Becoming More Influential and Persuasive with Dr. Robert Cialdini

Hello, my friends, and welcome to another exciting episode of Negotiate Anything. Negotiate Anything is produced by the American Negotiation Institute and with over 3 million downloads and listeners in over 180 countries, listeners just like you have made it the number one negotiation podcast in the world. I'm Kwame Christian and I'm the director of the American Negotiation Institute. We're growing and I want to introduce you to our new team members and new trainers. This will give you new and diverse perspectives on negotiation, conflict resolution. And that's why Shane Martin, our head of sales and partnerships, is going to serve as co host of the show from time to time. We're excited to continue to provide you with the best content that will help to make your difficult conversations easier both at work and at home. Lastly, our team conducts negotiation and conflict resolution trainings in the United States and abroad. Our trainings will give you the practical skills you need to resolve conflict, negotiate, lead and persuade with confidence. Click the link in the description below to learn more about how we can make your difficult conversations easier. Everybody, we have a treat for you today. We have the godfather of influence and persuasion, Dr. Robert Cialdini. And I want to give a quick backstory on how this happened and how we're going to proceed. And so Shane Martin is our new head of Sales and partnerships at the American Negotiation Institute. And he said, wami, I have a dream that we get Dr. Cialdini on the podcast. And I said, okay, Shane, go ahead and try. If you listen, if you land this interview, you go ahead and do it. Go ahead and try. And he landed the interview. So I am a man of my word. And so I'm going to take a step back and let Shane take it from here.

Excellent. Well, Dr. Cialdini, it is an absolute pleasure to have you on the show today. And really the purpose of today is to provide actionable insights, tips and just takeaways for all of our listeners who are striving to become successful negotiators. You may know Dr. Cialdini as the godfather of Influence because of his best selling books, Pre Suasion and influence. And now Dr. Cialdini is the CEO of Influence at Work, where he and his wonderful team in Arizona work with companies like Google, Microsoft and even Pfizer. So Dr. Tajini, it's an absolute pleasure to have you, like we said, and your new edition of Influence just came out. So we're looking forward to talking about that today and talking about the content that you've shared with the world. Your books, 44 languages, over 7 million copies. That's Sun Devil Football Stadium. Since you're In Arizona, that's 13 times Sun Devil Stadium's full. So it's a lot of book sales and that's a lot of nachos and cotton candy too. So you help people build credibility and develop relationships and ultimately increase sales. So in your work, what are some real benefits and results that you've seen people take away and grow from and see in their own lives after they apply the principles that you teach?

Well, what I like most about the principles in the way that we teach them is that there has to be an ethical base that we always have to be striving to move people in our direction by informing them honestly into assent rather than deceiving or tricking or certainly not coercing them into assent. And as a consequence, what we find is that people come back to us saying, not only did I get the sale, I got the relationship as a consequence of, of using these principles as a way to educate people into good choices. And then what happens is that what we've frequently found is that those people who we've taught or trained within marketing or sales or advertising, their, their CEO comes back to us and says, you know, inside our organization, with leadership and management, there's also an influence issue. Can you train those people, our frontline managers, to get everybody on board with new initiatives, to get everybody pulling in the same direction, to get everybody coming into the office with the right mindset? So that I think that's the thing that's been most of a standout for us is that if we focus on getting to yes through and along with building relationships in the process, then we go from a one time hit to a long time relationship and partnership.

Definitely. So it sounds like looking for the future, looking towards the future, building a thoughtful long term relationship rather than just focusing on the specific short term gain, you can be more successful in influencing others with a long term mindset.

Right. But the short term is not to be dismissed. I don't want to say, oh, hey, don't think about the short term. Of course you have to think about an immediate outcome, but you gain it by establishing an honest partnership rather than some sort of dominance or some sort of win lose arrangement.

Absolutely. And thinking about ethics, I know that you have a code of ethics and one of them is foregoing manipulation. And I imagine in your career you've had people approach you or say things about your work where some of the principles of influence can be manipulative. So can you tell us how come you built the code of ethics and what we as listeners and just humans, all of us are humans, why we should apply those as well when we're attempting to influence others.

Yeah. One of the reasons that we've already talked about is that that builds long term relationships when you've done something ethical. But secondly, it builds self esteem. It bolsters a sense of self effectiveness. If you don't have to rely on cheating in order to get people to move in your direction. If you can rely on an honest presentation that highlights the merits of your case in a way that you didn't know how to do before you in the way that you structure your communications and you sequence your arguments and so on. The kind of things we train. If that's all you need to do in order to bring people to you and your offer, that really makes you feel good about yourself ethically. Hey, I'm not a cheater. I don't have to be that in order to win. But also, oh, I've got the skills to simply unfold the case to people in such a way in the presentation of it that brings them into line with a good outcome for both of us. That really bolsters self confidence and self concept that I think both are big pluses going forward.

Absolutely. That's one of the things that we talk about at American Negotiation Institute is finding confidence in conflict. And one of the reasons why I find it so interesting is because for some of my life I've brushed things and just kind of put them off because I didn't have the confidence to address the conflict. So when we're thinking about influencing others positively and ethically, what can someone practically do to have more confidence to address essentially the conflict that's in front of them?

One of the things we can do is reflect back on the times in which we were successful and have that at top of mind. So that what our recent memories are that create an ongoing and present mindset is of I can do this. I've done this in the past. This isn't something beyond me. So we can reflect on that. I had a friend in graduate school who scored at the top of all the exams in order to get into graduate school. The graduate record exam in the 99th percentile. 99th percentile. 99th percentile. 99th percentile of all the facets of the exams. And I asked him because he didn't seem like any smarter than the rest of us, but what do you do to get so positively scored on these exams? He said, before I go into the room, you know What I see around me, I see a lot of people trembling outside the doors to that standardized exam. And they're running through, in their minds or in their notes, all the things that they're weak on, all the things that they're uncertain of. What they've done is to create a mindset of a loser. And then they go into the exam with that. I create a mindset of a winner. I just remind myself of the times that I have been efficacious, that I have succeeded, that I have surfaced above conflicts and challenges. And then I go in with that bolstered sense of enthusiasm. He says, everybody else is trembling. I can't wait to open the book. I can't. That blue book. I can't wait for the exam to start. And he gets 99. 99, 99, 99 percentile on all four of the exams. Wow. So that's the way I think we can do that. We just put ourselves in a state of mind that is congruent with the goal we want to put ourselves in. You know, I wrote a book a couple of years ago called Pre Suasion. Not just what you put into your message to get people to move in your direction, but what you put into the moment before you send your message that allows your message to be more successful. Well, you can pre swade yourself going to a negotiation, right? Yeah.

So it's kind of like a muscle.

You're.

You're. The more times you do something, the stronger you're getting. Right? You're.

You're.

I've never thought about persuading yourself, but it seems like that's a really powerful way to prepare for a negotiation. And since it's like a muscle, is there any sort of scale or way to measure how influential you are? Is there a scale of influence? Does that exist? Is there a way to know, like, I'm doing really well, or maybe I could improve?

Yeah. If people went to our website. It's influenceatwork.com we have a test, your influence IQ, essentially. And you can go through it. And then we give you your score as well as the answers. And you can see how aligned your automatic reactions are to the situations that we present in this test with what the research shows, what the science shows is the best way to go forward. And so there is a way to test where you stand now. And what we find is, after people have been through our programs, then they score significantly better in aligning what they do first with what the research says they ought to be doing.

All right, that's influencework.com Dr. Cialdini A true salesman at his finest. I love it.

Here's the thing. If it's a matter of answering your question by giving people information, then I don't feel that I'm being manipulative at all. In fact, I'm informing people of what is available to them if they want to take it into account.

Makes absolute sense. It's like a salesperson who really believes in the mission, knows what they're offering and knows the challenges. Right. Of who they're speaking to. Their prospect in the moment. Speaking of value, your new edition of Influence just came out on May 4, so I encourage everyone to take a look at that. I reviewed the changes and the additions and my jaw was on the floor. I couldn't believe it. Some of the statistics that were in there were just mind blowing and I was curious. There was one that was very interesting when it applies to negotiation. And you talked about how in negotiations, people who shook hands had a higher, essentially ability to create value for both parties. Do you mind explaining that?

Like it's just a handshake, right? Very often we begin a negotiation without a handshake. It's a mistake. Now, of course Covid is involved, but this will be gone in the same way that masks will eventually be gone. We will shake hands with people, right? By shaking hands, what you signal a willingness to cooperate. That's what a handshake signals to your partner. And that mindset, again, you're pre sueding that person to be more cooperative because they see you as willing to be more cooperative. Here's what my. So that's what the research shows. Here's what I think the research failed to show. Even when you do begin a negotiation with a handshake, why do we leave it as the only time we shake hands? Why wouldn't we? If that's the signal that leads to mutual beneficial outcomes, better outcomes for both parties. Why don't we do that again after the lunch break? Or why don't we do that again at the start of the second day negotiation? Every time we signal that intent, we enhance the system. We energize the system for cooperation, collaboration, and mutual success.

Definitely. You're essentially almost already agreeing on something without even saying anything. You're just shaking hands. So maybe elbow bumps for now until.

Elbow bumps for now. There are even. There are even virtual handshakes that you can put at the. The first slide in your. In your PowerPoint deck can be of a handshake, which signal that, I mean, there are creative ways to get around that, the fact that we can't do it immediately, but in a couple of months or a few months, we'll be able to do that. And we would be fools not to take into account what the research shows, a small little thing like that that produces better outcomes for both parties, which causes both parties to want to come back for future negotiations. Why wouldn't we take that into account?

And it costs nothing.

It costs nothing. You know, there are other examples where I talk about changing one word, one breath. So, for example, if you want somebody to be a partner with you on a new initiative that you have inside your organization, let's say you want to move something forward, but you need the alliance, you need the buy in of important voices within your team before you, you elevate it up the ladder. And so what you typically do, you'll have an outline of your idea or maybe a short description of it, and you give it to somebody and you say, can you give me your opinion on this? That's a mistake. When you ask for an opinion, you get a critic. People go inside. They, they move away from you. They go inside themselves and introspect about the pros and cons of this. If you change one word and instead of asking for their opinion, ask for their advice on this. Now, instead of a critic, you get a partner.

Interesting.

You get a collaborator. And what research shows is that if you ask for feedback in terms of advice as opposed to opinion, you get more buy in, you get more agreement on the same set of ideas. Why wouldn't you change that one thing? It's one more breath. It doesn't cost you a cent, even in effort.

And it's less syllables as well. Advice is shorter than.

Yeah, that's probably right.

It's less work. And we know that salespeople love less work. I mean, I'm just as guilty, right? We want to be as efficient as quickly as possible. So that makes total sense. It's like one of the misconceptions, I think, of negotiations and people listening is that negotiations and influencing is a competition. And that is just not true. It's a collaboration. And I think that that's what you're describing. And it's amazing that it's just, it's cost nothing and it's so easy to implement. It makes me think about years ago, I took over leading a sales team that was in last place. And I read some of your work and on all the training documents that I created, I put a trophy that said number one at top. @ the top. And it took a long time, but because I was pre swading my team that they were already number one, even though we were last. I mean, we were bad. We were really bad. But it worked. We ended up eventually being the top producing team. It took a long time and a lot of failure. But it's amazing how just one word, one photo, one handshake can change the whole conversation, Right?

It's where you put people in terms of what they're focused on in the moment before you make a recommendation, a request, an orientation that they should take to the next moment that drives their behavior in that moment.

How about delivering compliments? How do you do that effectively? You mentioned that in the new edition of Influence.

So there are two new ways to do so since the previous edition. One is the value of giving compliments behind people's backs. So there's nothing wrong with giving a direct compliment. Nothing at all. In fact, that will used to be my greatest weakness. You know, I was reluctant to praise people who deserved it. I don't know why had something to do with the way I was raised. I don't know. But anyway, when I recognized what a fool I was not to honestly compliment the people who warranted that compliment, I got much better social interactions afterward. But sometimes it's not possible. Suppose you're in a meeting and your boss says something brilliant. You can't raise your hand and say, boss, that was brilliant what you just said, because it seems like you're sucking up to the boss and you're all your co workers will see you as having ulterior motives. Maybe even your boss will. So what do you do instead during a coffee break? Tell your boss's assistant you thought what the boss said was brilliant. The assistant will tell the boss that because there's a lot of research showing people want to be associated with good news right in the eyes of especially their superiors. So the assistant will take it and they'll say, you know, Sean thought what you said about XYZ was brilliant. And now the boss will have no concerns that you were. You had an ulterior motive here. And the boss will love you. Shane Kwame will love you.

I already have a whole list of compliments I'm ready to send them right now.

And then there's a second one, which is you give compliments to people on behaviors you would like them to perform more of. When somebody does something that is productive or something that's admirable in your view, compliment them on the trait, not necessarily the behavior. Compliment them on the trait of being Conscientious or forward thinking or prepared, whatever it is. And you will see more of it because they will want to live up to the reputation you have given them this compliment. Here's an example. There's a guy who delivers my newspaper every morning. He drives by and he throws the newspaper out the window of his car onto my driveway. And most of the time, about 75% of the time, he gets it in the middle of the driveway so it doesn't get wet from these watering systems on either side. And also every year around the Christmas holidays, he includes a little envelope in the newspaper around Christmas with it's addressed to him and it's designed for me to send him a check as a tip for his service during the year. And I always do. But this year, after I read this research about giving people compliments that they can live up to, I put a little post it on the check and I said, carl, thank you for your conscientiousness in putting my paper in the center of the driveway so it doesn't get wet. Right. In previous years, he did that 75% of the time. This year, 100% every day. Every day. Because I gave him a compliment to live up to.

And the compliment was specific and relevant, which makes absolute sense. That's so fascinating. So thinking about the new additions, the new research that is coming out, and also thinking about negotiations. A lot of people are negotiations, negotiating their salaries. Right now they're buying new houses, especially in Arizona. It's growing really quickly. So of the new additions, which one do you think negotiators should know and imply that can have the greatest impact on their lives?

Well, we've already talked about one of them certainly being willing to demonstrate your willingness to cooperate. But there's another one that has strong research associated with it and that is bringing up before the negotiation begins, bringing up commonalities or similarities between yourself and your negotiation partner. There was a study done of online negotiators negotiating online. It's the most bloodless communication channel we've ever developed. Right. So it's emails. They were just extending the self into the email where there's nothing personal there. So one group of bargainers in this study were asked simply to get down to business and start negotiating. What they found was that in 30% of the instances, they were stymied. They never came to an agreement, they were deadlocked. Nobody won. Both sides walked away empty. The other half of the negotiators were told, before you begin the process, send some information about yourself, personal information what your hobbies are, your interests, you know, where you went to school, where you grew up, these kinds of things send some information back and forth, right? And what they found was in those cases, stymied negotiations dropped from 30% to 6%. And the researchers were stunned. They thought, well, what was, what could it have been that had produced this? When they looked into the data, it was the number of times there were commonalities that were revealed in the exchange of information. Oh, you're a runner. I'm a runner. You're an only child. I'm an only child. You have teenagers. I have teenagers. Whatever it was right though, it was the number of commonalities that were revealed in this process. So one thing that comes out of this is before you start any negotiation, you get to research, because we have this on the Internet now, the person you're going to be negotiating with, this person has LinkedIn information, has Facebook information, it's not proprietary. They make it public, find out what might be in common, what might be in parallel with the two of you, raise that to the surface and suddenly the barriers to a cooperative, mutually successful outcome come crashing down.

Wow. Finding an uncommon commonality, it sounds like, goes a long ways. And it's free as well, just requires a few minutes of research, right? That's so true. And now on LinkedIn, specifically, like you said, because people post information, there are tools that are free as well, that show you and analyze the LinkedIn profile and then say, okay, if you're giving a sales pitch to this person, consider approaching the conversation this way. Consider asking open ended questions for an example. There's so many things, so it is just crazy how the intersection of human connection, it sounds like you're describing, and also technology are changing negotiations, changing influence.

And so, and once again, it's access to information that's relevant that is now at your disposal that just wasn't there before.

It's so true. It's so true. And it makes me think about. There was an interview that you did a couple years back with Adam Gantt, he's the author of Give and Take. And he asked, or actually you were interviewing him and you asked a fascinating question. You asked in your experiences, something along the lines of, in your experience as a researcher and author, just like you are, is there maybe a funny or a humorous story that you can share with us today that maybe some people might not know about? So what is Dr. Toddini? What is a humorous or revealing story that you can tell us that maybe not very many people know about you or Your research?

Well, I'll give you kind of an overview of the results of the research. And that is. A few years ago I was asked to speak at a NATO conference that included people who were in psychological operations from all the NATO countries. And on this military base where the conference was held, I was one of the speakers. And so was the assistant, assistant deput, Assistant Director of Defense at that time. Right. And while he was speaking, I wasn't allowed into the auditorium because it was so top secret. And they gave me off to a lieutenant, a Turkish guy who arranged for me to see a spy plane that NATO had. It was this thing I went through and they showed me all this top secret information that they were, that they were able to gain from this spy plane just flying over a particular area. They could shut off all radio communication, they could alter it, they had all kinds of things that they could do. And afterwards, as I was coming off the plane, the crew was lined up and as I came down the stairs, they were saluting me like this. What? And I, and I thought to myself, what is going on here? I'm just this university professor, where do I get off getting all of this? And, and I was walking away from it and I said to this Turkish lieutenant, I never thought that academics, researchers would have such regard within the military structure. And he said, oh, the reason you saw that is I told them you were the assistant Secretary of Defense.

Authority.

It's the principle, the authority principle. And now here's my point. Today, because of the advances of behavioral science, behavioral researchers like me are getting saluted for real. Now the military has units, taking into account all of this research that we've been doing for 50 years now into the process of persuasion and negotiation and influence. They're taking it into account and they're saluting the heck out of us now. For real.

Well, we're saluting you as well and greatly appreciate it. And when we're thinking about the future of behavioral science, what do you see?

What I see is the greater use of the platforms, the electronic platforms that we've developed and the migration of these principles into the way in which people influence one another and even themselves on these social media and e commerce platforms. That's where we're going.

Definitely. It makes me think about the cloud example where research showed more sales were done on a mattress company. I believe it was because they had clouds on the homepage and it was fluffy. It pre suited people to purchase more. So I think you're absolutely right when it comes to the. I guess you could say digital age and the technology age. We are living in IT and Covid expedited that. But on a more real and a personal level, you have done so much important work in behavioral science and I know that your legacy is going to live on. But I'm curious and I think a lot of people listening are curious, what do you think your legacy will be and what do you hope it'll be?

You know, what I hope it will be is not just that I've made some contributions into the way that people can become more influential. It's that they can do so in an entirely ethical, morally responsible way so they can feel good about doing well in the process. That would be my hope.

Well, I know that it will be. And again, a pleasure having this conversation with you. I know that there are so many good tips and things to apply in day to day life, whether it's in a high intense negotiation or just in a conversation with family and friends. So Dr. Jialdini, as we wrap up, is there anything that you want to leave the audience with, the audience of negotiators with, anything that you want to inspire them or just mention as we wrap up today?

I think it's to come back to this point that you were raising earlier that these changes that produce big effects, large differences in outcomes, can be very small in terms of the time or effort required to employ them. It's like something that just flips a switch. If you're in a big stadium, let's say, and there's a night game or a night match of some sort, there's somebody down in the bowels of the stadium who flips a single switch. It hardly takes an ounce of effort and suddenly everything is illuminated. That's what we were taught, what we're talking about here. Small changes that ramify into big effects. If we can do that, we beat the problem of modern day overloaded agendas where we don't have time to think through big kinds of changes to produce big kinds of effects. There are some small things that hook to big psychological tendencies in people that will do the job for us.

Absolutely.

Wow.

I encourage everyone to listen to that three or four times on repeat. There is a lot of really good stuff there. And what a conversation. It was refreshing and impactful and specific. So I am so happy that people were able to tune in. And Dr. Sashini, it was a pleasure having you on and we look forward to carrying on your legacy of positively influencing people at work.

Well, I enjoyed our time together.

Shane, excellent.

Congratulations. You've just joined an Elite club by listening to a full episode. You're now officially on the Negotiate Anything team, so I welcome aboard. What most team members do is they subscribe to the podcast because that allows them to automatically get the latest episodes of the show. The best things in life lie on the other side of difficult conversations. Keep learning, keep practicing, and keep getting better. Your relationships will improve, your career will soar, and you'll have the confidence you need to get the most out of these crucial conversations. Again, thank you for joining the team. We're excited to have you, and I will see you in the next episode. I'll catch you later.