Instant Influence: How to Get Anyone to Do Anything--Fast

ISBN-13: 9780316083348

Media Type: Hardcover

Publisher: Little - Brown and Company

Publication Date: 05-09-2011

Pages: 240

Product Dimensions: 6.10(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.20(d)

Michael V. Pantalon, Ph.D. is a motivational coach, consultant, therapist, and award-winning faculty member at Yale University School of Medicine. He has published numerous articles in publications such as the New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association, among others, and has presented his work at national and international conferences. Dr. Pantalon lives in Hamden, Connecticut, with his wife, Marianne, and their sons.

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Instant Influence

Little, Brown and Company

PART I

Get Anyone to Do Anything—Fast

CHAPTER ONE

What Makes People Want to Change?

You’ve just left the gym to join your friend Kelly for coffee. When you meet up with her, she glances at your gym bag. “Oh,” she says, “I wish I could be disciplined like you are. I never seem to get to the gym—I haven’t exercised in months.”

Being a good friend, you’d like to help, so you start trying to motivate Kelly to exercise. “It’s so important,” you say. “You’ll look better. You’ll feel better. You’ll live longer…”

“I know,” Kelly says. “Wouldn’t that be nice! I just can’t seem to get started.”

“Starting can be tough,” you say sympathetically. “But you’ll feel so good afterward. You’ll have lots of extra energy to get everything done.”

“Maybe. I’m just always so tired.”

“But exercise perks you up,” you say. “I know. I’m always tired, too, but then I start my workout, and pretty soon I’m wide awake.”

“You’re so lucky. You’re really disciplined. I’m just not.”

Suddenly, you think you’ve come up with a perfect way to fix the whole problem. “Why don’t you book some sessions with a personal trainer? That’s how I got started. I thought it would be really expensive, but actually it’s not. Then you’d have to go!”

“Maybe I’ll try that sometime,” Kelly says, and the conversation turns to other things. You feel bad for Kelly, because you know she really wants to exercise. And you feel frustrated with yourself, because you just couldn’t find the right way to help her take action.

What went wrong?

In fact, at almost every turn, your efforts were doomed to fail. That’s because you were using what I like to call the tell-and-sell approach: you tell someone your reasons for doing something, then try to sell her on them. Unfortunately, no matter how good your reasons or how heartfelt your sales pitch, the tell-and-sell approach almost never works.

What happens when you try to sell someone on your reasons for change? Usually, as in this example, your efforts go nowhere. The other person might agree with you, as Kelly did, but that won’t spark a desire to take action. That desire—the motivation to act—lives in each one of us. But the only way to unlock it is with our own reasons.

In the example, you told Kelly to exercise because she would be healthier, live longer, feel better, and have more energy. All good arguments, but they didn’t work for Kelly because they weren’t her reasons. Although she agreed with you, she didn’t personalize the reasons or explore how much they meant to her.

You also told Kelly how to take action: hire a trainer. But if she hasn’t figured out why she wants to take action, she certainly won’t care about how to do so.

Three decades of scientific evidence clearly demonstrate that tell-and-sell methods not only fail to motivate; they also lower the motivation level. That’s right. Using the wrong type of encouragement can actually make a person want to do something less.

So what works? Here’s the secret to Instant Influence: people take action when they hear themselves say why they want to. People can tell you all day long that they wish they could do something. But when they tell you why they want to do it, that’s when things start to happen. That’s Instant Influence in a nutshell. Get someone to tell you why he wants to act, and action is almost sure to follow.

There’s a catch, though. Other people can’t simply agree with your reasons for change or parrot back to you the reasons they are “supposed” to have. For example: “It’s good for my health.” “My boss will be happier with me.” “It’s the right thing to do.” They need to dig a little deeper and find their own personal reasons for change, often unexpected reasons that may surprise both of you.

WHAT TO EXPECT FROM INSTANT INFLUENCE

Instant Influence can quickly open someone up to the possibility of change. The actual process of taking action or implementing new behavior may require a bit more time, but this first step is critical.

When you have an Instant Influence conversation with someone, there are four possible outcomes:

1. You have complete success. Your influencee commits to making a change or to taking a step toward positive action. You’ll follow up by making an action plan (we’ll discuss that in chapter 9) and by continuing to monitor his progress. If necessary, you may want to have a second Instant Influence conversation later on, to revive flagging motivation or to help him further along the path to his next step.

2. You have partial success. Your influencee opens up to change in a way she hasn’t before, but she still won’t commit to taking action. Give her time to process the conversation in her own way. She may go on to take independent action, or you might need to have another Instant Influence conversation to help her keep moving forward.

3. You have limited success. Your conversation ends on a civil note, but it appears to you that very little was accomplished. You’ve planted a seed that may need time to take root, so remain open to the possibility that more progress was made than you realize. If you don’t see any signs of improvement in a week or so, you may want to follow up with another Instant Influence conversation, using some of the suggestions in part II to make the conversation more productive.

4. You seem to have reached a dead end. The person refuses to have the conversation or remains highly resistant throughout. As in the previous scenario, be open to the possibility that more progress was made than you realize. If you don’t see signs of action in a week, you might want to attempt another Instant Influence conversation, just to keep the door open. Chapter 10 offers tips about how to accept the situation and move on when you feel that you have reached an impasse. Don’t give up too quickly, however. People change in their own ways and in their own time. If you’re not attentive, you might miss it.

Test Your Instant Influence Skills: Helping People Find Their Own Reasons

Throughout the book, I’ll give you opportunities to test your Instant Influence skills. But before you learn how to use this approach, maybe you’d like to find out how good you already are at motivating yourself and others to take action. You may have instinctively been using the Instant Influence technique all along—or you may be realizing that, like most of us, you’ve relied far too much on tell and sell. Here’s a quiz to test your motivational skills.

Imagine that a close friend needs to get a mammogram, but she keeps putting it off. There’s a history of breast cancer in her family, so you know it’s urgent, but she keeps insisting that she’s really busy and will take care of it “next month.” You believe (correctly) that she’s scared and has irrationally concluded that if she never finds out whether she has cancer, she won’t get it. You’d like to help her approach the problem in a more realistic and effective way.

Your goal is to get your friend to schedule a mammogram. Check the boxes next to the statements that you think might help you accomplish that.

• I don’t get it. It’s such a simple procedure. How come you don’t want to see the doctor?

• What do you think is getting in your way?

• Every time I’ve brought this up, we’ve had a twenty-minute argument. Why haven’t you ever just asked me not to mention this topic again?

• Look, let’s get real. You don’t have to make an appointment.

• Don’t you think you’ll feel a lot better when it’s all over and you know the results?

• Can I ask a really stupid question? Why are you even thinking about getting a mammogram?

• Would you like me to come to the doctor with you?

• Do you think maybe you’re hoping that if you don’t go, nothing will be wrong?

• Just for the sake of argument, imagine that you’ve already gone to the appointment. How do you think you’d feel then?

Analysis:

• I don’t get it. It’s such a simple procedure. How come you don’t want to see the doctor? Not effective. By asking your friend why she doesn’t want to see the doctor, you are encouraging her to rehearse her reasons for not doing something. Instead, you want her to focus on her reasons for doing something. The more she realizes why she wants to get a mammogram, the more likely she is to schedule one. Reminding her why she doesn’t want to get one may make any obstacle she perceives seem bigger than it already is.

• What do you think is getting in your way? Not effective. Again, focusing on obstacles only makes them seem bigger. Like most of us, your friend may be conflicted: she is reluctant to take action but also has a strong desire to do something. If you focus on her resistance, so will she. If you focus on her desire to take action, she may be able to focus on it, too.

• Every time I’ve brought this up, we’ve had a twenty-minute argument. Why haven’t you ever just asked me not to mention this topic again? Effective. The fact that your friend is arguing with you means that some part of her, however small, does—or at least might— want to make an appointment. Otherwise, she’d either change the subject or firmly tell you to stop bringing it up. If someone suggested that you get trained as a rodeo clown, move to Antarctica for six months, or wire your life savings to some investment website you’ve never heard of, would you argue with him? But if someone suggested a company job-development plan, a vacation in an unexpected place, or a meeting with his financial adviser, you might at least discuss the idea, if only to explain why you don’t want to do it. Asking your friend why she’s arguing about the mammogram might be useful: it could help her tap into that part of herself that is open, even a little bit, to the idea of having the test.

• Look, let’s get real. You don’t have to make an appointment. Effective. As I did with the GE executives, reminding people that you are talking about their choice, not yours, is extremely helpful. As we’ll see later in this chapter, we’re all subject to the law of psychological reactance, our tendency to resist being told what to do. In fact, when someone tells us that we have to do something, it may set us up for a virtually irresistible compulsion to do the exact opposite. If we want to take action, it really helps to see it as our own choice, not a necessity. While you might worry about this approach backfiring, you don’t have to: If the other person really doesn’t want to do something, she won’t, no matter what you say. But if even a small part of her wants to take action, this approach will free her to find her own reasons for doing so.

• Don’t you think you’ll feel a lot better when it’s all over and you know the results? Not effective. You are telling your friend how you think she’ll feel when the mammogram is over, and you may or may not be right. But by giving her your take on the situation, you’re depriving her of the chance to come up with her own. Helping her imagine the future might actually be helpful (that’s the basis for Step 4 of the Instant Influence technique), but only if your friend’s vision of the future is truly her own.

• Can I ask a really stupid question? Why are you even thinking about getting a mammogram? Effective. Now you’re asking your friend to tap into her reasons for doing what you would like her to do. If she discovers her own reasons for making an appointment, she’ll make one. If she knows only your reasons, she’s likely to keep resisting, even if she agrees with everything you say. This kind of question—Why are you even thinking about this? or, Why might you consider it?—is another version of Step 1 of the Instant Influence process. It’s a good way to fan even the tiniest spark of possibility (“Maybe I might do it”) into a glowing flame (“You know, I believe I will do it!”).

• Would you like me to come to the doctor with you? Not effective. This generous offer might be helpful later, but it isn’t now. That’s because your friend hasn’t yet committed to making an appointment. If your friend had said, “I know I’d feel a million times better if I just got it over with, but I can’t stand the thought of going there alone,” then this would be a wonderful way of offering your support. But until your friend has figured out the why, focusing on the how won’t help.

• Do you think maybe you’re hoping that if you don’t go, nothing will be wrong? Not effective. As with the first two examples, this question focuses on the why not rather than the why. Even if you’re right about this point, your friend may not be ready to admit it. And if she does agree, knowing why she’s scared won’t necessarily free her from her fear. She doesn’t need more insight into why she doesn’t want to make the appointment. She needs more insight into why she does.

• Just for the sake of argument, imagine that you’ve already gone to the appointment. How do you think you’d feel then? Effective. Helping your friend visualize what good might come of her action is very useful, because, again, it allows her to tap into her own reasons for making a change. (This is an effective version of Step 4 of Instant Influence.) If imagining that happy day when the appointment is already behind her brings your friend a feeling of relief, then a desire to keep feeling that relief may move her to make the call.

Score:

For every “effective” answer you chose, give yourself 1 point. For every “not effective” answer you chose, subtract 1 point.

• 4 points: Congratulations! You have a real knack for creating Instant Influence and are probably already quite effective at influencing others. If you’d like to develop your abilities further and learn how to apply them in more situations, even some you once thought impossible, keep reading.

• 1–4 points: You instinctively understand the kinds of questions that get things moving in the right direction, but you’re still missing some opportunities that could make you even more effective. Instant Influence can help you fine-tune your instincts and improve your approach.

• 0 points: Your good instincts and your less effective statements are canceling each other out. Reading Instant Influence can help you recognize the kinds of questions that are genuinely effective at producing action and steer you away from questions and statements that only get in the way.

• Negative score: You’d like to help but don’t yet know how to do so effectively. Don’t worry. Once you’ve mastered the principles in Instant Influence, you’ll find it much easier to move people to action, and you’ll also discover new ways to motivate yourself.

THREE GUIDING PRINCIPLES

Instant Influence is based on three principles:

1. No one absolutely has to do anything; the choice is always yours.

2. Everyone already has enough motivation.

3. Focusing on any tiny bit of motivation works much better than asking about resistance.

These principles derive from the work of such pioneering social psychologists as Jack and Sharon Brehm, Martin Seligman, Leon Festinger, and Daryl Bem, researchers whose theories have been confirmed by literally thousands of studies. So let’s take a closer look at the science of Instant Influence.

The Law of Psychological Reactance

The first principle—“No one absolutely has to do anything; the choice is always yours”—is a response to the law of psychological reactance: if someone tells you to do something, you probably won’t feel like doing it, even if you might otherwise have wanted to. Widely studied by Jack and Sharon Brehm since 1966, this law has long been the bane of managers, health-care professionals, and parents. In fact, the harder the other person tries to get you to do something—the more he yells at you, insists, threatens you with dire consequences—the less you’re going to want to do it, and the less likely you are to actually do it.

Ever since the Brehms identified this key aspect of the human personality, they and other researchers have conducted thousands of experiments, first to investigate whether the Brehms’ initial insight was accurate and then to understand this response in more detail. Obviously, there’s not room here to review the massive amount of research carried out on this topic, but let me share with you some of the most interesting studies.

In an experiment that has since become famous, researchers invited college students to survey a number of group problem-solving tasks and to rate them high, low, or neutral interest. They were then given time to engage in any task they wanted during two sessions separated by a short break, as experimenters monitored their preferences. However, during the break, “confederates”—student-researchers pretending to be participants—strongly encouraged the subjects to pick certain tasks and to avoid others as they entered the second round.

You’ve probably guessed what happened next. The tasks the subjects were encouraged to avoid became the very ones that interested them most. In fact, based on their actions, they were even more interested in these “forbidden” items than in the ones they had previously rated “high interest.”

Now, at this point you may be thinking, Sure, forbidden fruit is sweetest. Of course the students wanted to do what they were told not to do! But what if the students had been interested in certain tasks and were then instructed to do them? Would they avoid these simply because they had been told to choose them?

In fact, that’s exactly what happened. This study, along with numerous follow-ups, showed that people were likely to avoid what they had been told to choose and to choose what they had been told to avoid. This was true even if they had previously shown interest in something. Telling people to choose an activity—even one they liked—almost guaranteed that they would then avoid it. That’s how much people dislike being told what to do.

Once the law of psychological reactance was well established among scientists, researchers went on to look at it in more detail. Were there some types of messages, for example, that might have an effect opposite the one intended? In 2005, social scientists James Price Dillard of Pennsylvania State University and Lijiang Shen of the University of Wisconsin at Madison conducted an experiment with 202 UW Madison students. They divided the students into two groups and gave each a different message about the benefits of regular flossing. Although the two messages offered identical information, each was worded differently.

One group was asked to read what was deemed a “low-threat” message focusing on the students’ autonomy and right to decide for themselves:

… [M]ost people would agree that flossing is worthy of serious consideration…. [G]um disease can lead to other severe problems: heart disease, stroke, diabetes, pneumonia, [which] means that you might want to think about making flossing a regular habit.

If you floss already, keep up the good work. And if you haven’t, now might be a good time to start. In fact, you may want to try it today. It’s easy, why not give it a try? Set a goal to floss every day for the next week, starting today.

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