Please welcome Maria Yager and Bas Waters to One CA Podcast.
Originally, I was cohosting the show with Mariah, but I got OBE'd (or overcome by events), so Maria covered until I arrived and helped with questions and answers.
This is part two of a two-part episode on influence and persuasion.
FeedSpot ranked One CA Podcast as one of their top 20 foreign policy podcasts. Check it out at: https://podcasts.feedspot.com/foreign_policy_podcasts/
One CA is a product of the civil affairs association
and brings in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences on the ground with a partner nation's people and leadership.
We aim to inspire anyone interested in working in the "last three feet" of U.S. foreign relations.
To contact the show, email us at CApodcasting@gmail dot com
or look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website at www civilaffairsassoc.org
Special thanks to Max Sedgley for remixing Sarah Vaughan's iconic signing of the theme to the show Max Gunn. Found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33GglmH6U1k
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00:00:02 Introduction
Welcome to the 1CA podcast. This is your host, Jack Gaines. 1CA is a product of the Civil Affairs Association and brings in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences on ground with the partner nation's people and leadership. Our goal is to inspire anyone interested in working the last three feet of foreign relations. To contact the show, email us at capodcasting at gmail .com or look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website at www .civilaffairsassos .org. I'll have those in the show notes.
00:00:37 Mariah Yager
Hi, everyone. I'm Mariah Yeager, your host for today's SMA speaker session titled On Persuasion. We have Bass Waters, who is co -founder and CEO of the Cialdini Institute. He's the author of Online Influence, which is combining Dr. Cialdini's work with insights from other behavioral experts, creating a highly practical framework to boost online results.
00:00:57 Jack Gaines
Please welcome Mariah Yeager and Bass Waters to 1CA Podcast. Originally, I was co -hosting the show with Mariah, but I got OBE'd, or overcome by events, so Mariah covered until I arrived to help with questions and answers. This is part one of a two -part episode on influence and persuasion, so enjoy.
00:01:14 Mariah Yager
So after establishing the Cialdini Institute, companies like Disney, Bookings .com reached out to our speaker today. So he has extensive experience. We're happy to have him today. So with that, I'm going to turn the floor over to Mr. Waters.
00:01:28 Bas Wouters
Thank you, Mariah, for this great introduction. Thank you all for joining and to dive deeper into the practical application of the science of persuasion. I'm representing the Cialdini Institute. I'm aware that a lot of you know the great work of Dr. Robert Cialdini, and he is my business partner in the Cialdini Institute. I'd like to start with some things you may not know about Robert Cialdini, and one of the things that we are very proud of is this research in 2022. They established a jury of the top entrepreneurs in the world, which included Warren Buffett, Mark Cuban, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos. And they voted for the best business book of all time. And as you probably can guess, the winner was Influence from Dr. Robert Cialdini. And actually, they repeated this study with those top entrepreneurs. And in 2023, again, the winner was Influence from Dr. Cialdini. I understood from Jack and Mariah that most of you read his book, published in 1984. And Dr. Cialdini became a professor at the University of Arizona State. He started lecturing, PhD students, but he also started to do research. And one thing that fascinated Dr. Cialdini is why people can influence so easily. I'll give you an example. One day at home, somebody rings the doorbell. He opens. He makes a nice chat. Goes back inside and then he realized, why do I suddenly have a new energy supplier? I didn't need that. I didn't ask for it. I said yes to the request. So that fascinated him. So he started looking into the research that was already done for influence, the science of persuasion. But he found actually the first influence research of psychologists who were wondering in the 1930s. When Hitler came to power, how can a man who is an advocate for such a totalitarian regime, how can he move complete societies in his direction? So Dr. Cialdini was looking at approximately 40 to 50 years of data on influence research. And then he realized something important. These are lab studies. But influence is done in the real world. So I need to go out there where it actually happens. So Dr. Cialdini went undercover and he infiltrated a lot of training programs. So training programs on sales, marketing, VR. But he also infiltrated army recruitment and even calls. And after three years, he collected his findings and connected that to the 50 years of research that already was out there. And then he wrote his book, Influence. And in that book, first he wrote the six principles of persuasion. And later, in this new and expanded edition in 2021, he added a seventh principle. These seven principles of persuasion, these are the universal principles of persuasion. Sayers shows us these principles work in every culture, in every language, in every country. There's also research on what is the most powerful principle per culture, but they all work in every culture. The thing is what Dr. Cialdini wondered during his research is something different because everybody told him, well, we are from marketing. That's completely different than PR. Well, I'm from PR. That's different than sales. Sales is different from advertising. So everybody told him. how different everybody was. What he was looking for, what is the same? Which principles motivates in every case to move more people in your direction? Like I said, in 1984, he found six. Based on research, he added a seven principle. So these principles are reciprocity. If I invite you to my birthday party, you feel a pressure. To invite me back at your party. Liking. We like to say yes to our friends. To give you an example. If I walk here on the street. And a complete stranger is moving houses. And they say to me. Well boss. Do you want to help me? Most likely I would tell that stranger. I don't have time. Or no I don't want to help you. But if my best friend would ask me that same question. Probably I say yes. The fourth principle is social proof. There's something interesting with social proof. In its first edition, it was referred to as consensus. Dr. Cialdini created the term social proof. What it states is, when we are uncertain, we look to other people to decide what we should do. Think, for example, about booking .com. Which hotel should we pick to stay? A thousand people tell me this is a great hotel, so I booked that hotel. The fifth principle is authority. We follow the advice of the experts. This is an interesting one because how we base in our decision making if somebody is an expert is very interesting. To give you an example, if I go to my general doctor. I just ask him questions about whatever health condition I have. But who ever checked the diplomas of that general doctor? Probably nobody did that. But based on his title, I already trust him that he has expertise about whatever complaint I will bring to him in my health situation. Then consistency. It's about if we made a small commitment previously, we feel an internal pressure to act consistent with what we previously have said or done. Consistency is the most powerful internal driver to motivate into action. And that leads me to the second principle, and that's scarcity. Scarcity is the most powerful external driver that motivates us into action. And you can think, for example, about Black Friday. It started in the US, but now it's spread all over the world. And on Black Friday, everybody is moving into directions just because they assume they can get great deals. Then unity. This is the seventh principle that Dr. Cialdini introduced in his new and expanded edition of Influence. And it's about... Do we belong to the same group? We are all football fans. We are all Americans. So the fact that you belong to the same group may increase the motivation to say yes to a certain request if that is raised to awareness. Those are the seven principles. What's important, these principles are based on science. Everything we do in the Cialdini research has three core values. One is science. The other one is application. So you cannot change your outcome just with theory. You have to be able to translate the theoretical research into practical application. But that's another very important component of us, which we will discuss into a systematic way of applying today. And the third is ethics. And ethics, it's about these powerful principles. You have to use them in an ethical way because we talk not about manipulation. Influence is not manipulation. Ethical influence is not manipulation because it's raising to awareness parts of information that are also helpful for people to make a decision. And therefore, you create win -win outcomes. Because things are based on science, it can be taught. And if something can be taught, it can be learned. There are a lot of people out there who have a natural gift to be persuasive. They often end up in marketing, sales, or leadership positions because they have this natural ability to persuade. We know one thing for sure. People who master the science that don't have the natural ability to persuade are more powerful persuaders than people who have the natural ability to persuade. Can you imagine if you have both? One, you have a natural skill to be persuasive, plus you master the science. And why this is also important, I train a lot of people all over the world. And especially in sales and marketing, after a training, people told me, now I can actually explain what I was doing. They were successful, but they could not teach it. It's just what comes up to me natural. That is not transferable. So because it's science, it can be taught, and therefore it can be learned by everybody. And today we want to dive into the application. Dr. Neidert has been a right -hand man to Dr. Cialdini for the last 25 years. He is also a professor at ASU University, and he consulted the Fortune 100 companies, but also a lot of government agencies, including intelligence. And every time when he did such a consulting, he selected a principal that was most suitable for that case. And people asked him, of course, Dr. Neidert, why you've chosen reciprocity or why you've chosen scarcity to overcome our influence challenges? And this answer could not be, that's just because I do. Everything is science and research -based. So he developed the core motives model so we can teach you how to select the best principle in every given situation. Let me start by introducing the first core motives model. In an influence challenge, the relationship we have with a person is very important. To give you an example, let's imagine I'm in a very important meeting and my phone rings and I look at my phone and I see somebody that I don't speak so often. What would I probably do? I wouldn't pick up my phone. But imagine the same situation. I'm in that very important meeting and my spouse or your partner or friend that knows you are in that important meeting calls you. Now probably what will happen is you will excuse yourself and try to pick up the phone to at least know why they are calling you because you assume there's something urgent. You do this based on the relationship. you have with that person. And if you go back to the 50s, one of the communication models that was introduced was the sender -receiver model, which says, when you send out a message with words and images, then you have the receiver. That receiver processes the information they get and make it a message. Then you have the channel. Those channels are now extended in the online world. First, you had face -to -face. Then we had... face -to -face and phone calls. And now you have face -to -face, video calls, phone calls, text messages, emails. Also, the channel is very interesting to look at and which one is most persuasive in influence. Then back to the first core modus model. So as I shared with you in the situation, do I pick up my phone during that important meeting? Yes or no? So in any given influence situation, we have to establish a relationship. Some questions that you can ask yourself, well, how can you recognize a signal that you have to work on your relationship? Do people pick up the phone, for example? Do they answer my text messages because you see those blue check marks in WhatsApp, for example, but they don't reply? You saw that they got it, they read it, but they don't reply. People don't pay attention when you are in a meeting. They are distracted. Look at their phone. These are all signals where you should recognize in the future, I need to work on my relation. And the three principles that most likely will do the job to cultivate a relationship or repair an existing relationship are reciprocity, liking, and unity. So what you see... Pulling here is now we can recognize a signal. Why we might not reach our goals, why we get a no instead of a yes, can only be one core motive and the whole machine is start pinning again. So relationship can be one of those gears we have to work on. It's not a one, two, three step model. It could be in a new influence challenge, but it could also be just fix the relationship. So influence is start to move in your direction. So the second core motive that I like to introduce is uncertainty. In every decision -making process, we get uncertain most of the time. To give you an example, let's assume you want to buy a new kitchen. You go into Google and you type in buy a new kitchen. And then bang, you right away have like a million hits. Unconscious, we get uncertain. Where do I click? What are signals? What could you recognize when other ways that people are uncertain? Well, if you communicate with them, they might just say it. I don't know what to do. Or I doubt that this is the best decision for me. These kinds of expressions will help you recognize that people are still uncertain. Here's another thing people do. They start improving your offer. One of times we think, oh, but I am the expert. Why they don't listen to me? It's because they are uncertain. Those people don't want to act annoying. They know what to bother you, but they express uncertainty. And you should think I should m