April 30, 2009

The principle here is “commitment and consistency.” If you once commit to something, the theory goes, even in a small way, you feel obliged to act consistently with your commitment.  The drive to be consistent can cause people to act in ways that are contrary to their best interest; it’s that powerful.  The keys to getting commitment are that it must be (1) public, (2) active, (3) effortful, and (4) freely chosen.

 

• A commitment made publicly, in front of others, increases the need for consistency.  Telling your friends you are going on a diet makes it much more difficult to eat a huge dessert at a restaurant with those same friends.
• A commitment that is actively made, particularly if the action is written, is more difficult to change.  The action of putting something in writing makes people feel that their commitment is “more legal,” even when it’s just a commitment to join Weight Watchers.
• A commitment that requires effort increases commitment.  Fraternities figured this out many years ago, which is why they require initiations before allowing new members into the group.  Initiations that only included public service are not as effective as those that require something more difficult.
• A commitment that is freely chosen is more powerful than one that is coerced.  If you decide to lose weight you are much more likely to do it than if you are required to lose weight by a doctor.

 

How are you today? A small agreement is the beginning of commitment. One of the most subtle commitment tricks I’ve seen is the telemarketer whose first question is, “How are you today?” If you answer “I’m OK,” then you have committed to being OK and there’s no reason why you can’t talk and ultimately buy from that person.  Next time you get one of these calls, say, “I’m awful!” and see how the caller responds.

 

A ceremony of any kind increases commitment, because it incorporates several of these elements. Weight Watchers is a perfect example: You sign up (active) to go to meetings (public); it’s difficult (what diet isn’t?) and you have freely chosen to go on the diet. Every week your commitment is reinforced when you stand up at a meeting and tell about your progress.

 

So, what does all this commitment mean to you and your business?  Can you really get people to buy your products or services by using these principles?  Some thoughts on increasing customer commitment:

 

• Require a signature on a document.  A sales receipt is one example, but a special document that your customer must sign can be more effective.
• Incorporate a small ceremony into the sales process.  Even a small recognition – a special pen or a small gift – can work. Make it special.
• While you don’t want to make it too difficult for people to buy your products, a little difficulty doesn’t hurt. If someone has to wait to get something, they value it more.  Remember the Scarcity principle.
• Ask for a testimonial.  The act of writing or speaking a testimonial can increase the commitment of the person giving it.
• Small commitments in sequence are better than a large commitment at the end of your sales presentation.  Getting people to agree to your proposal in small increments increases their need to be consistent.

 

Does this commitment/consistency discussion make you uncomfortable?  You may feel it’s too much of a trick (like my questions in the first paragraph, designed to get your initial agreement to read more).  You can use it for your business if it fits, or you can just be aware of it when someone wants your commitment.

 

The above article by Jean Murray deals with one of the principles of persuasion. Why not attend the Principle of Persuasion Workshop to acquire the skills of ethical persuasion and influence to enable you to have the competitive edge? For details, please click the left side bar. You may be losing an opportunity to be effective in your career and workplace.

 

Let Kairos Performance Learning bring this workshop to your organization as an in-house program. You will be joining the best in class companies in the world in this impactful workshop. For further details, please contact: ckkhoo@kairospl.com.

 

April 16, 2009

By now, we’ve all been exposed to varied analyses of the highly publicized Ponzi scheme that Wall Street player Bernard Madoff is charged with orchestrating. While some analysts have focused on certain remarkable aspects of the fraud such as its size ($50 billion by most estimates) and its duration (going undetected for decades), I’ve been impressed by another remarkable feature: the level of financial sophistication of many of its victims. The list of those taken in by Madoff is rife with the names of hardheaded economists, seasoned money managers, and highly successful business leaders. With Madoff, it wasn’t another case of the fox outwitting the chickens; this guy bamboozled the other foxes. How’d he do it?

 

For me, the answer starts with the opaque and complicated nature of the hedge fund he was operating and the derivatives-based financial mechanism he was employing to create profits, which seemed beyond the comprehension of the majority of even the most sophisticated financial analysts. In addition, Madoff elevated the consequent mystery of what he was doing and how he was doing it by enforcing strict policies of secrecy around his business. But why, of all things, should the difficult-to-penetrate character of Madoff’s operation form the basis for his astounding effectiveness at persuading others to join him—especially others who, by virtue of savvy and experience, should have known better?

 

The Power of Persuasion under Conditions of Uncertainty

Under conditions of uncertainty like those Madoff cultivated, a pair of principles of social influence gain special traction: Authority and Social Proof. Let’s take each in turn and examine how they were commissioned by Madoff to advance his persuasive success.

 

Authority. When people are uncertain of what to do, they don’t look inside themselves for answers; all they’ll see there is vexing ambiguity. Instead, they look outside. One prominent place they look is to the counsel of experts, credible authorities on the topic. And, by any measure, Bernard Madoff certainly had the look of a credible authority in financial matters. He possessed expert credentials from long years in the investment industry. After starting his firm in 1960, he grew it into a juggernaut that was reported to be the largest dealer in NYSE-listed stocks in the United States. His firm helped to develop the NASDAQ, where he served as Chairman of the Board of Directors and where Madoff Securities became the exchange’s largest market-maker. Beyond expertise, Madoff spent substantial time and money establishing a reputation for possessing the second element of credible authority—trustworthiness. He was active in an organization oriented to the self-regulation of the securities industry, the National Association of Securities Dealers, and even sat on its Board of Governors. Moreover, he was widely known for his good heart via multiple charitable and philanthropic involvements.

Against such a backdrop, we can begin to understand why so many knowledgeable and experienced financial professionals followed Mr. Madoff down the garden path. Under conditions of uncertainty, they did not look inside (to their own knowledge and experience) for direction. They looked outside to credible authorities on the topic. And, there were few on the murky topic of derivative-based hedge funds more credible than Bernie Madoff.

 

Social Proof. Besides authorities, do people seek any other source of external information when uncertain of how to choose? They do. They look to—and then follow—what most people just like them are doing. Here, the proof of a correct choice isn’t based on knowledge or logic or empirical evidence; it’s based on social evidence of what one’s peers and those in one’s social network have decided to do. For instance, if the evidence were clear that your friends and coworkers were flocking to a new restaurant for lunch, you’d likely follow suit. At developing, honing, and providing this kind of social evidence, the Madoff client recruitment program had few equals. Madoff is Jewish, and so, too, are the majority of his victims, who were often recruited at country clubs by Madoff’s lieutenants, who were also Jewish and also members of the same country clubs. Plus, new recruits knew and were similar to past recruits, who served as unwitting sources of social proof that an investment with Madoff must be a wise choice “for someone like me.” Of course, fraud of this sort is hardly limited to one ethnic or religious group. Called affinity schemes, these investment scams have always involved members of a group preying on other members of the group—Baptists on Baptists, Hispanics on Hispanics, Armenian-Americans on Armenian-Americans. Indeed, Charles Ponzi, who gave his name to the infamous Ponzi scheme that Madoff copied, was an Italian immigrant to the U.S. who fleeced other Italian immigrants to the U.S.

 

Implications for Ethical Influence in Times of Uncertainty (Like Now!!)

What lessons can be gleaned from the Madoff case for those who want to be influential but who refuse to tumble to Mr. Madoff’s ethical level in the process? Honestly informing prospects, customers, clients, superiors, or coworkers of the views of legitimate authorities and/or the choices of comparable others is a both a potent and ethical route to persuasive success. But, to maximize the effect of these two sources of influence, there is one additional aspect to consider: They will have particularly strong impact under conditions of uncertainty, when people are looking outside rather than inside themselves for answers.

 

This means that when the economic environment has become unpredictable, as is currently the case—or even when business conditions have recently changed for more ordinary reasons, such as a new product introduction or a new organizational policy or the emergence of a new competitor—the resulting uncertainty will make audiences especially attentive and responsive to information about how experts and similar others are dealing with it. It also means that communicators would lose great persuasive leverage (more bluntly, would be fools) if they failed to marshal and honestly employ those two sources of information in their messaging at precisely these times.

Thus, when things are uncertain, the judgments and actions of authorities and of comparable others can provide a goldmine of persuasive resources. And that mine is…well…a terrible thing to waste.

 

Author: Dr. Robert Cialdini – is the president of INFLUENCE AT WORK, Regents Professor of Psychology and Marketing at Arizona State University and New York Times Bestselling Business Author. In the field of influence and persuasion, Dr. Cialdini is the most cited living social psychologist in the world today.

Why not attend the Principle of Persuasion Workshop to acquire the skills of ethical persuasion and influence to enable you to have the competitive edge? For details, please click the left side bar. You may be losing an opportunity to be effective in your career and workplace.

 

April 15, 2009

There was one company which manufactured combs and it intended to expand its business. The management decided to employ a new Sales Manager.

The company advertised the vacancy in the newspaper. They were so many applicants who turned up for the interview everyday in just a few days.

The company was in a dilemma to select the right candidate for the position of Sales Manager. As a result, the company’s interviewer assigned a difficult task for the applicants who came for the final interview.

The task was to sell combs to monks in the temples.

Only 3 Applicants were shortlisted for the final interview – Mr. A, Mr. B and Mr. C.

To these 3 final interviewees, the interviewer instructed: “Now I want three of you here to sell these wooden combs to the monks in the temples. You only have 10 days to do it and report to me after that.”

After 10 days, they came back to report to the company.

The interviewer asked Mr. A: “How many combs have you sold?”

Mr. A answered: “Only one.”

The interviewer asked again: “How did you manage to sell the one comb?”

Mr. A Answered: “The monks in the temples scolded me when I showed them the comb. But on my way back downhill, I met a young monk who bought it to scratch his head due to dandruff”.

The interviewer then asked Mr. B: “And how many did you sell?”

Mr. B replied: “10 pieces. I went to a shrine and noticed many devotees’ hair were ruffled due to the strong wind outside the shrine. The monk in there listened to my advice and bought 10 combs for their devotees.

Then, The Chief Interviewer asked Mr. C: “How about you?”

Mr. C replied: “1,000 units.”

The interviewer and the other 2 interviewees were astounded.

Excited, the interviewer asked: “How did you accomplish that?”

Mr. C replied: “I went to a famous temple. After making observations for a few days I discovered that there were many tourists. I then told the Chief Abbot there that the tourists who came are fervent devotees. If you could give them a gift, they would be elated. I told him that I had a bulk of combs here and asked him to craft some writings on the combs as gifts for the visitors. He was very delighted and straight away ordered 1,000 pieces.”

Leadership Lesson:

A leader’s attitude is the primary force that will determine whether he succeeds or fails. John C. Maxwell related the story about the former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir who underlined this truth in one of her interviews. She said, “All my country has is spirit. We don’t’ have petroleum dollars. We don’t have mines or great wealth on the ground. We don’t have the support of worldwide public opinion that looks favorably on us. All Israel has is the spirit of its people. And if the people lose their spirit, even the United States of America cannot save us.”

Cheok Kau Khoo

Cheok Kau Khoo is the Principal Trainer/Consultant for Kairos Performance Learning with working experience in education, manufacturing and service industries. He had been personally trained by Dr. Robert Cialdini who is the most cited expert in the Principles of Persuasion. He is certified in numerous training programs and is listed in the International Who’s Who of Professionals. He can be contacted at: ckkhoo@kairospl.com.

To know more about the Principles of Persuasion, kindly click on the introductory video clip by Professor Cialdini and the flyer on the left side bar. To have an in-house workshop, please contact: ckkhoo@kairospl.com or call: +6012-4019398 for a presentation. Do not let this opportunity pass you by as you need to use your influence and persuasion skills in this gloomy economic time.

 The Four Thinking Processes – April 03, 2009

 

If Sam Walton built Wal-Mart without an MBA, if David Packard made Hewlett-Packard an industry leader without “business process reengineering,” if Akio Morita created the Sony empire without Kenichi Ohmae as his guru, then how did they do it?

These leaders were especially proficient in four thinking processes, all of which contributed to their business success:

 

1.     They effectively assessed a complex economic environment, allowing them to identify and plan quickly responses to the most critical business issues. We call this process “Situation Appraisal.”

2.     When problems surfaced, they accurately identified the cause and quickly implemented corrective action. We call this process “Problem Analysis.”

3.     They made good decisions, balancing the benefits and risks associated with their choice. We call this process “Decision Analysis.”

4.     They implemented their chosen actions effectively by circumventing problems and seizing opportunities. We call this process “Potential Problem Analysis and Potential Opportunity Analysis.”

 

These four thinking processes are often cited as distinguishing features of successful executives.

 

Quin Spitzer & Ron Evans

Heads You Win – How The Best Companies Think

Kairos Performance Learning is a performance improvement company with a relentless commitment to provide best-in-class management/leadership training and consulting services to client organizations to achieve productivity and intended results.

 

Kairos Performance Learning offers workshops on Problem Solving and Decision Making. To know more, please email: ckkhoo@kairospl.com.