Do People Like You More Than You Think? w/ Zoe Chance | builders podcast

0:00There is a liking gap of 12 % where on a scale from 1 to 100, you think that I like you say a 70 but I actually like you 82.

0:15Hey, everybody. The podcast is back with a new name called Builders. So some context. During the first 42 episodes, I realized the original title, The High EQ Marketer, didn't really encompass all the conversations I was having, the people that we were talking to, and that the focus was really on people that had experience building businesses, teams, and careers. So hence the name change. And also exciting news, the podcast is now part of business.com. So shout out to them for making this part of their podcast and content network. And we're going to shoot for a new episode every Tuesday. So speaking of episodes, today is a conversation I had a few months ago with Zoe Chance.

1:01She's an award-winning professor and author. She's a professor at the Yale School of Management. Her book is about influence. You're going to really dig, I think, her advice on how to advance in your career and how to influence people. And then we have a new segment with Editor-in-Chief Marty Beckerman, where we hit on a few interesting stories he's covering. And this week, one of my favorites is where the happiest workers in America live. So thanks a lot for tuning in and enjoy.

1:57Eckerman. Marty, how are you doing? I'm doing great, John. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, thank you. Thanks for agreeing to do this. So you have a reputation, as I think you know, for being the master of the pun, the master of the dad joke. What do you think? Is this reputation warranted? Do you consider it a compliment or an insult? And what's the over under of the number of puns you'll be dropping in our conversations each week? Yeah, I'm definitely the most annoying guy in the office. But I actually, I actually became a dad this year. So now my dad jokes are actual, actual dad jokes before they were just, I don't know what you'd call them.

2:39But yeah, no, I have a baby girl now who in a couple of years will think I'm the most hilarious person in the world. And by five, she'll probably be like, dad, shut up. You're super obnoxious. Well, you've had a crazy amazing year, not only having your first child, you launched the newsletter that we're going to talk about and then also released your seventh novel, Amazing. Can you ever top this year? Two of them are good. This is one of the two good ones. Okay. What do you mean by that? Oh, you know, some of them are better than others. So the novel, let's actually get into that It's a time travel mystery Is that where you're going with the genre?

3:29I wouldn't say it's maybe a satire It's called The Time Meow Sheen It's about a future where climate change has ruined the world And the glaciers have all melted And humanity is dying out And it's the worst case scenario for climate change, climate apocalypse. A brilliant scientist. Uplifting. Uplifting so far. A brilliant scientist realizes they have to go back to 2000 and elect Al Gore as president because that will correct the timeline. But then her cat jumps into the portal as cats tend to do jumping through things. And now the cat must elect Al Gore president. Okay. Which sounds insane, but New York Magazine did call it one of the funniest books of 2023.

4:21So somebody liked it. Well, congratulations on that. You know, cats jump in a lot of things. I actually was sucked into an Instagram reel yesterday, which just was a compilation of cats jumping on aluminum foil. Have you seen this? No. All right. This is something to watch with your newborn daughter later today. And our cat. Yeah, Andrew Cat. Well, congrats on all that stuff. So as far as the newsletter is concerned, it launched when it launched last year. And what's the mission? Yeah, it's been around for about a year and a half now. We launched the newsletter because during the pandemic, a lot of people who were out of work, stuck at home during lockdown, decided to pursue their passions.

5:09They might have been thinking of launching a business for a very long time, or it was a bit of an impulse. Generation Z has a ton of entrepreneurial energy. And they started creating businesses, side hustles from their couch, all kinds of endeavors. And we wanted to create a newsletter that would give guidance that would provide information on how to do this while also interviewing experts and just being really entertaining and really fun. And we've seen phenomenal growth and we're having a blast doing it. Nice. Well, it is really great. And each week I want to talk to you about some of the stories you're working on that I find really interesting.

5:57One of them is like, if there's a thought exercise everyone could have that if you could move to any city or any state in the United States, like where would you be happiest? There's a company that recently did a survey to try to determine where the happiest workers live. And were you surprised by the answer? I was shocked by the answer, which coming in at number one was Alaska, the last frontier, which is where I am from. And while I enjoyed my childhood, it's dark for nine months of the year. I don't normally associate Alaska with anything happy, cold and dark. But Alaskan workers say that they're the happiest because of high wages.

6:41There's a high cost of living there, but the wages match it. And very short commute times, which when you're mushing dog sled through the frozen tundra, there's not too much traffic. So compared to LA, which we move about an inch at a time. Yeah, it's kind of amazing. That is really shocking. There's something about northern climates, because I guess Norway is the happiest country in the world and all that stuff. So I don't know what's going on. It also strikes me. There was an urban legend for years. It turns out this is not probably true, which is sad, but there was an urban legend for years that Alaskans ate more ice cream per capita than anybody in the U.S.

7:22Well, there's also a study that says that the Seattleites, where I'm from, like buy the most sunglasses, which also just doesn't seem like it could be true. But I also think speaking of Seattle in this study, we complain a lot in Seattle about life being difficult for the three or four months where it's really, really dark and really, really wet. And so I guess Alaskans are also just tougher in addition to being happier. In what state was— I'm not tough. That's why I left. I can't do one more of those winters. Yeah, okay. I'm in L.A. because I need sunny and 70 every day, but I'm weak. Okay, a little behind the scenes here.

8:08Our editor was like, oh, there's too much light behind your shoulder, Marty. Marty has the blinds shut, but there's still sun streaming through. So that's how difficult. I'm just soaking up all the vitamin D I did not get the first 18 years of my life. That's how difficult it is in L.A. So anyway, in which state were workers the least happy? Well, John, things are not peachy in the state of Georgia. There we go. where workers are the least satisfied. The survey didn't really get into why that is, but I guess people in Atlanta might want to head north with their snowshoes and live the good life.

8:57Yeah, well, you can definitely say that commute times are kind of brutal in Atlanta. I also wonder if there's something about the fact, now that I'm piecing it together, like in Atlanta, you can be outside all the time. So maybe when you're working in Georgia, you can see what you can do outside of work. But in Alaska, there's really nothing you can do outside of work. So why not embrace that and be happy? I don't know, just a theory. But another survey you're covering is, or a story you're covering, is an annual report from the Federal Reserve, which asks people how much they would need to be paid in order to take a job.

9:38And so what was the big news coming out of that this month? Sure. So this figure is called the reservation wage. The Federal Reserve does this survey every year. And it's the number, as you said, the lowest amount on average people say they would either switch their job or take a new job. And it is much higher this year. It's an 8 % jump year over year. For people without a college degree, it's$80 ,000. for people with a college degree, on average$100 ,000 is the lowest amount they would switch jobs for. So again, huge jump year over year. Surely it has to do with inflation. The cost of housing has skyrocketed.

10:22Groceries, every time you go to the grocery store, eggs are twice as much. And workers feel that they're not making ends meet. The good news for them is that companies actually are meeting these demands because of the tight labor market. According to the Fed, companies are paying 14 % more in wages this year versus last year. So it actually is keeping up with post-inflation wage demands. Wow, that's big. And probably bigger companies, big profitable companies, your Amazons, etc., can foot the bill. Uh, what about for businesses that have tighter margins or are smaller and can't, you know, can't pay someone a hundred K out of the gate?

11:13What should businesses do if they're looking to attract talent? Sure. That's, as you mentioned for a Facebook, that's, uh, that's a salary that's to be expected, but for, um, a small proprietorship, sole proprietorship, a family owned business, that's, an enormous starting salary for people. We spoke to an HR expert who recommended a few different paths. Some are not ideal, such as taking on more work yourself as the business owner or paying yourself less. But she did recommend that business owners can offer more benefits, whether that's more vacation days, free doggy daycare, things to attract workers, perhaps in lieu of a higher salary to make it a really attractive offer.

12:05And that's a way to find and retain talent. Nice. That makes sense. And the last thing I want to ask you about, you snagged some pretty great interviews in the newsletter. The one that's coming out, I think, next week or the week after is your team interviewed the president of the Rockefeller Foundation about his new book, Big Bets, and how to actually make societal change happen and have measurable results. What was most interesting to you about that conversation? Right. I was saying before that I kind of wanted to headline the article, I like Big Bets and I cannot lie, but it's a really serious interview.

12:51So that would have been that would have been not good. So Dr. Raj Shah is president of the Rockefeller Foundation. He's the former director of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and he also was head of USAID under President Obama. So he has accomplished some really impressive things in his career from overseeing the US response to the Haiti earthquake, to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. He's helped get vaccines throughout the developing world. So he's had a hugely impressive career. And his new book is about how to turn your ideal goals that might seem kind of pie in the sky, how to turn them into measurable, tangible results through a lot of nuanced and complex strategy.

13:41Nice. All right. To round this out, I guess two questions. One is, how does somebody get the free newsletter if they want it? Sure. Go to business.com. You'll see the signup form and enter your email and you'll receive two issues per week, one on Tuesday and one on Friday. The Friday one has our popular webcomic, which I call Dilbert for Generation Z. it's actually called work life unbalanced but now now that the Dilbert guy is you know kind of lost his mind uh we we sensed a business opening ourselves there nice you got to take advantage of what you can and then um just so that the we don't disappoint the audience here what maybe you can tell the uh uh the dad joke you told me um last week you remember that one oh sure uh What did the doctor say after the onion got a concussion playing in the NFL?

14:40What was that? He'll live, but he'll be a vegetable forever. Jeez. I stole that joke from Christopher Hitchens. Oh, okay. Okay, that's okay. He has a 20-minute version of that joke. I heard it over drinks at some journalist event in 2005. It takes 20 minutes to lead up to that stupid pun and everyone groans and it was great, but we'd have to do another podcast episode to include the full version. All right. If anybody has any dad jokes they want us to read on the air, just leave a comment on this podcast. We'll review and do our best to do that. Thanks, Marty. Thanks, John.

15:28Hi, Zoe. How are you? Great to see you. I'm fantastic. It's great to see you again, John. I'm really excited to talk about the topic of influence. It's for sure one of the most important things that any of us have. Your book literally talks about that influence is your superpower. And what I like about it is we're trying to achieve maybe an emotional gain or some type of game, but there's a science in making good things happen. And that's what I'm hoping to talk about today. You know, when you and I met, actually our first interaction, in a funny way, is you asked me for 20 bucks. Do you remember that?

16:06Of cold, hard cash. You did that for an experiment. Maybe can you talk about that and the actual experiment you did for the audience? Yeah. So this is an experiment that I do sometimes in class. And when I teach workshops to illustrate some weird things about asking and the experiment was the next ask. So my first ask of you maybe was a test to see if you're actually my friend and it turned out you were. But the ask invitation in the workshop is I have$20 in cash and I say to a participant or to the room, would you persuade me to give you$20? Having taught absolutely nothing about influence and, you know, it's kind of funny and it's awkward.

16:54And, of course, these are for people like executives. Like, you don't need$20. You don't need my$20. So it's further a little bit uncomfortable. But what happens the vast majority of the time is that the person who is asking is not actually asking. There's some story based on some assumptions about what the money could be used for. So we had somebody talking about his triplets and they need a lot of diapers. And then it just leaves the conversation there, just waiting for me to say, okay, but I don't because I'm waiting until there's an actual ask and until that person actually tries to close the deal.

17:42Most people think they've asked when they haven't. And this is illustrating this principle that a lot of us go around the world thinking that other people know what we would like and that we just have to be deserving to have all of these good things happen when clearly we don't. It's not true for any of us. And it's also unequally true for some of us more than others. So at a basic level, a lot of the influence that I teach is self-advocacy. But of course, for leaders, this extends to advocating for your team and teaching the people you mentor to advocate for themselves and for better policies.

18:21Yeah. When I think about the salespeople that I know who are most successful, people who are in a sales function or sales role, they're excellent at making the big ask. Yes, may I have a million dollars? This costs$10 million where others may have a trepidation about asking for the ask or they want the client or prospect to basically do that part for them. And it's not going to happen. Yeah, that's really interesting. I want to get back to that. But there's something else that you segued into when you were speaking at our summit. And that was there's an exercise that you do with your class sometimes where folks have, I can't remember whether they have an item or they have a certain amount of money and they're trying to trade up.

19:17Can you describe what happened and then kind of the end result for one of your most successful situations? Yeah, this piece is crazy. And it's a fun, like ice breaking team building thing. If you have an orientation at your company or something, some other people have done this. The game is called bigger and better. And you start with something small. So it could be something like a nickel or it could be like we'll use in class a paper clip and you trade up with something for something bigger and better, bigger and better as many times as you want with anyone on earth who will trade with you. you decide what bigger and better is.

19:58So it might be size. Like we've had in class, someone show up with a 10 foot statue of the Egyptian god Anubis and then not know what to do with it. But it could be sentimental value. Like some people have ended up with love poems and it could be so big that you couldn't even bring it into the classroom. And the story that I shared was of a couple of students, Manus and Tom, who had traded up between a Monday and a Thursday with 10 business owners in our town of New Haven, Connecticut. And they traded up for, there was some cupcakes, there was a cheese gift certificate, there was an ugly painting in there that was apparently valuable, but their biggest, best thing, they said, please come bring the class outside.

20:46It's in front of the building. And we went downstairs and there was a Volkswagen Jetta And it said bigger and better across the windshield. And they donated this family to the car to a refugee family from Afghanistan. The mom who had been commuting two hours each way on the bus got to spend more time with her family and her kids. And I love this story because it illustrates, first of all, the vast opportunities that are out there, if we even thought of asking, and how we don't have to always be able to repay whatever favor or help it is that somebody else is offering us. and how when we can share a grand or fun or engaging vision, people can be really excited to step up even more than if we asked them to do something that was more easy and manageable.

21:40So I love that story. And I also love how it illustrates some research findings, like that people are two or three times more likely to say yes than we think that they will be when we make predictions. And another one I really like is that there is a liking gap of 12 % where on average, people like you 12 % more than you realize. And this is part of the reason that they're more likely to say yes than you think. So, okay. So to reiterate, paperclip to car in 10 trades in four days. Yeah. And the number of car dealerships they called was one. Oh, wow. Okay. So the car dealership was the last one.

22:23The last one. Yeah. Okay. Okay, cool. You know, I wonder, like you're working with younger students, younger than me, anyway. Do you notice anything with your latest cohorts of students where either they're they're struggling with self-advocacy or influence compared to, you know, someone like me, their elder, and then also where new cohorts have advantages. You know, I'm thinking about like, whether it's social media or being more connected is a challenge or maybe a benefit. Any reaction to that? So first of all, for those of you who have not met John, he looks like he's in his 20s. So when he says elder, I don't know exactly what he means.

23:14Cohort wise, first of all, the students at Yale who I teach are MBA students, only a few undergrads here and there. So they're in their late 20s. They're, I guess, at this point, millennials. I think pretty much all of them with a few Gen Z sprinkled in. The discomfort around self-advocacy, I would say, is definitely not getting better overall. However, there are, as I've observed in many colleagues and managers who I've talked to in other organizations, there have been an increasing number of people who are asking in a really obnoxious way that sounds entitled. And it's not that nobody used to do that, but there's some more of that going on than there used to be.

24:13I don't know if that relates to social media, but then there is an increasing discomfort with using the telephone for sure. One of the exercises that we do with my class is we do a cold calling challenge where they're fundraising for charity. And I had been surprised to realize how many people never even make phone calls anymore. So the idea of cold calling and asking a stranger for money is already really, really scary, even if you're comfortable calling people. But just the idea of actually talking to a stranger on the phone is becoming for a lot of people less comfortable. What I also notice is that there's a more top of mind kind of interest in cultural differences.

25:04And it's not just that I have a very global international population of students and executives I teach, but people are more interested in understanding that and talking about it. And same thing for individual personality differences. So there are big cultural differences in how direct or indirect people expect us to be. And there are also big differences in terms of privilege, big differences in terms of gender and things like this. And personality type and behavior about being introverted or extroverted. my my son is is 15 years old so i'm not i'm not in my 20s but the reason the reason i bring that up is um is he's he's just joined a team um that's you know going to play a sport in the fall and they're all doing personality tests to to understand to understand each other and how to communicate better.

26:03And I never did anything even remotely close to that in my sporting days as a youth. And I think there's this recognition, bigger recognition that understanding different perspectives is a super important part to achieving anything together. So it's great to see that you're noticing that more. Is he excited about that? Is he finding it helpful and valuable? He hasn't done it yet. So I think it's, I can't remember whether it's the disc profile, or I can't remember which one he's doing. But both of my kids are teenagers in school and really, really focused on this issue, understanding different perspectives.

26:55So that's great to see that you're seeing that as well. Now, I want to ask more about the liking gap. So, so, you know, I think, how do I express this? So Zoe, I meet you and I might say, you know, there's a 60 % chance that Zoe likes me, but in reality, there's a 70 % chance that you like me? Is that what you mean by the liking gap? The liking gap is that on a scale from one to a hundred, you think that I like you say a 70, but I actually like you 82. Okay. It's also true that most people like most people like most of the people that they meet. What? That's a different statistic. And I don't know that number.

27:47What? what's the science behind that, if there is? I mean, it's just good. That's just an inherent good fact. But is there anything, and I wonder actually, a related question is getting back together in person in a lot of cases, does that make us like each other even more? Yes, for sure. Sure. So two specific researchers who've looked a lot into these topics and done many experiments are Erica Boothby, who's done a lot of the experiments on the liking gap, and then also Juliana Schroeder, and she's worked some with Nicholas Epley. And she has strangers come together and talk to each other, and you're predicting, so are you going to enjoy this conversation?

28:41Are you going to be glad that you had it? And are you going to have enjoyed your time more? Like she'll ask people, say before a commute, talk to a stranger on the subway. And then after your subway ride, fill out this survey and tell us how it went. And before getting on the subway, we definitely don't want to talk to a stranger or, you know, you show up to some in-person event where you didn't know anybody and it's super, super awkward. but you don't understand that actually everybody else is kind of feeling awkward and they're so happy to have a stranger come up and talk to them and this is almost every single person ends up being happy that they talked to a stranger this is I think reported in Malcolm Gladwell's book talking to strangers also so almost everyone is glad that they talked to a stranger especially if you're the person coming up and helping them feel more comfortable it's just that we don't predict it.

29:40But John, I've also had a number of people ask me recently about if it's really true that people have lost some of their EQ and their social skills during the pandemic. And I don't know about research on that, just that anecdotally, a lot of people think so. Do you know about that? I don't know. I can't give you any data point or science. I'd say anecdotally, when I saw people in 3D for the first time, people that I had hired or people that I had met via Zoom through work, it was, you know, it was, it was, you know, they're kind of like sparks, you know, sparks that happen. In a good way, you're saying.

30:24Yeah, yeah, in a really good way. It is also a very strange feeling, because in a bunch of cases, I, I was like, wait, actually, have I met you in person before? There was something very weird about the whole thing. That makes me feel so much better, by the way. I keep having that recently. Yeah. Yeah. So let me ask also about the liking stats. So repeat that again. So someone is two to three times more likely to say yes than you think Yeah, if you're estimating how likely do I think they are to say yes to an in-person request. So this comes back to what you were bringing up about the environment that we're in.

31:12And people are most likely to say yes to face-to-face requests relative to any other type of face-to-face, one-to-one, you ask me. and I am more likely to say yes in that situation than if you pick up the phone or send an email or you have texted me or you just posted a random, not random, but you posted a public message on social media or you emailed a group. In those more arm's length, one to many kind of invitations, there's nobody who has to say no. So it's very easy for nobody to say yes. But if you're asking me in person, in addition to the fact that I like you more than you realize, I'm also feeling how uncomfortable it would be to say no and actually reject you.