Persuasion, influence and behavior |Jonah Berger| Art of Charm podcast

well thank you for joining us Jonah we really enjoyed your book and we're excited to talk about how to persuade people and change people's minds how you all thanks so much thanks for having me we'll jump right into the book and I feel like obviously right now in this kovat time we are all facing a lot of counterintuitive opinions and arguments and beliefs and really struggling to change our minds and others minds around us so I think the book is really quite insightful in terms of understanding how we as humans respond to people trying to change our minds and be persuaded definitely interesting time we're in why are we as humans so resistant to changing our opinion I think at the core you know the way we're going about it is is wrong so you know when we try to persuade people and try to change minds we try to change action we often take a particular type of approach and that is some version of pushing right we think if we just add more reasons if we provide more facts figures more information people will come around and it's good why we have that intuition right if there's like a a chair sitting in the middle of a room and we want to move that chair what's a good way to move it pushing pushing is usually a very good way to move physical objects we push a chair it goes when we apply that idea to people though it gets a little bit more complicated because when we push people people don't just go along they often dig in their heels they push back and they often even do the opposite of what we wanted so rather than pushing we've got to figure out a different way to go and I think a lot of us when we rationalize our change we don't think about the emotional component we do feel like it was the facts and the preponderance of evidence that changed our minds when we look back in hindsight but that's really not what's going on yeah I mean I think it's also interesting you know there's a difference between trying to change our own behavior and trying to change others behavior you know if we're salesperson we might be trying to change the clients mind if employee we're trying to change the boss's mind if we're a leader we might be trying to change organizational culture we often focus a lot on the change that we want to have happen but we focus a lot less on the person or people that that we're trying to change and that's part of the problem it turns out there's a better way to change minds but it's not about pushing we have to think about change a little differently for myself that was one of the most compelling ideas in the book because it certainly changed how I viewed a lot of our marketing so when we are doing stuff on Instagram if we're doing some advertising on Twitter one of the things that your book had brought to my attention that I implemented immediately and saw an instant change was taking away hurdles which making it easier for people to follow along rather than giving them either a hurdle to jump through or having them think about something where the emotional response is there is always going to be triggered before they are logically understanding where they're going and by the time you're telling them to perform an action there's where the resistance becomes where emotionally they were following right along until they were logically triggered to see that hurdle hurdles is a great way to talk about it you know we we often focus on pushing we often focus on adding more but but the better way turns out actually to come from from chemistry and so um you know some of your listeners may have a background and at least a little bit of chemistry but you probably remember the change in chemistry is even harder than it is in the social world difficult to get you know carbon to turn into diamonds or plant matter to turn into oil and so chemists often use temperature and pressure to speed the process you know if you have a kernel of popcorn at your house and you want to eat it you want to turn it into popcorn you stick it in the microwave add temperature you know it heats up the molecules inside and moisture and pressure intensifies and it becomes popcorn but it turns out there's a special set of substances the chemists often use that make change happen faster and easier it cleans everything from you know the grime off your contact lenses to the you know the oil off your car's engine and carburetor but what's most interesting that these substances is how they create change they don't increase the temperature they don't increase the pressure they actually lower the barrier required for change to occur they remove the obstacle and as you guys have probably guessed these substances are called catalysts and that's exactly why I wrote this book right there's a better way to change by pushing harder but by finding out what those obstacles are and and removing them I think you know a great way to think about it is you no matter your car is parked on a hill let's say and you want to get it to go so you step on the gas you step on the gas it's not going what do you do you often say what god I need more gas or I just step on the gas harder it'll go sometimes we don't need to step on the gas sometimes we just need to remove the parking brake and so the book is all about figure out what are those obstacles those barriers those parking brakes that are preventing our desired action from occurring and how rather than pushing can we remove the obstacles and make change more likely and the book breaks down five common roadblocks to change and gives very compelling examples that I think we can all resonate with whether you're parents whether you are in sales or whether you're in an argument trying to persuade people so I'd love to walk through these five and then we could talk about some actual strategies that our audience can use to help alleviate these roadblocks yeah shore and so maybe we can pick one and dive into it a little bit I find sometimes if you skip across all five people don't remember any of them so so let's pick one and we can I'm happy to talk about it in a little bit of depth well I think the first one is the one that we all respond the most to because we know when someone's pushing us in a certain direction immediately that parking brake it comes up and we don't want to move forward and it's that reactance that we're talking about you know I think a good way to talk about reactance is it can I tell quick story is that all right yeah so I'll tell the story of Tide Pods because I think that's interesting in today's day and age and so some of you may be familiar with Tide Pods they're essentially a faster and better way to do laundry rather having to measure out exactly how much laundry detergent they come in these little packets and so you just chuck it in the laundry makes it easier so Tide release these pods they thought it could take a big chunk of the billion-dollar laundry industry $150 $150 in marketing behind it they release them they do pretty well but then there's a problem and the problem very simply is that people are eating them and so you might be sitting there going what do you mean people are eating them aren't they filled with chemicals you're exactly right they are filled with chemicals but people have decided there's a funny video on college humor there's a satirical article on the onion people challenged each other start eating them it's the tide pod challenge you may remember years ago and so tide is sitting there going well what should we do I mean people shouldn't be eating them in the first place but what do we do what we got to tell them not to do it they release all these press releases saying don't eat Tide Pods they hire Rob Gronkowski to make these videos and say no any Tide Pods they think that will be the end of it and the exact opposite happens they put all this work telling people not to eat Tide Pods and suddenly more people start eating Tide Pods interest in Tide Pods goes up visits to poison control call office well essentially a warning becomes a recommendation telling people not to do something makes them more likely to do it now you might be sitting at going that's ridiculous that never other other happens beyond this type odd example but it's actually a much broader or specific example much broader case which is this notion of reactance we like to feel like we're in charge we're in control of our own actions our behavior and our decisions but if someone else tries to influence us suddenly it's not clear whether we're driving our behavior or they're driving our behavior and so we often do is we push back we have essentially an anti persuasion radar like a missile defense system or a spidey sense that goes off and we send someone's trying to persuade us you know if a telemarketer calls us on the phone or an ad comes on the television or our spouse even tries to get us to do something we go oh wait they're trying to persuade us hold on let me deploy these countermeasures to avoid being persuaded I'll avoid the persuasion attempt I'll ignore it or even worse I'll counter argue yeah I'm sitting there listening to everything that person is saying but rather than just listening I'm thinking about all the reasons wrong with what they're suggesting why it won't work why it's too expensive why it's too difficult and so it really to change minds we have to figure out how to reduce that reactance I think our mayor here in Los Angeles gotta said he would certainly need to hear this because they just put out a press release yesterday stating that at this point they won't if you're going outside they want you to wear a mask and of course you can imagine what that pushback was like and of course my first reaction was what are you talking about I'm just going outside now there's arguments to be made for the psychology of other people feeling safe and and lots of other things but there's just to come right out with that the of course there was a media pushback and we're seeing it transpired right now because this just happened yesterday and I think that's a great example of a case where hey if they didn't tell you to do it you might have even been fined doing it to begin with right you might have decided yourself oh yeah I'm going out maybe I should wear a mask but the mere fact that they told you to do it makes you less I mean think about this happens often with spouses and friends someone says what do you want to do this weekend you say oh you know before the pandemic you mighta said oh let's go to a movie I don't want to do that right they might have been fine going to move if they suggested it but the fact that you suggested it like oh you know it's too nice outside or oh you know we did that a couple weeks ago and so because someone else suggested it there they're less likely to do it and so part of what the strategies that I talked about to reduce reactants are about is really figuring out well how do we not try to persuade people but allow them to persuade themselves how rather than kind of selling can we get people to buy in and make them feel like participants in that change process and when it comes to reactants what strategies can we employ to get people to buy in instead of you know and push yeah so I'll talk about a couple and I'll at the end at least I'll come back to the pandemic because I recently put a piece out in HBR they talked a little about how to apply these ideas to kind of kind of public health campaigns so um I think one I would start with is this idea of providing a menu and this came from talking to a lot of great salespeople and great consultants and what they said very simply is you know you're in a pitch meeting and a little bit like I talked about already you know you're making your pitch you've got your fancy slides and your PowerPoint deck or you're on the phone whatever it is and you think that person is listening right you think that client or that boss or whatever it is you're trying to pitch is listen your pitch but they're really doing is they're poking holes in everything you're saying sure you say your product is better but you know how do I know it's gonna cost less and is it actually gonna pan out and is the service gonna work and how's it gonna integrate with what we're already doing I'm just like a high school debate team I had a poking and prodding and figuring out all the problems with your message and so essentially you need to give them a better job a different job if you give them one option their job is poking holes in that option and so what great salespeople what great consultants often do is they give people multiple options they give them a menu at least a couple of different choices because what it does is it shifts the role of the listener now rather than sitting there going oh don't I like about this they're sitting there going Oh which of these do I like better and because they're sitting there thinking about which of them they like better they're much more likely to choose one at the end of that interaction right because they made the choice and I called providing a menu because you're not giving them ultimate you know unlimited choice they're not saying you can do whatever you want you're choosing the choice set but you're letting them choose within that choice set and that feeling of participation that feeling that they had a role to play makes them much more likely to go along with with what they end up doing at the end it's kind of counterintuitive you would think wait if I'm giving them choices what if they choose the thing that I don't want them to choose yeah but in actuality there's always that struggle when we're only given one choice immediately we start looking what are my other options here I can't usually have one option yeah and notice by the way that you're choosing the choice set so I agree that someone could say well you know maybe they'll choose the option I don't want but if you're smart about it you give them a set of options that you're happy which are whichever of those options they choose right parents often talk about doing this with their kids so you know rather than saying hey you know you say eat your vegetables I don't want to eat your chicken I don't want to so you say so okay which one do you want to eat first your chicken or your vegetables which you want to put on first you know these pants or your shirt and by giving them a choice you're you're giving them options you're equally happy that they choose between but because you're choosing the choice set they're much more likely to go along with the other example in the book around smoking teenagers I think we've all lived through the dare campaigns and what was remarkable was the truth campaign and how it took a different approach to this exact problem yeah so I'll talk a little about truth and I'll also talk about this campaign most your listeners are probably are not familiar with from Thailand that they also does an interesting job and so what truth did write is think about sort of old cigarette advertising basically all public health messaging and said don't do it don't smoke and what kids said is well don't you tell me what to do government I'm gonna do whatever I want right just like in today's day and age where you have these armed militias saying don't you tell me to wear my mask I'm gonna show up with my gun and not wear my mask right you know people are pushing back on what others are saying what's so true so it's one of the first campaigns to do is say hey great you want to react against someone react against the cigarette companies because without you realizing they're the ones persuading it what truth it is it said hey I'm not gonna tell you to do anything I'm just gonna show you what the cigarette companies are doing to persuade you and yet you make the decision and kids said well yeah I love reactants I love pushing back let me push back into the cigarette companies screw them I'm not going to do what what they want to do but there's even a better version as I mentioned of this recently happened in in Thailand so it's this organization and it's called the Thai health promotion foundation and they want to get people to quit smoking and the problem is if you tell people to quit smoking what do they do they say no thanks you know stop telling me what to do I'm not interested so trying to figure out a different way to get people to quit so they do something really interesting they have this ad campaign but they also actually did this to a number of people where they go up to smokers and they ask those smokers for a light of course in most cases you know someone comes up to smoker ask them for a light cigarette like their cigarette smokers would say of course but in this case the person who asks is an 8 or 9 year old child it's a little kid a little boy or a little girl walking up to a smoker saying you know can I have a light and smokers do what you can guess they would do they say no no way I'm not gonna kick you a light right smoke is bad for you you get emphysema you'll hurt your lung so you want to go run and play by the way it's clear no one knows more about the dangers of smoking than smokers right they can lecture the kids all they want about all the dangers of smoking and so the kid says you know ok fine no problem hands them a slip of paper and walks away and on that slip of paper what it says is you worry about me but not yourself call this quit line to find out how to quit and so first of all is hugely successful right call us a quit line go up 40% it goes viral on the internet millions of people view this video but more importantly what it does is it highlights what I'll call a gap it highlights a gap between someone's attitudes and their actions if you're a smoker right you like smoking that's what you're doing and someone just come up to you and ask you for a cigarette and you've told them no and now you're kind of stuck because you're at a 2-day lineup right people want those things to line up but when they don't we have what's called cognitive dissonance right our attitudes or actions they don't match I've got to do something to fix it I say I care about the environment but I never recycle doesn't make me feel so great I've got to do something to bring those two in line and so in this case what the smokers do is they quit smoking right or at least they call the quit line and they explore quitting not because someone told them to but because someone pointed out that their attitudes interactions weren't lining up and and so they have to bring them in line and so just to bring this back to the coronavirus you know we want someone or a mask well if we tell them wear a mask they're gonna say no what if instead we say well hey you know would you want your elderly grandparent to be outside without a mask on you know if you're a kid would you want your younger brother and sister to be outside with a mask on you're a parent you want your kids to be outside without a mask on all right if we would say no to those things then asking well why are you not wearing one is a great way to encourage people to do it not by telling - but by allowing them to participate and I think that's the biggest point of the book in general is that we can't force people to do things it's not going to work but so many of us try in our daily lives whether it's with our kids or our co-workers or in selling and I think many of us don't realize how our own decision-making process works we backwards rationalize things we don't realize that a lot of our actions don't necessarily line up with our beliefs we're walking around tell the other people what to do but oftentimes we're not following our own advice and by asking the right questions to create that thought provoking moment then people start to realize well maybe my rationalizations aren't correct on this matter or maybe I've been acting out of character and not realizing it yeah I love the way you put it and you know there's that old phrase practice what you preach and in some sense when highlighting a gap does is it reminds people that their practices and their breeches aren't necessarily the same it doesn't force them to do anything doesn't push them it just says hey you're being inconsistent it doesn't say it that way because people wouldn't want to hear that they're being inconsistent and says you know do whatever you want and people go home well Wow maybe I am being inconsistent and now maybe I should I should do something to it and that in general you know the I talked about I think four or five different strategies in the book those are the main ideas behind the strategies of reducing reactance it's not pushing it's not selling it's kind of allowing people to participate asking questions rather than telling people what to do encouraging them to feel like they're participants which will make them more likely to go along in asking those questions you are fading in the rumination that's going on internally for them so it's bringing out their thought process so that you both can manage it instead of just letting that thought process happen internally where we don't really have any clarity on what this person's feeling or thinking yeah I think you know think about a doctor for example you know you don't walk into the doctor's office and the doctor goes let me put a cast on your foot a doctor starts by saying what's the problem right well what's what's hurting how long has it been hurting for what's the issue essentially they do a diagnostic um salespeople don't do that with clients salespeople start by saying let me tell you why my product or service is so great don't you want to listen I brought along my you know 500 page PowerPoint deck we should start with the person that we're trying to convince where that person is a spouse a kid you know client boss whoever it might be starting with them understanding well where they in the first place what are the barriers for them let's find that root that underlying thing that's preventing them from doing what we want them to do and then let's pick the right thing out of our toolkit to make it easier right it takes a little bit more effort initially but it smooths the ride and makes it much more like that change happens and a lot of times our assumptions around the reasons people are doing things are wrong they're off so it's important to question our own assumptions and allow the other person to explain their thought process behind it yeah I mean this is this is so true I was talking about a friend and colleague of mine who is trying to get something adopted as University and he'd spent months on this particular project and it goes all the way up to the Dean and eventually the Dean says no and the guy's so bummed because he put all this work in and I sort of said well why did the Dean say no he was kind of like well I'm not exactly sure right um and he was so focused on all weight the Dean said no how bummed I am well I said well have you figured out why he said no you might actually be able to change it around right you might be able to have a better chance and so starting with that well why is the person not changing what are those barriers makes it easier when we're talking about behavior change another big component of this is people are just resistant to change we want to keep doing what we've always been doing it's our comfort zone and the second point of endowment I think we've all run up against that where we want to help change someone's habits we want them to be more healthy we want to help them socially even in our coaching practice we run up against this thing where well we've been doing it a certain way it doesn't feel uncomfortable to me to keep doing it this way so why should I change yeah and so you know this is what psychology would call the status quo bias we tend to be attached to the stuff that we're doing already new things also feel risky and that's sort of you know the cost of uncertainty uncertainty tax and maple talked about that in a couple minutes but old things also feel so comfortable and easy right it feels costless to stick with what I'm doing already I know it it's comfortable you know think about moving homes for example right wine I know where I live right now it may not be perfect right but at least I know it I know all the good things and all the bad things it's easier I people dating they often talk about sedating well yeah I'm not you know not so happy with the person I'm dating but God you know um well if I go out there and I break up with this person I gotta find someone new it's gonna be so difficult and so you know it's often really easy to stick with what we're already doing even if it's not perfect do you find that there is a mechanism in which people familiarize and personalize these strategies to themselves obviously they know that there's other ways to be doing things they see other people doing them in different ways though they've been doing it for so long and when you mentioned that bias but also I find it that that they personalize it the world they say well for me I do it this way and it's like well we know that that's why we're here that's why we're discussing different ways and that attachment is one thing but when you personalize it it's become so fixed yeah I mean I think you guys talked a little about this already but it's basically this idea of motivated reasoning right like if we want something to be true and someone tells us some information that's consistent with it we believe them if we don't want something to be true we go well do I have to believe this is true and I do all this work to sort of figure out how it's not likely to be true and so same things with our own behavior right if we're doing something we tend to think it's the right thing sure you know that other thing might work for another person but it wouldn't work for me and so we think about all the reasons why it wouldn't work rather than all the reasons why it would and so we're motivated to make it not work even though it might actually be quite effective once you break the glass on that idea and you are open to doing things in any way life opens up and becomes so much more fun and but and it's but it's is so difficult to get people to see what life can be if you open yourself up to these ideas yeah you know I used to have a sticky note above my desk a number of years ago that said what's the worst that will happen and I wrote this down because I was dealing with exactly what you're talking about it in my own life right and now I sometimes they give this advice to other people but sometimes you know we're like oh well you know it'll just it won't work and and I think really thinking about what is the worst not you know not what's the most like mm what's the worst that could happen and often once you go down that road you actually realized that the worst thing wouldn't be that bad you know oh yeah I buy the wrong product okay well then in a couple years I'll buy a new one you know if it's a really big decision okay then maybe they have to the house or a spouse or having a kid those are harder to turn around but you know a product or a service it's not that even even that difficult even you know worst case with a spouse or a house worst case you get divorced you buy a new house you change your job even if these big decisions you know the worst case is not actually that bad and sometimes you know they don't say we have nothing to fear but fear itself sometimes were so the uncertainty is what we're worried about right we're actually that's what we get caught up in not not the worst thing this happened to me recently actually I was this is a number of months ago what people are still flying but I was flying to speaking an event um and the flight was late and it keeps getting pushed back and it keeps getting pushed back and keeps getting pushed back and I'm going oh my god I'm gonna miss this meeting oh my god I'm gonna miss this meeting I'm you know I'm so worried about it right and eventually the flight gets pushed back so far that I'm definitely gonna miss the meeting and you would think now the worst possible outcome has been realized right the worst possible thing would be that I'd missed the meeting and now I found out that I missed the meeting and so I should be despondent but I'm actually fine right because the worst thing is actually the uncertainty missing the meeting is bad it's not good to miss the meeting but once you know that you missed the meeting you figure out a way to solve it what's often worse is the uncertainty than not knowing there's lots of research that says it's really the not knowing that's bad and so part of what we need to do is change agents as catalyst is reduce that uncertainty and I think right now you know we're feeling that exact point so many people are telling us oh use this opportunity to create massive change be the catalyst in your life start that new business do that new thing pick up that new habit but unfortunately with uncertainty our human nature actually wears us to hit the pause button not to make the big change not to take the leap yeah there's this study I talked about in the book that was out of Stanford University from a couple years ago they basically asked people now decade it's not a couple years but you know they asked people to imagine you take an exam you know you it's a you feel rundown you pass the exam do you want to go on this vacation yes no or you want to wait most people say I'll take the vacation I didn't pass the exam I feel good I'll take the vacation they asked some other people hey imagine you took this exam same basic scenario except these people fail so you took an exam you found out you fail the exam but you could go on vacation do you want to go on vacation you can't take the exam again until next semester most students say well I'm feeling bad I'll take I'll take the vacation right so my past will take the vacation I fail I take the vacation but a third group is told they don't know there's uncertainty you'll find out in a couple of days whether you pass or you fail and what's like what I love about this study is the decision tree is clear right and I'll draw a little decision tree here right if you pass if you pass you take the vacation if you fail you take the vacation so even if you don't know even if you're up here you should take the vacation yet what do people do they hit that pause button right they say oh no I'll wait and that's what we do all the time uncertainty makes us wait which is really great for whatever we're doing currently you know sticking with our old job sticking with our old way of exercising or old way of doing things but it's terrible for change right because uncertainty causes us to do nothing yeah and we hear historically that these are opportunities for that change these are the moments where we can set aside systems that are broken we can look at our life in a different light but that pause button is is looming large in all of our lives so how can we create that catalyst for others to change dealing with uncertainty and the uncertainty tax for me the the best way to ease uncertainty is to lower the barrier to trial it's basically how can we figure out rather than us try to persuade someone let me tell you great this product is how great the service is why you should do what I want how can I stop persuading you and again get you to persuade yourself and so one way is to make it easier for you to experience what I want you to do so like I'll use an example in a product or service context and we'll sort of generalize it but think about Dropbox so billion-dollar business usually successful a number of years ago though they come out initially had a lot of problems I had trouble getting customers why because there was an old way of doing things people used to storing their files on their computer there was this new way cloud storage which Dropbox was one of the leaders in the space but people are sitting there going I don't know what cloud storage is where's the cloud what happens if the cloud goes down right I'm so used to doing what I'm doing before you say your way is better but how do I know it's better and so Dropbox talked about buying search ads they talked about trying other types of advertising but they didn't think it would work what they landed on was giving away the product for free and you might be sitting there going what do you mean give it away for free they gave away two gigabytes of storage for free they gave away some of their service for free and you might say how do you make money giving away something for free right every kid with a lemonade stand knows you got to get people to charge they didn't give it all away for free they gave two gigabytes of storage away for free and if you hit that 2 gigabyte limit well then you have to pay for more storage they they use what's called freemium right and most of us are familiar with at least some version of freemium even if we're not familiar with the term but you know you go to the New York Times they give you some articles for free but eventually you have to pay for a membership you use Skype for example you get certain features for free but there's a set of premium features you might have to upgrade to if you want those features you use Pandora you have to have ads you want to get rid of the ads you got to pay for it what this model does it gives you something which is great for people people like free but it's also great for the company because by giving people something it lowers that barrier to trial it says hey rather than me telling you Skype Dropbox Pandora is great you check it out yourself if you like it come back and pay us some money if you don't like it stick with what you're doing before all right and what it does is allows people to experience the value because they experience the value they're much more likely than to be willing to pay to upgrade which is exactly what happened at Dropbox and a lot of other businesses it's not just freemium it's lowering the barrier to trial and reducing uncertainty think for example about test drives of a car so free version and premium version but it relies on the same idea says yes I think this car is great but let me have you sit in it and check it out drive it for a day and if you like it right then come pass the money and so I would say where they're trying to change our own behavior or whether trying to change other's behavior how can we give them essentially a micro version that experience a sample of what we're offering a sample of what we want someone to do and all how do you see for themselves and if they like it they'll be much more likely to to do it yeah and it becomes a lot easier than for them to rationalize that emotional response that they just had oh oh this is really easy I thought storing on my hard drive and lugging my computer around would be the easier way but actually having it in the cloud being able to access that on my phone it's a lot easier and now I'm emotionally in turn ready to go and start paying yeah and I think you know what's interesting about the pandemic you've talked about it a couple times and alluded to it is it's forced us to change our habits right you know where as bosses before might have said you got to come into the office yeah remote working from homes sounds great but you know people aren't going to get their work done it's forced bosses because people have to work from home now people working from home you know if you like exercise and you used to go to the gym you can't go to gym anymore you got to figure out whether running or doing something else you know there may have been pink grocery store you might have thought about grocery delivery but never been willing to try it because you let's say you like go in the grocery store so many things that you did before that have been forced to change you Sencha been forced to try some new things and what's great about those new things is they're better than you thought they were now you're gonna stick with them not everything right you're not gonna do all if you tried running and you hate running right back to gym as soon as it opens but if you learn something from that trial you're much more likely to stick with it and so anytime we're trying to get someone to do something whether it's product or service or even an idea how can we lower that barrier trial how can we make it easy for them to sample what we want them to do and actually see it's not as bad as riskier as emotionally negative as they might have thought and I just go along with that furiten Lee for the the online companies and the platforms everything has been designed so well and already been the time has been put in to figure out how to make these things as usual or friendly as poss so of course once they're set up it is very easy to know I get you hooked you're gonna be you're gonna be back yep becomes very fun but but notice by the way that that only works if the product or service is good if you have something it's Tarrant what I love about freemium and the idea of luring the bare trials if your car is terrible people sitting there go yeah thanks for the trial but thanks and so really what is nice about freemium is it it's good for both sides right it's good for consumers you get to experience something and it's good for brands if you got something that's really good and you allow people to experience it they'll realize how good or or valuable it is now I think in all of these examples the person we're trying to persuade or the mind that we're trying to change they need to feel agency they need to feel as though they are making the choice and in all these examples that involves listening and listening to that person on a deeper level to really understand them and how can we become better listeners many of us are in roles where we have to persuade people and all we're thinking about is that end goal and it's often difficult for us to meet that end goal that we have in mind and listen to the level that it takes to give that person the agency the choice the menu all these great things we talked about yeah there's a lot of research on listening I've talked to some great listeners but also reviewed a lot of the literature and and listening actually has three pieces and I think we understand that intuitively but we don't always call them out right and so the first is attending if we don't attend to what someone is saying there's no way we're gonna hear what they're saying right and so it's really about paying attention the second is understanding right we may have paid attention but I may have misunderstood what what you said and so even though I paid attention doesn't guarantee I understand but even if we understand really listening we have to show that person that we listened it's not enough to actually understood what they said we have to indicate to them that we've understood for it to have an impact on them right yes we might have heard it but if they don't know that we listened it's not gonna have the beneficial impact and so a lot of the strategies and approaches to listening is really not just having listened but having shown to other people that you listened right people talk a lot about something called emotion labeling right where you know I use this often with our son where I say you know you sound like really frustrated you sound like you're really angry now that doesn't mean that it's okay to be angry but it means that I've heard that you're feeling this way right it's not I'm ignoring this thing and stumping right to the solution right but acknowledging that I've heard what you said and even if it's not something I like I still I still heard it right and I talked to some hostage negotiators as part of this book and you know they talked about using this strategy a lot where it's really kind of showing that you understood hey this is why that person's holed up in there with two hostages this is why this person wants to commit suicide this is why this person wants to do this bad thing I may not agree with the reasons why they're doing it I may not want to let them do those things that they want to do but at least acknowledging that I've heard what they said is gonna made them feel listened to which make them much more likely to come around right this happens often in disagreements with spouses and friends right someone says something and someone says no no this is what I want and the first person says you didn't hear me and so I think part of that is just literally saying hey not just saying I've heard you but showing I've heard you let me repeat back to you what you said label your emotions so it's clear that I not only attended and understood but you know that I understood and the fact that you know that is gonna make it trust me at least a little more and we're testing those assumptions because sometimes you might miss label the emotion and they might not be feeling that at all and of course if you're trying to persuade someone and you're not even putting them in the right bucket you're gonna have a very thought that's such a good point right it's like a doctor if you miss understand if you miss diagnose the problem you're gonna bring out the wrong tool for the solution and so I think the powerful thing about some of these approaches emotion labeling you know talking back saying what you heard in a nice positive way is it both you know shows that you paid attention but also as you said test that assumption because that assumption is wrong or you didn't understand it all the way they'll correct you but now you have a good sense of where they are and you may not agree with them but at least you know what problem you're trying to solve the other point that I think is difficult for people to grasp is for so long certainly in in certain cultures we've all been speaking the same language we've been having the same information we've been schooled the same and we're speak on a level that all of us completely understand with the Information Age has opened up as many different communities many different cultures many different and this is not only cultures for ethnicities and geographical areas we're talking about cultures and communities such as the gamer community and this community and all of these these different communities have their own language they have their own definition for the words and so we're now seeing where active listening has become something that we need to develop at such a level to be able to have real conversations that in the past we had taken for granted yeah I think you're very right I mean part of it is we assume we all have the same reality but in some case we don't right there are different pieces of information there are different things going on there are different concerns that people have and those things matter and then the more we least call them out again we may not agree with them but a more we say okay well these are the assumptions that you're building on people startup founders often often talk about this right but they say you know look when I have a disagreement with another founder in in my organization you know two founders within a company and they're trying to figure out what to do we start by making sure we're relying on the same facts right because we can we can get to a different conclusion from the same facts but the first place to start is well are we even agreeing on what the facts are because part of where the disagreement might be is hey we're not looking at the same information and actually when I have access to information that you have access to I make the same decision you do and so it's not that we disagree it's once you give me that information I realize where you're coming from now there may be other cases where even once I have the same facts I disagree but at least giving access to the same information make sure that we're more likely to get on the same page and the pattern that arose in the book for me around the hostage negotiation is just the use of teamspeak and understanding that in a lot of times that we're trying to persuade someone it can feel adversarial especially if we're not choosing the right words and understanding that if you want to change someone's mind they have to feel like you are on their side you can't be setting up this well you need to do this you need to do that but said hey let's work on this together we're gonna solve this problem even though you don't want him to jump off the bridge or you don't want him to shoot the hostage yeah I mean even think about the way we use pronouns and so I'm doing a bunch of work at the moment with a colleague named grant Packard who's sort of an expert on language and he has a bit of work on pronouns but you know let's say we're having a bad connection on this call right there are different ways to use language to talk about that I can say hey you need to speak louder what does that suggest it suggests it's your fault right I can suggest we have a bad connection now it's not your fault together we have a bad connection I can say I can't hear you that's taking responsibility saying you know maybe you're speaking loudly maybe you're not but partes maybe me I can't hear you and just by using different pronouns to describe what's happening right we have a bad connection I can't hear you you're in there but you know I can't hear you is different than you need to speak louder to me while the same quote-unquote information may be there the abiding of blame the question of who's in control who has responsibility and all those things it is different and so I think in the past few years doing some of this research I've become much more attuned to very subtle differences in language right where often people disagree because one person feels like the other person is assigning blame they may not even be assigning that blame but the language they're using a science assigns that blame so whether it's team speaking or saying hey we're on the same team let's solve this together I'm here to help you you know whatever it is that shows hey maybe we're together rather than separate is gonna bring you a little bit more to my side to go along I've certainly have seen and been a part of arguments where you've agreed on the same thing but because the language is slightly different people are talking past each other and once again we're getting that that place where we've taken for granted in the past that we all came and we're educated and had that same that same language with the information age though it is connected all of us it has put us all in our own worlds in our own language yeah it sort it certainly has and I think you know things may mean different things to different people and we got to be careful with that and I think right now especially where we're seeing this in the information age we all have our supporting evidence right now whether you are conspiracy theorist or whatever side of the aisle you're on you can find that supporting evidence and that often doubles your resolve to not want to change do you feel that it's become harder to persuade people with this glut of information now and the accessibility to evidence that furthers your beliefs even if that evidence is flawed I agree with you first of all I do agree but even backing up for a second you know I think you made a really nice point about the way that information and the plethora of information has allowed people to do things right so it used to be you know if your doctor tells you to do something you generally do that thing now if the doctor tells you what you want to hear you go along with that doctor but if the doctor doesn't tell you what you want to hear you go back home when you look at doctor Google and you look at all the other information until you find a piece that agrees with what you what you wanted to believe you know whether you want to call that motivated reasoning whether you want to call that confirmation bias we kind of search for information until we find something that agrees with us and the Internet has made it much easier to do that and so I think as a result as you said you know it in some way is not on every dimension but particularly on things in which there's more information available has made it harder to change people's mind because if they want to find a reason why you're wrong and they're right it's easier to find some reason even that reason isn't necessarily the case isn't true most of the time or may not be from the most reputable source all right there's kind of this notion that because it's on the internet it must be true and I'm very interested to see what's gonna happen in five or ten years now all these sort of questions of fake news and disinformation whether that will change but I think for the most part you know we're sort of we go on the internet if there's a piece of information we assume it's from a good source but it's not always the case and sometimes we then rely on faulty information and the last piece that I found so remarkable from the book and I know a lot of people in our audience struggle with this concept of awkward pauses a lot of people in our audience feel that they're awkward in conversation yes and because of that they avoid pauses and you try to barrel through their points barrel through their argument and it speeds up the pace of communication but you point out that pauses are actually really powerful when we're trying to persuade someone yeah so what I will say by the way is I'm terrible at this so you know I like everybody else when you get excited when you get nervous you tend to talk faster right yeah either because you're you know anxious about something or because you're excited about something we're actually doing some research now and sort of communicating via voice versus written communication and what you see is that one reason that written communication has some benefits is you get a chance to think through what you're saying whereas with voice communication you kind of get excited you start talking and you know you have your train of thought but it's different and in some some important ways and so if you look at pauses you see a few interesting things um you know first what pauses do is they encourage people to sit a little bit closer alright so if I speak more slowly you start to get drawn in to what I'm saying now I did a bad job of that I did terrible job of that but um I've watched you know very persuasive people whether you talk about President Obama did this a lot there's a great teacher at Wharton one of my first years I sort of sat in on his class he got amazing ratings I'm sitting there going is his class that good like are they learning that much I'm like why do people love him as a teacher and what I realized is he did a really good job of speaking slowly came courage because he spoke slowly sure they kind of pull up their chair and lean in a little bit and listen harder and they're doing more work to pay attention which makes them more likely to learn something in the end but what pausing also can do in interactions in sales interactions or persuasion or actions is they can encourage people to agree and so we're doing some research on this at the moment but imagine I'm giving you a long explanation or you know I'm trying to persuade you of something and so I'm sort of laying out some points every time I pause there's a tendency of you the listener or me if I'm listening to you to kind of go uh-huh okay or shake my head yes alright so think about when you when you call customer service and they're giving you a long explanation if you sit there for 10 minutes you don't say anything it feels a little awkward so you tend to fill in those pauses by saying yeah uh-huh okay and what that does is you're implicitly agreeing with what they're saying right whether you actually agree with it or not you're implicitly agreeing with what they're saying which means at the end when you rate them on how helpful they are or how much their solution was useful you're more like could agree because you spent the whole conversation agreeing and so that in some way what is one of the things pauses allows people to do not only does allow them to draw them in not only does allow them to think about what you're saying if it's complicated they can think through it but it also encourage them to go yeah uh-huh which makes them at the end of that conversation but I agreed with that person the bunch I agreed was at AJ said a bunch he must be right um it makes it more likely to be persuaded the pauses have a way of holding your attention and as you were saying there's the implicitness but also even on the internet when we're looking for entertainment and there's so many Talking Heads who are just going to be going giving off their point of view and of course you're gonna settle with one that aligns with your worldview where you have that agreement where you feel where you feel good and and that puts you in a position where you're gonna pay attention where but the positives have that same effect where the minute I don't agree I'm just going to - now yeah and so you know a little bit of his just giving you that opportunity to be present to be part of it right if the person just continuously talking you never have time to think or or agree I also feel in a lot of these situations especially when we think about people who aren't good salesmen and they're trying to force us to make a decision if you don't create space for the person to maybe disagree with you if your assumption is wrong or to voice their opinion they're gonna feel forced in a box and less persuadable I I deal with this all the time when doing interviews just like this one right so I say here going hey how long a story should I tell I think stories are good because they draw audience members in but I also recognize if I'm talking non-stop but you guys you don't have an opportunity to chime in with your thoughts and enrich the discussion and you know take it in a different direction and so I think there is always this question of kind of should I pause or not and I think the answer at least I've seen so far is that we should pause a little bit more than sometimes we think is right not terribly like I did before and oddly but you know give people at least a little bit of a break every so often to think too agree as you said you know if you disagree to raise your hand say I disagree to chime in there give them those opportunities I know from our experience and videotaping our clients communicating oftentimes our internal awkwardness meter is off we tend to judge ourselves more harshly than the other person is feeling or experiencing because they're running through their own thoughts and machination says they're trying to reason through the argument so internally it may feel like a long awkward pause but actually in the cadence of a conversation it's a blip it's not awkward at all yeah I mean we as communicators you know particularly voice communication like we're doing now with images added to it you know while you're talking I'm spending time processing what you're saying looking at what you're doing thinking of what I'm saying next I don't have a lot of time to notice I'm worried enough about me to notice you know every single thing that you might feel is awkward and same is true most interactions people are worried a lot about themselves and so you know the easier we can make it for them the better it's gonna go now the big part that we're all experiencing as well right now working from home is we're not in the room together and body language is an important part of communication and even in this lovely zoom I can't see your hands you know we're just floating heads what is the impact of body language on persuading someone and is there a better way to go about this if we're forced to you know communicate over video and not be together body language certainly matters and there's you know a lot of research on different aspects of body language that may be important I think though there are other features that matter too you know there's what we say the content there's how we say it the paralinguistic use things like pausing things like speech rate things like tone we can use all of these tools as vehicles for persuasion and so while it would be ideal for all of these avenues to be available even when one like body language is shut off we can use some of these other channels to do it we may not be as effective in those channels but the more we learn about those channels and what helps across those channels the more effective we can be you know I'll go back to some of the written and voice work where we're doing you know we're doing some research right now that suggests when people communicate via voice they use more emotion and in what they're talking about right because written tends to be a little bit more deliberative I'm going to think about what I'm gonna say before I put it out there I'm in a mindset that makes me a little bit more cognitive which is good in some ways but if I'm writing a restaurant review I may use less emotional language which may actually be less persuasive on you the listener not due to my intent but do the channel that I chose to speak through and so I may if I'm trying to be persuasive and I may want to use voice because it allows me to take advantage of some things I can't do just I love that and the book was fantastic catalyst please check it out and what is your next project contagious catalyst I feel like you got another book with a Sikh coming out here soon you know I am the catalyst just came out I'm gonna sit on this one for a little while doing a lot of speaking and consulting around it you know I will say I'm doing a lot of research on natural language processing sort of pulling behavioral insight from textual data so everything like you know as a customer service phone call what are the words that agent uses that makes you the customer more satisfied reading online content or the ways of writing that lead the longer reads parsing behavioral insight from textual data that's a lot of the stuff I'm working on but we've got a number of years before that's that's ready for another plan we'll have you back yeah thank you thank you so much for joining us Jonah no problem thanks so much for having us [Music] you

Channel: Art of Charm

Views: 3,547

Rating: 4.9191918 out of 5

Keywords: the art of charm, art of charm, storytelling, confidence, self confidence, how to, how to be confident, charisma, charisma on command, self help, jay shetty, jay shetty interview, dave goggins, vanessa van edwards, coaching, best practice, how to read people, coffee time, coffee time with johnny, coffe with johnny, food for thought, persuasion, Jonah Berger, How to change someones behavior, change behavior, influence, how to persuade someone, how to use persuasion

Id: N9P3Lz1069E

Length: 50min 30sec (3030 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 02 2020