Persuading without coercion

As kids my brother and I spent our holidays in our grandfather’s village. From the point where the pucca road ended, we had to travel five kilometres along a dusty — or muddy, if it was the rainy season —track to reach his village. In the late 1970s, this part of the journey had to be undertaken on a bullock cart. One year, we came to an intersection. My uncle explained that the government had built a new track that was shorter and in better shape. Alas, the pair of oxen insisted on taking the road to which they had been accustomed for years. It took a considerable amount of coaxing, yelling and pushing before they grudgingly took the new path.

   

Mulish behaviour from animals can be expected. But if you think you are going to have better luck getting humans to change their minds, banish the thought. Try to get a teenager to study regularly instead of pulling in all-nighters just before an exam. Suggest changes to the way your office team operates so that productivity improves. Nine times out of 10, you will come away feeling you are banging your head against a wall. 

People don’t like to be told they are wrong. They don’t like it if you make them feel you know better. And they definitely don’t like to be told what to do. Ego and inertia make it difficult to abandon long-held opinions and positions. Rational arguments usually fail in such situations. Throw more facts and data at a person and they bounce like rainwater off a duck’s back.

  

When faced with such obduracy, the natural tendency is to push harder. If the child doesn’t study, deliver, at more frequent intervals, stern warnings about the bleak future that awaits him or her. If a person won’t buy the product you are trying to sell him, visit or call him more often. The only thing such tactics achieve is to stiffen the prospect’s resistance. 

The Catalyst: How to change anyone’s mind 

Author: Jonah Berger

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Pages: 270

Price: Rs 449

 

If pushing harder won’t get a person to change his mind, what will? In this book, Wharton School professor Jonah Berger offers an alternative approach. In chemical experiments, catalysts enable reactions to take place at much lower temperatures than is normally required. In real-life situations, says the author, catalysts manage to persuade people by expending less force. They achieve this by focusing more on removing the barriers preventing a person from making the change. 

Instead of pressing harder on the accelerator, Mr Berger advises removing the parking brake and wheel chocks.

This book contains persuasion tools suited for a variety of situations. One is that instead of trying to persuade people, allow them to persuade themselves. In the late 1990s, teenage smoking was a massive problem in the United States. The governor of Florida appointed a man called Chuck Wolfe to tackle the issue. Wolfe did not take the traditional route of developing ad campaigns that warned teenagers about the health risks arising from smoking. Instead, he organised a Teen Tobacco Summit where students took the lead. All the organisers did was lay out the facts about how the tobacco industry uses avenues like sports and movies to make smoking seem aspirational. 

After the summit, a number of “truth” ads were released that demonstrated how tobacco companies try to influence teens in subtle ways. These ads contained no homily at the end. The campaign was very successful. According to the author, the battle against a rival as formidable and resourceful as the tobacco industry was won because the organisers trusted the teenagers to decide for themselves, instead of thrusting a message down their throats. 

Change entails risk, which is why people are reluctant to embrace it.

Mr Berger suggests that when trying to persuade others, make explicit the often high, but not immediately apparent, cost of sticking to the status quo. Allowing someone to try out something new — a new typing technology like Lightkey, for instance—for free for a limited period can make them more amenable to adopting it. Allowing people to reverse a decision at zero cost achieves the same. Online shopping for products like shoes took off only when companies allowed buyers to return products they didn’t like at zero cost.

The ability to persuade is a powerful tool. Mr Berger’s book promises to bestow this power on you. His lucidly written tome is peppered with real-life examples that drive home the points he is trying to make. But reading it just once will not do. Make a gist of its suggestions and try them out in a variety of situations. With some practice, your hit-to-miss ratio should improve.

Hopefully, you will have to expend less effort than my uncles had to on that country road more than four decades ago.