Chapter 14. Human Influence

Charles E. Dwyer

Getting people to do what we want them to do is often considered the most important and challenging of management tasks. In this article I attempt to summarize what I believe to be the essential elements in any successful approach to human influence.

Values

I believe we each act as we do in an attempt to take care of what is important to each of us, to serve our values. While intrinsic values (those things that we value for their own sake) vary from culture to culture, a list of contemporary intrinsic values for Americans includes security (physical, material, and emotional), autonomy, acceptance and approval by a relevant reference group, recognition, praise, gratitude and thanks, success and achievement, respect, status and esteem in the eyes of others, fun, and self-esteem. While many of these values are shared by other cultures, it is always a good idea to learn the value similarities and differences when dealing with someone from another culture. It is too easy, and often a mistake, to assume that others value what you do. If you are not appealing to a person's values, then you are not influencing that person.

People also act in order to gain instrumental value—those things that are valued as a means to the service of an intrinsic value. Money is often regarded as the chief instrumental value, because it is perceived as a means to the satisfaction and protection of so many of one's intrinsic values. But, anything valued intrinsically or instrumentally is a potential source of human influence.

Frequently, people engage in behavior in order to protect against a loss in value satisfaction. Therefore, fear, coercion, intimidation, and threat can also be effective in influencing others. But, there are a number of cautions to be observed when using such negative approaches to human influence. These are dealt with below.

Behavior

When attempting to influence, it is probably best to focus on the concrete, clear, unambiguous, specific, observable behavior (or measurable performance) that you want from another. We tend to frame what we want from others in terms of attitudes, dispositions, personality, characteristics, and quality of relationships. "He has an attitude," "She has a personality problem," "He has a lousy disposition," and "She is in a bad mood," are all too familiar ways of talking about people. We say that we are looking for respect, recognition, support, cooperation, loyalty, and the like. These are less than optimal ways of thinking and talking about what we want or do not want from others. If you could limit your descriptions of what you want from others in terms of observable behavior or measurable performance, your effectiveness with others would improve markedly. You would know precisely what you wanted and so would the target of your influence.

People often do not do what we want them to because they do not know what we want them to do, and they do not know because we use vague descriptors. I think the reasons we use those attitudinal words and phrases (particularly the negative ones) are, at least in part, because it is easy to label people in this way; it bonds us with our friends (anyone who dislikes him for any reason can identify with the broad, vague, "He has an attitude."), and it confirms our beliefs and justifies our negative feelings about the person and makes us feel superior. For these reasons, it is not easy to give up these automatic, comforting habits of thought, feeling, and action. It is costly to do so, since we are foregoing the value satisfactions that come from drawing such (negative) psychological portraits of others.

Changing Self

What is clearly suggested here is that if you wish to become considerably more effective with others, you will be required to change yourself in ways that will probably make you uncomfortable. All that each of us has available to us in influencing others is our own behavior. This means that changing one's own patterns of behavior is the first task toward increased effectiveness. Likewise, changing one's own behavior requires changing both the way one thinks as well as how one feels, since these three (thoughts, feelings, and behaviors) are inextricably linked. Many people talk of changing the world, few of changing themselves. While I will suggest what some of these changes are and how to go about producing them, the change itself is up to you.

We now know that imaginative rehearsal of new ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving can enable one to override old, automatic responses. One deeply imbedded program that inhibits effectiveness in most people is the socialized practice of rationalizing about issues of human influence. In defense of our egos we have been taught to scapegoat, blame, and externalize when people fail to do what we want them to do or when they do things we do not want them to do. This results in fewer attempts at influence (we rationalize instead), in less persistence in dealing with people, and it creates a psychological barrier between them and us as we attribute negative characteristics to them, such as the familiar "we versus them" phenomenon.

You can override such automatic belief programs by rehearsing an alternative response. The one that I teach people is, Never expect anyone to engage in a behavior that serves your values, unless you give that person adequate reason to do so. This moves you away from rationalization, toward 100 percent responsibility for your own effectiveness, and toward action. And, the only adequate reason you can give people for changing their current behavior is their perception that the new behavior is better than their current behavior in the service of their values.

Perception and Anticipation

People, while attempting to serve their values, are not necessarily successful. People do not, in fact, do what serves their values. They do what they perceive will serve their values. First, this means that there is always a time gap between the brain's consideration of a behavior and the behavior itself. Second, the processing that takes place in this time period, I refer to as perception. The process is usually subconscious rather than conscious but is nonetheless subject to influence. It is in that perceptual process that all influence takes place. That is what advertising, selling, marketing, merchandising, politics, religion, parenting, spousing, and negotiation and conflict management are all about. Advertisers, if successful do not change your intrinsic values; rather, they change your perception of what behavior on your part is in the best interests of your values, (i.e., they reshape your instrumental values). You have been successfully shaping those perceptions in others since you first cried and managed to get someone to feed you.

Perceptions are personal, subjective, idiosyncratic, fragile, and infinitely malleable states. These characteristics mean that influence can be costly and fragile, but potentially unlimited and permanent. As noted above, it may well be costly and risky, particularly to your ego, to do what is necessary to shape others' perceptions. But on the other hand, because of the malleable nature of perceptions, your power with people is potentially unlimited and permanent.

The Mosaic

When approaching someone with the intent of influence, we, of necessity, create a mosaic. By this, I merely mean that there are a great many choices available to us in how we approach the person, including timing, tone, language, mode of communication, gestures, direct or indirect approaches, and so on. It is in the selection of these options that the power of the mosaic is determined. But most of the time we do not make use of the huge set of options available. Instead, we go by "default" to the one with which we are most familiar, or which is easiest, safest, or most comfortable. These are rarely the options that maximize our effectiveness. For example, approaching someone indirectly through others is often the most powerful option, but few Americans use the indirect approach to influence. They have been socialized to prefer the direct approach and to disregard the indirect. Likewise, we have all learned the importance of timing and reading context in attempting to influence someone. But, often overly impressed with the "power" of our own idea, we believe that the idea itself will be sufficient for influence, and thereby ignore timing and context.

Filters and Data Fragments

Each of us, including those we wish to influence, is flooded on a daily basis with 2,000 to 3,000 messages trying to influence us. Every ad, every commercial, every piece of mail at home and work, every phone call, email, fax, voicemail, every meeting, every informal encounter, every trip to the mall or the supermarket is jammed with messages trying to influence us. The human consciousness cannot possibly process all of these thousands of messages vying for our attention. And so, we have filters, quick, rough, automatic filters, to keep most of those messages out of our consciousness.

For example, each day when you process your mail, you use a very sophisticated filtration mechanism and toss most of your mail into the trash, unopened. You pick up a few "data-fragments" of information, such as the return address, how it is addressed to you, the postage, and make an instant decision whether or not to give it further consideration. We do this all day long with multiple, complex, and dynamic filtration systems. Those who have succeeded in influencing us have packaged their ideas in ways that gets through our filters.

It is highly likely that you have, on occasion, thrown out the "good" mail with the "bad." Because we must rely on these fragments of information for our decision making, our filters are not perfect. Therefore, independent of the quality of your idea, independent of your altruistic intentions, independent of the actual value you are offering another, if you do not package your idea effectively, you are in effect in the other's mind, junk mail.

Language

In the majority of situations, of all of the fragments we use in creating our mosaic, language is by far the most critical. Frequently in our attempts to influence (primarily because of technology), language is the only category of fragments available to us. And words are extremely fragile vessels in the work of constructing appropriate perceptions in the minds of others.

So, what language should we use? While there are many well-researched answers to that question, I will list a few of the more powerful ones. The first is obvious but, in my experience, rarely used. When attempting to influence someone, use a few of their words, their favorite ways of expressing key ideas, their pet expressions. They have an affection for their words. They already have a place neurologically carved out in their brains for their words.

Also, contrary to your English teacher's advice, use synonyms and paraphrases in expressing your key ideas and when describing the behavior or performance you want. Since you do not know in advance which words a person will respond most positively to, it is best to use several, thereby multiplying your chances of success.

Use stories that put flesh and blood on the bones of your ideas. We know that much decision making is done at a subconscious level and involves both emotion and imagination. These can be brought into play by short, relevant stories. Autobiographical stories, relevant to the desired behavior, can build credibility and trust with those you wish to influence. These are just a few of the language-based tools that can increase the likelihood of compliance with a request.

Values, Perceptions, and Behavior

I maintain that all behavior, with very minor exceptions, is a function of an individual's perception of the relationship of the behavior to that person's values; that is, we do those things, at any given point in time, that we perceive will best serve our values overall. I use this simple concept to formulate a model of the human information process that leads to decisions about which behavior to engage in. The model has five steps. While I do not argue that this is an invariable sequence of steps, I do believe it represents a reasonable approximation of the decision calculus human beings use in their decision making. You can use it to probe for ways to frame your behavior so as to elicit the behavior or performance you want from others.

1. Capability: Can the person perform the behavior?
   

   • Does the person have knowledge of exactly what the behavior is?

   • Does the person have the minimum competence to engage in the behavior?

   • Does the person have the minimum self-confidence necessary to engage in the behavior?

   
   How can you increase each of these, if need be?
2. What does the person perceive as the potential value satisfaction he or she may receive by engaging in the behavior, and how can you increase that perceived value satisfaction?
3. What does the person perceive as the probability of value satisfaction (to what extent does the person believe that he or she will experience the value satisfaction if he or she engages in the behavior?) How can you increase that perceived probability?
4. What is the person's perception of the costs (e.g., lost time, energy, or lost opportunity) of engaging in the behavior? How can you reduce those perceived costs?
5. What does the person perceive to be the risks to him or her of engaging in the behavior? How can you reduce those perceived risks?

Problems with the Negative Approach

The above is the positive approach to influence. I noted earlier that a person can also be influenced by the negative approach: having the perception of potential loss of value satisfaction if he or she fails to engage in a particular behavior. The practical problem with the negative approach (leaving possible moral issues aside) is that people do not like it used on them and have developed coping mechanisms when they perceive they are faced with it. These include attempting to escape your influence, giving as little of the desired behavior or performance as possible, and seeking to reinstate their self-esteem and autonomy by threatening the values of the one they perceived threatened theirs (i.e., revenge). In general, you should try to avoid the use of the negative approach if at all possible, even though at times it may appear tempting.

Application of the Five-Step Model

There are six situations in which you can apply and practice this model of human information processing:

1. When you fail and, instead of rationalizing, you want to learn from your failure;
2. When you are planning to influence someone (or a group);
3. When you meet resistance but are willing to persist;
4. When you succeed in influencing someone after overcoming objections;
5. When someone succeeds in influencing you; and
6. When you see successful influence of which you are only an observer.

Dealing With Groups

Often we are required to influence in a group, team, task force, or committee. When doing this, I still look at it as influencing individuals and use the same model but with some adaptations in application. When dealing with a group, try to identify those individuals who are closest to the threshold of the behavior you want. Focus on the informal leaders in the group. As you bring them across, others will follow. Offer multiple value satisfactions and protections against perceived costs and risks, knowing different people will respond to various combinations offered.

In summary, remember that most of what is powerful in influencing people is costly and risky to you, particularly in terms of ego needs. You can have as much power with people as you are willing to pay for!