions about preferred influencing tactics. But even without the indicator, here are some questions you can ask yourself to begin to understand your style:
•Rationalizing: Do you use logic, facts, and reasoning to present your ideas? Do you leverage your facts, logic, expertise, and experience to persuade others?While answering these questions, take your style a step further. How often does it work for you? Are you more successful with certain types of people? Have you ever wondered why? Since there are five different influencing styles, using only your preferred style has the potential to undermine your influence with as many as four out of five people.
•Asserting: Do you rely on your personal confidence, rules, law, and authority to influence others? Do you insist that your ideas are heard and considered, even when others disagree? Do you challenge the ideas of others when they don't agree with yours? Do you debate with or pressure others to get them to see your point of view?
•Negotiating: Do you look for compromises and make concessions in order to reach an outcome that satisfies your greater interest? Do you make tradeoffs and exchanges in order to meet your larger interests? If necessary, will you delay the discussion until a more opportune time?
•Inspiring: Do you encourage others toward your position by communicating a sense of shared mission and exciting possibility? Do you use inspirational appeals, stories, and metaphors to encourage a shared sense of purpose?
•Bridging: Do you attempt to influence outcomes by uniting or connecting with others? Do you rely on reciprocity, engaging superior support, consultation, building coalitions, and using personal relationships to get people to agree with your position?
Gaining awareness about our own influencing style and those of others is especially critical in light of today's fast-paced and stressful work environments, and here's why: When we are operating unconsciously out of a preference (our style) and not seeing the results we expect, we actually have the tendency to intensify our preferred behavior — even when it's not working!
If your individual success depends on gaining the cooperation of people over whom you have no direct authority, this should concern you. The way to begin to increase your odds of influencing more people is to learn to recognize and use each of the five styles.
Becoming aware that there are influencing styles other than yours is a good start. To further increase your influence, you must learn what each style sounds like when it's being used effectively and ineffectively. Gaining this awareness will help you recognize when the style you're using isn't working and how to determine one that will.
What's your influencing style? And what are you going to do about it?
Chris Musselwhite is president and CEO of Discovery Learning Inc. and Tammie Plouffe is the managing partner of Innovative Pathways.
Access Source And Its Great Content: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/01/whats_your_influencing_style.html
Saturday, November 12, 2011
How the Rift Between Sales and Marketing Undermines Reps - Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson - Harvard Business Review
It's no secret that sales and marketing executives don't always see eye to eye.
In a recent Corporate Executive Board survey, sales executives' top terms for their marketing colleagues included "paper pushers," "academic," and perhaps worst of all, "irrelevant." On the other hand, marketing executives called out their sales counterparts as "simple minded," "cowboys," and flat out "incompetent." Strikingly, across several hundred sales and marketing responses, a full 87% were negative.
Management has long called for sales and marketing to bury the hatchet, but the requests often lack urgency and are generally met with indifference. That must change. In today's historically difficult selling environment, the rift between sales and marketing seriously undermines even the best-performing reps. In previous posts (here, here, and here), we've described a gifted kind of sales rep we call Challengers. Challengers excel by creating constructive tension with customers through unique and surprising competitive insights. However, all but the very best Challengers will struggle to source and package those insights unless they have organizational support — especially from marketing.
Yet much of the sales support marketing provides falls short because it's focused on teaching customers about the supplier's business, not the customer's. Worse, the function responsible more than any other for differentiating your solution in the marketplace often churns out collateral and sales tools that look and sound exactly like everyone else's. Where's the teaching in that?
Don't take our word for it. In a recent study, public relations expert Adam Sherk analyzed the most frequent terms in company communications, and the results were eye opening. Here are the top ten: Leader, leading, best, top, unique, solution, largest, innovative, and innovator.
Sound familiar? Most companies' marketing materials make generic claims like "an industry leader with decades of experience helping global customers achieve business objectives through unique solutions and uncompromised value." Blah, blah, blah. When customers hear such commoditized messages often enough, they stop hearing them altogether. So, you say to your customers, "Our solution is unique," and your customers don't believe you. Why should they? Your message sure isn't. Their reply? "That's fantastic. Can I get a discount?" After all, why should your customer pay more for your solution when it sounds exactly like everyone else's?
So what's the alternative? In our book, we share case studies of companies whose marketing organizations have gotten it right.
Here are four rules Challenger marketing organizations live by:
1. Identify your unique capabilities, not all your capabilities
In their excitement to tell the world about their broader "solution," most marketing organizations fail to identify the handful of capabilities that truly set them apart. Sure, your products are "faster," "newer," "smaller," "bigger," or "greener," but why does it matter? If customers see no difference between you and the competition, anything you teach them will simply wind up in an RFP headed for a price-driven bake-off. Bottom line, if you can't identify the unique capabilities customers should be willing to pay you for, they're sure not going to do it for you.
Answer the question, "Why should our customers buy from us over anyone else?" It's a simple question, but often proves surprisingly hard to answer. It's shocking how many companies are unable to identify what truly sets their solution apart.
2. Focus on the unique capabilities your customers currently undervalue
Most marketing organizations naturally focus on capabilities customers disproportionately value. The thinking goes: customers want it, we're best at it, so that's the core of our value proposition. The best marketing organizations, however, are far more interested in promoting capabilities customers under value. Why? Because their primary goal is to teach customers new perspectives, not reinforce existing ones. The best teaching opportunities often spring from the question, "What is it that customers fail to appreciate about their business that leads them to undervalue our capability?" The answer provides a strong foundation for insights that challenge customers' thinking.
3. Design messages that lead to those capabilities, not with them
Virtually all marketing collateral suffers from the same flaw. If the first five pages — and the first ten slides — of your collateral or sales pitch deck are about you (and they almost invariably are), you've got it wrong. Build messages that lead to your unique capabilities. In a teaching conversation, the supplier enters the conversation at the end, not the beginning.
4. Calculate the ROI of changing behavior, not of buying a solution
Finally, equip reps with an ROI calculator that shows customers the value of behavior change. Surprisingly, the best ROI calculators are supplier agnostic. They're built to convince customers to do something, not to buy something — to take action on whatever new perspective you've just taught them. Of course, when customers ask, "Wow, who can help us do this?" the rep must be able to legitimately say, "Let me show you how we're uniquely able to help make this happen."
Successfully challenging customers' thinking is a team sport. Does your company set up Challengers to succeed? Pull out the latest piece of collateral produced by your marketing organization. Does it equip your salespeople to teach customers about their company or about yours?
In a recent Corporate Executive Board survey, sales executives' top terms for their marketing colleagues included "paper pushers," "academic," and perhaps worst of all, "irrelevant." On the other hand, marketing executives called out their sales counterparts as "simple minded," "cowboys," and flat out "incompetent." Strikingly, across several hundred sales and marketing responses, a full 87% were negative.
Management has long called for sales and marketing to bury the hatchet, but the requests often lack urgency and are generally met with indifference. That must change. In today's historically difficult selling environment, the rift between sales and marketing seriously undermines even the best-performing reps. In previous posts (here, here, and here), we've described a gifted kind of sales rep we call Challengers. Challengers excel by creating constructive tension with customers through unique and surprising competitive insights. However, all but the very best Challengers will struggle to source and package those insights unless they have organizational support — especially from marketing.
Yet much of the sales support marketing provides falls short because it's focused on teaching customers about the supplier's business, not the customer's. Worse, the function responsible more than any other for differentiating your solution in the marketplace often churns out collateral and sales tools that look and sound exactly like everyone else's. Where's the teaching in that?
Don't take our word for it. In a recent study, public relations expert Adam Sherk analyzed the most frequent terms in company communications, and the results were eye opening. Here are the top ten: Leader, leading, best, top, unique, solution, largest, innovative, and innovator.
Sound familiar? Most companies' marketing materials make generic claims like "an industry leader with decades of experience helping global customers achieve business objectives through unique solutions and uncompromised value." Blah, blah, blah. When customers hear such commoditized messages often enough, they stop hearing them altogether. So, you say to your customers, "Our solution is unique," and your customers don't believe you. Why should they? Your message sure isn't. Their reply? "That's fantastic. Can I get a discount?" After all, why should your customer pay more for your solution when it sounds exactly like everyone else's?
So what's the alternative? In our book, we share case studies of companies whose marketing organizations have gotten it right.
Here are four rules Challenger marketing organizations live by:
1. Identify your unique capabilities, not all your capabilities
In their excitement to tell the world about their broader "solution," most marketing organizations fail to identify the handful of capabilities that truly set them apart. Sure, your products are "faster," "newer," "smaller," "bigger," or "greener," but why does it matter? If customers see no difference between you and the competition, anything you teach them will simply wind up in an RFP headed for a price-driven bake-off. Bottom line, if you can't identify the unique capabilities customers should be willing to pay you for, they're sure not going to do it for you.
Answer the question, "Why should our customers buy from us over anyone else?" It's a simple question, but often proves surprisingly hard to answer. It's shocking how many companies are unable to identify what truly sets their solution apart.
2. Focus on the unique capabilities your customers currently undervalue
Most marketing organizations naturally focus on capabilities customers disproportionately value. The thinking goes: customers want it, we're best at it, so that's the core of our value proposition. The best marketing organizations, however, are far more interested in promoting capabilities customers under value. Why? Because their primary goal is to teach customers new perspectives, not reinforce existing ones. The best teaching opportunities often spring from the question, "What is it that customers fail to appreciate about their business that leads them to undervalue our capability?" The answer provides a strong foundation for insights that challenge customers' thinking.
3. Design messages that lead to those capabilities, not with them
Virtually all marketing collateral suffers from the same flaw. If the first five pages — and the first ten slides — of your collateral or sales pitch deck are about you (and they almost invariably are), you've got it wrong. Build messages that lead to your unique capabilities. In a teaching conversation, the supplier enters the conversation at the end, not the beginning.
4. Calculate the ROI of changing behavior, not of buying a solution
Finally, equip reps with an ROI calculator that shows customers the value of behavior change. Surprisingly, the best ROI calculators are supplier agnostic. They're built to convince customers to do something, not to buy something — to take action on whatever new perspective you've just taught them. Of course, when customers ask, "Wow, who can help us do this?" the rep must be able to legitimately say, "Let me show you how we're uniquely able to help make this happen."
Successfully challenging customers' thinking is a team sport. Does your company set up Challengers to succeed? Pull out the latest piece of collateral produced by your marketing organization. Does it equip your salespeople to teach customers about their company or about yours?
Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson
Matthew Dixon is Managing Director of the Corporate Executive Board's Sales and Service Practice. Brent Adamson is Senior Director of the Sales Executive Council, a division of the Sales and Service Practice. Their new book, The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation, is forthcoming November 10, 2011 from Portfolio/PenguinAccess Source And Its Great Content: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/11/how_the_rift_between_sales_and.html
Thursday, November 3, 2011
You don’t have to be a Dupe to be Duped:Lessons from the Madoff Affair - Inside Influence Report
Inside Influence Report [Special Edition]
11/02/2011
About Madoff & 60 Minutes
Because of Sunday’s big 60 Minutes interview with the Madoff family, we’ve received a number of requests to reprise the article written by Dr. Cialdini entitled: You don’t have to be a Dupe to be Duped: Lessons from the Madoff Affair.
These are good lessons for us all. Click here to read Dr. Cialdini’s article. [pasted below]
You don’t have to be a Dupe to be Duped:
Lessons from the Madoff Affair By Dr. Robert Cialdini
By now, we’ve all been exposed to varied analyses of the highly publicized Ponzi scheme that Wall Street player Bernard Madoff is charged with orchestrating. While some analysts have focused on certain remarkable aspects of the fraud such as its size ($50 billion by most estimates) and its duration (going undetected for decades), I’ve been impressed by another remarkable feature: the level of financial sophistication of many of its victims. The list of those taken in by Madoff is rife with the names of hardheaded economists, seasoned money managers, and highly successful business leaders. With Madoff, it wasn’t another case of the fox outwitting the chickens; this guy bamboozled the other foxes. How’d he do it?
For me, the answer starts with the opaque and complicated nature of the hedge fund he was operating and the derivatives-based financial mechanism he was employing to create profits, which seemed beyond the comprehension of the majority of even the most sophisticated financial analysts. In addition, Madoff elevated the consequent mystery of what he was doing and how he was doing it by enforcing strict policies of secrecy around his business. But why, of all things, should the difficult-to-penetrate character of Madoff’s operation form the basis for his astounding effectiveness at persuading others to join him—especially others who, by virtue of savvy and experience, should have known better?
The Power of Persuasion under Conditions of Uncertainty
Under conditions of uncertainty like those Madoff cultivated, a pair of principles of social influence gain special traction: Authority and Social Proof. Let’s take each in turn and examine how they were commissioned by Madoff to advance his persuasive success.
Authority
When people are uncertain of what to do, they don’t look inside themselves for answers; all they’ll see there is vexing ambiguity. Instead, they look outside. One prominent place they look is to the counsel of experts, credible authorities on the topic. And, by any measure, Bernard Madoff certainly had the look of a credible authority in financial matters. He possessed expert credentials from long years in the investment industry. After starting his firm in 1960, he grew it into a juggernaut that was reported to be the largest dealer in NYSE-listed stocks in the United States. His firm helped to develop the NASDAQ, where he served as Chairman of the Board of Directors and where Madoff Securities became the exchange’s largest market-maker. Beyond expertise, Madoff spent substantial time and money establishing a reputation for possessing the second element of credible authority—trustworthiness. He was active in an organization oriented to the self-regulation of the securities industry, the National Association of Securities Dealers, and even sat on its Board of Governors. Moreover, he was widely known for his good heart via multiple charitable and philanthropic involvements.
Against such a backdrop, we can begin to understand why so many knowledgeable and experienced financial professionals followed Mr. Madoff down the garden path. Under conditions of uncertainty, they did not look inside (to their own knowledge and experience) for direction. They looked outside to credible authorities on the topic. And, there were few on the murky topic of derivative-based hedge funds more credible than Bernie Madoff.
Social Proof
Besides authorities, do people seek any other source of external information when uncertain of how to choose? They do. They look to—and then follow—what most people just like them are doing. Here, the proof of a correct choice isn’t based on knowledge or logic or empirical evidence; it’s based on social evidence of what one’s peers and those in one’s social network have decided to do. For instance, if the evidence were clear that your friends and coworkers were flocking to a new restaurant for lunch, you’d likely follow suit. At developing, honing, and providing this kind of social evidence, the Madoff client recruitment program had few equals. Madoff is Jewish, and so, too, are the majority of his victims, who were often recruited at country clubs by Madoff’s lieutenants, who were also Jewish and also members of the same country clubs. Plus, new recruits knew and were similar to past recruits, who served as unwitting sources of social proof that an investment with Madoff must be a wise choice "for someone like me." Of course, fraud of this sort is hardly limited to one ethnic or religious group. Called affinity schemes, these investment scams have always involved members of a group preying on other members of the group—Baptists on Baptists, Hispanics on Hispanics, Armenian-Americans on Armenian-Americans. Indeed, Charles Ponzi, who gave his name to the infamous Ponzi scheme that Madoff copied, was an Italian immigrant to the U.S. who fleeced other Italian immigrants to the U.S.
Implications for Ethical Influence in Times of Uncertainty (Like Now!!)
What lessons can be gleaned from the Madoff case for those who want to be influential but who refuse to tumble to Mr. Madoff’s ethical level in the process? Honestly informing prospects, customers, clients, superiors, or coworkers of the views of legitimate authorities and/or the choices of comparable others is a both a potent and ethical route to persuasive success. But, to maximize the effect of these two sources of influence, there is one additional aspect to consider: They will have particularly strong impact under conditions of uncertainty, when people are looking outside rather than inside themselves for answers.
This means that when the economic environment has become unpredictable, as is currently the case—or even when business conditions have recently changed for more ordinary reasons, such as a new product introduction or a new organizational policy or the emergence of a new competitor—the resulting uncertainty will make audiences especially attentive and responsive to information about how experts and similar others are dealing with it. It also means that communicators would lose great persuasive leverage (more bluntly, would be fools) if they failed to marshal and honestly employ those two sources of information in their messaging at precisely these times.
Thus, when things are uncertain, the judgments and actions of authorities and of comparable others can provide a goldmine of persuasive resources. And that mine is…well…a terrible thing to waste.
© 2010 INFLUENCE AT WORK ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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Dr. Robert Cialdini has spent his entire career researching the science of influence earning him an international reputation as an expert in the fields of persuasion, compliance, and negotiation.
His books including, Influence: Science & Practice, are the results of years of study into the reasons why people comply with requests in business settings. Worldwide, Influence has sold over 2 million copies. Influence has been published in twenty-six languages. His most recent co-authored book, Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to be Persuasive, has been on the New York Times, USA Today & Wall Street Journal Best Seller Lists.
In the field of influence and persuasion, Dr. Cialdini is the most cited living social psychologist in the world today.
Dr. Cialdini received his Ph.D from the University of North Carolina and post doctoral training from Columbia University. He has held Visiting Scholar Appointments at Ohio State University, the University of California, the Annenberg School of Communications, and the Graduate School of Business of Stanford University. Currently, Dr Cialdini is Regents’ Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Marketing at Arizona State University.
Dr. Cialdini is President of INFLUENCE AT WORK, an international consulting, strategic planning and training organization based on the Six Principles of Influence.
Dr. Cialdini’s clients include such organizations as Google, Microsoft, Cisco Systems, Bayer, Coca Cola, KPMG, AstraZeneca, Ericsson, Kodak, Merrill Lynch, Nationwide Insurance, Pfizer, AAA, Northern Trust, IBM, Prudential, The Mayo Clinic, GlaxoSmithKline, Harvard University - Kennedy School, The Weather Channel, the United States Department of Justice, and NATO.
His books including, Influence: Science & Practice, are the results of years of study into the reasons why people comply with requests in business settings. Worldwide, Influence has sold over 2 million copies. Influence has been published in twenty-six languages. His most recent co-authored book, Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to be Persuasive, has been on the New York Times, USA Today & Wall Street Journal Best Seller Lists.
In the field of influence and persuasion, Dr. Cialdini is the most cited living social psychologist in the world today.
Dr. Cialdini received his Ph.D from the University of North Carolina and post doctoral training from Columbia University. He has held Visiting Scholar Appointments at Ohio State University, the University of California, the Annenberg School of Communications, and the Graduate School of Business of Stanford University. Currently, Dr Cialdini is Regents’ Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Marketing at Arizona State University.
Dr. Cialdini is President of INFLUENCE AT WORK, an international consulting, strategic planning and training organization based on the Six Principles of Influence.
Dr. Cialdini’s clients include such organizations as Google, Microsoft, Cisco Systems, Bayer, Coca Cola, KPMG, AstraZeneca, Ericsson, Kodak, Merrill Lynch, Nationwide Insurance, Pfizer, AAA, Northern Trust, IBM, Prudential, The Mayo Clinic, GlaxoSmithKline, Harvard University - Kennedy School, The Weather Channel, the United States Department of Justice, and NATO.
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Access Or Subscribe - Inside Influence Report: http://www.insideinfluence.com/
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Inside Influence Report: Should I Stay or Should I Go?
September 14, 2011
By Steve Martin, CMCT
In a 1981 single that went on to feature in VH1’s Top 100 Greatest Hard Rock Songs, UK punk rock band The Clash asked “Should I stay or should I go?” The question posed in their song is likely to be asked as often today as it was upon its release thirty years ago - and not just pertaining to matters of the heart; but to matters of business too.
Every day millions of customers and consumers ask themselves if ‘they should stay or go’ when finding themselves waiting in line for a service and not knowing how long their wait is likely to be. Shoppers may switch lines in checkouts hoping to pick a faster moving one. Web users might refresh their browser in the hope a chosen download will run faster. Customers contacting a telephone helpline may abandon a current call and call back later in the hope that the wait time will be shorter.
But what are the factors that people use to decide whether they should stay or go and what are the potential implications for business when it comes to ethically influencing and persuading customers?
We might be living in the fastest-moving, most stimulated-saturated environment ever but we still spend a considerable amount of our time waiting in line (or online). Some sources estimate that the average American citizen can spend upwards of 2 years of their life waiting in queues. In a new paper about to be published in the Journal of Marketing Research, Narayan Janakiraman from the University of Arizona, together with two Wharton School colleagues Robert Meyer and Stephen Hoch, look at what influences people to stay waiting when in a line or to abandon their wait for another time.
The core of their work is that the simple intuition “a queue worth joining is a queue worth persisting in” is advice that is frequently violated. Janakiraman, Meyer and Hoch cite examples where significant numbers of callers (34% in one study) who contact call-centers hang- up and dial again primarily as a result of impatience. Tellingly few people in these groups ever benefit from these abandoned waits primarily because they invariably call back some time in the future and their total cumulative wait time becomes much longer.
Viewed through the lens of Dr. Cialdini’s six universal principles of persuasion a decision to continue waiting or to abandon a place in line appears to pit two principles against each other.
On one hand the longer a person waits in a queue the more likely they are to focus their attention on alternative activities they could have accomplished while waiting. Not attending to these alternative activities could be viewed as ‘sunk costs’ or ‘losses’ and the principle of scarcity clearly demonstrates that our attention and subsequent actions are drawn to avoiding losses of any kind. As a result it is possible that a person focussing on other activities they could be attending to while waiting in line might be motivated to abandon the wait by virtue of this loss aversion.
However things are rarely as straightforward as they seem. It could also be argued that a person who begins waiting in line or in a queue has made an active commitment to that queue and therefore the principle of consistency might be activated, compelling them to remain. As each minute of waiting time passes it is possible that a person experiences an increased motivation to completing the goal of getting through and becomes even more committed the closer they get. Much akin to a frequent flyer taking more flights the closer they get to the next reward stage of a loyalty program.
So in view of the tension between the powerful forces of scarcity and consistency what do people typically do? Janakiraman and his colleagues find that normally, peoples’ decisions to abandon a wait are most likely to occur somewhere in the middle of that wait. No doubt that this decision to abandon a place in line will also likely be accompanied by feelings of annoyance at the potential losses incurred not to mention general frustration and displeasure. Hardly a desirable situation if it is your company that customers and potential consumers are waiting to do business with.
Which prompts the question, what can be done to mitigate these feelings and to reduce the number of potential customers who will hang up before speaking with your organization?
Clearly the obvious answer is to reduce call wait times and wherever possible this should be done. But what if this is not always possible? Across three studies Janakiraman and his colleagues test and propose some suggestions:
- Provide a contrast by informing people in line of the current duration of alternative queues they could have joined. The authors found evidence that if customers see that wait times would have been just as long (or longer) in other queues it diminishes the appeal of abandoning one line to join an alternate one.
- Publish the slower rates of progress in alternative queues. In line with the adage “a watched pot never boils” the studies found that if consumers were simultaneously provided with information about slower progress in alternative queues then this was also likely to reduce abandonment. Of course such an approach should only be used if such comparisons are true and it is ethically wise to do so.
- Provide active distractions while people wait. Providing simple activities for people to engage in while waiting also led to a reduced likelihood to leave a queue in the studies. One wonders if this might also provide a business with the chance to turn waiting, a largely frustrating experience in most people’s eyes, into an opportunity to influence consumers and perhaps create future obligations? For example a business might employ the principle of reciprocity by providing valuable information or recommendations to customers while they wait. This information may not necessarily just be about products and services supplied by that company - in fact it may be better if they are not. Doing so may demonstrate that company’s desire to do its best for its customers and at the same time at least turn a less than pleasurable experience into a tolerable one.
One wonders what strategies and ideas Inside Influence Report readers recommend for productively filling that time while customers wait in line or if you are the customer what might work for you?
As always your comments are gratefully received......if you would just like to form an orderly queue please.
Source:
Janakiraman, N., Meyer, Robert J., and Hoch, Stephen J. (2011) "The Psychology of Abandoning Waits for Service," Journal of Marketing Research (in press).
Janakiraman, N., Meyer, Robert J., and Hoch, Stephen J. (2011) "The Psychology of Abandoning Waits for Service," Journal of Marketing Research (in press).
Access Content Source And Its Great Stuff: http://www.insideinfluence.com/inside-influence-report/2011/09/should-i-stay-or-should-i-go.html#more
Friday, August 19, 2011
Why employees lie (and how to get them to stop) | Sam Taute | SmartBlog on Leadership
By Sam Taute on August 18, 2011
Participants were broken into three conditions where [1] they were asked to make their decision immediately, [2] contemplate their decision for 3 minutes before acting or [3] exchange an e-mail with an anonymous stranger before acting. The people who made their decision immediately and the people who had a conversation with someone who encouraged lying told the truth about half the time. The people who were given an instruction to contemplate their decisions for 3 minutes and the people who had a conversation with someone who encouraged honesty told the truth about 85% of the time.
SmartBrief recently asked the co-authors of the research, Brian C. Gunia, Long Wang, Li Huang, Jiunwen Wang and J. Keith Murnighan, some questions about what employers should should take away from their experiment. An edited version of their responses follows.
Does your research suggest that people’s initial instinct when faced with a decision is to act out of self-interest?
Several theories suggest exactly this — that people start their lives as self-interested and only through learning, or maybe evolution, acquire a willingness and a desire to think of others’ interests. Our research suggests that right-wrong decisions naturally put people on the fence, and that a small amount of contemplation or conversation can push them onto more stable, ethical ground.
Does contemplation before making a decision and having a conversation before making a decision trigger the same psychological process, or do they simply produce similar results?
Our data cannot definitively resolve this question, since we could not “get inside” people’s heads. However, we do believe that contemplation and conversation trigger a similar psychological process. Contemplation and conversation both lead people to weigh various considerations before acting. In a way, conversation is a public form of contemplation. Another reason that we believe the two are the same is that people’s explanations of their actions almost uniformly supported their decisions, justifying them as natural and appropriate. This suggests that contemplation and conversation had similar long-term effects, in addition to their short-term impact on the decision itself.
Do you think that participants in your experiment were more likely to give honest answers when they were given time to think because contemplation leads to a desire act morally? Or are there other factors that come into play, such as an increasing awareness of the potential for embarrassment if caught?
Again, it is hard to say without additional evidence. We do think embarrassment in front of others is an unlikely explanation for our results. Participants in all conditions of our study were assured that they would never see, meet or even know who their decision counterpart was — and they knew that their counterpart knew the same. They also knew that the experimenter would not learn whether they had lied. That said, it is possible that some people may have told the truth to avoid being embarrassed of themselves. This is consistent with other research that shows that people act more ethically when made aware of themselves by looking into a mirror.
Your experiment suggested that people were surprisingly influenced by a short message from an anonymous source. Why do you think people were so easily swayed?
We believe that these decisions truly put people on the fence, and it is quite easy to fall off, one way or the other. More seriously, right-wrong decisions force people to choose one of two, automatically-compelling courses of action. Decision-makers typically have several persuasive reasons to tell the truth, and several to lie. This forces them into a delicate balancing act, in which any number of small, situational factors can push them one way or the other.
Most obviously, companies should integrate contemplation into their formal training programs. Second, organizations should provide employees with clear, deliberate decision-making frameworks. Third, organizations might give employees who are likely to face many moral decisions more time to think. In other words, they could actually slow the pace of organizational life for these individuals; any loss in productivity would be balanced against freedom from moral scandal. Finally, organizations could integrate contemplation into their technology. For example, their computer systems might automatically require a “cooling-off” period for decisions above a certain dollar threshold. During this period, the screen might prompt individuals to think about and reinforce the organization’s values.
Almost all businesses are forced to place ethical decisions in the hands of their employees. Whether employees decide to do right or wrong in these situations is less clear-cut than employers think, suggests the results of an experiment done by researchers from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. Often, it takes very little to sway workers in either direction.
In the experiment, participants could either lie or tell the truth to a counterpart. Lying was likely to result in participants receiving a $10 payout, while telling the truth was likely to result in a payout of $5. Participants were broken into three conditions where [1] they were asked to make their decision immediately, [2] contemplate their decision for 3 minutes before acting or [3] exchange an e-mail with an anonymous stranger before acting. The people who made their decision immediately and the people who had a conversation with someone who encouraged lying told the truth about half the time. The people who were given an instruction to contemplate their decisions for 3 minutes and the people who had a conversation with someone who encouraged honesty told the truth about 85% of the time.
SmartBrief recently asked the co-authors of the research, Brian C. Gunia, Long Wang, Li Huang, Jiunwen Wang and J. Keith Murnighan, some questions about what employers should should take away from their experiment. An edited version of their responses follows.
Does your research suggest that people’s initial instinct when faced with a decision is to act out of self-interest?
Several theories suggest exactly this — that people start their lives as self-interested and only through learning, or maybe evolution, acquire a willingness and a desire to think of others’ interests. Our research suggests that right-wrong decisions naturally put people on the fence, and that a small amount of contemplation or conversation can push them onto more stable, ethical ground.
Does contemplation before making a decision and having a conversation before making a decision trigger the same psychological process, or do they simply produce similar results?
Our data cannot definitively resolve this question, since we could not “get inside” people’s heads. However, we do believe that contemplation and conversation trigger a similar psychological process. Contemplation and conversation both lead people to weigh various considerations before acting. In a way, conversation is a public form of contemplation. Another reason that we believe the two are the same is that people’s explanations of their actions almost uniformly supported their decisions, justifying them as natural and appropriate. This suggests that contemplation and conversation had similar long-term effects, in addition to their short-term impact on the decision itself.
Do you think that participants in your experiment were more likely to give honest answers when they were given time to think because contemplation leads to a desire act morally? Or are there other factors that come into play, such as an increasing awareness of the potential for embarrassment if caught?
Again, it is hard to say without additional evidence. We do think embarrassment in front of others is an unlikely explanation for our results. Participants in all conditions of our study were assured that they would never see, meet or even know who their decision counterpart was — and they knew that their counterpart knew the same. They also knew that the experimenter would not learn whether they had lied. That said, it is possible that some people may have told the truth to avoid being embarrassed of themselves. This is consistent with other research that shows that people act more ethically when made aware of themselves by looking into a mirror.
Your experiment suggested that people were surprisingly influenced by a short message from an anonymous source. Why do you think people were so easily swayed?
We believe that these decisions truly put people on the fence, and it is quite easy to fall off, one way or the other. More seriously, right-wrong decisions force people to choose one of two, automatically-compelling courses of action. Decision-makers typically have several persuasive reasons to tell the truth, and several to lie. This forces them into a delicate balancing act, in which any number of small, situational factors can push them one way or the other.
What are some things that companies can do to encourage employees to make a habit of contemplating moral decisions before taking action?
Most obviously, companies should integrate contemplation into their formal training programs. Second, organizations should provide employees with clear, deliberate decision-making frameworks. Third, organizations might give employees who are likely to face many moral decisions more time to think. In other words, they could actually slow the pace of organizational life for these individuals; any loss in productivity would be balanced against freedom from moral scandal. Finally, organizations could integrate contemplation into their technology. For example, their computer systems might automatically require a “cooling-off” period for decisions above a certain dollar threshold. During this period, the screen might prompt individuals to think about and reinforce the organization’s values.
Sam Taute writes multiple SmartBrief newsletters and contributes to SmartBlogs on Restaurants and Social Media. A former intern at SmartBrief, he recently graduated from the Philip Merrill School of Journalism at the University of Maryland in College Park.
Access Content Source And Other Great Stuff: http://smartblogs.com/leadership/2011/08/18/why-empoyees-lie-and-how-to-get-them-to-stop/
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
11 ways to build trust within your team | SmartBlog on Leadership
Trust is flexibility. It allows you to achieve more than you ever thought you could. Trust lubricates relationships and provides freedom of movement necessary for great team achievements.
Without trust, just like the moving parts of a car, your team will either break down or rust. If you continue to attempt great achievements, friction between members will cause the team to overheat and lock up. If you give in to the inertia, your team will simply coast until it stops and begins to rust. Either way, achievements will just become too difficult. At critical moments, someone won’t be available or misfortune will mysteriously occur.
To avoid either the breakdown or the rust out, you must do things to keep the parts working together and maintain flexibility.
- Give Win First. No one ever created a win-win relationship without letting the other person win first. If you refuse to let the other person win, you force everyone to contract and withdraw.
- Listen and learn. Attention, focus and time are scarce commodities. Consider how much (or little) time you spend focused on a single activity or person. Actively listen to others and work to understand them twice as long as normal today.
- Appreciate and value others. Simply forcing yourself to listen and focus doesn’t mean you will learn. Appreciation is the point at which you engage. Bring energy to maintain the connection with others out of your own internal desire. Appreciating and valuing another person builds trust. (Hat tip: Monica Diaz’s book “Otheresteem.”)
- Remember what you hear and see. If you appreciate something, you will process and consider it in a way that will help you remember. As you remember what you hear and see, others rest more in their understanding of you, and that builds trust.
- Trust others. Nothing betrays trust more than the lack of trust. Most often, people who won’t trust others do so because they can’t be trusted either. If you would never steal from someone else, why are you always afraid the other person will steal from you? Trust first.
- Find solutions. Begin with the belief that the other person can succeed. Don’t tell them their idea won’t work. Help create ways to make them successful.
- Make a sacrifice. Sometimes the solution to someone else’s problem is a sacrifice on your part. Be willing to be the solution to your teammate’s problems.
- Learn from your mistakes. Don’t make the same mistake twice. People will forgive errors made by genuine people attempting to do the right thing. Work hard to avoid repeat mistakes.
- Make it right. Even though errors can erode trust, you build trust when you fix a mistake well. Be proactive and do the right thing.
- Give generous credit and praise. People want to matter. If you help people be important and valuable, you become valuable.
- Do what you say. It all comes down to this. If you are not capable of delivering, people will like you but not trust you to lead.
Act like an owner and take care of your team. If you don’t do the routine maintenance, your team won’t be able to perform when the opportunity arises.
Mike Henry Sr. - Leadership Developer, Coach, Trainer, Speaker. Helping Leaders Grow Leaders. President Lead Change Group
Access Content Source And Other Great Stuff: http://smartblogs.com/leadership/2011/07/19/lead-change-post/
Friday, July 15, 2011
Why avoiding office conflict is not an option - Fortune Management
Fortune
July 14, 2011: 12:46 PM ET
Managers who hold themselves above the political fray at the office are doomed to fail. To be an effective boss, you must influence others.
By Linda A. Hill and Kent Lineback, contributors
Excerpts:
To be an effective boss, you must influence others -- people and groups over whom you have no formal control -- to get what your group needs and to work for what you believe is best and right. Your own people count on you to do this because they cannot do their work well otherwise. Your organization depends on voices like yours to keep it on the right track.
The best way to build influence is to create ongoing relationships for mutual advantage. There's no reason you cannot do this while holding yourself to high standards of openness, honesty, fairness, and respect.Most organizational conflicts are resolved through influence. The groups with bosses that have influence will get what they need. Those groups whose bosses lack influence will not.
"Playing politics" and wielding influence in a political environment aren't the same. Ironically, the way to cope with dysfunctional "politics" is to engage others, not avoid them. Hunkering down will only make you less influential and so less effective.
Engage those around you -- not to play political games but to build real bridges -- if you hope to accomplish the work that you believe needs doing.
[Don't] confuse[d] petty politics, the pursuit of personal aspirations and needs, with genuine disagreement about an important question. What's wrong, we wanted to know, with seeking allies and presenting a united front when real business issues are at stake? "Why weren't you," we asked, "the one talking to task force members and seeking allies before the meeting?
We never tell any manager to "be political" or to "play politics." We do tell them, however, that they must be willing and able to operate effectively in the political environment that exists in all organizations. Their success will depend on their ability to manage not just their own groups but the broader organizations within which they operate.
... conflict is inevitable and natural because of three features inherent in all modern organizations.
- Division of labor.
- Interdependence.
- Scarce resources.
Linda A. Hill, a professor at Harvard Business School, and Kent Lineback, a writer with 30 years of management experience, are co-authors of Being the Boss: The 3 Imperatives for Becoming a Great Leader.
Access Content Source, Article, And Other Great Stuff: http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2011/07/14/why-avoiding-office-conflict-is-not-an-option/
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
The Longer We Know Someone, The Less We May Be Able To Predict About Their Preferences - Inside Influence Report
Inside Influence Report
By Steve Martin, CMCT
Influencing and persuading others can be a tricky business; whether it’s influencing family members to say ‘Yes’ to our requests, persuading business associates to partner with us, or attempting to get an organization to do business with us. A true Detective of Influence will plan their approach carefully and make sure that the person or the organization they are targeting actually needs or will benefit from what they have to propose or offer.
Understanding what our influence targets want and prefer can be challenging at the best of times. And surely no time is more challenging than during the early stages of relationships when we are likely to know relatively little about a prospect’s likes, dislikes and preferences.
Fortunately, most of us will also have longer term relationships with people with whom we interact and do business with. And surely, one of the major benefits of having regular contact with people over an extended period of time is that it is generally easier for us to predict their needs and preferences. As a result, we can construct more effective and tailored influence and persuasion strategies.
Well, according to newly published research, it turns out that this may not necessarily always be the case.
July 5,2011
Older? Yes! But Wiser? Maybe Not!
By Steve Martin, CMCT
Influencing and persuading others can be a tricky business; whether it’s influencing family members to say ‘Yes’ to our requests, persuading business associates to partner with us, or attempting to get an organization to do business with us. A true Detective of Influence will plan their approach carefully and make sure that the person or the organization they are targeting actually needs or will benefit from what they have to propose or offer.
Understanding what our influence targets want and prefer can be challenging at the best of times. And surely no time is more challenging than during the early stages of relationships when we are likely to know relatively little about a prospect’s likes, dislikes and preferences.
Fortunately, most of us will also have longer term relationships with people with whom we interact and do business with. And surely, one of the major benefits of having regular contact with people over an extended period of time is that it is generally easier for us to predict their needs and preferences. As a result, we can construct more effective and tailored influence and persuasion strategies.
Well, according to newly published research, it turns out that this may not necessarily always be the case.
Benjamin Scheibehenne from the University of Basel and his colleagues, Jutta Mata from Stanford University & Peter Todd from Indiana University, suggest that even though people will claim to be pretty good at predicting the likes and dislikes of others we are often anything but good. Surprisingly, they present evidence showing that the longer we know someone, far from our predictions getting better, they may actually get worse. While these studies were conducted with groups of people who were involved in personal relationships with one another, one has to ask whether the same effects hold true for business relationships too.
In one set of studies, people were asked to rate on a scale of 1 (don’t like it at all) to 4 (like it very much) 118 different items. In addition these same people were also asked to predict how a person with whom they shared a relationship would rate those same 118 items. Some people in the study were asked to make preference predictions for people they had known for a relatively short time (the average relationship length in this group was 2 years), others were asked to make predictions for those that they had known for much longer (the average length of relationships in this group was over 10 years).
In one set of studies, people were asked to rate on a scale of 1 (don’t like it at all) to 4 (like it very much) 118 different items. In addition these same people were also asked to predict how a person with whom they shared a relationship would rate those same 118 items. Some people in the study were asked to make preference predictions for people they had known for a relatively short time (the average relationship length in this group was 2 years), others were asked to make predictions for those that they had known for much longer (the average length of relationships in this group was over 10 years).
The 4 point scale was an important part of the study because it meant that a complete stranger could, on average, be expected to get 25% of their predictions correct just by chance.
Fortunately, and one suspects to the study participants relief, both groups were able to predict the likes and dislikes of someone they knew better than a complete stranger could - but not that much better.
Those subjects who were asked to predict the preferences of people they had known for a relatively short time were accurate 42% of the time. Surprisingly those who predicted the preferences of someone that they had known for a much longer time were accurate just 36% of the time.
Perhaps the most telling result of all was how little awareness people had over how well they actually knew people. In pre-study tests, both groups estimated that their prediction accuracy would be at least 60%.
The study authors suggest that there are several potential reasons why having a longer standing relationship with others could lead to reduced levels of understanding of those other’s likes, dislikes and preferences.
One reason is the simple fact that a significant proportion of our understanding and learning of another occurs in the early stages of relationships, when motivation levels to get to know each other are arguably higher. As time goes by, that motivation can decline and as a result important information or changes that occur could go unnoticed or not be attended to as much.
Another potential reason is the idea that people in long standing relationships will typically consider themselves to be more committed to each other by virtue of the extended time they have invested in each other. As a result, they may think that they know each other better than is actually the case. Consequently, they become less likely to notice changes in attitudes and preferences especially if they occur subtly.
There is also evidence to suggest that, in some instances, people in long term partnerships may be tempted to tell ‘white lies’ or avoid ‘frank and candid’ conversations. While understandable from a relationship protective perspective, such an approach could also lead to a decline in understanding and a reduction in knowledge about others over time.
So given that older doesn’t necessarily mean wiser, having processes in place to ensure a continuous and honest exchange of likes, dislikes and preferences seems sensible. An immediate example of that comes to mind is in the area of sales and business development. Sales executives and account managers might typically prefer to be seen as the single point of contact for their customers. This makes sense given the likely amount of time and effort they have invested in establishing a productive and profitable partnership.
This new research suggests that it would make sense to occasionally invite a colleague who knows the client less well to meetings. That colleague, given their reduced knowledge levels, could end up asking questions that the more experienced sales executive might be expected to already know but may have missed or considered less important.
This new research suggests that it would make sense to occasionally invite a colleague who knows the client less well to meetings. That colleague, given their reduced knowledge levels, could end up asking questions that the more experienced sales executive might be expected to already know but may have missed or considered less important.
There are doubtless many other applications. The overarching message seems to be that regardless of whether your influence target is a long standing friend, business partner or customer, arranging for either regular formal reviews or more informal catch-ups will be an important part of any good Detective of Influence’s persuasion activities.
Discussion Questions:
- The study referred to in this month’s Inside Influence Report was conducted with people who were in short and longer-term personal relationships. Do you believe the results and lessons have less, equal or potentially greater utility in other types of relationships, for example in business settings?
- What other examples exist where the existence of a longer term relationship has actually led to a reduced understanding between two parties?
Source:
Scheibehenne, B., Mata, J., & Todd, P. M. (2011). Older but not wiser—Predicting a partnerʼs preferences gets worse with age. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 21(2), 184-191
Scheibehenne, B., Mata, J., & Todd, P. M. (2011). Older but not wiser—Predicting a partnerʼs preferences gets worse with age. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 21(2), 184-191
Steve Martin is the Director of Influence At Work (UK). Along with Dr. Noah Goldstein & Dr. Robert Cialdini he is co-author of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Business Week International bestseller Yes! 50 secrets from the science of persuasion which to date has sold over ¼ million copies and has been translated into 26 languages. In 2008 the book was long-listed for the Royal Society’s annual prize for science writing and in 2009 the Harvard Business Review listed the book on their prestigious ‘Breakthrough Ideas for Business’ list.
Steve regularly features in business and the national press including his monthly ‘Persuasion’ column for the British Airways in flight magazine Business Life and he is a columnist for the Harvard Business Review online and the UK’s Institute for Leadership & Management. His columns are read by over 1 million people each month.
Steve speaks and runs workshops about the science of influence and persuasion and its application to a wide variety of business, government and non-profit organisations around the world. At the time of writing he is working closely with the Behavioural Insight Team within the UK Government’s Cabinet Office and he is a member of the Secretary of State’s Behaviour Change Network Team within the UK Dept. of Health.
Access Content Source And Other Great Stuff: http://www.insideinfluence.com/
Steve regularly features in business and the national press including his monthly ‘Persuasion’ column for the British Airways in flight magazine Business Life and he is a columnist for the Harvard Business Review online and the UK’s Institute for Leadership & Management. His columns are read by over 1 million people each month.
Steve speaks and runs workshops about the science of influence and persuasion and its application to a wide variety of business, government and non-profit organisations around the world. At the time of writing he is working closely with the Behavioural Insight Team within the UK Government’s Cabinet Office and he is a member of the Secretary of State’s Behaviour Change Network Team within the UK Dept. of Health.
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