Catie Holdridge
In case you missed our recent webinar, here are five ways to increase your influence at work, based on neuroscience and psychology research.
The decisions we make often have a huge impact. Not just our own, but the ones our colleagues make too.
Decisions to increase or cut a budget. Decisions to expand a team or reduce headcount. Decisions to move ahead with a project or ditch it in favour of a different one.
These are the things that affect our future.
Of course, not all decisions are the right ones. And it can be especially galling when our advice falls on deaf ears.
That’s why we recently dedicated a whole webinar to helping you get your voice heard. Be more persuasive in your communication: the science of influence was presented by our trainer Kathy Gemmell. And in case you missed it, here are the key takeaways to help you communicate more persuasively.
1. Reduce overload
Your audience need to understand what you’re saying before they can act on your proposal. They may sound obvious, but it’s surprising how much of the brain capacity of decision makers gets wasted on merely trying to absorb what their would-be advisers are saying.
The mere act of reading even the best document or PowerPoint slide takes effort. (Reading and writing are both harder for the brain than most people realise.) But many reports and presentations are so turgid or confusing that they’re exhausting to get through.
It’s natural to try to cover all bases and you do need to provide the evidence that supports your recommendations. But providing too much information actively works against you.
According to research by neuroscientist Angelika Dimoka at Temple University in Philadelphia, mental overload triggers a circuit breaker in the reader’s brain. This can either stop a choice from being made or – worse – make the process totally illogical.
’With too much information, people’s decisions make less and less sense,’ she says.
So if you want to win someone over, you need to be selective. You’re far more likely to get the result you want if you choose carefully which information to include and which to leave out.
Keep in mind too that it’s easy to overestimate how much your audience know (especially when writing for senior teams).
2. Make it easy to process
Science shows that we often favour or trust information that’s easy to process. (This is probably why proverbs and sayings have often endured for centuries.)
In research at Princeton University, psychologists Adam Alter and Daniel Oppenheimer found that, in the initial weeks after a company launches on the stock market, shares with easier to pronounce (‘fluent’) names outperform those with more difficult-to-read names.
Initially, this starts with how investors perceive those companies. But this then influences purchasing behaviour, inflating the financial value of those stocks.
The obvious lesson we can take from this is that information that’s communicated well tends to be more convincing than information that is not. And it’s not just about choosing the right wording and structure. If a slide deck or document looks clear, we start to assume that its message must be clear too.
3. Harness the power of stories
It’s natural to assume that everything hinges solely on assembling facts into a logical argument. But never underestimate the power of narrative. The human brain thinks in stories – so much so that it will make one up if one isn’t provided. So merely presenting information alone risks losing control of the narrative in their minds.
Compared with bare facts or data, stories affect our brains in ways that make that information both more memorable and more persuasive.
In research using a functional MRI scanner, neuroscientist Uri Hasson of Princeton University found that stories literally synchronise the brains of the storyteller and the listener.
The implication is that weaving data into a story format is a powerful way to get your audience to see things in the same way that you do.
This could be by using the Four Ps structure: Position (where you are now), Problem (why you can’t stay there), Possibilities (what you could do) and Proposal (what you should do – your recommendation).
But even smallest hint of a story is compelling, and you can evoke one anywhere, even in an email or quick chat. Consider the difference between starting a message with, ‘Here’s the attendee feedback,’ and ‘I’ve been reviewing our attendee feedback. There were some surprises.’ (Well, what were they?!) Our founder Rob Ashton coined the term ‘microstories’ for this simple but effective technique.
Learn more about storytelling at work here.
4. Use familiarity bias
We tend to like (and trust) things and people once they’ve become familiar. Psychologists call this bias the mere exposure effect.
Advertisers certainly know this better than anyone, with some paying millions to appear where exposure will be highest, such as during the American Super Bowl.
But this effect works at a more everyday level too, whether you want people to warm to you or to things you want to recommend, like projects, providers, services or products.
Recommending an initiative, project or supplier? Ahead of your official report, proposal or presentation, mention it in passing and share links or testimonials. You could also share a draft of the document/project and talk a colleague through it.
Want to make yourself (or your communication) more influencial? Try simple steps like being visible in the office or in online meetings (with your camera on) and contributing on remote platforms like Slack or Teams. Post regularly to social platforms and/or publish articles. And maintain a consistently clear communication style everywhere, so that becomes your personal stamp.
5. Mood matters
All decision makers are human, no matter how senior they might be. So never underestimate the role of emotion in the choices they make.
The brain’s emotional system evolved over millions of years to keep us alive, so it reacts much more quickly than our logical thought processes. In fact, we often make decisions based on emotion so quickly that we don’t realise we’ve done it, then we justify them with logic.
This is part of what psychologists call the affect heuristic (‘affect’ being the technical term for mood).
Other people’s emotions may be largely beyond our control. But there are things you can do to mitigate for the emotion with perhaps the most powerful effect on decision-making: anger.
When someone is already stressed, irritated or angry – even if it’s nothing to do with you or your message or document – they’re more likely to form a negative view of your communication (and often of you yourself). This greatly increases the chance of a ‘no’.
Psychologists believe anger causes a kind of tunnel vision, making us lose sight of the bigger picture and home in on details that reinforce what we already believe.
This is another reason to do all you can to make the decision-maker’s life easy.
This may sound ominous. But much of what we’ve covered already works with the affect heuristic.
Clear, planned communication reduces cognitive load and frustration. A structure like the Four Ps starts neutral-positive, getting the audience onside, then reassures them by showing all options have been considered. And microstories align their way of thinking with yours.
Above all, if you ever sense a decision-maker is angry (whether about you or something else), deal with their anger or wait till it’s defused. Never try to influence them until they are no longer under the influence of a strong, negative emotion.
Learning these lessons in our webinars is even more fun than reading them on a page (it’s true!). It also means you get to interact directly with one of our expert trainers. We rerun sessions from time to time, so if you’d like to experience this topic live, keep an eye on our upcoming sessions by subscribing to our mailing list using the button to the right.
We also run tailored versions of our webinars for clients – so if you’d like a version for your team, find out more here or get in touch with the team.
References
Adomavicius, G; Dimoka, A; Gupta, A; and Pavlou, PA (2009). Reducing the cognitive overload in continuous combinatorial auctions: evidence from an fMRI study. Working paper, University of Minnesota.
Alter, AL and Oppenheimer, DM (2006). Predicting short-term stock fluctuations by using processing fluency. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 103(24): 9369-9372.
Begley, S (2011). The science of making decisions. Newsweek, 27 February.
Hasson, U (2016). This is your brain on communication. TED2016.
Lerner, JS and Tiedens, LZ (2006). Portrait of the angry decision maker: how appraisal tendencies shape anger’s influence on cognition. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 19(2): 115-137.
Litvak, PM; Lerner, JS; Tiedens, LZ; and Shonk, K (2010). Fuel in the fire: how anger impacts judgment and decision-making. In Potegal, M; Stemmler, G; and Spielberger, C (eds), International handbook of anger. New York: Springer, 287-310.
Oppenheimer, DM (2008). The secret life of fluency. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 12(6): 237-241.
Stephens, GJ; Silbert, LJ; and Hasson, U (2010). Speaker–listener neural coupling underlies successful communication. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(32): 14425-14430.
Zajonc, RB and Rajecki, DW (1969). Exposure and affect: a field experiment. Psychonomic Science, 17(4): 216-217.
Image credit: Mangostar / Shutterstock
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