#487 Ask the Expert - The Power of Influence and the Messenger Effect with Steve Martin

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1:16Although meningitis is uncommon, about 1 in 10 who develop it will die. Ask your teen's doctor about missing meningitis vaccinations. Learn more at meningitis.com. Vaccination may not protect all recipients. Sponsored by GSK. The perfect lunch combo. That first bite of your favorite sub, followed by ice-cold Pepsi. Add a couple of friends, and now that's next level. Suddenly, the laughs get louder, the stories keep flowing, and the food tastes better. Because Pepsi brings out more flavor, more fun, and more of the moment. food deserves pepsi grab a pepsi zero sugar today hi it's helen from the squiggly careers podcast this is a weekly show where we talk about the ins the outs the ups and occasional downs of work and try to give you some tips and tools to help you feel in control and a bit more confident about your career development normally this show is brought to you by me and my co-host sarah but today we're doing something slightly different We've got one of our experts and we're going to talk about the topic of influence.

2:18So over the next 30 minutes or so, you're going to hear me talk to author Steve Martin. And specifically, we are going to focus on when you are influencing, why the message and the messenger makes such a big difference to how successful you are. This is based on Steve's book, Messengers. And I've known Steve for a little while now, and I find his work very, very well researched and very, very practical. So I think you're going to learn a lot from the conversation today. Some of the things we talk about are why we need different messengers for different messages and also why things about hard and soft power make a difference to how we influence at work.

2:55So I'm going to let you listen and learn and I'll be back at the end to let you know what's coming up next on the Squiggly Careers podcast. I'm very excited that we get to talk because I feel like we've been, you know, we've been talking around this topic for a while and influence is so important for people to succeed in their squiggly careers. but I think sometimes it can feel a little bit uncomfortable, like I don't know what to do. And I think your take on understanding the messenger, as well as considering the message, which I think a lot of people prioritize, is something that I know is going to be a really useful conversation for people today.

3:30So maybe we just start with that. Why does differentiating the message, so what you want to say, from the messenger, so from who is saying it, Why does that matter? Why do we need to even make that distinction? Well, so I kind of landed on this idea that it's a helpful shortcut. You know, we live in a society in our business now where there's so many things that we do have to pay attention to. The challenge can sometimes be, well, what message do I listen to? You know, do I believe this point of view? Do I look at this proposal? Do I think about this potential option? and as more and more options more and more information becomes available to us it can be really confusing and one of the things as humans we all are is we we want certainty and I think what the messenger effect does is it allows us to answer a question that wasn't asked but in an easy way so instead of saying what do I pay attention to instead we say well who can i rely on whose voice can i trust and that then often becomes the output of what influences us we don't have to worry about well do i have to weigh up all the pros and cons do i have to kind of go and do my own research do i have to you know kind of figure out these conflicting messages i trust helen or helen knows what she's talking about or this person has served me well in the past.

4:58And so I rely not on what's being said to determine the direction I go in or who I pay attention to, but rather who is saying what is being said. And so that messenger effect is essentially why we pay attention to certain people, regardless of the truth or wisdom of what they say, just because they sent the message. And I only see this becoming even more relevant in our busy workplaces, in our busy lives. We don't have the time to pay attention to everything. And so it's a neat, easy shortcut, a reliable rule of thumb that generally guides us in the right direction. So our brain is going about its very busy day making these sort of mental shortcuts about who we trust because that person is a messenger.

5:45So I trust this person more than that person, that messenger more than that person. But what are the factors that influence our brain? I mean, I'm sure our brains is doing that all very quickly or very automatically. But what's going on that makes me filter out that person as being more trustworthy or more credible or whatever, whatever my brain is saying? I trust that messenger and what they are saying more than that person and what they are saying. I guess even if they're saying the same thing. This is it. I mean, we've all I remember early in my career. And I think lots of us have this situation where you go into a room, you've got an idea, a proposition, your proposal, your presentation, you've got your nice PowerPoint slides and you deliver your message, you deliver your presentation and it kind of falls on deaf ears.

6:32You think, why did I bother? And that in itself is frustrating. But when that frustration turns to annoyance is when someone else comes along with pretty much the same thing, pretty much the same idea that you had. And then they present it and everybody's like, oh, this is the best idea ever. We absolutely have to do that. And I think that's just a really neat demonstration. It happens to all of us in our careers of what's being said, the message being entirely irrelevant in that instance. and it being a function of, well, I trust this person because maybe they look like they know what they're talking about.

7:10Or, you know, sometimes the reason we trust people is a factor of frequency of contact. I mean, trust really is a contact sport. You know, we need to build up interactions with people and recognise that their behaviour has been consistent over time, and so therefore we can trust them. I think sometimes, Helen, people confuse truth and trust. they are very very different things you know we've seen in our politics over the years that we can get people that will lie and their trustworthiness ratings go up not down because trust is not a is this person truthful are they advising me well or not trust is basically a bet that we make with ourselves about our ability to predict someone else's future actions.

8:03And so therefore, contact is important, consistency is important. Then it goes some way to explaining why our politicians can lie to us and certain groups will actually increase their trust in them. Because when they lie, they're saying, well, they're telling my lies. Sarah and I, my business partner, we are quite different. But we think there's similar things, like about career development. You know, we know similar things, we think similar things. And we'll sometimes be in conversations in the same meeting. And I can see when, you know, I am the messenger that's more powerful in that situation.

8:34And I can see when Sarah is the messenger that is more powerful in that situation. And we're not doing anything different. You know, we're not saying anything different. But something has happened that has made either me or her the better messenger to the person that we are talking to in that moment. Right. Exactly right. And I think one of the primary reasons why that occurs is that that situation, that context, that environment in will often influence audiences to be more receptive to one kind of messenger or another. So in our research and the research, I should also quote my colleague, Dr.

9:09Joe Marks, who and I that published this work, we find that there are broadly in our societies, in our businesses, two types of messengers. We have what we call hard messengers. And hard messengers, Helen, are defined as those that are able to be heard and that their message is accepted. Because the audience they are communicating with see them as having some form of status and a status over their audience. In contrast, there are times when we seek out the soft messenger. And the soft messenger is essentially defined as someone who doesn't have status over their audience. They have a connectedness with their audience.

9:52And there are certain contexts and situations where we are psychologically more inclined, sometimes hardwired, to be more attentive to what the hard messenger is saying over the soft or vice versa. And those hard messenger traits are typically defined by things like, you know, are they an expert? Are they rich and famous? You know, are they physically attractive is another one. Or in the case of some of our leaders and some of our politicians, are they kind of the dominant personality? And then by contrast, soft messengers are heard because they have a connection, a warmth with others. They are able to communicate some sort of vulnerability.

10:32They are seen as trustworthy. And in certain circumstances, they're seen as charismatic. And so all these things are playing out. And, you know, around the boardroom table in our meetings, our project teams at work, there is going to be a variety of different messengers. And what's also interesting is, is that these messenger traits, it's not that we just have one. We might have a preference for one kind of style, but we typically have at least, you know, one and a secondary one. And sometimes we even swap between messenger traits. you know you know we may not necessarily be dominant by personality but sometimes we just have to take a hard stand with the kids right and kind of do that thing we often fall into the kind of preferred styles and I wonder if that's with you and Sarah that people are actually noticing that and you know even though what you're saying is exactly the same yeah I guess it's making me think about the sort of dynamic between the messenger so let's say it's me I'm presenting some information to someone I am the messenger and then the person who is receiving the message and let's say I'm naturally kind of hard I'm sort of wired for status I'm that kind of more dominant person and let's say the person that I'm messaging to so I'm presenting to is is kind of softer in orientation a bit more relational I think is a bit more kind of values that sense of connection if I want to influence that person then is the best thing for me to sort of recognize that difference like quickly get a read on that person's a bit more relational and drop my hardness if that's if that's a word but you know like drop my dominance in order to dial up the relational is that the skill that we need to be having that sort of sensing the the difference and then dialing up one of the other the other styles well possibly that i mean that is one route you could take um the other thing to think about of course is is that you know depending on the saw the the the message itself you it might require a dominant messenger because one of the things that audiences do is they don't just make assumptions uh about who's speaking to them and who's communicating we do a pretty good job when a messenger delivers a message of connecting that message to the messenger you know we have to don't shoot the messenger which is why it can be often difficult to give bad news even if it's not your news you know one of the things that you know i i think as you know i i first started working with bob cialdini about 25 years ago and we've been in a very kind of close partnership and um i trained under him and one of the things that he taught me early on about influence is that the best influencers know when they're not the best influencers and sometimes at work you know we might be objectively the most qualified person to speak about a topic we might be the most experienced we might have the longest tenure and all those things are kind of important for credibility and displaying our competence but that doesn't necessarily make us the most influential persuasive communicator at that moment in time and so maybe one of the the lessons here is is that even though we've worked hard to establish that over our careers i think there's there's something wise about recognizing when you even if objectively you're the best messenger and best qualified that doesn't make you the necessary most effective communicator and you would choose someone else in that instance.

13:54I mean I think in a lot of organisation the assumption is you know it's the most expert person that should deliver this message or more likely it's the most senior person who should you know do this presentation deliver this message and it's really interesting for you to hear that that assumption is not necessarily that effective for what's going to be most influential. One of my favourite well it's a story that we wrote about but I actually found this in the the catalogue of government business back in the 1980s there was a cabinet office meeting that was taking place and they were discussing essentially public order and what to do if god forbid um you know someone from another country pushed the big red button and we were suddenly a threat of a nuclear war and the The government at the time actually had some really quite detailed plans, including millions and millions and millions of leaflets advising people about what they should do in the event of a nuclear attack and how they should behave and conduct themselves and look after themselves after the fallout.

14:59And I noticed in one of these meetings there was a long conversation about who would be the best person or the best group of people to go on the news and communicate this to people and to put their name and their signature to these leaflets and public information appeals and these kind of things and of course the obvious answer is well is it someone from the government is it Margaret Thatcher is it someone from the Department of Defense is it a nuclear scientist and I tracked this conversation it was going on and on and on and then one junior minister then turned around and said, what about Kevin Keegan?

15:40I'm like, what? And he goes, what, this captain of the England football team? Well, yeah, he may not know anything about nuclear fallout. He may not know anything about the politics of the situation. But we know him. We trust him. Oh, and by the way, we should probably throw Ian Botham into the mix as well, because he single-handedly batted the Aussies into submission at the test the other day. And it's a really good example, I think. And it sounds extreme, but actually that's what they ended up doing. They ended up putting the pictures of the captain of the England football team and cricket team on these what to do in the case of a nuclear attack, public information films, leaflets, all these different kind of things.

16:20It's a perfect example of, you know what you want to say. You know what the objectively correct message is. But now think carefully about who you get to deliver that. And it's not always the obvious person. In this instance, they wanted the connected person, because if you think about an audience in that context, they're going to be frightened. They're going to be highly anxious, highly uncertain. What do I do? In that instance, I need someone that perhaps is a little bit more connected and familiar. But there are other instances where, you know, we might be uncertain about something and we're going to rely on maybe that harder messenger.

16:57You know, sometimes we do need to hear the hard message from the boss or the doctor. So that context is actually going to play a big part. But I think what I would want to kind of highlight here is how much time and effort we often put into the content of our message. You know, and we think, what am I going to say? And how will they react to this? And how will I defend myself if they, you know, object to this, that, and the other? And all that's important. But the cost of doing that is that we don't pay attention to the source of the message. and that happens first often people make a decision about whether they're going to say yes or no to you before you've even started speaking so do you think actually it would be a really like a useful exercise for a team to maybe look over a month or look at a quarter and think about what are the most in like you know the top three messages that we send from this team um to influence an outcome what the top three and then who is the best messenger like if a team sort of practice that approach do you think that would result in a more influential outcome I think it would in fact actually I'd add to that there are little tests that you can do you know this gives you a kind of sense of what type of messenger you are and your teams as well and you know we can put a link maybe to where you can find those they're they're free to do but here's another thing that I think is uh under noticed but important how we have meetings you know oftentimes we'll get together in the meeting uh sometimes we'll be familiar with each other but other times there might be other people you know new people in the meeting and and someone invariably starts the meeting by saying right okay well let's go around the room and introduce ourselves okay that's a terrible way to start a meeting the first reason why it's a terrible way to start a meeting is is that and maybe i'm just speaking for myself but most people don't necessarily have a high level of motivation to stand up in a room full of people that they either know or don't and say, well, hi, my name is Helen Tupper and I'm a best-selling author.

19:00I'm a world-leading expert on careers and how squiggler they are. And you should listen to what I've got to say in this meeting for all these reasons, right? No one's going to say that. So generally what you get is, hi, I'm Steve from IT. And the only information that's actually conveyed is about the same amount of information that you'll see on someone's signature of their email. So that's one reason. But there's another reason, of course, which is that no one is listening anyway. Because as that creeping ring of death goes around the room, everyone's sitting there going, Oh my God, what am I going to say about myself when it's my turn?

19:37And so it's a wholly ineffective, arguably big waste of time. and what it also does is it potentially you know if you've got someone quite senior in the room that you know he's quite charismatic and that everyone looks to and is probably sitting at the top of the desk in the middle you know you might have someone in that room that is highly qualified has a really brilliant insight whose voice isn't heard and so the recommendation for teams if you're a manager if you're leading teams if you're sponsoring a meeting is at the beginning of a meeting just simply go around and say hey subject to the meeting today is x and i have helen in the room and this is what helen brings we've invited sarah because sarah has good insights on this we've got joe because joe generally has a good insight in what's actually happening outside etc etc and we go around and we establish everyone's credibility and their contribution to the meeting and if you can't think of something worthwhile to say about the person that's in the room Don't invite them.

20:36Don't waste their time. You should be able to advocate for everybody in that room or why are they in the room? You should be able to say this is what they're bringing. This is the value that they've got. And so that is a way that we can give credibility to each of those people being a messenger in their own right by making that introduction. I think it has big implications for Korea. it has big implications for people's confidence and actually their future actions and behaviors as well so you know we've met a few times before Helen and um I think you know that so my team at Influence of Work we have 18 people currently in the team um they are ridiculously smart ridiculously clever uh most of them are young I've got I've got one member of my team that's actually a principal now now the thing about her is is that invariably she's the smartest person in the room.

21:29So in a way, it's our duty to introduce her expertise. This is someone that is literally a world-leading experimental psychologist. I mean, she published her first papers in Harvard when she was 22, for God's sake. She is doing groundbreaking work, looking at how you can influence and persuade millions of people to change their behaviors in the context of environment and sustainability. Can you imagine her standing up at the beginning of a meeting and saying all those things about herself but if we don't say that she's not heard and everyone loses in that instance and so it's our duty to make that information available and here's the thing that's really interesting uh i noticed about her so when she's introduced in this way two things happen the first is she kind of squirms awkwardly in her seat and was like oh my god i can't believe they're saying this about me you know they're setting me up for failure my god does she perform afterwards you know it seems like when we give people these wholly appropriate and honest legitimate labels to live up to most of the time they do just to go back to your kind of that hard status point and also kind of the more kind of softer status points i guess what we are adding in by doing this is you're adding in more hard status right like no one's going no one's going here are my labels here are my labels because of you know confidence or worries about coming across of arrogant but we are we are going but here are their label here's some here's some things that give this person like the hard status we're adding that into them yeah there's an example of how you can kind of like orientate an audience back to those kind of more status hard messenger effects which in the context of the meeting could be the most important thing that that could be what causes people to pay attention to what's being said and act on it we talk quite a lot about you know like being in a room and i've talked about you know i'm presenting in front of people and i guess the assumption is that that's the kind of physical thing but very often lots of influence is happening remotely like via via zoom or a team's call or whatever whatever we're doing does that have any implications on how we influence how the how kind of messengers influence is there anything that's kind of come up that's worth as worth as kind of being aware of We did an experiment during COVID when everyone was kind of, you know, doing their meetings and their sales calls and everything from behind a screen.

23:59And one of the experiments we actually did was with financial institution, you know, financial investors, investment managers, pensions, these kind of things. And here's what we found is that putting your qualifications after your name on that black bar on the Zoom or the team call matters a lot. and if you think about it you don't have all those signals that you might have in a face-to-face meeting with a with a banker a mortgage advisor face-to-face you know let's have a cup of coffee you know you can see maybe a picture of him and the kids or her and the family and whatever they do you don't get that kind of that humanity is kind of like stripped out and and so you are really down to what is the credibility of this person does this person have you know good a good sense of you know understanding and can they can they advise me and you know if i just give you an option you know you've got two financial advisors they they look the same they're of the same age they got the same clothes on whatever one's called bob and the other is called robert tupper a-r-i-p bsc whatever the case may be where and who do you give your money to in that instance the same proposition same person but just putting you know your qualifications in in that that had a big effect you know like someone doing that in a i really believe it and i can see what but i feel like you know because it's not kind of the social norm in a in a in an environment at work i think to have like helen tupper whatever my things are credentials after my name i'd feel so awkward doing it and you're exactly right about that of course is that everyone at the time is uncertain about what the right norms were, what the practice was.

25:41And so, you know, when you're uncertain, what do you do? You look to everyone else around you who's in a similar situation. And if they're doing it, well, it's probably the right thing. Well, it might be the normal thing to do, but it might not necessarily be the most effective. There's a couple of other things we actually found. We noticed that in online settings, people talk louder. And they typically talk at a volume that's on average, and it will vary amongst people. But we found in the research that they talk about a 15 % increase in volume compared to the same conversation that was taking place face to face.

26:19Why do we do that? But the advice was turn down the volume of your microphone. OK, because the last thing you want if you're having a conversation with someone in an online environment is for them to turn your volume down. better that they turn yours up or they say hey helen i'm struggling to hear you a little bit would you mind speaking a little louder or turning your volume up maybe it's something you know with our connection whatever the case may be but i think we've all gone into those situations online where there's there's always someone who's like really loud and it's like you move away from them and then third and finally which i found kind of interesting there's a lot of research in the psychology of influence on on mimicry you know this idea that we tend typically to prefer to kind of communicate with people that we see as showing similarities with us commonalities uh and that extends beyond just commonalities of experience and you know political affiliation and you know similar career backgrounds and these kind of things words we use the rate of speech these these kind of things as well there's some really famous studies on the hospitality industry that show that if a waiter or waitress repeats back word for word the order that you've just give them, you're more inclined to give them a bigger tip.

27:42And if you think about it, it kind of makes sense, doesn't it? Because when you actually repeat back word for word what people say, what they're also communicating is, I'm hearing you and I'm understanding you. We found early on in the pandemic that the same thing was actually happening online, is that those that were having communications that listened intently and mimicked the words and phrases that people were actually using were deemed to be more in sync with that person and as a result more likely in a sales context to place an order or further a meeting particularly in these first time kind of meetings and it seems to be a pretty good way of building a connection when you perhaps aren't able to kind of use those you know look people in the eye shake them by the hand see the photographs on their desks these these kind of things in a way what you're doing is you're kind of humanizing an interaction that for all sorts of reasons means that we can't be human and I think you know we often I think I've heard for a while the idea of sort of mirroring like my career started in sales and that kind of mirroring someone's body language is very interesting but the idea of sort of mimicking someone's words I think that is a sort of a sort of a newer a newer tool for people maybe to play with is there any kind of one last piece of advice that you would suggest to people if they want to think about you know being a messenger communicating with influence anything additional that you think people should consider I really like this idea that I'm playing with at the moment that um in order to be a good influencer a good communicator it helps to think like an artist you know artists know you can create any color that you want by mixing different quantities and combinations of the three primary colors of blue yellow and red and i sense the same is true for influence persuasion and communication um you know sometimes we have our favorite piece of evidence and we double down on that sometimes you know we just think well if we want people to do something just pay them other people kind of like what's the compelling story that grabs people My observation is it's never one of those.

30:14My Reset. Connecticut, call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org. On behalf of Boothill Casino in Kansas, FedTax pass-through may apply in Illinois. 21 and over. Void in Canada. Bet with DraftKings Sportsbook to get bonus bets that expire in seven days or trade with DraftKings Predictions to get predictions dollars that expire in one year. Event contract trading involves risk of loss. Predictions offer void in New York. Non-withdrawable rewards issued as$50. Click to claim every seven days for 21 days terms at dkng.co slash offer limited time offer nationwide based on sports book predictions and free-to-play sports contest availability varies by state three things it's it's it's a combination of those three things and but it's always going to be one that leverages more than the other it's never equal amounts you know um i don't know but if you mix blue yellow and red i learned you get this horrible brown yeah my children do it all the time yeah and no one wants that color yeah my advice would be to kind of think about before you go kind of of bowling in and saying, right, I'm convinced this is the argument that's going to win someone over.

31:13You know, sometimes your job is not to win the argument. Your job is to win the outcome. And I think by thinking in that way and thinking, you know, what is the right balance here of facts, finances, and importantly, feelings relevant to the context that will help me construct the best message? I'm finding that quite a helpful kind of metaphor and frame of reference to think about. I think you're right about not winning the argument, winning the outcome. I Steve, thank you so much for your time today. I will direct people to that survey so they can think about their kind of messaging stance and profile.

31:46And I'll make sure that everyone's got links to find more of your work because, you know, you've written many books and they are very interesting and very helpful in the context of Influence, particularly your new book, Influence at Work, as well. So I'll make sure that everyone's got those details. Thank you so much for your time, Steve. Oh, absolute pleasure. Lovely to see you, Helen. Thanks for your time. So I really hope that you have enjoyed that conversation with Steve. he always sparks my thinking when I'm talking to him I also think if you want to dive deeper into this area the conversation we had earlier in the year with Robert Cialdini on influence is a really nice one to pair it with and actually as you heard that Robert Cialdini and Steve have worked together so they are kind of thought partners as well as squiggly career experts that have been on the podcast coming up next on the podcast we've got some exciting things coming so make sure you subscribe to the Squiggly Chris podcast we have a really interesting series coming up over the summer where we're going to talk about the quotes that inspire us and how you put them into action.

32:37And then in September, we have got our next Squiggly Skills Sprint, which is all about the five Squiggly career skills, values, strengths, confidence, network, and future, and how adding a bit of AI can help accelerate your learning. So subscribe, stay with Squiggly, share Squiggly, and we'll be back with you again very soon.