Invisible Influence E-Book

Kevin Hogan

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 300

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

There are many moments in life when you have to ask someone a critical question that could determine your salary, whether you have a spouse, whether you get a job--your entire future. Do you know how to get the answer you want? Do you understand how much influence you actually have over your fate? The truth is, how that person is going to respond depends more on what's going on in your head than it does on what's going on in theirs. Your expectations, the words you choose, the environment in which you ask these questions--so many factors that you control--can determine whether you hear a "yes" or a "no." Invisible Influence shows you a step-by-step process to quietly persuade others to choose you or your product. Based on new scientific discoveries that reveal fascinating and unique approaches to influence, this book shows how people process their feelings about products, services, and people, and what mental shortcuts they use to make their choices. You'll learn how to incorporate 52 techniques for subliminally influencing others in order to sell, market, and communicate more effectively, including how to: * Use questions early in a conversation to give the person a sense of control and you an opportunity to understand and deliver to their expectations * Know how much information to give to someone * Determine what people lose if they don't do business with you, and then leverage that knowledge * Use photos in order to make yours a familiar, and therefore more attractive, face * Recapture someone's attention * Use stories to explain what statistics can't * Help other people find meaning in their own actions and decisions * And much more! Invisible Influence also includes a 10-step influence template that you can follow for better results in negotiations. When you truly incorporate how you think about and approach communicating with other people, you'll find that you can persuade anyone, anytime, anywhere to make decisions and take actions that benefit you.

Leseprobe

Cover design: Susan Olinsky

Copyright © 2013 by Kevin Hogan. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey. Published simultaneously in Canada.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Hogan, Kevin. Invisible influence: the power to persuade anyone, anytime, anywhere/Kevin Hogan. pages cm Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-1-118-60225-6 (hbk. : alk. paper); ISBN 978-1-118-62047-2 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-62046-5 (ebk): ISBN 978-1-118-62039-7 (ebk) 1. Persuasion (Psychology) 2. Influence (Psychology) 3. Interpersonal communication. I. Title. HM1196. H64 2013 303.3’42—dc23 2012048008

For Mark, Jessica, and Katie

Acknowledgments

I want to thank Mark Hogan for making this book better. Every day for an hour he’d take me away from writing to play catch, chess, or Rockband. Those breaks helped me return to the manuscript and instantly find a dozen ways to make something better for you, the reader. More than anything, the nightly hug from a 15-year-old young man and “I love you, Dad” drives me to be the best I can be. I have the greatest son in the world.

Thanks to Katie Hogan for tolerating me while under the influence of yet another book being written. There is a real tension between author and the rest of the world that exists when a manuscript is being penned. It must be tougher to navigate through and around that tension than I often estimate in real time. There are plenty of bonus challenges each day when the person you live with is an author. I’m well aware that I’m not all that charismatic when I’m researching, not so charming during rewrites, and not even close to tolerable during editing. I love you.

Jessica Hogan continues to inspire me as she works toward her PsyD down in Chicago. Just knowing she’s down there keeps my competitive edge “on.” I no longer feel like she’s in “my world.” I now feel like I’m in hers. Taking on grad school with the handicap of profound hearing loss makes me doubly proud of her tenacity. I don’t know how she could be in class, do labs, and work with children, all while hearing only some of the words being spoken. She could moan about her disability and no one would think less of her. Instead she works damned hard and carries on without complaint. I couldn’t be prouder. She’s an inspiration to everyone around her.

I want to thank my editor Rachel Hastings for pushing me to continually make this book better for you. She had the audacity to regularly suggest that “You talked about something like that in Science of Influence. Do you really want that in this book?” My favorite is when she says, “This technique is weak. I saw something like this in so-and-so’s book. I’m taking it out.” She wasn’t going to let anything slide. Her constant suggestions and sometimes sweeping changes were not only annoying, they were absolutely necessary in bringing you what is in your hands.

Jim Speakman, my co-author of Covert Persuasion, was a true creative impetus behind this project. He encouraged me to do an influence book, including techniques I hadn’t previously written about. After we wrote Covert Persuasion, which was loaded with “tactics” and “techniques,” it seemed like everyone came out with a technique book of their own. If imitation is the best form of flattery, then we were very flattered. Mackenzie and Madison (Jim’s kids) seem to play a role in all of Jim’s ideas.

The members of my Platinum Inner Circle, without question, are the daily force that drives me to not just keep up but get ahead of the curve. They are Duane Cunningham, Clare Delaney, Annie Born, Lisa Hyatt, Octavio Urzua, Todd Gaster, Scott Bell, Dale Bell, Christian Haller, Bryan Lenihan, Sonya Lenzo, April Braswell, Rob Northrup, Steve Chambers, Ken Owens, Michael Walker, Cherie Miranda, and Larry Hines.

I want to thank Roberto Monaco of www.influenceology.com for letting me use his story in the Technique section.

Bob Beverley has had a greater impact on me than he knows. Now he knows. Special thanks to David Garfinkel and Deb Cole.

Thanks to Andrew Records for making www.KevinHoganUniversity.com a great place for our team to work.

Special thanks to Gary Moon and Wendy Schauer for always having something good to say when the rest of the world said something else.

Thanks to all the great researchers around the world from whom I drew ideas or quotes from their press releases or studies. They are the heroes of persuasion and influence.

Thanks to Matt Holt, Shannon Vargo, Tiffany Colon, and Linda Indig at Wiley. They are a pleasure to work with and made this a better book!

1

Intentional Reality

You’re about to meet someone and the stakes are high.

You’re about to ask them a question that really matters. Perhaps the answer will determine your income, your job security, whether you’ll have the date with the cute girl next week … or not.

But I have bad news.

They are going to say no.

You can change that right now, if you can wrap your mind around the fact that the birthplace of influence is in your own brain.

What the person is going to be like, and what their response to you and your request is going to be is, in significant part, happening right now between your ears.

In His Own Image

The Bible says that God created man in “his own image.”

It turns out that God gave man a touch of that creative power as well.

This story about how you shape others in your own image has a few twists and turns, and a surprise ending with a lot of Ahas and Wows in between. You may never see yourself or others in the same way.

The truth is that yes and no often rest squarely on the creative power of your imagination.

Let me explain that. Go back with me to a time in the not-so-distant past. We’re at the University of Minnesota, in 1977.1

Fifty-one men and women are paired up to have a telephone conversation. They are told they are part of a nonverbal communication study that looks at the process of how people become acquainted when they do not meet in person, and there are no nonverbal elements present.

The women in each pair fill out a brief background profile, giving information about their schooling, education, and other facts that we know to be totally irrelevant to how people actually get acquainted.

The man has his photo taken and is given the information sheet, along with a photo of a woman. The photo he receives is one of a selection of four photos of women whose average attractiveness is rated as 8.1 (on a scale of 1 to 10) or a photo of one of four women whose average attractiveness is 2.56. The photo is not of the woman he can’t see in the other room. She has no idea he has been given a supposed picture of her.

Armed with only this information, the men record their impressions of the women before the call.

After a 10-minute conversation the man completes another impression sheet on the woman. She, in turn, provides information on how comfortable she was with the conversation, how accurate a picture of herself her partner had formed, and how typical her partner was in terms of his treatment of her. Finally she records her prediction of what the man rated her personal attractiveness to be.

Later, 12 people listen to an audio, which only contains the woman’s side of the conversation. Based only on this, they provide an assessment of her looks and personality. Nine other judges listen to a recording of just the man’s side of the conversation and give their impressions of him.

None of these observer judges are given a photo or any other information.

What were the results?

1. The men’s initial impressions, after seeing the photo but prior to the conversation, showed that the photo biased his overall impression of the woman. When shown a photo of an attractive woman, the men anticipated her to be more social, poised, humorous, and socially adept. When shown the photo of the unattractive woman, the men’s perceptions of her were typically as unsocial, awkward, serious, and socially inept. In total, men assigned 17 of 21 personality traits the researchers predicted would be attributed to the attractive women based on her photo.

You already might have guessed that. But here’s the really interesting part.

2. The observer judges also assigned the same traits to the women that the men did, solely on the basis of listening to the woman’s side of the recorded call. Remember, they had never seen a photo!

If a man had seen a photo of an attractive woman and ascribed positive personality traits to her, then the judges recorded the same perception of that woman based solely on listening to her side of the conversation.

If a man had seen a photo of one of the unattractive women, the judges ascribed very different personality characteristics to that woman based on only her four minutes of recorded conversation. And remember, there were 51 pairs!

The researchers (Mark Snyder, Elizabeth Tanke, and Ellen Berscheid) concluded, after a thorough statistical analysis, that, “What had initially been reality in the minds of the men, had become reality in the behavior of the women they interacted with—a discernible reality by even naive observer judges, who had access to only … recordings of the women’s contributions to the conversations.”

And what about the men? How did the judges rate their personality traits?

Based on only the men’s side of the conversation, the group of judges who had not heard the women or known about any photos had the following perceptions: if the man was looking at the photo of an attractive woman he was ascribed traits of higher physical attraction, more confidence, and more animation than the men who were looking at a photo of an unattractive woman. In addition, those who had seen the photo of the attractive woman were themselves seen as taking greater initiative, being more comfortable, and enjoying themselves more. Finally, the observers believed that the “attractive” women would see the man as attractive, in contrast to those men who had seen the photo of the unattractive woman.

The “attractive” target women (whether they were or were not attractive we will never know) believed their partner saw them more accurately, and the unattractive target women believed their partner did not. The researchers suggest that may be why the results were achieved.

The implications are mind-blowing.

What can you do with this information?

If you are male, what would happen if you had a picture of an attractive woman in view as you worked on the telephone setting appointments, consummating the business deal, or communicating with a woman for any reason? It would seem likely that more appointments would be set, more deals would be sealed, and communication would be vastly improved.

And what about women who communicate predominantly with men? Would the same strategy be effective? It has not been tested, but my guess is that it would.

Maybe it would even work at creating better outcomes with the same gender.

The study clearly shows how much we are influenced by people’s appearance.

But more importantly, doesn’t the research imply that our biases change people’s behaviors?

That’s exactly what it implies.

The notion that a belief that has been held for one minute about the attractiveness of the woman you are speaking with, and the impact on how you are both perceived by people listening in, is remarkable.

The lessons here are many:

Attractive people are ascribed positive personality and social traits that unattractive people are not.One person’s reality is communicated vocally in such a way that a belief held for one minute can transform another person into who they are perceived to be by the person they are in conversation with.Believing you are interacting with someone attractive changes you: your self-perception, your behavior, your attitudes. And the opposite is true as well.Your certainties about someone will impact them.

Now let’s look at the “Prophecy Effect.”

Does what you think really shape others?

Every day you might typically run into 100 people. Each of those people sees you in some distinct way. So, do they all shape your behavior? And if so, wouldn’t that create you and me in the image of how society as a whole sees us?

The Powerful Influence of Prophecy

Two psychologists visit a 15-week military boot camp for experienced soldiers in Israel.2 They want to know what a commanding officer’s beliefs and expectations will do to those he trains.

One hundred and five soldiers are assigned one of three labels by the psychologists visiting Boot Camp. The psychologists meet with the base commander and the four commanders doing the training. The base commander is the only person let in on the secret.

The psychologists explain that they have developed a complex method to predict the Command Potential of the 105 trainees. They show the four instructors their results and ask them to record this prediction of Command Potential in the files of the 105 recruits. The predictions include one of three words:

HighRegularUnknown

Over the course of 15 weeks of advanced training, the long-time soldiers are to be evaluated by their own instructors, as well as external assessors, based on their theoretical knowledge of combat tactics, topography, standard operating procedures, and practical skills of navigation and firing a weapon. Their Combat Potential has been randomly assigned.

One week into training, the commanders rank the Command Potential (CP) of the trainees.

After one week, the influence of the CP the commanders received from the psychologists on the 1–9 ratings they recorded is already significant:

6.83 average scores are given to those randomly assigned with High CP.5.31 average scores are given to those randomly assigned with Unknown CP.4.32 average scores are given to those randomly assigned with Regular CP.

Because of the dramatic results, the psychologists take several precautions with the base commander to ensure all trainees are treated well and that their future career will not be negatively impacted as a result of the study.

At the end of the 15 weeks, the soldiers are assessed by independent military trainers. The scores for trainee performance are as follows:

79.98 average scores are given to those randomly assigned with High CP.72.43 average scores are given to those randomly assigned with Unknown CP.65.18 average scores are given to those randomly assigned with Regular CP.

Stunning and dramatic differences, right?

The researchers’ (Dov Eden and Abraham Shani ) findings were mind-boggling.

It was evident that a commander’s beliefs would change and shape the performance of even experienced men, with an average of 11 years each in the military. More remarkably, once debriefed, the experienced instructors on base didn’t believe the results and didn’t believe the fact that the men had been randomly assigned CP by the psychologists.

The power of real expectation is to be taken seriously.

These two studies highlight the fact that no one was doing “affirmations,” like “I think I can,” or trying to manipulate behavior. These people were convinced about the truths they were dealing with.

Statistical analysis showed that 73 percent of the variance in the results on performance came down to Instructor Expectancy.

If you move that expectancy into a classroom, then the difference between a child getting a “B” and “D” could mostly be generated from the teacher.

Thinking positively, or negatively, about someone isn’t going to cut it in the real world. In fact, it could easily have the opposite effect. However, one piece of compelling evidence that causes us to have certainty about another, something as simple as an errant photo or a word transcribed from a psychologist’s notes to a military file folder, can change someone’s perceived personality, their performance, and ultimately where they end up in life.

One word. One photo.

I can almost hear you saying, “Okay, that is amazing, but how do I make that happen in my life with the girl, with the client, with the kids, with the spouse, with the neighbor?”

Let me share with you what I refer to in my work as The Expectant Mind.

The Expectant Mind allows you to change your Self and Others.

Everyone has an Expectant Mind. Our beliefs, attitudes, values, non-conscious attention, nonconscious goal pursuit are all frozen in concrete.

Fundamental beliefs (in every sense of the word) about self and beliefs about others are not only sticky. They are solid.

A tiny percentage of people have the current skill set to shift their current Expectant Mind and deliberately craft it into a Mind that can change themselves and others in a unique and powerful way.

How many people have the capacity to shift to the Expectant Mind that causes them to have what they want?

Most.

How many people know how to do it?

Just a few.

How many will do it if you give them the formula?

You tell me.

What the Expectant Mind Is Not

You didn’t convince yourself of something.You can’t recite affirmations and come to believe something that you are not certain of.It isn’t stating something to yourself or to a group that you aren’t absolutely certain of, and believing change will magically happen.

The Expectant Mind is absolutely convinced of the truth of some belief, notion, or idea to the point where it is simply not questioned. There is no reason for the conscious mind to doubt the fact and bring the notion to awareness.

Examples:

You look and say, “That’s the sun.” And it is.You look and say, “That’s where I work.” And you do.You say, “That’s my car.” It is.

In each case, you could be hallucinating. You could be wrong and think it’s your car but actually it’s someone else’s car.

How is the certainty of reality significant in the studies we just looked at?

The Expectant Mind knew that he was looking at a photo of the woman he was talking to on the phone, even though it was simply a photo of a woman at the University. The Expectant Mind of the military instructor “knew” that certain trainees were going to have high Command Potential.

They had no reason to question the facts, even though they weren’t facts at all. They were simply pieces of information that were not critically analyzed by the individual. They became more than beliefs. They became “the sun,” “my car.”

The Expectant Mind is beyond certain. It’s not arrogant. That would mean The Mind is correct or right about something. The Expectant Mind is not right. It is not wrong. It simply has accepted inputs as facts and leaves the facts and moves on.

There is no wondering.

There is no investigation.

That’s pretty profound stuff.…

The question is, how do you generate an Expectant Mind so that you make more sales, get more yeses, and achieve change in others, a mind where you have absolute fact expectations (the sun will rise in the morning) without having the trait of arrogance and other instant turn-offs?

Step back and ponder this.

People have evolved to use each other as mirrors. You ask someone how you look because without a mirror you don’t know. You tend to mirror other people’s behavior because of mirror neurons in your brain, so long as there are no internal triggers not to mirror another’s behavior. The mirroring effect is an absolutely crucial element in changing yourself and others because their brain literally sees and hears your certainty.

Their brain replicates those inputs without any conscious processing at all, and it becomes certain that you know what you’re talking about. Without having any kind of psychic or paranormal powers, your nonverbal or inner truth is authentically readable to the other on a very deep biological level.

The women in the study didn’t think about how they behaved on the phone. The men didn’t try to change either their behavior or that of the women. The men changed who the women “were” because of how they communicated with them, and how those inputs were received and processed.

The soldiers in the study didn’t end up shooting better, navigating better or showing evidence of greater command potential because they “thought about it.” The trainers didn’t “try” to get the soldiers to behave in some new way. The trainers had no idea how their communication was affecting each person. It simply did because the commanders were primed. They were convinced, to the point of not thinking about it, that certain soldiers had higher Command Potential than others.

Now Expectancy grows clearer.

How do you cause the girl to admire you?

How do you cause the soldier to achieve to his peak potential?

How do you cause the employee to perform?

How do you cause the prospect to say yes?

How do you cause people to change their behavior?

You’ve learned it has nothing to do with bogus affirmations. There is no connection here with “positive thinking.”

So, how do you create an Expectant Mind that will enable certainty to be replicated in the mind of another when you communicate with them?

Certain about themselves.

Certain about you.

Here’s the thing: Would you agree that most people are intimidated by actually thinking something through?

They want a script to get the girl.

They want a script to give the telemarketer.

They want a script to sell a product online.

They want words given to them such that when they say them, they will magically change someone. That works at Hogwarts. It doesn’t work in real life. The funniest thing in the world is watching people sell something and say, “Here’s the script, just do this and you’ll get this result.”

People want to believe that if they copy something that worked for someone else it will work for them, too.

Then the individual will spend $2,000 on a turnkey wealth-building or success system and find out that it doesn’t work. They are surprised, shocked, depressed. Why? They truly believed that it was in the “exact words,” the exact marketing script, hypnosis script, sales script … they are all the same. Ultimately they don’t work beyond slightly more than chance. Scripts work in a play where actors practice and rehearse how they interact with others and the story and the audience. In situations where all actors are not rehearsing an agreed script, the script essentially will fail.

Save your money.

The exact words have very little to do with getting someone to say yes. There are exceptions. I’ve written about such exceptions, but an Expectant Mind is the sun coming up in the morning, compared to lighting a match in a dark corner.

The men in the study didn’t intentionally say anything to change the behavior of the women. It was their certainty (and errant belief) in her image that created the effect. That photo first triggered behaviors in the man, which changed his attitudes, his behavior, then her self-concept, her behavior, and finally the beliefs of independent people listening to audiotapes weeks later.

The Expectant Mind.

The layers are starting to peel away.

You are starting to see what doesn’t work.

You can’t wish for it.

You can’t pray for it.

You can’t hope for it.

You can’t generate it from willpower.

You can’t force it to happen.

You can’t say words to yourself and make something up.

What you need to do is to optimize your mind to the point where you have an Expectant Mind that is deliberately different from what it is today.

The best predictor of over 90 percent of people’s life situations in five years’ time is to look at what they are doing today. Most of them won’t change themselves, they won’t evolve, and they can’t change others. They want exact words and they don’t want to understand how and what is happening in a conversation, in a picture, in a video. They want the beautiful model handed to them on the plate without working for her.

She’s not coming.

Exact words are only effective when matched with outputs that will trigger mirror neurons to tell their brain that (1) you are 100 percent correct and (2) that they believe you without question.

I assume you want the girl or guy to say yes.

I assume you want to make more money, have a more successful business.

I assume you want to change people, to influence people.

I assume you want to be a trigger of change.

In almost all cases, wherever your life is heading is very close to where it will end up.

If you don’t change, they don’t change. You always get what you have now and move further in that direction whatever it is to the ultimate end goal of bankruptcy, foreclosure, default, and failure.

When you are certain in your communication beyond question, they agree. Period. If you aren’t a credible source, you fail. If you are source credible, you will succeed.

That’s not the same as a date. That’s the same as the 9.7 model having one drink with your 7.0 self. The date comes next.

The date can only happen, the big sale can only happen if the certainty in your mind triggers the mirror neurons in their mind.

Women will tell you there are two kinds of guys that approach them with similar characteristics. They both approach, ask, expect yes, and have pure confidence. The women only say yes (to some things) when the guy meets a high enough score on her Guyometer.

The same is true with a sales call. The same is true with marketing. It’s all the same.

It begins with your absolute certainty they will behave in a certain manner. You wouldn’t think of trying to cause the behavior. Your communication is merely a function of your identity. You don’t try to do anything. This is just how you now are.

By causing a person to behave in a way they normally wouldn’t, you create cognitive dissonance. That means they have two conflicting values, attitudes, actions, or beliefs going on in their brain at the same time. They don’t like that. They need to fix it.

The girl is having a drink with you and you have seconds to make a convert. If your perception is that girls like this always say no, then you have 0 percent chance of yes. If your perception is that girls like this have said no in the past it is because of some reason, which you can truly understand. You can turn that into something different as you go forward. You have reframed the picture. You are no longer the same person. You have gone from a certain no to a likely yes where you would be surprised, no, stunned at no.

You do not need to figure out why you are so amazing because you probably aren’t and, if you were, the last thing you want to do is reinforce that by fine-tuning the fact.

You need to figure out why all those people said no in the past. You need to dissociate from the picture, see yourself in the picture, and describe in massive detail why things happened in the past as they did. You don’t have to make anything up and if you do you simply fail more as time goes on.

All you want to do is write about why they said no. And write a lot. The girl? The marketing sales letter? The sales call? It’s literally all the same thing. It’s someone saying no to you who you would have wanted to say yes.

Think back to the research. The women behaved differently from each other because of the photo the guy held. His confidence and certainty sold her one way or the other. The trainers in Israel? They simply knew the recruits they were assigned with high Command Potential would do well, then didn’t think about it again. They just … knew. They were certain. They didn’t think about it. It wasn’t even a given. It just was.

Developing Your New Expectant Mind

Your brain is a storytelling machine.

It only learns through fluid concepts and story. That’s it.

A lengthy, detailed, completely plausible, reality-based story will generate a result very different than your current story, unless of course your current story is getting you precisely what you want, instead of what you don’t want.

Here’s the Template

1. Take a half-hour every day for one week and use your camera or DVR or pen and paper and record why all those things happened in the past. Go into a half-hour of detail. Writing is probably best, but video or audio could do the trick if you are a well organized thinker.

2. Next week turn your attention to the future. Using great detail, create a complete movie or screenplay for your future. Not 2050 but 2017. Go into massive detail, using lots of sequences to show what leads to what, why things happen, and your response and reactions to what happens each day and hour. No hype. Your brain must buy into your story 100 percent. It must be 100 percent plausible or you might as well go to the beach and get a tan.

3. If you want to change them you must reframe them. You must go back in your mind and find out why all that happened with those significant people before you met them. Describe it all in massive detail, like a movie where everything is fully fleshed out and you understand everything. But you aren’t making stuff up; it’s real. It has to be real. Then turn to the future and how future similar experiences will turn out (sales calls, getting the girl to say yes, positive reaction to your sales letters, people admiring you, and so on and so forth).

Be meticulous and thorough in your use of detail. Take one week. Do this each day. Write five pages of text both for the past and the future.

If you don’t do this, you are simply 100 percent normal and you will, with absolute certainty, get the exact same results you always have gotten. This is simply your choice to completely rewrite the script that has passed, and to write a desirable, plausible screenplay for the future.

If you do do this, you will become expectant.

You will develop a nonarrogant self-certainty that will probably drive some people nuts simply because they will never get what they want out of life, but you will.

It’s simple science. It’s work, and because of that you will never be the same and people will never respond to you in the same way again.