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Persuading Others: Management Techniques, with Robert Cialdini
Suppose you are now in a managerial position, you’re in a leadership position, you’ve got a group of people working with you, I’m going to suggest a couple of things that you can do to enhance the likelihood that they will want to move in the directions that are most productive.
Let’s say that you’ve got an initiative that’s rolling and people have been doing their jobs and you’re halfway there. You’ve accomplished the beginning steps; you still have a way to go but they’ve reached a midpoint. One thing we should do is congratulate them for that movement, for that kind of advancement toward the goal. But, what we typically do, which is a mistake, is to congratulate them on the progress that they’ve made so far. Because what happens when we congratulate people on the progress they’ve made since they’ve begun – they stop peddling. They start to coast. Because you’ve asked them to look back at all the distance that they’ve covered since the beginning and what people do is to kind of exhale a breath. “Good. I’ve made all this progress. I can take a little me time now.” If instead pre-suasively we change one word, instead of congratulating them on the progress that they’ve made towards their goal we congratulate them on their commitment to their goal. Now they keep peddling.
Because instead of focusing them back on all the ground that they’ve covered to get to this point you’re focusing them ahead on their commitment to the goal that they’ve yet to reach. And people wind up choosing to keep working in a dedicated way to reach that goal that will benefit all concerned. So one word: change progress to commitment and you get the kind of buy-in and engagement that leads to successful completion of the task. So that’s one thing we can do.
Here’s another. Suppose you’ve done that and people are trying to move forward towards the goal because they’re committed to it but there’s some aspect of the task that has just been difficult to solve, some problem and you want to call your team together for a brainstorming session to think outside of the box, to get a novel creative way to achieve this solution. Here’s the pre-suasive thing you can do. Move them to a room with a high ceiling. Because research shows people are more creative, they think in more out of the box ways in spaces that are open and expansive. Those open expansive spaces lend themselves to open and expansive thinking. And there’s research on this. People become more creative in rooms with a high ceiling.
There’s also research that shows that people are more creative out of doors than indoors. It’s for the same reason. Out of doors there are no physical constraints, there are no walls. You’re thinking expansively and as a consequence you’re more likely to hit upon a novel solution that you didn’t encounter previously.