The art of negotiation: Six must-have strategies | London Business School

so this morning I'm going to be sharing some you know theory with you so to some extent I'm glad I have you early where the caffeine is still kicking in what we're gonna be talking about this morning Society of influence and persuasion and when I say theory the reason why I say theory is because there's actually a rich this isn't a rich area of research there's a lot of science behind it and I want to share with you just a little bit of that science now you know here at lbs we believe very strongly that there's no point throwing theory at you if it's also not simultaneously practical to you so while I'm gonna be talking about these ideas of influence and persuasion and the science behind it simultaneously I'm going to be giving you tons and tons of examples right whether it's in the business world whether it's in the rail social world just try and make these ideas come alive and the other thing about my style of sort of like teaching and being in front of a class is that I really don't know what to do if I'm just hearing myself talk endlessly so I do hope and expect that you guys will participate along with me and you know bring in things that you think are pertinent as we talk about these ideas of influence and persuasion so on I think big picture we all appreciate the idea of needing to influence people right so you know many of you guys may be very senior in your organizations and yes it may be the case that you can go around just telling people to do something but as you may well experience telling somebody to do something might result in them just kind of complying with what it is that you want them to do which is all fine and good but it doesn't necessarily result in them being committed to what it is that you're thinking about wanting them to do and the course of action that you're pursuing um and as a result of that these ideas around influence and persuasion are really really key because they move beyond getting somebody to just simply comply with what it is that you're requesting to actually being truly committed to the course that you're setting for them such that when you're not in the room when you're away at LBS attending a course or at a meeting in a different organization these individuals are still doing the things that you want them to do and that in some sense is a big reason we have these ideas and want to think about these ideas of influence and frustration and as I said there's a very very large area of research around this and I want to share with you just six basic principles around how it is that we interact with people right so this work is really being influenced by a guy called Robert Cialdini he's a social psychologist and he he came up with these ideas these six principles and thinks of them as a sort of like interpersonal principles of influence and that's kind of what I'm gonna be doing this morning sharing these ideas with you so if we start off just kind of at the top and work our way down if we think about the idea of reciprocity reciprocity is this very very powerful sense of that when I do somebody a favor they feel a compunction to do a favor back for me in return I'm sure that you can think of many many instances in your own lives when when you're trying to get somebody to do something rather than just making request after request after request it may actually be easier to do them a little favor first and then all of a sudden they're actually much more likely to do something back for you in return right so in negotiations we know this very very well that if for instance we want the other side to share information about their priorities actually a really really good way of trying to start that process is to share a little bit of information with them when we do that that kick starts this process of reciprocity and then hopefully and usually people then feel a of a duty to respond in kind and give you some information back in return on I have this thing here on anybody know what I'm talking about what this is it's very popular in the US so these are like mailing labels so return address labels and I don't know how many of you guys have experienced this but sometimes charities will send these out so the gentleman is at the back is nodding so tell me a little bit about this in the US that yeah Ennis I mean this is exactly they're trying to work on this principle reciprocity okay um did you ever donate out of curiosity yes okay um so so you're more generous than I was I was when I was in the u.s. I was always a starving student so I would get these in the mail and starving student as my excuse I never I never donated but this is the principle that they're working on right so they're printing out these return address little stickers and and obviously this is incredibly cheap for them to do you can only imagine that all they need is a color printer they need to have bought some stickers from from Office Depot and then they're printing them out on mass and then they send it to you and now you'll receive this thing and oh my goodness it's a personalized gift how thoughtful of them and then they kick in this idea of reciprocity and now you feel a slight need to do them a favor in return ah there are many other examples of this so you know this is a decide of like is it really a free gift in the mail I mentioned this idea of reciprocity negotiations right giving some information to get information but I'll give you another example so this is a study that was done some years back and then we're trying to figure out how to get people to respond to surveys so I don't know how many of you guys I have to do customer surveys or even in-house service when you're trying to get your employees to respond to you but this is an interesting one so this company was interested in trying to understand it's not this company sorry these bunch of researchers were interested in trying to understand how to get people to respond to surveys so what did they do they had two groups of people and one group of people they sent out this survey and they said hey we'd like for you to complete the survey is really important for us you're all part of this organization we want feedback from you and if you complete the survey and send it back to us we will send you a check for $25 okay I mean $25 is it's not a small amount of money it's a decent amount of money you know I could get a very nice lunch or simple dinner for that okay I can I can work with that and then in the other condition what they did was they send out the survey and they said hey we really really like for people to complete the survey here's a five-dollar track it's yours to keep whether you complete the survey or not but we really like for you to complete the survey people were much more likely to complete and return the survey in this condition now Synnex in the room are probably going hang on a second I've just sent out like a lot of five-dollar tracks am i in a lot of trouble now interestingly no people in this condition tended to be honest they tended not to cash the check unless they actually completed the survey so this idea of reciprocity was one more effective and to more cost efficient then this idea of hey you do something for me then I do something back for you in return right so this idea of reciprocity is quite powerful any ideas that you guys can think of around reciprocity ideas or how you've seen it play out in your lives or in your organizational lives if you get promoted sometimes in some situations it may be that you've had this credit of trust from your boss or whatever yeah no I can see that right so interestingly enough you've done the work to get the promotion but even then they're giving you this promotion and now there's this sense that oh my goodness I really really need to do good by them for giving for putting their trust in me okay thank you anything else that you guys can think of any other examples that you can think of I'll give you a funny example but this also gets a little bit at how as we start thinking about how to use influence it's also I think interesting to think about how it is that we make sure that it's not being used against us okay so this one's a funny example that puts those two two ideas together on I'm Singaporean originally I know that my accent is now completely muddled I lived in the US for a long time I lived here for a long time I don't know what I sound like now but in sample one of the things that we celebrate is Chinese New Year and during Chinese New Year and this is a very Singaporean custom it's not even an s necessarily a chore broadly Chinese custom but in Singapore when you celebrate Chinese New Year you go visit all your friends and family which is the same across China but the unique thing in Singapore is that when you do this you bring two mandarin oranges to your host home okay and it's two mandarin oranges because the word for mandarin oranges are in in Chinese sounds like gold sounds like fortune so in a very Chinese way they're playing on this linguistic thing to say I'm bringing you fortune okay so what happens is that you go to your host home you bring to our and just for with you you give them to them and they now immediately feel the need to do you a favor back in return so what do they do they go to their kitchen put those two oranges down take two oranges and give them back to you so you started with two oranges now you know five minutes later you you're back with two oranges so then you repeat this process as you visit the houses right so you visit the next house hey you still have two oranges so you give it to your new host your new host gives you new oranges back in return you still have two oranges so you keep doing this process of giving favors and then reciprocating such that at the end of the day you still have two oranges you started in with two oranges and the end of it might not be the same two oranges but you still have two oranges and it really is this a very ritualized version of this reciprocity process okay but it's also how it is that people are trying to now out the effects right so if people are trying to do your favorites and curry favor with you this is this is an instance of how it is that you defuse these reciprocity influence tactics can you guys think of how else you might you know try and diffuse these tactics if they're being used against you Cole thank you so so so so okay for those who are not in on the on the details to tell me a little bit about okay okay that she's bringing Olimpico okay I think it's called first I see okay okay good good evolution of a tradition okay other ideas of how you can see this sort of like if somebody is trying to use this influence tactic against you how you would try and now also these sorts of reciprocity influence tactics mm-hmm so you could you could pay for you could just decline to accept it but my guess is that in an organizational situation well in most situations that could come across as kind of rude right so yes you can try that okay but be careful that you don't offend your your your counterpart other things that you could do absolutely right so there's just a sense of tit for tat you know down the line I remember it's my turn to pay for lunch or dinner or whatever or drinks yeah somebody had a yes yeah yeah so exactly right okay yes aye aye I don't dispute this so in some sense as we go through all these different types of influence tactics that is the the advice that will be consistent for many of them but I'm gonna present to you some research that basically says you know what sometimes that doesn't work as well as we'd like to think that it would and in that regard it's therefore even better to have other ways of tackling them my guess is that for instance within an organizational setting many many many of you guys will have rules within your organisation set that say I can accept this gift but not this gift a certain value of gifts or there's certain things that I can't do these organizational boundaries are there in some sense because sometimes just uh saying I understand what they're doing and I'm not gonna fall prey to it is not necessarily sufficient yeah so some things that we can do as I said you could try and reject the gift but it could be it's not necessarily easy it could be seen as impolite we could be exactly this right accept the gift but kind of be wary of what's going on and again that can't work don't get me I'm not trying to say that it won't work but I'm just saying that it's not as easy as it might sometimes be and uh that whatever this happens to me I I generally like to have a ready excuse you know somebody want I go into a shop and try and buy I'm trying to buy something and they offer me a coffee or whatever it might be thanks I just had breakfast I don't need anything right now that doesn't necessarily stop them from still trying to really like foist and stuff on me but at least if I have a ready excuse that potentially helps me to overcome their their influence tactics that's reciprocity let me give you some other ideas to think about um another tactic that she'll Dini talks about is this idea of commitment and consistency and the idea of commitment and consistency is that once we make a decision and we head down a particular path of action we feel the need to be consistent with that course of action and this can happen even if we get negative feedback about our actions and is particularly effective if the commitments are done sort of like in a very active public way right you can imagine right so if you stand up and immediately start saying things about you know I am going to you know New Year's is coming and I'm going to make a resolution to start going to the gym if you make that sort of like public commitment it becomes much more effective in ensuring that you become consistent with that course of action down the road so I have another example a bumper sticker right so not as common here again but again this is potentially a bit of a u.s. example but when I was in the US I remember seeing bumper stickers for every which cause that was out there but beyond that for children's schools right always like proud parent of you know whatever whatever school why do people do that why why are these you know bumper stickers so prevalent and then come election time also very very prevalent why are they out there okay and then what happens when that brand comes knocking on your door for for money or current you know or your time commitments or something like that you've defined this is exactly you're exactly right right you're spot-on you've defined yourself as that is part of your brand so when that brand comes saying I need your help in terms of time whether it's for your children's school or money for saving the whales or whatever it might be you're much much more likely to do that right another example and this one is I like this example because it really kind of combines these different a couple of these different influence tactics and one of the things to think about if you're trying to go around influencing and persuading other people is that if you can tap into multiple of these principles whatever you're doing becomes ever more powerful because it fundamentally means that it's leveraging off of different psychological ideas simultaneously okay so example how many of you guys have been let's say on the plane and you're reading some sort of magazine and you see in the magazine this little tear off thing that says you can get three weeks or three issues or free of this magazine and then after that you know you have to stop paying how many of you guys have seen that yeah how many of you guys have signed up for that okay and tell me a little bit about you did remember counsel well done you so how or why did you remember to cancel but that's this to large extent is this idea of like commitment and consistency but there's also reciprocity going back to what we just talked about right they're giving you three free issues or whatever it might be and then there is also the hope that hey I'm reading this I'm reading you know whether it's National Geographic or The Economist or whatever it might be and especially come on let's say the Economist okay I'm reading it now Wow I'm feeling so smart for reading The Economist okay and and you know what you know what I want to be that smart person who reads The Economist so when it comes time to renew my subscription sorry to actually stop pay for my subscription I'm quite likely to do it because I've coded myself as a person who reads The Economist but honestly speaking I don't know about you guys but the Economist is like comes out what once a week it takes me a month to read each issue right so there's just like giant backlog of economists sitting on my desk and I'm still shelling out money because I've coded myself as somebody who reads The Economist other examples that I have for you for the SIA T of commitment and consistency so we talked about bumper stickers petitions are very similar in nature has anybody heard of the foot in door technique I I hear laughter so I'm hoping there with our with our new guest who's just joined us feel comfortable sharing a little bit with no no no sorry I'm putting you on the spot but you were laughing so do you want to tell us a little bit about this foot in door technique make sure you're on the inside before they people know actually what you're talking about kind of yeah anybody else familiar with this tack tactic you're selling brushes yes yeah housewife obviously they do that by saying yeah so thank you that that's pretty much this idea that it came about when people used to go door-to-door selling stuff whether it's brushless or whatever it might be and the idea is simply that hey if I can get my foot in I can get the rest of myself through the door okay because once you've committed to letting me just you know get in a little bit I can open that door further there was a study done in and this is an old study but it's a beautiful study done in the 1960s to examine this wooden door technique and I have to tell you about it because it's really um it's kind of amazing so this was done in California and they were interested in getting people to put a big ugly sign saying drive carefully on on these people's front gardens okay um and they were kind of curious about how to get people to comply with this request and so in one condition they knocked on a bunch of doors in a neighborhood and said hi we're very interested in people driving carefully in your neighborhood would you be willing to put this big sign which was very very ugly on your front garden people looked at the sign and so we're like not so much okay 17% of the people here said that they were willing to put this big ugly sign on their front Gardens the other condition they knocked on the door and said hi we're very interested in people driving carefully in your neighborhood would you be willing to put this little sticker sing drive carefully on your window everybody said yes I mean this is a neighborhood people had children they wanted people to drive carefully so absolutely everybody said yes two weeks later knock knock knock what do you be willing to put this big ugly sign saying drive carefully on your front lawn 76% of the people said yes right verses 17 from the other condition so think about a time when if you're trying to get somebody to do something for you and their initial response is no no no think about whether you can make a smaller ask initially because that may be the way to try and get them to do the big off later on this is this idea of commitment and consistency how do we prevent from well I'll give you one my idea the there's a very very powerful area of literature that talks about something called escalation of commitment okay escalation of commitment refers to a phenomenon where if people make investments are typically money but also time or energy in a particular cause of action and then they get negative feedback people typically feel people typically reinvest in this failing cause of action because they feel the need to be consistent with their initial choice right so from an economic standpoint this is considered irrational it's considered throwing good money after bad you're supposed to ignore some costs and people are honoring some cost and this escalation phenomenon has been used to explain anything ranging from R&D investments to commitment to personnel right so you hire somebody there not working out quite right well we could ask them to exit or we could give them more training well let's give them more training and more training and more training even though maybe we should be thinking about exiting them gracefully it's been used to explain the Vietnam War it's been used to explain even things like the amount of time that basketball players have on court so these analyses try to control for how much how good these players were but even then if these people these basketball players were recruited with a big lump sum of money they ended up having more more playing time on the court understanding all of this how do we try and prevent some of these things from happening how do we ensure that the decisions that we're making are good decisions and not bias by these initial commitments that we make agree so being very concrete and objective in your data I will say that research has found that the way that we look at the data becomes bias to because of this right so I hear you and I agree with that the stop-loss is like this bottom line this reservation prices reminder that I need to stop which I also agree with so this is very difficult to prevent and you need to try many things so these are good but may not be sufficient all the things that we can do very good idea right so what's happening is that if I make the initial choice to invest resources in the course of action I'm the one who feels as though I need to be consistent but if I have a neutral third party make the reinvestment decision so a colleague who can help me with my thinking help me analyze the data that can be very helpful because this colleague is not burdened by the same need to be commit to be consistent with initial commitments other things that you can think about this is one of those where we say ignore sunk cost right so this gentleman was very very rational and say well we need to kind of understand that these things are happening to us and we just need to say no and my dissertation for many many many years ago was looking at exactly this idea when it comes to these sunk costs can we just say you know what we just need to ignore them we just need to understand that they're there and ignore them the problem is that we don't go around saying ooh let me look out for sunk costs ooh let me beware of sunk costs and then the next thing you know the sunk costs hit you and then you feel this this this need to be consistent this is why these principles are as potentially tricky as they are yeah so some idea is there let me give you more things to think about so we talked about reciprocity we talked about commitment and consistency there's this idea of social proof which is this notion that when the course of action is Caesar what was interesting as I'm coming you know this is this is this is something that happens in the collaboration and actually you can I can see when she sits something out loud I'm like yeah that's gonna be as a public commitment he's gonna kind of reinforce her so they're there any tips for us so so without asking for more specifics which I'm not sure I can deal with um I would say that you want to try and find an a graceful exit right so so a graceful exit a graceful way to back out from that commitment but the other thing too is to find an alternative so a lot of these types of commitment and consistency things it be in your head it becomes go no-go it becomes invest not invest it becomes let the person in don't let the person in but if we can think of an alternative path and also another acceptable path then all of a sudden the thinking becomes different and it's not so binary it's not so oh my god I have to do this to be consistent there's wait hang on second maybe there's this alternative thing that I can do instead so without the gory details those are my suggestions yes yes yes in a face-saving manner yeah for you as well probably yeah okay so so so proof social proof is saying that when the course of action is not completely clear we very often look to other people around us as to what it is to that we should do and we follow them right we're much more likely to follow people who are like us who are in close proximity to us and this can result in a lot of interesting things so I I had the the difficulty with doing these sessions is that I have so many examples to share with you and I'm like picking and choosing amongst my kids but this one I have to choose so laughs tracks do we know what those are the canned laughter right so and a lot of TV shows a lot of these sitcoms says this canned laughter in the background who here finds it annoying yeah okay but why do sitcoms wider the studio's do this because it works and it's particularly effective if the show is ambiguously funny if somebody else is laughing you find that funny too so it's just something to keep in mind how do we get somebody to do something well tell them everybody else is doing it and we see this happening a lot of times right it's like this happens with trends it happens with a lot when in marketing where they try and say look everybody likes this and when that happens since the senses oh I must like it too within a more business example and the source of social proof ideas have a lot to do with both actions and themselves so if somebody's bidding right you're not very sure whether this has value or not if somebody's bidding okay you bid too but then that as a result of that they have it has implications for things like M&A so my husband's a banker and what do they try and do if you can get one interested party to interest the party you're done there will now be a whole slew of people who are interested in buying this company because these ideas of social proof kick in please I'm afraid somebody else you're trying to get me social proof to say exactly exactly yes absolutely right and and then very often too it goes beyond social proof but we pair it with this idea of we pick the people who whose quotes we use right it may be a celebrity or somebody very cool because we want to be like these people so it's again pairing different types of influence tactics together but absolutely yeah the best thing to do is just talk to each of them before their meeting yeah and present the new idea to each of them yeah them to think that idea is great yeah presented as new yeah old meeting yeah there's more chance that's going to be accepted yeah and so so so thank you for this and but it's it's not just I mean I know that it may be particularly relevant in a in a Japanese culture but it's true the world over right if you're trying to sell an idea trying to sell it first time in front of a big group it's not necessarily the easiest thing to do whereas if we can get a bunch of people off line to buy into your idea then to hopefully publicly support one or two of them to publicly support you in the big room you're much more likely to get a momentum of people who are who are voting in your favor again bringing things like brexit where it becomes pertinent um how do we prevent some of these things from affecting us unfortunately the research doesn't necessarily have great ideas here so we just have to kind of say looking cut you need to understand your motivations for doing something don't just follow the crowd right and I write I say this for those of you guys who have kids I mean this is really particularly pertinent right so kids just kind of follow fads and trends and and and you're trying to give them to be individuals and to understand what's going on this is consistent with some of these ideas this one's easy to understand but really really powerful we like to say people who we like to say yes to people whom we like which means that we want to be likeable in some sense and what makes us likeable well if there's a lot of research to show that people who are physically attractive are more likeable people who are similar to us are more likeable so if somebody comes from the same town same city same country as you more likeable if somebody has the same name as you research has shown that even if you just tell them same name all of us you don't know anything else you're more likely to trust them okay for I don't know why but there you go we like that we like our name so we like other people who have the same names as us people who compliment us people who are associated with positive things I'll give you some funny examples who are these guys Arnel I'll be back who's the other guy some what some other know Cruz Bustamante okay now you might remember that our our I'll be the terminator became the Governor of California right this happened during the this recall elections and the other there were a lot of people who ran for these recall elections but the the other big contender was this guy Cruz Bustamante now Cruz Bustamante as it turns out was extremely qualified for the position he was the Lieutenant Governor he'd been a public servant for many many years in fact up until that time he was like of a highest-ranking Latino in public office okay but he didn't win the elections the famous Hollywood star won the elections right I mean and this goes towards this idea of liking especially in especially since the vote was happening in California I mean this is a Hollywood wall people know him people I mean like him he represents all these cool things he's married into the Kennedy family or was at that time was okay and then things happened on another example some of you guys might be aware this in the presidential elections in the US the taller of the two candidates tends to win the electoral vote it's a little bit nastier with the with the other vote but we like tall apparently or tall symbolizes I don't know power or authority or something and we tend to vote in the person who is tall which is really bizarre right I mean it's like what if somebody is height and I feel bad for myself have anything to do with somebody's ability to be president not a whole lot and yet the taller candidate tends to win the US presidential election now some of you guys then are thinking of world leaders who may not be as tall Sarkozy comes to mind or you know when he was in power and I don't know how much how much you know about Sarkozy but one he first of all he was quite short but he tried really really hard to make himself tall okay so there are pictures and you google it you'll see it there are images of him standing on on boxes in front of podiums right so if there's like a lectern and a mic and everything he's standing on a box yeah there are press conferences of him in like some sort of like company like opening a new factory or something like that and the the the the story goes they called around the entire organization looking for the shortest members of the organization to be in the photo shoot with him so that he wouldn't appear quite so short right so there is the sense that I want to seem tall and being tall conveys good things that people like bizarrely enough so yeah I don't know whether he had heels shoes but yes I mean here again notoriously short right um I was just about to say Kim jong-il Yi there are pictures of him with with these like lifts in his shoes but it's to try and appear tall thoughts questions examples so very good question right so at least with regards to these data it's I mean except for the last elections is always with men between men so we don't know and then the comment in the caveat that I often give especially with these data is who knows nowadays because it's becoming more complex with gender coming to play with race coming into play that said a big picture there's generally a big main effect where and this is very unfortunate and a whole different story men are generally perceived as more competent so it is going to be like for like but there's also us just a sense that men are more competent than women which I beg to differ on but several story going to share with you two other principles the second last one is Authority we tend to say yes to people who are in positions of authority or seem like they're in positions of authority okay so studies have been done and is really scary where somebody dresses up like a doctor so they put on a lab coat they put on Scrubs they have a set of scope and then they'll go into a hospital they'll find a nurse and start giving random instructions to the nurse on how to take care of patients and the nurses very often say yes and follow through with the instructions obviously they stop the nurse before bad things happen but the idea is this person's seam is like an authoritative figure and therefore people say yes to what they're saying or what they're asking for same things opens with regards to a lot of these when people start investigating what's happened with airplane accidents on very often it has to do with the dynamics between the copilot and the pilot right so you guys may remember some years maybe five years ago there was the plane that I was I think was a Korean Airlines plane that landed in San Francisco and thankfully people were generally not hurt there were not that many fatalities and the plane managed to land fairly safely and what happened is that they they found out that the Sun was in the the pilots eyes but the copilot didn't want to put down any sort of shades or wear sunglasses because he thought that that might be disrespectful to the pilot and as a result of that these sort of like crazy things happen now I put out these examples and we especially for you guys I think is useful to think about it from two ways one is huh how can I get people to do the things that I want them to do okay but simultaneously I think it's important to realize especially with with with people who have a lot of a seniority and manage other individuals your own seniority your own authority could be suppressing your employees abilities to think creatively to voice their opinions because they're just kind of concerned hang on I better not speak up against my superior against my boss right so we want to think about it from there two ways um example that I have to mention when it comes to Authority anybody heard of the Milgram experiments okay this is a good one oh I actually do have a little bit of a picture for you okay so what happened in the 1950s and 1960s a guy by the name of Stanley Milgram wanted to try and understand why the atrocities of World War two happened and one school of thought was look they're just some people who are bad and they're bad and that's what it is okay they're bad apples and that's there's nothing we can do about it there's another school of thought that said hang on a second there was something about the city situation that made really good people do some really bad things and stanley milgram was of that opinion so what did he do he ran a study in New Haven Yale and where he brought in a bunch of people off of the street to be teachers okay and they were supposed to teach a student who is this guy who's actually working in collaboration with experimenter and the this participant was told look you're the teacher that person's a student okay and every time the student gets the answer wrong you need to give them an electric shock okay and the this student as you can see was hooked up to a bunch of wires and then the the teacher had control of a big box that had a bunch of flipchart one that had a bunch of levers on it from 15 volts going all the way to 450 volts okay now they asked a few psychiatrist beforehand so what percentage of the people do you think would go all the way and the psychiatrist said no no no no very few very few okay people are good it's only the nutty people the psychotics the sociopaths who are gonna do that so what's the percentage of Psychopaths and sociopaths 1 to 2% of the population those are the only people who are going to go all the way to 450 volts what percentage of the people do you think went all the way to 450 volts very close to thirds 2/3 of the people went all the way to 450 volts when the student who was not very good at learning got the questions wrong again and again this person just kept on pressing these levers from 15 volts up up up up up up up up up they didn't stop when the student was screaming in pain faking it they didn't stop when the student shouted that he had heart condition they didn't stop when the student fainted dead away right they just kept on going why did they do that because this guy who was the experimenter was standing there in his white lab coat with a clipboard there and he never held a gun to the guy's head and said you have to go nothing like that but just prompts along the lines of the the the the experiment requires you to continue please continue right so they were lots of there were verbal prompts but it was never anything physical that said you have to do this now these um participants they were stressed out beyond their minds they were sweating profusely they were shaking they were traumatized from doing it but they still did it this is the power of authority I will give you one thing to think about though keeping in mind the idea of commitment and consistency imagine if the study had started off here my guess is that you would have a very different result you probably wouldn't have had two-thirds of the people giving him a 450 volts of shock which by the way was also marked with xxx so again combining different types of principles can be very very powerful I have just a few minutes left with you so I want to give you this last idea to think about and hopefully that's enticing ideas which is that when something is limited we want it more and that limited can be limited in time limited in number it's particularly valuable if it's just limited and and you'll if you think about it now almost all these sort of like places online where you can buy tickets do that right and even Amazon does that when it's just a few more they'll tell you three more like by now right or for airline tickets you know four more seats at this price it's trying to tap into this principle of scarcity getting you to say get the sense of I need to get in on this action now before that opportunity goes away auction fever which I study a lot is the perfect sort of combination of this there's scarcity because in auctions is typically one unique item there's time pressure because you have to bid very quickly on the item goes away and then there's competition with other people right so this competition increases the sense of the scarcity of the item so all of that makes it really seemed as though this item is really really scarce in general we really need to be where this adrenaline rush especially in a sort of like auction type setting take a break think carefully confer with your colleagues but fundamentally understand your motivations for buying something or doing something is it just because it's very very rare and very scarce or is it because you really wants it now I bring this up example give you just a second and to something I hadn't realized that how perfect the timing for this is but even I mean the Black Friday sales which are on right now in the UK and then they'll start in the u.s. properly tomorrow it's all about this idea here yeah please so they're actually not the buyer themselves yeah and you give them obviously target price restrictions around what they do today also they might they might because at the end of the day if they're watching all of I mean first of all in theory you're asking a professional to do it so one might hope that they're there for a little bit yes yes that I have not no I have not to see how an agent would do in this situation but your example is interesting because when I said professional then I'm saying okay they know something when auctions they know how to do all this and in theory there should be better off then you asked me specifically then I'm gonna be obnoxious to say well I know about scarcity I know how to like guard again so in theory if you train somebody then you're better off so but you could train yourself you can train an agent does that answer your question yes understood so that's a very good and important distinction right you're basically pointing out the fact that there are different psychological motivations for you as the buyer versus an agent as a buyer and for both parties there are things that will motivate them to keep going but different types of things that will keep them going so for each of the parties you need to be careful of of what the bottom line is but you need to put in place different safeguards to ensure that they're not taken over by auction fever if you ask someone to go to the auction for you if you tell them up front that you want that item you know they will feel kind of compelled and they will feel this implicit liability towards you that if they miss out on that item and someone takes a problem it's an issue because you employ them to get that for you so I suppose if you don't tell them what the outcomes you want is then probably you can eliminate well I mean I think it goes back to something that we've said before right have very clear bottom lines right so that will prevent you from getting a bad deal but it may not help you to get a good deal yeah I saw a hand up yes please that's a lovely example thank you yeah yeah yeah it taps into all these principles which is why it becomes very powerful when you're using all of these different principles simultaneously I'm at time but can I please give you my favorite example diamonds so pretty yeah timeless classics Beauty fire love brilliance women tend to like them what do we know about diamonds scarce are they really scarce tell me more control [Music] married engagement rings we're not something nineteen twenties thirties when I think was to this young men get married buy an engagement ring when is one month I'll be honest at this law revenue ticked up very nicely they thought we're all something yet nor six that's not some campaign it's brilliant though okay I mean it is genius so that's exactly it okay so I mean look time is there are tons of diamonds in this world they're just loads and loads of diamond in the world but De Beers holes control the support of the supply of diamonds it limits the supply it makes it to be a perceived value combined with some clever marketing and biggity bam-boom we really really want them now I have to say this because it's important we're looking at the women in the room going oh yeah we want these diamonds but you guys have the things that you want to okay I don't know whether it's the iPhone or the watch or the stereo or the gadget or the limited edition print or whatever it is but you guys women and men have things that they covet because of scarcity yeah let me just end with this final idea here when we think about influence and persuasion I've talked a lot about these ideas there are other things that folk that fall into how it is that we can influence and persuade people the bottom line if you don't remember anything else remember this you guys have been trained to strategically and think about the content of your message yes the content of your message is important but when you're trying to influence and persuade somebody think also about how you're creating that relationship how you're framing the information that you're conveying because that has a huge impact on how it is that you influence and persuade people I'll stop I'm happy to take questions or thoughts but I know that I'm also over time I think that works from company to person perspective if you're doing and if you're the one who's doing ago she ate you and you're going to someone to say yeah they might get caught on the consistency but it's in there in danger that they'll think actually already done you a favor right but the way that I'd actually think about doing it is if you're trying to get in with a company it's hey can I have a meeting with you to have a chat about something can I buy you a cup of coffee right and then from that coffee it's the biggest sale after that so it doesn't yes they've given you their time but you've bought them coffee right yes yes please yeah I guess I what I'm just trying to choose to summarize this idea that the ideas of influence and persuasion are all of this stuff is not necessarily around what you're saying so think about politicians okay and these like type things that we're talking about are the attractiveness things about it's not that the their actual political positions that they're conveying yeah okay there's something there but people are being persuaded by other things like their attractiveness their height so that's what I'm trying to convey to you that that the message is important and the message is particularly important if people are motivated to listen to you and have the cognitive resources to listen to what you have to say but especially if they don't have cognitive and motivation resources there you want to focus on how you're getting to them buying them a coffee asking for a little bit of time and then asking for more time doing them a favor those kinds of things and you can question about some of the actions off to us well the trap comes across as a big some small uncouth people don't listen to them exactly right so there's a message component but there's also how you're delivering it absolutely let me stop thank you guys very much for your your time and I hope you have an interesting rest of your day [Applause] you

Channel: London Business School

Views: 78,034

Rating: 4.9276838 out of 5

Keywords: London, business, school, education, Gilian, Ku, Organisational behaviour, lecture, interpersonal, skills, event, guest, advice, how to, communication, people skills

Id: uKbcmlKb81c

Length: 56min 54sec (3414 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 08 2019