Influence – after nineteen years I finally get to blend my two great loves!

 Oct 16, 2013

I don’t share this much in corporate circles but I am a closet muso and in my younger days I used to play professionally as a solo guitarist, pianist and singer. Being self-taught, I am not a fantastic musician on either instrument, retarded by the fact that I can mask any musical fluffs with my singing. Still, I was good enough for people to sing along and get drunk to and most times, even though I’m boasting, people would have a thoroughly enjoyable night. What’s this got to do with influence? Well, I’ve already given you two of the keys, so stay with me if you haven’t picked it up yet. My other love is of people and what makes them tick; which is why I retrained in psych after having started off with a business degree. After 19 years, I’m still intrigued by why some people are motivated and others not; how you achieve behavioural change, and; what happens if people are not on board. These days, if I go out to a bar or a restaurant and there is someone playing in the corner and not moving a crowd, I watch and analyse why. Generally, it’s not their playing or singing ability. Many times in business, people can be technically competent but what they lack is the ability to move people artfully. They lack the skills for getting people engaged and motivated or trying to get buy in to a particular point of view. Sometimes they try coercion; other times they simply fail at their quest. Unless they can influence and persuade, it’s probably going to be a hard slog. There was a trick to being able to move the crowd like I did. Not so much a trick; I simply employed three concepts that have been around forever. I didn’t know I was doing it at the time. I, sort of, stumbled onto it. Around 2,500 years ago Aristotle  realised that these three concepts were the integral elements to influencing people: Ethos, Pathos and Logos. Ethos is credibility, Pathos (literally meaning suffering) relates to feelings, and Logos is logic, and they are as important today in influencing as they were when he first discovered them. So here’s what I did: First Set: I would start off with slow numbers in the first set to be in rapport with where people were at in their evening; they wanted to chat and were relatively sober. During this set I would put my all into some tear-jerker ballads. This piqued people’s awareness and I established credibility whilst connecting with their feelings. Invariably, people would come up and ask for a particular song and if I couldn’t play it,  I would explain that to them logically and substitute it with perhaps another song of the same artist. At least they felt I had given them something, so again I built rapport.  I even played stuff I didn’t like but if they liked it and I knew it, I’d play it. Second Set: By the time I got to the middle set I had made some friends and got into the mid-tempo numbers and a few of my own (and others’) short, sharp, humorous songs, to get their attention again. As people were starting to have fun (feelings) they would often drink a bit more, which aided the process (and had me liked by the publican). Invariably, I would have a few plants in the audience who would get the sing-alongs happening. Here, I was working on ethos and what Robert Cialdini (another expert in the influencing space) calls ‘social proof’; where some people engage (which becomes credibility established by others) and surreptitiously give ‘permission’ for others to do so as well. Third Set: The last set was then full of the sing along standards (e.g. American Pie) and dance numbers (e.g. Beatles, Stones). Quite often passersby would see people singing and dancing and come and join in (more social proof). Sometimes, someone would ask for a song that was out of step from where I was at (usually it was slow or a bit obscure). Most times I’d say I liked the song (keeping rapport), it was just out of step with where I was at and ask if they could give me some up-beat suggestions (logic) and I’d play that and keep them happy (feelings). Whilst I will admit that my cause was aided by a strong alternative ‘influence’ – alcohol – there are many elements of influence that I engaged in (intuitively at the time), that have bearing on getting buy-in within the workplace. Here are ten tips.
  1. Firstly, you must have an attitude that you are there for them as much as they are there for you. At work we have symbiotic relationships. If I only played tunes that I liked I would have lost the crowd early, but because I played tunes they liked they were more likely to listen when I played my own tunes.
  2. Start with where people are at. Establish rapport; have them feel comfortable with you (pathos). Having people like you is another of Robert Cialdini’s tenets.
  3. Get credibility early (ethos). When performing, I had to establish my technical competence. You may already have that established but may have to establish your ‘people’ competence. Credibility is not always transferrable from context to context and you may have to re-establish it depending on your topic and audience.
  4. Engage them (pathos). Work out what moves them and give them more of this in reward for doing things that don’t move them as much.
  5. Logically (logos) explain your rationale when what they want falls outside what is acceptable, but try and negotiate win/win. Also, follow a logical and predictable flow.
  6. Build the rhythm of work; don’t always stay at the same pace (pathos).
  7. Whilst you don’t have alcohol to help you out, anything that changes people’s mood for the better is important. Humour (not at others’ expense), story-telling, games, awards and having fun can shift people’s states (pathos).
  8. Help people to open up and lose self-consciousness by making it safe. A highly judgmental office stifles creativity and engagement.
  9. If you can, get those people likely to be on side, influenced early so they can be advocates and create social proof (ethos).
  10. Have them leave on a high note wanting more (pathos and ethos).
In the second paragraph I asked you if you had spotted the two influence keys I had used to that point. Did you get them? The first related to tip number ten; I had people leaving happy and wanting to show up next time eager to see me. The second was something I did to you, the reader. I created a tenuous link to a story (pathos), then asked you a question about the story (moving you to logos) and then I delayed giving you the answer (ethos and pathos – my credibility was predicated on maybe having something you did not have and the delay in giving it to you created an artificial scarcity [another of Cialdini’s tenets]). Next time I will show you the anatomy of influence in the written word.

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About the Author:

Tim Higgs  

Tim has been involved in the corporate training industry for over 15 years; seven of these have been as the Portfolio Manager and Senior Facilitator at New Horizons. Tim holds a Graduate Diploma (Psych/Couns), a masters’ degree in Cultural Psychology and a bachelor’s degree in Business, giving him a unique theoretical backdrop for understanding human performance in the workplace. This complements his actual experience of working within the corporate sector in sales and management positions and owning and running a small business. Having worked with individuals and groups in both clinical and business settings, Tim has a fantastic insight into human behaviour, motivation and the issue of human change.

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