318. Unlocking Your Hidden Influence: Revealing the Secrets to Making a Difference with Vanessa Bohns (refreshed episode)

Welcome to episode 318 of the Brainy Business Understanding the Psychology of why people Buy. Today's episode is about how you have more influence than you think with Vanessa Bonds. Ready?

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You are listening to the Brainy Business Podcast where we dig into the psychology of why people buy and help you incorporate behavioral economics into your business, making it more brain friendly. Now here's your host, Melina Palmer.

Hello.

Hello everyone. My name is Melina Palmer and I want to welcome you to the Brainy Business Podcast. Today's episode is a refresh of my conversation with Vanessa Bonds about her wonderful book, you have more influence than you think. This episode originally aired in early 2022. I love this book and conversation with Vanessa, and clearly you all do as well as the episode was one of the top 10 most downloaded of all time. When I did the anniversary episode, the first five years of the podcast, which came out just a few weeks ago, there is a link to that episode number 299 in the show notes for you as well. So in addition to just loving this conversation and Vanessa's insights, you might be wondering why I chose to refresh this one today. It's mainly because of my guest in this coming Friday's episode number 319 with Andrea Learned. Andrea is in the space of helping people to increase their influence in a more natural way and to get others to follow them. So specifically in the area of what she calls climate influence. Knowing that you can't just shout at people to get them to change even when it's really important, as that typically backfires, you need to be more subtle most of the time. And it's important to know that even the little things you do can either support that message and build your influence or be working against you. So it felt like the perfect opportunity to refresh this conversation with Vanessa to help you see how the research shows we really do have way more influence than we realize in ways we may not expect. As you listen, consider how you've been showing up and how does that align with your values? Where might you be able to tweak your behavior in some way and increase the influence you have for others in a way that could have positive change that might be toward climate change or something else you care about, but keep it in mind as you listen to really prep for that episode coming out on Friday. And don't forget there are links for everything, including past episodes, articles and books like you have more influence than you think all waiting for you in the show notes for this episode, which are found within the app you're listening to and at the brainy business.com 318. All right, let's jump right in. Dr. Vanessa Bonds, welcome to the Brainy Business podcast.

Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here.

Absolutely. I'm so excited we were connecting about. It's like the season of influence. I feel like all time is the season of influence anyway. But I'm really loving the books and things that are coming out now. We're going to get into it. I would love if you can start by introducing yourself to the audience. For people who don't, don't. Whoa. I don't usually do that. For people who don't yet know. Know who you are.

Sure, no problem. So I am an experimental social psychologist, and I have been studying social influence for over 15 years now, believe it or not. And I study social influence in kind of a different way than many other people do, which kind of started back when I was in graduate school. And one of my first studies that I ever ran was with a professor Frank Flynn at the business school at Columbia, where I was a graduate student. And to run the study, we needed data from just ordinary people. And so I went down to Penn Station and I asked people to fill out surveys. And we were kind of looking at traditional forms of influence, like, what gets people to say yes more when you're asking for things? I did this for days, and it was just torturous and I hated it so much. And I still feel kind of traumatized by Penn Station. And when the study was finally over, Frank and I were looking at the data and whatever our prediction was, which I don't even member now, didn't pan out. And I was so kind of distraught by the fact that the study did not work. And I was like, this was so painful to collect this data. It was so horrible to ask people over and over to fill out a questionnaire. And Frank was kind of looking at my data and he was like, you know, you're describing this terrible experience of rejection and pain and just being totally uninfluential, basically. But I'm looking at the data, and actually, most people are saying yes to you in this data. And so that's where I kind of started on this journey of exploring influence in a. In a different way than many other people have. So instead of kind of looking at what gets people to do things more or less for you, we, my colleagues and I, tend to look at what our intuitions are about influence and how they match or Most often don't match reality. So in our heads, we're, like, ineffective and, you know, bumbling, and people are going to reject us in reality. That's so often not true. And so that's really kind of the piece that I've offered to the influence literature, and my book is really about that piece. This. The intuitions and how they match with reality.

Yeah. And a main episode I'm going to be linking to in the show, notes that I was thinking of, like, the entire time as I was reading your book really is the focusing illusion. So we're thinking, oh, my gosh.

They.

They're looking at and, well, the weird shirt or whatever it is, you know, something that you're so hung up on, the thing that no one else is noticing, but it's this. They're going to say, no, they're rejecting. They think I'm weird. This is so awkward. And you're all in your own head. I guess there's probably some fundamental attribution error thrown in there, too, but just super stuck on something, and often the other person doesn't notice any of that at all. So maybe let's start because I kind of threw in the weird shirt. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Yeah. And I'll say, you know, in general, sort of this idea of just being, you know, I often describe it as like tunnel vision. We just get focused on one negative thing, you know, the possibility someone's going to reject me or this embarrassing thing someone's staring at. Right. And we're so focused on that thing that we don't pay attention to all of the other things that other people are paying attention to. And really, one of those main things is what's going on in someone else's head. Like, what are they actually thinking? And so the weird T shirt that you mention is, of course, from a colleague of mine here at Cornell, Tom Gilovich, and his colleagues, who did the spotlight effect. And the spotlight effect is basically the tendency to think that whatever embarrassing feature you think everybody is looking at. Right. You think everyone's paying attention to that and judging you based on that, when in fact, they really aren't. And so they famously demonstrated this by having participants come into the lab and they gave them these Barry Manilow concert T shirts to put over their clothing.

Fancy.

The funny thing is, I'm like, I feel like if you walked around with a Barry Manilow concert T shirt, now, it would be very hip and cool. But, you know, back then, it was not.

Yeah, not the hipster chic that it might be these days.

Exactly. So they had pre tested it, and basically when people put on these T shirts, they were super embarrassed to be wearing them. And then they led them into a room full of people, and there was some cover story where it was like, okay, you're going to do a study. Actually, no, we're going to take you back out of this room and have you do something else. Because they got started already and dah, dah, dah. And then they said, you know, how many people in that room we just walked into, do you think, noticed who was on your T shirt? And then they actually surveyed the people in that room and said, how many of you noticed what was on that person who just walked in? T shirt? And what they found was that people thought like, oh, my God, almost everyone in that room noticed that I was wearing this really embarrassing T shirt. But in fact, very few people actually noticed what was on that person's T shirt. And so this is where they. They came up with this idea of the spotlight effect. You think a spotlight is shining on your most embarrassing feature and that everyone's paying attention to that. But in fact, that's not true.

Right. And just where you're thinking about the weird. Your weird freckle or whatever it is. Oh, my gosh, it's all anyone can see, but it's really, really not. Which is helpful when you think about not getting hung up on your own stuff. I did an episode really early in the pandemic of why we hate to see ourselves on zoom and with, you know, mirror images versus straight on and all these different things that you get just staring at that thing, like how, like, oh, my gosh, my eyebrows are crooked or whatever.

Right.

It's all you can look at and you aren't able to pay attention to the words you're saying or whatever it is and get hung up. But how does that all tie in then, to influence and how we actually have more influence than we think?

Yeah. So this is, I think the interesting part, right, is that you would think then, oh, you know, no one's really paying attention to you, but that's actually not true. They're just not paying attention to the things you kind of hope they're not paying attention to. Right. The things that you're really insecure about. But in fact, when it comes to you as a whole person, they're actually paying more attention to you than you realize. And so this is something that Erica Boothby, a researcher at Wharton, has called the invisibility cloak illusion. So this is the Idea that we often feel like we walk through the world kind of wrapped up in an invisibility cloak. And you can imagine yourself like wearing headphones and sitting on, you know, the subway or, you know, walking through the park with your sunglasses on. And you just feel kind of invisible to the world, but in fact, you're not. And people are noticing you and more than you tend to think. And so Erica Boothby tested this by having people come into the lab and do something very similar to what Tom Gilovich and his colleagues had them do. So they either put on an embarrassing T shirt, right, Just like Gilovich and his colleagues had done, or they just wore their ordinary clothes. So they came in and there was nothing that they had to be sort of acutely self conscious about. And she basically ran the same experiment. She asked people, you know, how much do you think the other person in this room was paying attention to what you are wearing, right? And then she asked the other person, how much did you notice what that person was wearing? And it turned out that when you were wearing something embarrassing that you were sort of acutely aware of, you got the spotlight effect. You thought someone was really noticing that embarrassing thing about you. But if you were just kind of wearing your ordinary clothes and going about your business and kind of you had nothing that you are particularly self conscious about, then people were paying more attention to you and what you were wearing than you realized. And so in terms of influence, that means, you know, that people are actually paying attention to us as a whole more than we tend to realize and watching the things we do, you know, noticing when we're in the room, noticing, you know, if we're wearing a mask, if we're recycling, doing all these kinds of things that you could see, see kind of having downstream effects on other people's behavior, but they're not noticing these just really tiny, embarrassing flaws that are the things we worry that people are noticing. And so in the end, we are really having more influence than we think and, you know, a more positive way often than we think.

Yeah. And of course goes beyond clothing and things like that. And so what I really love is how in the book you talk about the influence of. Of course there's misinformation and things like that, but being able to have influence. And you talk about. So I do a lot of public speaking and how the speakers are influenced by the people in the room and talk about how that comes up in, in work scenarios and how that happens on a stage. And even if you don't say anything, you know, so if you're a more shy person, perhaps you may think, it doesn't even matter if I'm there. It's not going to make a difference. But thankfully, it sounds like that's not the case.

Yeah, I. So I love this, and I refer to it as the power of being in the audience. And one of the things I love about this is that, first of all, it kind of flips our idea of influence on its head. You know, I think that we tend to have sort of a theory of influence, a personal sort of theory of influence, that it's standing in front of a, you know, group of people presenting up on stage, holding a microphone or making this big pitch. You know, it's the talking, it's the act of persuasion. And that's when someone says influence, that's what we think of. Right. But in fact, and I think this is really, as you said, you know, very reassuring to know if you're more shy and you don't want to be that person in the front of the room or, you know, you worry about, you know, how articulately you can sort of make a case if you speak up. In fact, influence works both ways. So it's not just that person standing in front of the room. It's also the people that they're speaking to who have influence. And anyone who's sort of been in the front of the room with their PowerPoint knows that you look around at all the faces in front of you, and you are really attuned by to how they are reacting to the things that you're saying, right? You notice if they're nodding along. You notice if they're looking kind of grumpy or skeptical. And as you sort of tune into the way people are reacting to the things you have to say, you adjust so simply by sort of being there, by being a person that someone's noticing and by, you know, your emotional expressions, maybe some of your demographic characteristics, right? Maybe if you're, you know, the only woman in the room, your presence, make someone talk about an issue a little bit differently. People notice that, and they do something called audience tuning. They tune their message to what they're seeing the rest of the audience sort of reacting to. When they do that, the audience is actually shaping the message that they're getting. And even more than that, they're shaping the beliefs of the person who is in front of the room. Right? So there's something else called the saying is believing effect. So basically, if I tune my message because you guys are smiling when I talk about this, I'm going to keep talking about it, right. And then as I keep talking about it and you keep smiling, you know, I start to think, I guess that is a really good idea. You know, now that I've said it, I kind of believe it. And you guys seem to really like it. And so the audience sitting there without saying a word can really shape the beliefs of that person in the front of the room. And it really changes who has the influence in the room, or at least our perception of that.

Right. And I, like I said, as someone who does a lot of speaking, a hundred percent, right. As I've. I always am doing that where it's like, this is clearly a group that is not about interacting and answering questions. And so I'm going to change the way that I bring up different tidbits or like you said, you know, I might have mentioned something and it really resonated. And so I'm going to bring up this other story or study that I don't typically talk about because it's here in my brain. I've got lots of stuff floating around that I want to talk about, but I had a limited amount of time. But I can change what comes up and what we bring up based on the audience, for sure. And if I bring it up and the group likes it, you know, then it's like, well, maybe that should be part of the presentation. You know, maybe I should change that up and drop this other thing or, you know, whatever. Like this, like, you know, where comedians would be testing. Right. And like, this joke landed. No, it didn't. Or like, I was sure this was going to be good, but maybe not, you know, and you have to do some of that sampling. And so we don't necessarily realize how that changes everything that we end up talking about. But. But it is important. So when we think about work and. Well, actually, I'm going to take one little sidestep that's related as we're shaping the conversation here as we go. And you didn't even say anything. But I had a different thought. Right. So one thing that I know was difficult for a lot of people and we're still dealing with is doing presentations then over a virtual format where you lose that feedback. So people didn't realize how important that feedback was to them until you make your joke and you're used to hearing people laugh, to be able to determine what you say next or how you respond. And it's silence. And thankfully, I had, you know, a couple years or, you know, I had training with the podcast of Pause for Effect. You know, it's like I tell a joke and like, I bet that was funny, and then kind of keep going. Like when you first start that, it's, it's awful. And it's almost worse to be looking at faces to see on Zoom, because it chooses random people and it might be giving you the ones who are not paying attention. But everybody else likes it, but you can't get the room as a whole and they're not feeding off of each other's energy from this, like, shared enjoyment experience. I know there's some great stuff about that in the book, too. So do you have any tips or is there any research or insight as far as what you should do and how this plays into a virtual experience when you're speaking? And it doesn't have to be where I do, you know, presentations to a conference or something, but, you know, even talking with your teams at work, where you're used to being in person, you know, what sort of tips would there be when there's, say, a group call and you're the shy one in the group, how do you have some influence when it's all virtual like that?

Yeah. And as you were talking, I was just thinking of one of my sort of favorite pastimes early on in the pandemic was watching late night, late night hosts kind of melt down at not having an audience anymore to know whether their, their jokes were landing.

Right.

Yeah.

Just kind of laughing maniacally at the, at the camera, being like, I don't know if this is funny anymore.

Right. Like losing all their confidence because you're not. Yeah, it's, it was, it's weird. It's, it is jarring when you're used to the laugh and then it's not there.

Yeah. And I, so I'm used to teaching, you know, lecturing in front of groups of like 200 students. Right. Who you really get a sense of the energy in the room and you look at all these different faces and as you said, like, some are, you know, nodding along, some are falling asleep, and you kind of pick the ones that you're going to pay attention to. To. What I found when we had a transition to Zoom teaching was, you know, again, how sort of how much that feedback means for figuring out even like how fast or slow you want to talk about something, how long you want to linger on a particular topic. You know, are people even getting what I'm saying? There's just so much of this feedback you get from non verbals that you take for granted. And so I really, you know, I definitely worked in a lot of polls and sort of chat questions, things that both kept other people sort of on their toes, the people on the other side of the computer screen. Because it's so easy. I mean, all of us do that. Sorry. If you're watching like a zoom webinar. Webinar or something, you zone out, you're like, on your phone, you're doing something else, you're answering emails, whatever it is. And so I would work in little moments, you know, where they had to put something in the chat or they had to put up, you know, a certain emoji or whatever it was to keep them on their toes, but also for me to get feedback, you know, and sometimes I would ask, you know, should I slow down at this point? Should I move on? You know, and that really gave me this feedback that I was missing. But also, yeah, in terms of, you know, even just meetings and things like that, I think, again, just by virtue of the technology, people can get lost in these zoom meetings, right? Because they could drop off, you know, the page, just the screen sometimes, and it takes extra effort. One of my colleagues calls it like the barrier of the little red mic, you know, that you have to click unmute. And like, you actually, you can't just throw out a comment the way you can in a regular meeting and just, you know, interrupt or say something. You have to make an active decision to click unmute, and then you have to speak. And lots of times, you know, again, because of virtue of the technology, you know, you might overlap with somebody else. It gets awkward. It gets weird. And so one of the biggest sorts of things that I found works is making everybody take turns to go around and say what they think about a particular topic. Because again, assuming that someone else is going to actually make the effort, click on, mute, jump in. People are talking over each other. You can't hear anything. It just makes it really difficult, and you lose certain people in those conversations. And so I think one big thing is going box by box, you know. Okay, what do you think? Even if it's just a really quick little thing, even if people are saying almost the same thing over and over, it still gets everybody's voice in there and it brings everybody into that discussion. So I think that's a helpful thing to try.

Right. I know the. Like you said, though, when you're lecturing to a group of 200 students, like, that might be hard to have everybody put their.

Yeah.

Voice. And that's a whole class, you know, for that. But.

And that's why I use like the emojis and the chat and the polls for that, because you get, you still get most people sort of participating, but you can't go around, as you said, you know, and have them all talk.

Yeah, but for anybody that has the ability. I don't think all versions of Zoom have breakout rooms on them. But. And you know, we say Zoom, it's become the new Kleenex, right, Where we don't say tissue anymore. But, you know, whether you're using Microsoft Teams or WebEx or whatever else, it's all gotomeeting the same stuff. But, you know, there's usually some sort of a room option where you can have people go have a quick discussion and it's like waking themselves up and re energizing versus just like bleh for forever, you know, and you can give maybe a thoughtful prompt that helps to overcome some of the, the herding or group think or, you know, coming up with a contrary thought about this that someone from your team can share back to help facilitate a larger discussion or, you know, something to get everyone thinking and, and talking about this instead of just we all agree, right? Let's go. Because whether it's in school or it's in work, you know, just lots of nodding heads is not great either.

Yeah, exactly. And I think, I mean, again, this gets really at the power of the audience. I think a lot of us didn't realize how important it was to be able to look around the room at all the people who aren't speaking and look at their faces. Do they all actually look like they're on board with this thing? Right. And that's. Once you lose that, you, you lose a lot of information.

Right. And where you're able to say, susie, seems like maybe you have a different opinion, will you share? And you don't have that option. And so that really is in the, you know, you have more influence than you think you do. So. But so Susie in this case has lost that connection perhaps in a virtual presence. And if we are looking at going to a more virtual world for lots of work, whether you're on that Zoom thing and you, and you can hide a little bit, but some of these spotlight effects and the invisibility cloak, you actually are having probably more invisibility cloaking than you realize, but in a way that is now negative in because you are losing the one way perhaps that you are influencing the group in person that you didn't realize that was helping kind of move you forward. So do you have any advice for those people who, if they're not in person and don't like to speak up, they're losing that power of the audience, of their non verbal communication. If they're in say, an organization that's not opening things up for questions or whatnot and they then need to kind of force themselves to try or say something and do that thing that's the worst, which is to ask the question or whatever it is, you know, which I was laughing because I have been saying asking people for things is the worst. It's no fun.

Oh yeah, it's the worst. Yeah. Heidi Grant has a book Reinforcements about asking for help and she. I think one of the chapters is literally called it's the Worst. But yeah, I know this is. It's unfortunately, you know, I hate to be a pessimist about it, but it's true that we have lost so much of these sort of interpersonal, just informal aspects of influence by moving to a virtual environment. Like so many of these really are about being more attuned to the people in our audience or in our proximity than we tend to realize and being really sort of attuned to living human beings and bodies around us. Right. And so you do sort of have to make up for that in some way in a virtual environment. On the other hand, one interesting thing about all of these, you know, video conferencing sort of functions. Now I'm scared to say zoom because.

No, no, you're fine.

It is the Kleenex of video conferencing. You know, I think they all have chat functions. And one thing is that, you know, we find it's so much easier to put, you know, dissent or questions and all those things into a chat. Right. Or like send an email. This is why lots of people will, will use a less ineffective means of asking for things by sending an email because it's easier, it's easier to be rejected, it's easier to say something you might be judged for over email than actually having to speak it out of your own voice. But that can be used to your advantage. And things like, you know, video chat, if you are particularly shy about speaking up and like wanting to click that unmute button and be the center of the screen, you, you can put some thoughts in the chat. And I found that there have been really interesting conversations in the chat that someone else might, you know, then bring into the broader discussion. So that's one way. Another way is that, you know, I've had my students who are shy about speaking in public Write out what they want to say in advance, because I think that's just so helpful. And again, over zoom. It doesn't have to be as obvious in some other. As some other context. You know, you could, like, type it, look at it, kind of read from it, or use your notes so that you feel like you can actually get the words out. One of the things I talk about in the book, right, is this idea that we're so worried about being articulate. Like, if we say something, we're going to come across as bumbling and inarticulate, and then we're not going to actually have the impact we want. People are going to judge us. Right? And none of that tends to be true. Right. People think, first of all, that we sounded much better than we thought that we did. But more than that, people really just get the gist of what we say. Like, no one's really paying attention word for word to what you say. They're just kind of getting the gist. And so if you have, you know, a group think kind of scenario, everyone's nodding along, going along with this particular, you know, idea that you don't think is the greatest idea, simply saying anything that says, I'm not sure about this can break that momentum, right? All of a sudden, there's just at least one dissenting voice. And there's so much research showing that just one dissenting voice can make such a difference. Doesn't matter if you're articulate. Doesn't matter if you say it perfectly. Doesn't matter if you put it in the chat or, like, speak up. But as long as you know that not everyone actually agrees in this group, now, other people in that group are going to be like, I wonder why that person doesn't agree. I'm going to start thinking about, you know, the opposite perspective. And then you can really change the direction of a conversation for sure.

I am going to be linking to the interview I did with Dominic Packer on the Power of Us. And I focus a lot in that episode. And whenever I talk about, it's a. As with all the books, it's a great book. I highly recommend the entire thing, the piece about dissent, and even just this one insight, that dissenting in a group is actually really hard for people to do, and it's not a sign of. So sometimes people just like to be difficult, right? There are some of those people, but in general, it's really difficult. And people only speak up about things that they really care about. And so knowing that we should all have a better Appreciation of dissent, you know, being one thing when you were talking, it made me think about this benefit for the thoughtful ones in that you have. You actually have a really great opportunity. I always like to reframe here. Right. So in the past, all those people that might have spoken up over you, you didn't have an opportunity to be heard in the group. You can take your time to think about something. You have the opportunity to be thoughtful in advance, especially if people are being better about sending agendas and things for virtual meetings now and be able to put some questions together that you have that are at the ready that you can grab and paste into the chat. Like you said, whether it's as a speaker or being part of a, you know, facilitating meeting, I always go through and read the chat and I love to have questions come into the chat. I'm assuming it's the same for you and your teaching. It's like, oh, yay, people are talking. I'm so excited someone's listening to me. That you want to see that they're engaged in what they're talking about. It actually can be really advantageous of giving them a voice where before they might have been hiding because everybody's speaking up. But this kind of the partitioning of the red mic, of giving you that stop point for all the people that would have just shouted out and felt comfortable doing that in the class, now they are meeting or whatever, now they won't be as likely you're going to lose some of them in that mix because it's not worth the huge effort to hit unmute for a second and shout out into the void. So, yeah, it seems like it could, could be a good thing. What do you think about that?

Absolutely. And I think, you know, it is an outlet for people who, as you said, you know, feel less comfortable actually speaking out. And I've noticed in the chat that there's usually not a ton of comments. It's like there's a few things. So that means that if you have something you want to stick on the agenda you want people to be considering, it's going to be right there for everyone to see. It's probably not going to get, you know, overwhelmed by all these other people's ideas. And so you can actually have more of an impact again than you might think. Right. Just by sticking something in the chat now everybody's reading that, everybody's kind of thinking about what you are proposing and that can work its way into the more general discussion, right?

Yeah.

Gives you just that opportunity to be seen and Even if people don't realize it, our eyes are constantly scanning the world around us. And so if the chat's popping up, you're kind of looking, you know, and interpreting the question. It's, it's shaping, I would say even more the way that people are listening to everything else that's happening and the questions that they want to ask, often based on something that comes up in the chat. Just from, you know, when I've been in, you know, as an attendee or something, you know, myself, and I see a question that someone. And you go, oh, that is interesting. I wonder what my thoughts are on that. And you're thinking about that as the person that's doing the speaking and speaking so.

Exactly.

Yeah. I like this reframe. I think it's a positive and I think.

So this is kind of a more general point that I think kind of is a theme in the book that so often when we do something, we're so focused on how people are going to judge us for that thing. Like we're really kind of paying attention. What are people going to think about this thing that I put in there, you know, instead of thinking about how that thing we did or said impacts other people. And so I think this is a really good example of that. You know, we're so worried about speaking up, about saying something about whatever we're going to write in the chat. But actually people are going to spend less time judging us for that and more time thinking themselves about what we actually. The substance of what we said.

Right.

What we actually asked. And we are going to have that impact in their heads that's actually much greater than any way they're going to be judging us for what we said.

Yeah. So as we're rounding out our conversation here, I guess bringing it to the question of why does that matter? Why does it matter if I have influence in every, maybe it's not every meeting, but like, does it matter to everyone? Should it? Why does it matter? You know, why is this important? Important for people?

Yeah. So the book is kind of divided into two halves. I think of it. The first half is this kind of happy, typical self helpy kind of book half where it's like, this all matters because there's opportunities you might be missing. Right. Because the research shows that people like us more than we think, they listen to us more than we think, they believe the things we say say more than we think, and they're more likely to do things for us than we think. Right. And so for all those reasons, anytime that we're holding back and not asking for something or asking for less than maybe we should, or holding back from saying something because we don't have the perfect, articulate way to phrase it or even just, you know, doubt whether we should show up to the meeting at all. Right. In all those cases, we may be missing opportunities to have a real impact by saying those things, asking for those things, showing up to those meetings.

Right.

The second half of the book kind of says, you know, if all this is true. Right. If people are paying attention to us more than we realize, they're seeing our posts on social media more than we realize, you know, they're listening to the things we say and believing them more than we realize, and they find it harder to say no to the things we ask them. We realize we could unintentionally also have negative influence on people. Right. So if we're spreading misinformation or things that we haven't vetted carefully, people are likely to believe it and pass it on. Right. If we ask people to do things that they're uncomfortable with, they don't actually feel as comfortable saying no to those things as we might think. And so they may just go along with something that they don't really want to do because they feel uncomfortable saying no. And so it matters for both those reasons, because of the opportunities that we might miss because we're doubting the influence we have, but also for all the ways we may kind of carelessly and unintentionally impact people in potentially negative ways or ways we just wish we maybe wouldn't.

Right? Yeah, that's. It's good to be. Being thoughtful is sort of the. The theme of life around here at the brainy business. So I end every episode by saying that, and it's the clothes on my emails and everything. And so I appreciate any time that somebody's throwing in thoughtfulness, you know, into. Do I want to say this thing? What are the ripples that are going to be coming off of this, both good and bad? One of my favorite books is by Susan Scott, Fierce Conversations. And it's. Man, it's. It's old now, right. But it's still such a good book. But one of the things she says in that is that you want to be aware that in every, you know, conversation or interaction point, even if you don't realize that you did anything, especially as you rise up in an organization, you have more impact than you realize. Right. More influence than you think. And this, everything that you do is leaving either an aftertaste and Aftermath or an afterglow. And you want to really be focusing on those afterglows. But so when you would have the interactions in the. At the water cooler coffee and you're just like rubbing your eyes and like, and somebody asks you a question, you're like, I can't deal with that right now. And you are, you know, their boss's boss's boss or something, and you weren't trying to be rude, but you were distracted and they asked at the wrong time and they are now sitting, spinning out and going banana pants is sort of the thing I like to say.

Right.

Like, can't even handle, oh my gosh, all of what this means. They're so focused on that little thing that you didn't even notice, you know, bringing that back to our focusing illusion we started with. So knowing that you have more influence and being thoughtful about all of those interactions is something I think is. Is really important. So I'm glad that we got to talk about that. Do you have any tips or thoughts on moving your focusing illusion to something else that's now like, oh, gosh, I'm so worried about people are going to think what I said. And you spiral in kind of a different way that it gets people stuck?

I mean, I think it's really about being mindful. It's not obsessing. Like, the research I review really says we are too hard on ourselves when it comes to people judging us. Right. So again, when we go into a situation and we interact with someone, we're so focused on how they might be judging us, and we really obsess and spiral about those kinds of things, but we're much less attuned to how we might be impacting them. And the things that we say are kind of reverberating in their heads after the fact. Right. And even. Especially when we're in positions of power. So one of my colleagues likes to say that a powerful person's whisper sounds like a shout out. Right. So even these, like, little throwaway comments when you're in a position of power really are meaningful. Really get stuck in people's heads. And so I think it's about refocusing in that way, not focusing on other people's judgments of us, but being mindful of the impact our words and actions are having on other people. And I think that's less likely to make us spiral in this negative way and more likely to make us mindful about the things that we say because we're not so worried about our own, you know, personal ego.

Yeah, I'm so glad that you said the shout thing, which is in a totally different context to what it reminded me of, of a piece that was in your book. So everyone. So, you know, it's so well crafted throughout the book that it's. You go through a chapter and it's like, oh, that's so interesting. And then it's got the next section. Like, that's such an interesting little tidbit. And, like, good little stories. It's got a nice, like, a clip to it where it feels almost like the kind of Dan Brown of like, next section, next. Like, oh, that's so good. You know, you want to get to the next thing. But so one of those little pieces. And you just barely mention the Devil Wears Prada in a different context, too, I think. But it made me think about how. And you talk about people tend to shout when they're. They feel like they don't have influence and that, you know, speaking louder when you don't have that confidence. And I remember hearing Meryl Streep talk about playing the part of Miranda Priestley and how everyone expected. And it might have actually been Anne Hathaway talking about this, but, you know, you expected to come in on the first day of shooting and for Miranda to have this, like, booming, yelling at you voice to exert her authority. And she actually spoke incredibly quietly and focused with what she had to say. And they were saying it was terrifying, like being in the room. And, you know, Meryl Streep, you know, was saying how all the very powerful men, like, they don't yell like that she had seen. And so trying to emulate some of that where forcing people to lean in to hear you speak and having that confidence of not, you know, shouting is. Is not really influenced, but when you have that confidence to just exist in whatever it is that you're saying. I don't think that you got to that point in the book, but do you have any. I don't know if you've even heard that story, but do you have any thoughts on that?

I hadn't, but that makes so much sense. I mean, I do have a section where I talk about how shouting really is born of underconfidence. Right. That we shout when we think nobody's listening. But if you're Miranda Priestley and you're sitting at that desk, you assume everyone's listening and so you don't need to shout. Of course not. Right. And I love that. That is such a great thing. Story.

Yeah. And being able to own whatever it is. Right. Having confidence Shows through of being able to just say, this is. This is me and this is what I have. And if, yeah, if you shout, people go, why are you yelling? Like, there's something going on over here. So know that keeping that calm and collected can be, can be valuable. Of course. So as we wrap up, do you have anything that you wish that I would have asked or a story or a study or, you know, putting a bow on it? This is your, like, choose your own adventure moment to kind of pick, you know, how we kind of close things out.

Sure, I will. I guess I will kind of sum up one of the main themes, I think, throughout the book and one of the interventions I offer at the end to try to address it. And so I'd say that a major theme is that so much of our tendency to underestimate our influence comes down to what we see and what we don't see, right? So when we look around a room, we don't see people looking at us because as soon as we look at them, they look away, Right? It's called gaze deflection. So we think people aren't looking at us. When we make a suggestion for something someone should do and they take that suggestion a week later, we're not there to see it. When we say something and it really sticks in someone's minds. We can't see inside their mind. And when we're in an interaction with other people, you know, just by virtue of our physiology, we're looking at that interaction through our own two eyeballs and we see everything those people are doing and everything they're doing to one another and everything they're doing to us. But what we don't see is ourselves, right? And so for all those reasons, we don't see the ways in which we are impacting people all the time. And so one of the interventions I talk about at the end of the book is a way to kind of get out of your own head. And this comes from Eli Finkel, who wrote a book called the all or Nothing Marriage. So it's actually a technique for couples, right? And he looked at this technique where he had newlyweds who ordinarily, sorry to depress everyone, have a decrease in marital satisfaction over their first year post marriage. And so he was curious, can he keep newlyweds from experiencing that decrease in marital satisfaction? So he had them do this really simple technique where three times over the course of a year, he had them write for seven minutes about a fight they had had with their partner from a third party perspective. So recall A fight that you have with your partner, but recall it as if you were a friend who, you know, thought the best of both of you and, you know, was watching this fight. And that really forces someone to get out of their head and see the ways in which they might be contributing to a dynamic. Right. When we usually put ourselves back in, like, a fight or an interaction, we put ourselves right back in our own body looking at everybody else. But that forces you to get out and see what you're doing, how you're impacting other people. And interestingly, there's this phenomenon I mentioned, people like us more than we think they do, called the liking gap. If you show a third party video of two people interacting, they're accurate about how much those two people like each other. So that third party perspective can be accurate. And some other studies that Erica Boothby, the researcher at Wharton and I did, we had people give compliments to other people, and they underestimated how good those compliments would make someone feel. When we asked a third party, how good would those compliments make someone feel they were accurate. Right. So if you can find ways to get out of your own head and sort of reflect on the things that you're doing, you can be more accurate and more aware of the influence you have. And a really simple way to do that is just this simple exercise where you imagine or write about, you know, a recent experience where you are taking this outsider perspective and visualizing yourself and all the things you did and contributed to that situation.

It makes me think a lot of. I really love Dove's Real Beauty campaign in. I don't think I've seen any of them that I haven't resonated with, but where they have the, you know, people drawing a picture of someone and like, what you expect they're going to be drawing of you. And it's so beautiful compared to what you were thinking and what words you would use to describe someone were so much nicer than what people expected they would say or what they were going to be worried about. I think it's very rooted in all of the psychology that we're talking about here and what's in the book. And knowing that. What I get from the book and all the great insights really is this people like you more than you think that they do. And you've obviously said that. And don't get hung up on whatever you think is bad. Just forget about it. And I know it's easier said than done, but try not to get hung up on the thing I talk about that in that episode about why we hate seeing ourselves on video, you know, if you can not look at you, then you don't notice. Like you didn't notice when you were sitting in a room talking. So it shouldn't impact that, you know, there's a camera that other people still saw you the whole time. But also knowing any of the times that somebody comments or shares your post on social media or says, hey, you know, thank you so much for providing that feedback. It helped me in this future meeting. You know that you probably remember someone that said something like that to you five years ago because it's so impactful. So why not just tell people more that they're having this great impact on you. Showing them that they have that influence can have a hopefully a good ripple that goes through the world of helping more people to share and, you know, spread that kind of gratefulness around.

Yeah. Couldn't say it better myself.

Oh, well. Well, thank you so much for joining me. We'll definitely have links in the show notes for your book and to connect. But for this, for everyone that now is so excited to go do that, what is the best way for them that you would recommend for going to get the book to connect to chat, whatever it is. Where should they go?

Sure. So you can find the book pretty much anywhere. My website, vanessabonds.com also has links to buy the book, different essays I've written and also social media connections. If you want to connect with me on Twitter, Instagram, wherever all those links are, my website as well.

Perfect.

We will absolutely share those and please share the Twitter love. So what's, what's your handle on Twitter?

So it is Rofbonds and bonds is.

B O, H and S. Perfect again will be included in the show notes for everyone. But this is your opportunity to go show how much influence you think was provided and or how influential you feel. Now let Vanessa and I know on Twitter Rofbonds and at the brainy biz are waiting to hear from you. So thanks again and yeah, absolutely. Vanessa, thanks so much for joining me on the show. It was a lot of fun.

Thank you so much. Yeah. And for both of us, I'm sure you know it will mean more than you realize if you send us little love notes online or privately.

Quite possibly my favorite thing that ever happened. So.

Absolutely.

All right, thanks.

Thank you so much.

So what got your brain buzzing as you learned about all your influence today? For me, I find the idea of this invisible ish influence to be so fascinating and especially how someone who is an introvert or who doesn't feel like they have a lot of power or persuasion or influence can be shaping their environment without even realizing it. Whether it's on a zoom call while you're in an audience, the things you do and say, the questions you ask, the way you show up in the meeting and on social media, it all matters and can have a huge impact, which is really, really cool. As I mentioned at the top of the show, this is a perfect tie in to my upcoming conversation with Andrea Learned who helps people increase their climate influence. And that's coming out on Friday as we're going to talk about in that episode, which goes beyond climate change and can apply to anything you want to have more influence about. It's so interesting to think about how that social post or the choice to ride your bike into work can have an impact on how people see you and either support your causes or may feel like there's a disconnect and something's just off. Walking the walk is a big way of getting that influence. It's so interesting and I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Vanessa. As I said, influence has been a super popular topic on the podcast. Three episodes focused on influence were in the top 10 most downloaded episodes episodes of all time. Of course there was this one as well as Zoe Chance's influence is your superpower and my conversation with Robert Cialdini on his book Influence. There are links to all those episodes as well as the best of episode waiting for you in the show notes so you can go check them out. And of course, be sure to tune in on Friday to my conversation with Andrea Learned about learning to leverage your influence. The show notes with the links to those related past episodes, books and articles are all waiting for you in the app you're listening to and@the brainybusiness.com 318 and just like that, episode 318 on how you have more influence than you think with Dr. Vanessa Bonds is done. Join me Friday for a brand new episode with Andrea Learned. It's going to be a lot of fun. You don't want to miss it. Until then, thanks again for listening and learning with me and remember to be thoughtful.

Thank you for listening to the Brainy Business podcast. Melina offers virtual strategy sessions, workshops and other services to help businesses be more brain friendly. For more free resources, visit thebrainybusiness. Com.