Women at Work - The Essentials: Persuading People

0:02You're listening to Women at Work from Harvard Business Review. I'm Amy Gallo. Raven Hoffman, like a lot of us, is trying to figure out how to better persuade others. She works in the construction industry as a senior estimator at a tile and stone contractor. I spend my entire day looking at blueprints, pricing things out, convincing guys I do know what I'm talking about, telling the guys what to do so that they do it right when they get to the job. Not much time at my desk.

0:34I get up and I'm out in the workhouse looking for stuff. I'm on the phone calling people. Most of my day is putting out fires. Construction is one of the most male dominated industries in the world. Raven has been in it for 20 years, thriving and with no plans to leave. Lately though, she's been struggling with a new important part of her job. Selling people she hasn't met before on doing business with her and her company.

0:58Conversations and meetings she's initiated haven't consistently forged the sorts of trusting relationships that lead to contracts. But Raven's determined to become more persuasive, with perspective and existing clients as well as with longtime colleagues. And so she was excited, as was I, to talk to and learn from a woman who's studied and mastered this skill. Vanessa Bonds is a social psychologist. She teaches at Cornell and is the author of the book You Have More Influence Than You Think.

1:28how we underestimate our power of persuasion and why it matters. And she's here with advice for pitching ideas, preempting people from doubting your expertise, and getting co-workers to start or stop doing something. Raven, Vanessa, thank you so much for joining us on the show today. Thank you for the invitation. Yeah, thanks so much for having me. So Raven, I want to start with you and understand a little bit more about your work.

1:57Where exactly you feel like you have influence and where do you think you currently lack influence? So I am fortunate the company I work for the current ownership came on when their grandmother was running the company They believe in hiring strong women. They believe in letting us do what we do best So I feel they listen within the company so often externally My knowledge seems to be under question. Is that with customers with subcontractors or customers? So often I will call with an issue on a project to say I foresee this as an upcoming problem and the response I will get is Hey is your boss there? Can I talk to him about it? Hmm Usually I transfer him over to him and he laughs at them and says you need to talk to rave and she knows what's going on more than I do

2:55and sends them back, but I think they've already disengaged from me as an authority who knows what she's talking about. Vanessa, in your research, you explore people's perception of their influence and how that compares with reality. Your book is called You Have More Influence Than You Think. What did you hear in Raven's answer there that speaks to the common perceptions or misperceptions that women tend to have about their power to be persuasive?

3:24So I definitely hear some elements of the difference between the way we use stereotypes to understand people we don't know well. If I go into an interaction with someone and I don't know how to behave with this person, I don't know what I think of this person. Stereotypes guide us in a sort of way of thinking about this person and how this interaction is going to go. And unfortunately still in many places in the world, you know, Seeing a woman brings to mind the stereotype that they don't have as much expertise as me, particularly if it's in a field that it tends to be a male dominated field.

4:04On the other hand, describing these people who really do know you, who know that you have this expertise or you have these established relationships, now they don't need to rely on a stereotype, right? They actually know you, they've gotten to know you. So this is a very sort of classic way of coding people that we don't know. One of the things that women tend to get sort of dinged on in terms of the stereotypes is this idea that we aren't authorities.

4:31on something, again, particularly if it's in a sort of male dominated field. Like construction, right? Exactly. Right. And so one thing that we know from the influence literature is that we listen to people who we think are authorities. If someone we think knows what they're talking about tells us that we should do something, not surprisingly, we assume that we should do it more so than if we think, oh, this person doesn't know what they're talking about. Right. But women often face this sort of double whammy.

5:00There's this coding of like, okay, this person is not as much of an authority, right, as maybe their male counterpart. But women also often struggle to profess their own authority. I was part of something called the op-ed project where we learn how to write op-eds to get more female and under-representative minorities into, you know, public discourse.

5:25And one of the activities they had us do was to establish our authority. Why am I the one to write this op-ed? And so we would go around the room and we would say, here's who I am. I went to this school. I have this background, you know, da-da-da-da. And women with these extraordinary backgrounds were playing them down.

5:43Women who had done amazing things were like, yeah, I know how to do this little thing when in fact they had studied it for like 10 years and were masters at it. So one thing women can struggle to do at times is to make up for that authority gap that we're missing by actually professing our authority by saying.

6:03Hi, I'm so-and-so. Here's my long list of expertise. And this is why I'm talking to you, right? To say, okay, you know, you may have had a stereotype about me. We're going to get rid of that right here and now. And I'm going to tell you exactly why I have the authority to be talking to you. And at the same time, women tend to hesitate to do that. And so in this case, the fact that they're just saying, you should talk to Raven without giving you that buildup, right? I think it's kind of putting you at a disadvantage.

6:32Raven, how do you introduce yourself when you're working with new clients? Have you tried what Vanessa's describing? I have not. And I'm really intrigued about what that would end up looking like in a conversation to not come across as arrogant and, you know, hey, I know you're new. So let me pile on you how many years I've been doing this and how much I know. And then try to build a bigger relationship is how I perceive something like that.

7:01So I'm wondering how you would work that into the conversation and have that dialogue without coming across as arrogant. And that's exactly why the women in my group hesitated to talk about all their accolades was because they were worried they were going to come across as bragging and arrogant. Really, what people often talk about when we're judged by other people, we're judged on two main things, warmth and confidence.

7:29And women tend to be judged even more on warmth. So if we overplay our competence, people think we're cold, and that's where we come across as arrogant, etc. And so the best way, unfortunately, to sort of counteract that is to couple your expressions of competence with something warm. So it could be something like...

7:51I am so excited to work with you because I have worked with so many other clients. I have worked with these big clients or whatever it is that sounds really good. I have been working in this field for 15 years or 20 years because I just love it and so I can't wait to work with you. So something that says, you know, look at all this experience I have, but in this warm, friendly, like cooperative sort of way. How does that land with you, Raven? I like that. I can do that. Yeah.

8:21I mean, I can even imagine something simple and Vanessa tell me if this would work, but even saying, you know, I've been assigned to this project because I've done 4,000 just like it. I'm really excited to collaborate with you to get your project done on time and under budget or, you know, whatever metrics matter to your clients. What do you think of that? Yeah, I think that would be great. As you said, you want to know the metrics that matter to them, like what would establish to them that you're an expert.

8:47and you put that out there and you just add something that says and I'm telling you this so that we can have a great relationship and so I can be helpful and I think that gets that across for sure. Raven, I can imagine that you do a lot of influencing already. Can you tell me about a time where you needed to persuade people at work to either do something or to stop doing something and it was successful? Most recently there was a product line that I wanted to bring back on that we had carried for a while.

9:17and did not. And I went in and presented the facts of what products they had that were good, that filled gaps. I stuck to the facts. I knew what I needed to present and we brought the line back on. It has worked very well for us. And can you give us an example of a time where it didn't go so well? Yes, with my coworkers and emails and do not reply all. I have requested quite a few times that we don't all need to be on these back and forth conversations between two people. If you're having this conversation, I get a hundred plus emails a day easily. No one listens. And unfortunately, I've had a few meltdowns over it, which I'm sure did not help the persuasion on. I was hoping that it was just going to be one of those things where Graven's had a meltdown. We don't want another one. Let's quit doing this. That didn't work either.

10:15So what do you hear in those two examples Vanessa about what worked and why and what didn't work and why? Yeah, it's interesting because they are pretty different influenced topics right one is about facts and I imagine you sort of outlined here's this thing I think we should do to a group of people who probably were pretty Expert in what you were talking about right. They probably knew quite a bit about it already. There's work on the difference between when we try to influence someone on something that they know really well and care about quite a bit. And when you're trying to do that, you really want to stick to the facts, like you said, and come up with arguments because they're going to get it. You know, they know the counter arguments, they know their facts, they know how to interpret the facts you're giving them, and they care enough. Then there are other kinds of things we try to influence people about where

11:08They're less expert or less invested is a big part, right? They just don't care that much. And so often in those cases, the facts are not going to get them to go along with you. It's all these other sort of peripheral aspects. It's just our other people going along with what you said, you know, I'm not going to pay that much attention to all your arguments for why I should do this. But as long as I know that like Bob is doing it, I'll do it. Well, what about the reply all situation? Why do you think Raven was less successful there?

11:38That one I am actually fascinated by because that just sparks my curiosity. Why don't they stop doing it? Is it because they actually aren't persuaded that they should? Like, is this a question of persuasion or is it something else? Is it a question of motivation or just the ease? Are they forgetting? Do you have any insight into why they haven't stopped doing it? It's easier to just hit reply all than to reply just to one person.

12:07Interesting. In that case, like what would be persuasive? And it's funny. I know this example is, I think some might say silly, but I actually think this is something people deal with all the time. Yeah. As someone who talks about conflict and difficult co-workers, I hear about the reply all messages all the time. So I do think this is quite relevant. So like what would be persuasive?

12:31As I said, it sparks my curiosity because I can't imagine that the reason is that they feel strongly about being able to reply all. It must be sort of an automatic behavior, you know, that they're not even thinking about it in the moment. And so those are the kinds of things where you want to be able to change either just the default response, like the norm of everybody, so that when you're about to hit that, you're like, oh wait, I don't want to be that person who hits reply all because, you know, there's this norm that that's not a good thing to do.

13:00or it could just be one of these things where it really is like they need a reminder like they forget right so like putting something in a signature line or putting something on you know people's computers like a sticky note like something that just sounds like it could just be a habit that they don't care enough to break.

13:24And so I think the ways, you know, to break habits are either to make them more automatic, right? The opposite habit, more automatic. And so you kind of get rid of just that default click or you make it so counter normative to do that thing that people actually do care enough to stop before they hit that button, right? Like I know that enough people like make fun of you here if you hit reply all that.

13:49No one wants to do that. And so many times I have actually triple checked to make sure I didn't accidentally hit reply all, but that's because of a norm that's been set. And so you could do something where like you start teasing people who don't know how to not hit reply all or just get some people to stop doing it and then eventually other people stop doing it. Yeah. But as can you.

14:11Tell us about an experience you've had recently where you've had to persuade someone or a group and how you used your own research to be effective at it. You know, I was thinking actually about this person I used to work with when I first came to the job on the now who is an incredible persuader. He just could get any group to sort of see his version and When I first came to the job I have now, you know, we would do things like we would get together as a group and decide on a candidate to hire. That was a common thing, or a graduate student to admit those kinds of decisions. And my expectation was we're all going to go into this meeting and we're all going to lay out our ideas and who we think should be the candidate. And then we're going to make a decision right then.

15:01But I quickly learned that so much of what happened in that meeting was predetermined by all the legwork that this person would do before the meeting. And it really made me realize that so much of influence is these informal conversations that you have to get people on your side, this like coalition building and setting the stage for arguments that are going to be made and less about that sort of formal presentation. You know, I had in my head that like almost movie version of someone stands up in the front of the room, gives this big presentation. Everybody's like, that's the one and clapping. And it's like this kind of formal persuasive attempt. But so much was about garnering support before you went in. So that once you got into that meeting, you knew who was on your side already. And you could kind of point to them. So you could say like, so and so and I really think

15:56this person's the best. And now all of a sudden you've got like a little team that started the momentum in that meeting. You also have done your reconnaissance so you know what people's objections are going to be. So you know that so-and-so cares about this and they're probably going to say that. And so-and-so cares about this and they're probably going to say that. So you kind of are already lined up to be able to have a counter argument. And then you also know who's not going to care.

16:24As long as the rest of the group is going in this direction, this person is just going to go in that direction as well. And so now I realize that almost all of, I'd say maybe 90% of the attempt to persuade in a meeting happens before that meeting. Raven, is that a tactic you've used, sort of the meetings before the meeting? Absolutely. Generally, if I know I'm going to be meeting with a group of people, especially if there's somebody new in there, I kind of get a feel for who they are from people that know them. So I know what to talk to and how to present. Some people are going to want more facts, more detail. Some are going to want it as short as possible so they can get on with the rest of their day. And some are going to be entirely focused on building a relationship and not care about any of the facts. So it's really determining what your audience needs before you get into that meeting.

17:21so this is kind of how i think about it and i'm curious if this works with customers as well pre-selling before you get into that meeting i feel like in many cases people feel cornered if you just give them all the information they didn't have anything before and you expect them to kind of make a decision there and that's really hard to get people to actually commit in that moment but if you kind of pre-sell it you're like this is what i'm going to present to you and they've kind of got their mind halfway made up already, it's so much easier in that moment to sort of close and get them the rest of the way. Would you agree with that too? Absolutely. And I usually don't anticipate leaving a meeting with an answer. I anticipate leaving the information with the clients and probably getting another week's worth of questions after it. Raven, other than the reply all situation, are there other things

18:17that you'd like your team or company to start doing or stop doing that you haven't yet pushed for? I have been saying for years that we need to be more proactive about getting in with the trade schools and the high school trade programs to recruit staff. And for a lot of times I've just been shut down on it. And it's kind of a perception of not being quality people in those programs.

18:47having come from an alternative school background, I highly disagree. Yeah. Where do most employees come from now, Raven, if they're not from these trade schools or high schools? At the moment, nowhere. We're not getting applications. We're not having any luck. We're trying all sorts of things we have not in the past. It used to be entirely word of mouth and reference. Right. But that's any advice for Raven on how she might push this issue? Sure.

19:17First, I'll say that it's great that she wants to keep pushing it because I do think that a lot of people here know or don't get an enthusiastic enough sort of response and assume that no is forever or there's no way they're going to change this person's mind when that's really rarely the case. So I think it's great that you do want to keep pushing forward, you know, once you do have the time. I think one piece of advice that, you know, we give in negotiations a lot if you're kind of at a stalemate.

19:46is to ask the other party for advice. Something that Zoe Chance calls the magic question, which is basically saying to someone, what would it take for you to actually consider people from trade schools? What would it take for you to agree with this thing that I'm coming to you with? And what that does is that...

20:07brings the other party to your side, right? So now it's not like a confrontation, I'm trying to convince you, you're pushing back, right? Now we're both gonna look at this problem from the same side and you might get some insight into the hesitations and they might even be more willing to reflect on their hesitations than you would otherwise get, right? When you're playing a guessing game of I say this and then I see if that resonates with you or not, right? It may be that they come back and say, well, if I saw this kind of data, maybe i would consider it if i saw competitors using people from trade schools maybe i would consider it if you could get so-and-so on board maybe i would consider it and maybe you wouldn't have thought of one of those things it also kind of gets them thinking a little further down right so there is a way i might consider it and it sets up an expectation if they say if you could show me this i would consider it okay find that

21:03And now they've already kind of pre committed. So now you have sort of already gotten them a little closer towards your position. Awesome. I can definitely do that. Vanessa, I have a question for you. I'm largely an introvert and I'm not good with soft skills. So I'm not always good at picking up on the nonverbal cues. So anything that can help me know what I need to be looking for other than the really blatantly obvious, you know, arms crossed, leaned away.

21:33fidgeting, what are some smaller cues out there that might indicate that I'm not being as persuasive as I would like to be? Ultimately, it's actually really hard for people to say no and to kind of come out and tell you, I don't like what you're selling me. I don't agree with the things that you're saying. And often people will sort of hem and haw instead of actually coming out and saying, you know, forget about it because people are polite at the end of the day you know people want to be agreeable they don't want to be disagreeable so I do think you know you kind of have to look in many cases for these nonverbals these kind of hesitations and try to lock in some enthusiasm for something you know like get them talking about

22:26some real problem that they have or something they really don't like about their current situation. Something that gets them out of this sort of defensive, I don't want to say no, but I also don't want to say yes kind of thing and gets them opening up a little bit and maybe sharing a little bit of the problems they have and the ways in which you could then jump in and talk about your solutions. Yeah. Are there questions that people who don't feel confident reading?

22:52nonverbal cues. Are there questions that you can ask to take temperature along the way to see, oh, how is this going? Again, if you're not confident reading someone's body language, can you be a little more explicit? I think you can be explicit. And there's research showing actually that we hesitate to ask people questions because we think they're going to be hesitant to answer them. But in fact, the best way to get insight into how someone's feeling is to ask them. There's other research showing that if you tell people, try to figure out what's going on in this person's mind. We think that we know what's going on. We think we can read body language, but we're actually pretty bad at it. And our guesses are often wrong. But if you just tell people, ask this person what they think.

23:43ask what's on this person's mind. Of course all of a sudden they're so much more accurate because the person is quite willing to open up and say, you know, well actually I wasn't so sure about this thing that you were saying or here's my hesitations or here's the person I would have to convince, right? And now you kind of know what you're dealing with. So I definitely would say if you can ask an open-ended question that's like How do you see this potentially applying to your situation? Are you hearing things that you like in this or things that you're not so sure about is a great way to take their temperature? If this is something you're working on and you want to be more persuasive at work, you know, you're going to be looking for opportunities to do this and it can feel like you're pushing, pushing, pushing. Can you talk about Vanessa how pulling back on an effort or even letting an issue go all together is actually

24:35part of the skill or part of the tactic that can be effective? Yeah, it's funny. You know, we, we really have this sort of need for closure and to feel effective when we're trying to persuade someone. And so we kind of want to know right away that we've made some progress at least or that we've gotten somewhere. And often people aren't ready to show that and we have to give them space to digest.

25:01but we also want to keep, you know, what we're trying to persuade them of top of mind. So gentle check-ins can be helpful. This is another sort of skill that comes from Zoe Chance is, you know, saying, can I follow up with you?

25:16in a few days, or can I follow up with you next week? And that says, I'm going to give you space and time to think about this, to digest what I've said. You've given me permission to follow up, so I'm not just annoying you by following up. And then you can keep it top of mind and give them a little space. The research shows that If we're given the chance to try to persuade someone who is completely against what we want to persuade you know them to believe or someone who's actually kind of close to what we want to persuade them to believe.

25:48We want to persuade the person who's totally on the opposite side. We want to feel that satisfaction of like I flipped that person, right? We just want that satisfaction. But in fact, it's so much easier to persuade the person who's closer and you're more likely to be successful. But we tend to not derive the same kind of satisfaction. And I think it's a similar thing. It's like, I want that. Yes, right now.

26:09Right? But sometimes we just need to relax and take the small wins and take the tiny steps that are getting someone a little bit closer to where you want to close them and be okay with, you know, patience and space. One of the pieces of advice I've heard given often in sort of negotiation context that is if you want to persuade someone, you need to demonstrate that you yourself are persuadable. Is that advice that you agree with Vanessa? And if so, how do you show that you're willing to change your mind?

26:40Yeah, I do think that that's a really helpful sort of tactic, right? Because one of the fundamental aspects of human behavior is reciprocity. So I give a little, you give a little, right? Once I give, you feel this kind of urge or this need to give a little back. No one wants to be the jerk who like you just made this major concession and now I'm just gonna stay in my ground, right? And I also, I think, makes the other person feel listened to right if you can give something it shows that actually you're not just in it for yourself that makes it a more cooperative integrative kind of discussion which i think we tend to forget when we're trying to persuade someone we think we're on two sides and i'm just trying to push and you're pulling or whatever but when you give a little it says.

27:30I see, you know, your side. I am willing to consider this integratively. I'm willing to give up a little bit myself. Now, what are you willing to do when it becomes more of a cooperative discussion? One of our company owners says that quite often with customers, I go from their salesperson Raven to by the end of the project, I'm their friend Raven. Well, if I'm their friend, they're going to be more likely to refer me.

27:59So it is getting to that point where they realize I do actually care. You cannot fake wanting someone to have a successful project and they feel that. Yeah. So many people are uncomfortable with things like negotiation. So many people are uncomfortable with sales. And I think part of it is that discomfort makes us think of one-shot interactions. I'm just going to get in there. I'm going to do it. I'm going to make the sale. I'm going to convince someone. I'm going to get it done.

28:27When in fact, the best kinds of sales and negotiations are long-term relationships, they're not one-shot interactions. And as soon as you start thinking of it like that, the next time I have to sell to this person, the next time we negotiate, it changes the way you approach the one that you're in right now, I think for the better. Vanessa, let's say you have tried to persuade your boss or your team to do something and it hasn't gone well.

28:56you've failed. Maybe we even talk about the reply all situation here, but you still believe it's a cause worth pursuing or pushing. What should you do before you try again, before you sort of get back in there? What do you do in your mind or in terms of preparing yourself to be more effective the next time around? I definitely think that this is a case where I would try to generate as much curiosity as possible.

29:25because especially if I think it's an important enough issue that I'm willing to go back and push for it, right? But other people don't seem to see my side. I'd be really curious. What's happening? What's keeping people from doing this? How are they seeing things so differently from me? And I would definitely get into question asking mode. I would probably take a step out of my initial like, I'm going to change things. I'm going to persuade kind of mode and get into, okay.

29:52I'm going to understand. I'm going to ask questions. I'm going to go and say, you know, I'm curious, like, why do you hit reply all? You know, what is it that happens in that moment? And I think that's where you really learn, you know, what it is that are the actual barriers to getting them to see your side. And you might actually learn that, oh, you know, there is an advantage. They're getting something out of doing this their way.

30:18that I didn't see and I didn't understand, maybe I can find a way for them to still get that thing and still get what I need as well. So I think a lot of what you do next is dependent on the answers you get from those follow-up interviews after you've failed to persuade. Before we wrap up, Raven, what are you taking away from this conversation? What do you feel like you might do differently? I'm definitely going to work on building allies when I'm going into conversations and meetings with new people, I'm going to keep in the front of my mind becoming that authority in ways to do it gently as opposed to with a sledgehammer so that I can build those relationships because everything in life is about those continued relationships. So if I do something incorrectly in the beginning, it can cause damage moving forward and I want to use the correct persuasion tactics and I've gotten a lot of wonderful tools.

31:17to be able to do that. Thank you. That's great. Well, Raven, Vanessa, thank you both so much. This has been a really useful conversation for me. I've learned a lot. And Raven, I appreciate you sharing your experience around all things persuasion. Yes, thank you for having me and thank you, Vanessa, for your insights. They've been valuable. Thank you. It's been really, really, really interesting listening to you. Thank you as well. Thanks for sharing.

31:44Women at Work's editorial and production team is Amanda Cursey, Maureen Hoek, Tina Toby Mack, Rob Eckhart, Erica Truxler, Ian Fox, and Hannah Bates. Robin Moore composed this theme music. This episode is part of our series, The Essentials. In it, we bring together management experts and women working in essential industries in order to cover the fundamentals and nuances of key career skills. Scroll through the show's feed to find other Essentials episodes.

32:14You'll see ones on negotiating strategically, being productive, managing stress, and giving feedback. Plus, more are on the way. And if you want to go deeper on the topic of persuading others and create a plan to practice what you've learned, check out Harvard Manage Mentor. It's an online, self-directed learning and skill building resource. Visit hbr.org slash Harvard Manage Mentor to see all the different skills the program can help you build, broaden, and refresh.

32:43I'm Amy Gallo. Thanks for listening. Email us anytime at women at work at hbr.org.