The Small BIG: Small Changes That Spark Big Influence (12 page)

I
f there’s any truth in the saying “Meetings are where minutes are taken and hours are wasted,” then there is a fair chance that you have come away from a few meetings wondering if anything productive has been accomplished. Over 25 years ago psychologists Garold Stasser and William Titus published their seminal work on how people communicate in decision-making groups. Yet despite these studies being a quarter of a century old, for many the results remain just as relevant today.

They found that a significant amount of time in meetings was typically spent listening to people telling each other what everyone else already knew. Perhaps even more distressing was the discovery that those individuals attending meetings who actually possessed genuinely new information—information that only they knew about—often failed to alert the rest of the group to this new information.

The result: decisions that were at best okay, and at worst pretty poor.

More recent studies have confirmed these findings. Take, by way of an example, a study conducted by James Larson Jr. and colleagues in which a number of doctors were shown videos of two specific medical cases. The doctors were split into small groups to see the videos but, unbeknownst to them, each group watched a slightly different video. Additionally, some doctors were provided with individual information about each of the cases. As a result, all the doctors received
some
relevant information about the two patient scenarios, but no one doctor received
all
the relevant information.

After watching the videos the doctors were asked to discuss the two cases with one of the other groups and come to a consensus about both the diagnosis and the required treatments. Cleverly the researchers made sure that the most accurate diagnosis and treatment decisions could only be made if
all
the doctors contributed their respective knowledge to the group. What they found, though, was that the sharing and pooling of information rarely happened to the extent necessary for the most accurate diagnosis. As a result, less-than-optimal decision making led to poorer treatment decisions. In short, not a good outcome.

So what can be done to ensure that information is offered freely and communicated effectively? Here are four ways that you can
SMALL
BIG your meetings both at work and at home.

The first small change that can make a big difference is to ask those attending to submit information
before
the meeting. This may sound somewhat obvious, but its practice is the exception rather than the rule. Making this small change can lead to contributions that are less likely to be influenced by those of others. It can be especially effective for meetings where a desired output is new ideas: Asking for contributions in advance often increases the number of voices that are heard, potentially leading to a greater number of ideas generated. It turns out that a similar approach can be applied to training sessions and family meetings too. For example, when facing a situation or challenge that would benefit from the collective input of every member of the group, instead of asking everyone to submit their ideas and suggestions at the same time, it can be much more effective to ask people to spend a few moments quietly reflecting on their ideas, writing them down, and in turn submitting them to the group. Doing this can help ensure that any potentially insightful ideas from quieter members of the group don’t get crowded out by members with louder voices. The small change required here costs nothing more than a couple moments of silence.

A second small change that can make for big differences is to make sure that the person who leads the meeting always speaks
last
. It is remarkable how common it is for people who lead meetings to fail to notice their influence over the group. If a leader, manager, or a family elder contributes an idea first, group members will often unwittingly follow suit, leading to alternative ideas and insights being lost. One way to avoid this potentially unhelpful influence is to ensure that the leader solicits the opinions and inputs of others
before
publicly declaring his or her own.

Third, it can be helpful to recognize the value of a checklist. One way that physicians now routinely ensure that they avoid making less-than-optimal decisions and collectively take the right course of action is to make use of a simple checklist. As Atul Gawande recounts in his book
The Checklist Manifesto
, these lists contain some surprisingly obvious but disastrous-if-missed items. Is this the right patient? Do I have their medical records? Are they allergic to anything? Do I know their blood type?

Much like pilots will employ a checklist as part of their preflight activity, there is a lot to be said for the organizer of a meeting to consider the essential items that should appear on their pre-m
eeting
checklist. Are the right people in attendance? Is the balance of expertise correct? Is someone coming who will dissent in a positive way?

Finally, recent research by Juliet Zhu and J. J. Argo suggests that making subtle changes to the seating arrangements in meetings can have an effect on what people choose to focus their attention on. For example, the study found that circular seating arrangements typically activated people’s need to belong. As a result they were more likely to focus on the group’s collective objectives and be persuaded by messages and proposals that highlighted group benefits rather than benefits to any one individual. This effect was reversed, however, when the seating arrangement was either angular (think L-shaped) or square. These seating arrangements tended to activate people’s need for uniqueness. As a result, people were more responsive and reacted more favorably to messages and proposals that were self-oriented and that allowed them to elevate their individualism.

The researchers concluded that if the goal of your meeting is to create an atmosphere of collaboration and cooperation between people, seating arrangements that are circular will likely be more conducive. Therefore a team leader whose challenge is to persuade staff to generate next steps and future actions that will be contingent on people working together would be advised to ensure that a circular seating arrangement is arranged. This might be especially important should they have a member of the staff that has a reputation for marginalizing themself.

However, if the team leader’s goal is to focus their staff’s attention on taking responsibililty for more individual actions, then an angular seating arrangement, such as square or rectangular, might be a better alternative.

Of course in some instances the meetings you arrange may require elements of both colloborative
and
individual working. As a result, it might be neccesary for you to arrange for seating arrangements to be changed during the meeting. For example, a conference organizer recognizing the need for cooperation and joint work during the early stages of a meeting should arrange for people to be seated in a circular fashion during that time and, where neccesary, make a small change to create angular seating arrangements when the focus of the meeting shifts to topics that require individual attention and focus. Another small change that the meeting’s planner can adopt is to assign people to specific seats at tables rather than allowing people to select their own (remember, birds of a feather invariably flock together). As any wedding planner will tell you, people are remarkably compliant when they see their name on a place card.

I
t’s taken you weeks, perhaps even months, of hard work and tenacity, but it appears that your efforts are at last starting to pay dividends. Your phone rings. It’s the personal assistant of that important and potentially lucrative new client you have been targeting. They are calling to confirm a meeting the following week. You briefly allow yourself a moment of self-congratulation before turning your attention to planning for the appointment. Meetings like this are hard to come by and the chances are you’ll only have one opportunity to make a great impression. You want to come across as a trustworthy and credible communicator. Friendly, likeable, approachable, and influential.

So what exactly should you wear?

For many years persuasion scientists have been studying the effects of clothing on people’s likelihood to be influenced. Social psychologist Leonard Bickman is perhaps best known for his studies demonstrating the powerful sway of the well-attired. Many of his experiments involved a researcher stopping passersby and asking them to comply with a request of some sort. Sometimes the request would be to pick up a piece of discarded litter, or to stand on a specific spot by a bus stop, or even—and this is our personal favorite—asking passersby to give coins for a car parking meter to a complete stranger.

In each case the small change that Bickman would make would be to vary not the requester, but simply what the requester was wearing. Sometimes the requester would be dressed in casual clothes and sometimes in a uniform such as that of a security guard. Tellingly, in surveys conducted prior to the studies, most participants would dramatically underestimate the influence that a uniformed requester would have on people’s decisions to comply. But the results, of course, told a different story, with often
twice
as many people being persuaded to act when the requester wore the security guard uniform.

Other more recent studies have found similar effects. For example, a UK study demonstrated that people were significantly more likely to recall health messages given to them by a healthcare professional when that messenger was wearing a stethoscope than when no stethoscope was present. Interestingly the stethoscope never had to be used. In addition to acting as an effective tool to help medical professionals diagnose a potential condition, the stethoscope also acted as an effective tool to inform the patient of the wearer’s credibility and knowledge.

Studies have shown that donning a straightforward business suit can have an equally persuasive effect. In one experiment, 350 percent more people were willing to follow a man crossing the street against a red light and against the traffic (and, incidentally, against the law) when he wore a suit rather than just casual clothes.

It is interesting to note that in all these studies, and others like them, a person’s clothing was primarily influencing behavior for one very simple reason: No other information existed about the requester’s expertise. The immediate implications are clear. When meeting someone for the first time it is important to dress at a level that matches one’s true expertise and credentials. To do so is entirely in keeping with a fundamental principle of persuasion
science
—authority. Authority is the principle that influences people, especially when they are uncertain, to follow the advice and recommendations of those they perceive to have greater knowledge and trustworthiness.

But modern-day business meetings are rarely so straight-fo
rwar
d. With the advent of different dress codes, from business formal to dress-down casual and a myriad others in between, perhaps it would be more effective to draw on another powerful driver of human decision making—
similarities
.

In previous chapters we have described how one potential route to effective persuasion for a communicator is to reach out by highlighting genuine commonalities that exist with audience members. What better way of highlighting similarities and minimizing dissimilarities than to find out the dress code of the specific organization and then match it on the day of your meeting? But, again, such an approach is not without its pitfalls. What if the dress code is one that you would not normally choose for yourself? Are you demonstrating true authenticity by matching their standard? And even if you are, could the upside of a similarity be a downside in that your authority and credibility could potentially be undermined?

Put more simply, is there a clear answer to the question, What is most persuasive—authority or similarity?

Unfortunately, we aren’t aware of any research that directly answers this question. However, as is sometimes the case in persuasion, we would surmise that a more effective route might be to employ elements of both approaches. This could mean that, where and when it is appropriate, one might dress in a style similar to that of the person or group you wish to influence—but do so at one level higher. That could mean a neck tie or perhaps a jacket, for example, in an office that generally practices a more relaxed or casual dress policy.

U
sually, a communicator’s purpose is to develop and send a message that alters the attitudes, decisions, or behaviors of its recipients. The critical question, of course, is how best to arrange it.

Although social psychologists have provided many important insights into this matter over the years, one of the most valuable is offered by Anthony Greenwald in his “cognitive response model,” which represents a subtle but critical shift in thinking about persuasion. According to Greenwald’s model, the best indication of how much change a communication will produce lies
not
in what the communication itself says but, rather, in what the recipient of the communication will likely say to him- or herself as a result of receiving it.

When identifying the changes that can be made to a message that will lead to the biggest differences in its persuasiveness, researchers have traditionally focused on elements such as message clarity, structure, logic, and so on because it was thought that the recipient’s comprehension of the message’s content was critical to persuasion. Although this is certainly true, the cognitive response model adds an important insight by suggesting that the message itself is not directly responsible for change. Instead, the direct cause of any change is the result of another factor: self-talk, the internal cognitive responses that people engage in after being exposed to a message. Or put more simply, what a person says to themself after receiving a message.

A good deal of research supports the model. For instance, in one of Anthony Greenwald’s persuasion experiments, audience members’ attitude changes on a topic wasn’t related so much to what they recalled about the elements of the persuasive appeal as it was to what they recalled about the comments they’d made at the time.

So what might be the implications of this view when the time comes for you to fashion a persuasive attempt of your own? Suppose for a moment that you want to write a letter to the citizens of your town supporting lower highway speed limits. The most obvious implication is that you would be foolish to make this attempt without simultaneously thinking about what your audience members would say to themselves in response to the letter.

So what small steps could lead to big differences in the effectiveness of your communication? First, you should consider ways to stimulate readers to talk positively to themselves about all aspects of your letter. This means that in addition to considering the key features of your intended message (for example, the strength and logic of the arguments), you should also take into account an entirely different set of factors that are likely to spur positive responses. For instance, you may want to delay the mailing of your letter until your local newspaper reports a rash of highway accidents; that way, when your letter arrives, its message will gain validity with its recipients because of its good fit with other information. Or you might want to increase the favorable responses to your letter by printing it professionally on high quality paper because people will make the assumption that the more care and expense a communicator has put into a persuasion campaign, the more the communicator believes in its validity.

But, even more important than trying to ensure that your message creates positive self-talk, another small but important step that you should also think about is how to avoid negative s
elf-tal
k—especially in the form of internal
counte
r-ar
guments
to your stated position.

Persuasion researchers have routinely shown that the counter-arguments that audience members make in response to a message can devastate its effectiveness. Thus, you might want to include in your letter a quote from an acknowledged traffic safety expert asserting that higher speed limits greatly increase automobile fatalities.

Recent brain-imaging studies conducted by Jan Engelmann, Monica Capra, Charles Noussair, and Gregory Berns tell us why such a step would work. Participants in the study were asked to make a series of unfamiliar financial choices, some of which were accompanied by advice from an expert source (a prominent economist). When the economist’s guidance was available, the participants’ choices were powerfully affected by this expert’s advice. The reason was revealed in the brain activation patterns of the participants. In the presence of expert advice, the areas of the participants’ brains linked to critical thinking and counter-arguing practically flatlined.

These findings help explain why expert communicators are so effective. It’s not that people look upon a legitimate authority’s position merely as a single important factor that—when combined with other important factors—tips the balance in favor of one choice over another. Instead, and especially when they are unsure of themselves, people allow the authority’s opinion to dominate all the other factors—indeed, even shutting down cognitive consideration of those other factors. As one of the study’s authors said in describing how his findings challenged the traditional model of rational decision making, “In this [traditional] worldview, people take advice, integrate it with their own information, and come to a decision. If that were actually true, we’d have seen activity in brain regions that guide decisions. But, what we found is that when someone receives expert advice, that activity went away.”

Two lessons emerge, both of which require a communicator’s attention when structuring an influence attempt. First, because people frequently disengage their critical thinking and c
ount
er-a
rguing
powers and defer to expert advice, communicators who can lay claim to relevant expertise would be foolish not to make that expertise known early in the process. In addition, steps should be taken to make clear the relevant credentials of the other members of your organization with whom audience members may be interacting. Although simple, it’s surprising how often otherwise savvy communicators forget to credentialize themselves and their colleagues before an influence attempt is launched.

But when they do remember, the results can be impressive.

Take as an example a problem that blights a large number of health centers—too much demand for services and seemingly not enough capacity to meet this demand. When faced with such issues the immediate and obvious response is to simply increase capacity. However, not only is such a response very costly, but as many service organizations will attest, demand for services has a knack of expanding to fill any subsequent increases made in capacity. Newly qualified doctors in the UK, as with many of their colleagues around the world, will complete rotations in various hospitals and health centers after graduation. These rotations provide a significant boost to capacity in the centers; however, patients often appear reluctant to consult with these less experienced doctors, preferring instead to wait and see a resident doctor. But here’s the rub. Given that they have recently graduated from some of the top medical schools in the country and come armed with the latest and most up-to-date skills and knowledge, it could be argued that an appointment with one of them would be a good choice for patients to make. There may be lots of demand in the health system, but often there is underutilized capacity, too. To redress this balance, a number of centers in the trials experimented by prominently highlighting the credentials and up-to-date knowledge of these doctors, usually accompanied by their photograph. Reception staff played a role too, by changing the all-too-common retort, “I can fit you in to see the locum doctor” (the medical equivalent of seeing a substitute teacher), with a credibility-enhancing “I can get you in to see our new highly qualified doctor who has joined us from the University Medical School.” These small, and relatively cheap, interventions led to a dramatic reshaping of demand and capacity. Waiting times for appointments in some centers declined, often by as much as 50 percent, not due to a big system change but because of a small contextual one instead.

In addition to projecting your own and your team members’ expert standing into the consciousness of an audience, it is equally important to protect that status by conveying your background, experience, and skills honestly without exaggeration. That is, if we overstate our know-how and are later discovered to have been deceptive in this regard, we will likely lose the ability to promote our expertise convincingly in the future, even along those dimensions where we can fairly claim it.