1187: Knowing When to Speak Up versus Shut Up with Vanessa Bohns

Pete Mockaitis
Vanessa, welcome back!

Vanessa Bohns
Thanks so much for having me again.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to learn, once and for all, whether or not I should say something and discuss your book. But I got to hear about your time working at a sleep lab first.

Vanessa Bohns
Yeah, you know, my introduction to research and the thing that made me fall in love with it was working at a sleep lab at Brown University when I was an undergrad. And it was just a crazy experience where we ran this sleep camp for kids between the ages of eight and 12. We were trying to capture them right around puberty.

And they had to live in the basement lab for a week in the dark. And we gave them little naps throughout the day to see how sleepy they got, and they had to take these little sleep tests and they had to eat the same little bologna sandwiches at the same times all the time because they couldn’t know what time of day it was outside.

We couldn’t have watches. It was this crazy experiment. It was actually very useful for the world. It showed us that kids through puberty have to get more sleep. They have to go to bed later, wake up later. So there was a purpose behind the madness, but it was a wild experience and it just showed me how elaborate a psychology study can be.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Vanessa, I love that so much for several reasons. One, I love sleep and I have been into a sleep lab myself at Vanderbilt, and that was quite an experience, all the wires and the monitoring things going on there.

Vanessa Bohns
What did they test you for?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it was sleep apnea, very ordinary. And what’s so crazy is, like, they told me, “Oh, yeah, it looks like you have mild sleep apnea.” And I was like, “No way.” Like, I didn’t believe it. I was like, “Can you show me some footage?”

And then I just, like, got a phone recorder the next night, it was like, “Oh, yeah, there I am doing the thing.” I was like, “I guess I could have just done that instead of gone to an elaborate laboratory situation to learn this.”

Vanessa Bohns
Actually, I worked in one of those labs after at the NYU lab, and I would watch people sleep all night and then put the apnea mask on them to see if it actually made their sleep better. It was fun. Anyway, I loved the sleep stuff, but you know why I can’t do it? It’s because you have to stay up all night, and I love sleep too much, I cannot do sleep research.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. And that’s a great reason. You love it too much to do it, the sleep versus the study of it. And one thing that I thought was so striking, though, was I asked someone, the lab technician, as she was getting me all hooked up to the things, I was like, “Boy, I bet you’ve met a lot of people and heard a lot of tips and tricks for, you know, how people are are trying to sleep better. So what’s the thing?”

I guess I can’t stop being an interviewer about being awesome at your job, being awesome at your sleeping. And she’s like, “Oh, I heard all kinds of things but the real thing that does the trick no one wants to hear, which is put your phone in another room.” I was like, “Oh, okay. There you have it.”

Vanessa Bohns
Yeah, it’s a good one.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool beans. Well, so, Should I Say Something? I’m glad she said something. She’s sort of shared her perspective. Your latest book, The Science of What to Share and What to Keep to Yourself. Can you tell us what’s the big idea here?

Vanessa Bohns
Yeah, so, partly, this is a follow-up of my first book, which is all about the influence we have on other people. And I kind of left that book saying, you know, we have more influence than we think on other people, and that means sometimes we should use it and sometimes we shouldn’t, because that influence could be good or bad.

And so this book is kind of answering the question, “Okay, you know, you told us to use it sometimes, but when are those times?” And so the big idea here is that the choice of whether to say something is as important, if not more important, than how we actually say the thing.

Usually, the dilemma we’re wrestling with, and I saw this again and again because I’m obsessed with advice columns, and I would read like The Ethicist in The New York Times and social cues, and it was like every question, it’s not like, “Oh, how do I phrase this thing?” because that’s not a true dilemma. It’s more of a practical instrumental thing.

But, like, the dilemma is, “Do I tell this person that, you know, I got the job that she wanted.” “Do I tell this person that they’re doing something annoying?” “Do I tell this person that, you know, I hate their Botox?” And so these kinds of questions were the real dilemmas. And so I wanted to look at what the science said in trying to answer them.

Pete Mockaitis
Ooh, that is so fantastic. And I’m glad you wrote this book because I was thinking about writing a book kind of like it, but I thought this was going to be a lot of work and, I don’t know. I’ve got other things I want to do. So you did it for me and that’s fantastic.

And because I’m right with you, that is so critical, and not just because it’s a juicy question for The New York Times’ Ethicist, but it has real implications. And on the one hand, you know, we’ve heard, you know, for Amy Edmondson was on the podcast, and we talked about psychological safety, and that’s just so magical, in part because folks are really able to, they feel safe, saying what they really think.

Like, “Hey, this thing we’re doing kind of doesn’t seem to be working. Maybe we should do something else,” versus just, like, holding that to themselves and then the team never being enriched from that.

So one might infer from that, like, “Oh, it sounds like that’s the move, you know? To be awesome at your job, to have awesome teams, we really got to be doing the sharing.” But, Vanessa, you suggest it’s not quite so simple.

Vanessa Bohns
Yeah, and I love this connection to the work on psychological safety because it’s true. You would think, in a psychologically safe environment, that means I can say anything and people are, you know, it’s not going to change how people think of me, and it’s not going to change their feelings.

But we know that’s not true because, even in a psychologically safe environment, people are people, right? And so one example, so I organized the book in chapters about, like, “Should I be honest? Should I share my success? Should I share my failure? Should I apologize?”

And so one of the chapters, the one about sharing failures and vulnerabilities, right, you might think that, “Oh, it’s psychologically safe. I can just kind of share the stuff that’s going on in my life. Like, I’m having a really hard time in this aspect of my personal life, and then everybody is just going to be open and supportive.”

And what the research shows is that people are supportive. And so if you’re looking for, you know, social support and building rapport and trust, you will get that if you share this difficulty that you’re having in your personal life.

But, again, because people are people and we build our impressions about other people, you know, aside from any psychological safety in a group, we also can judge that person as being less competent. And so when you share something, there are often these trade-offs.

In that one, it’s like you share a vulnerability at work and there’s a trade-off. It doesn’t mean that people are going to like you less, which we often really focus on, but in a workplace environment where you really want to display competence and be seen as someone who can get things done, it can actually hurt you a little bit in terms of the perceptions of your competence.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. So, Vanessa, I’m with you. I mean, the stakes are big. Well, they can be, depending on the context of the conversation. So can you walk us through how should we think about it when we’re in that pickle, “Hmm, should I say this?” Do we have some key principles to work through? Or how do we wrestle with it?

Vanessa Bohns
Yeah, so each sort of dilemma has its own set of specific principles, but there are also some just overarching principles that we see kind of in most of these domains. And so one is that we tend to be overly focused on the short-term discomfort of saying something and less on the long-term ramifications of it or consequences of it.

And so one principle that shows up again and again is to take a long-term view, right, “If you say this right now, what are people going to think when they remember what you said, you know, six months from now?”

And sometimes that means you should definitely say it. So when we take a long-term view about, for example, being honest with someone about their work performance. Right now, in the moment, I’m really focused on sort of the short-term discomfort of being honest and how it’s probably going to hurt this person’s feelings if I’m giving them honest, difficult feedback.

But in the long term, I really want them to have that feedback. It’s going to help them improve. They’re going to look back and be happy that they received it and happy that I gave it.

And so when you take a long-term view, you realize that this momentary discomfort isn’t really worth the long-term consequences, so I’m not going to stay silent. I’m going to actually say something.

There are other situations where you might not want to say something, right? And so if we take the same sort of feedback question, if someone has done something that they’re not going to have a chance to do in the future, and it’s already done and they can’t go back and fix it, there is no point in being honest and telling them they did something wrong.

So there’s this distinction researchers make between brutal honesty, just honesty for honesty’s sake, like, “Oh, that really stunk,” and benevolent honesty, so honesty with this kind of long-term plan.

And so one sort of principle that applies specifically in the feedback domain, but also you can apply it to other domains, is ask yourself, “If I say something, if I say this thing, if I give them this feedback, how are they going to use it?”

And if you can’t come up with a reason why they might use that feedback, then you really don’t need to say it. There’s no point in saying it. If you, instead say, “Oh, well, they can use it to improve in the future,” then it’s worth saying.

And so this is something I talk about. You know, I teach this big intro class and I give hundreds of students their first exam, usually their first college exam ever. And I have to make this decision each year about what kind of exam to give them. And there’s a lot of different ways you can go, right?

And people have taken each of these approaches. So you can imagine a professor who decides like, “I’m going to give a really easy exam to boost their confidence. They’re new students, they’re anxious, we’re always hearing about like the mental health crisis of students, so let’s just give them a really easy exam and it’ll boost their confidence.”

Or, you could take the approach, which some of my colleagues take as well as, “Let’s give them a super difficult exam to wake them up and weed out anyone who’s not going to sort of make it, right?”

And so these are, like, two approaches that are completely approaches I’ve seen my colleagues take. What I try to do is neither of these. One is like brutal honesty, like, “Oh, you can’t make it using your current sort of set of skills.”

The other one is just kind of avoidance of the issue and false hope. So it’s like, “Okay, you know, eventually they feel good now, eventually they’re going to encounter something that’s a lot harder.”

So I try to use this benevolent honesty strategy where I give them a challenging exam, I give them real feedback, and then we focus everything on how you’re going to improve on the next exam.

And so, again, it’s all this forward thinking, like, “I assume you’re going to get better. We’re going to have a difficult conversation about what went wrong here. I’m not going to give you false hope by giving you an easy exam. I’m not going to be brutal and say, ‘I guess you can’t, you know, make it in this.’ But we’re going to have a difficult exam, we’re going to have the conversation, and we’re going to talk about how to do better next time.”

And so, in general, that sort of approach of, like, let’s look to this forward long-term oriented way of giving feedback is really useful, both for deciding whether to give feedback and how to give the feedback.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s really a nice distinction there, the benevolent honesty versus brutal honesty. If you cannot answer that question, “How will they use this or behave differently as a result of it?” then don’t do it. So if it’s like one and done, never again, okay, maybe you might be like just let them go.

Although, you might say, “Hey, we’re not going to handle this exact situation again, but there will probably be a time in which a client has a unique request. And when they do, it’d be great to, I don’t know, read their email twice, or double-check the thing, or anticipate what they might really need, or ask a clarifying question, like whatever it is.”

So, I suppose, if you zoom out one layer of, “Are they going to do this again?” I guess the ‘this’ can be super specific or broadly more and more vague or generalizable.

Vanessa Bohns
Yeah, and what you’re doing is really looking for this future-oriented feedback, right? So it’s not like, “Oh, you know, you shouldn’t have done that, you shouldn’t have sent Karen that email.”

It’s like, “In the future, when we have clients like this, we want to make sure that we run an email by somebody else. We send this kind of email. We read the email twice, whatever it might be. So it’s less about like what you did in this specific situation, and more like how we’re going to avoid that problem happening in the future.”

And the nice thing about that is it’s easier to give that feedback. It’s really hard, like when you think about, like, telling someone what they did wrong, you brace for it in your stomach. It’s just like, “Ugh, this is going to be painful for me. They’re going to get defensive. It’s just me telling, like saying something that’s going to make them feel bad.”

And part of why giving feedback is so hard, like honest feedback, is that we are genuinely kind and we want to be kind people. And we feel like that kind of feedback is not kind. But the kind of feedback that is kind is what helps people improve.

And so saying instead, “Okay, in the future, let’s do it this way.” It says, “I trust you to improve. I know that you can improve and you care about this, and we’re kind of on the same team to improve in the future.” And it makes it so much easier to give that feedback.

It’s like a helpful kind of, you feel like you’re being kind of pro-social and benevolent as opposed to just being kind of mean, which is part of the holdup people have. But also, people are way less defensive. They’re not going to argue with you, “Well, I meant to do it this way.” It’s like, “Okay, going forward, we can do it that way.”

Pete Mockaitis
And, Vanessa, I just want to check an assumption, I think, we’re both making here, this notion of we, “We want to be kind and not mean.” I think that seems like a general human principle. But I also get the impression there’s a subset of folks who are unconcerned entirely with that.

And so it’s like, “This is how it’s supposed to be done, so I’m just going to say it and that’s that.” It’s like they don’t give it a second thought. Do you have a sense from the research, like, what’s the term we use for these people with this, on this continuum of this trait? Like, what do we call the trait? And how many people have it versus don’t?

Vanessa Bohns
I mean, I would say, you know, there are people who are more communal-oriented or agreeable, things like that.

Pete Mockaitis
Agreeable.

Vanessa Bohns
But I wouldn’t say that the feedback example that you gave, “This is just how it’s supposed to be done,” is necessarily not benevolently honest, right? It’s still like, “This is how it should be done.” There’s this kind of broader future-oriented, you know, “I’m teaching you. So maybe I’m not doing it in a super touchy-feely way.”

And I think that’s where people get a little bit caught up. Like, it doesn’t have to be touchy-feely. There has to be a plan for the future, not just, “You did that terribly,” right?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, certainly.

Vanessa Bohns
So there are people, I’m sure, who would say like, “Oh, you did that terribly. You’re terrible at your job.” That’s, I think, a very small subset of people. And it’s more for the people who don’t feel comfortable saying that, but don’t really know how to do this other, like, benevolent, honesty, future-oriented kind of feedback.

Pete Mockaitis
I hear you. So it can be benevolently honest and genuinely helpful, although, in a super blunt, maybe a candid package, that’s not fun to get. But I guess what I’m hearing from you is that, is it fair to say, the vast majority of humans are concerned about such things, being kind and not mean?

Vanessa Bohns
Yes. And even that awkwardness we feel when we give, you know, difficult feedback, that is telling you that you care about hurting someone else’s feelings. There’s nothing else in that interaction that’s like really the hard part.

The hard part is when you say something that other person is going to be uncomfortable, that’s not going to feel good, that other person’s going to be a little bit hurt, you don’t know how they’re going to react. There’s this idea, it’s really bracing yourself for hurting this other person that makes that so uncomfortable for us.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So it’s not just us feelers who feel that substantial amount of discomfort here. This is, you believe, quite prevalent across the vast majority of humanity.

Vanessa Bohns
Yeah, people hate giving negative feedback. I mean, there’s tons of research just on these, you know, whether it’s doctors even who give regular feedback, who have to tell people about, you know, dire diagnoses, professors. Like, I’m sitting here talking about this. I hate giving negative feedback to students. It pains me.

But this is why, the way that I’ve sort of found to do it is this future-oriented way where I’m like, “Okay, together we’re working to help you improve, right? I’m not just here criticizing you, essentially.” So I do think it’s a pretty universal difficulty that people have giving negative feedback, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So we’re talking about the feedback domain. What’s another key domain we should think through?

Vanessa Bohns
Yeah, so another one, if we go back to sort of the sharing vulnerability at work, right? As I pointed out in this case, there’s kind of another theme. So you asked about like kind of these general themes in the book. So one is this long-term, short-term thinking, right, and being future-oriented.

Another one is trade-offs. And the fact that in different situations, you should be super aware of what your goal is in that situation to understand how to manage a trade-off. And so in the vulnerability domain, like expressing to a colleague about some personal stuff that’s been going on with you at home, the trade-off, as we talked about, is between competence and warmth, we would say, in experimental psychology.

So it would be like, “People are going to like me and feel close to me if I open up and trust them.” And so a lot of our fears are about like, “Oh, if I tell people, you know, the things I don’t like about myself or things that I’m finding difficult, they won’t like me.” And it turns out that is really not true.

People feel, like, when you trust them with what’s going on with you, they really lean in towards you. But as I mentioned, there is this trade-off with competence. You can seem less competent, less able to handle certain things.

And so in that case, you want to, first of all, ask what your goal is, “Which of these things do I prioritize? Being seen as competent in this situation or being liked?” And if you’re, like, in this workplace environment, “I really want to make sure I’m still seen as competent.” But if you still see your kind of work friends as your friends, and you, therefore, want to share these things with them, there are ways to do that that just aren’t in the workplace.

And so one sort of recommendation I give in the book is that, when you’re trying to balance these things, you don’t want to, if you’re trying to prioritize competence, don’t tell people in the hallway or at the beginning of meetings all the stuff that’s been going on with you at home.

Unless you are have a specific instrumental ask that, “I need some support,” or, “I need some time off,” that’s fine. But if you’re just kind of sharing sort of difficulties that you’re having, keep it to happy hour after work. Keep it to a coffee meeting outside of work.

And that can give you a chance to actually connect with people, talk to them, make them feel closer to you, which we see is a benefit of sharing vulnerabilities. But, at the same time, it’s not, like, “In the workplace, I’m talking about these things and now people are questioning my professionalism.”

“They’re questioning my competence. They know what’s going on outside of work, but then, in the workplace, I’m kind of putting in my workplace face and getting the job done. And so people continue to sort of see me that way in that domain.”

Pete Mockaitis
And then, I guess, when it comes to vulnerability and versus that competence situation, I imagine there’s a number of things we could disclose that feel personal but would not result in a competence hit. It was like, “Oh, you know, I’m really worried about, I don’t know, my son’s drug problem.” I’m just making this up. My kids are drug free.

But, like, that’s a vulnerable thing to share. It’s heavy. It’s emotional. It’s not something that you broadcast, generally. And yet, I would imagine that the recipients at work would not conclude you’re less competent as a result of this disclosure. Or, how would you think about that?

Vanessa Bohns
So they didn’t ask that exact kind of thing, but, I guess, when you look at the kinds of things that researchers have tested people disclosing, so, for example, saying like, “Oh, I had a big fight with my girlfriend today,” right, that’s kind of similar. It doesn’t have to do with the workplace. It’s something that’s kind of on your mind and is this vulnerable thing you’re wrestling with.

People, again, they felt closer to people who are willing to share that. But if they were the ones sharing it, they also got this hit in incompetence. They don’t have a mechanism in these studies, so it could be a number of things.

It could be that you think this person is distracted, or, you know, they’re not like focused on work, or they don’t know professional norms about what to talk about. These are all conjecture. I have no idea based on the research. They didn’t actually show any of that.

But there is sort of this sense of like, “Okay, you know, my sort of friendliness-trust button is being pushed and not my like, ‘Oh, this is a competent worker,’” when you’re disclosing these kinds of personal things.

One interesting thing is that, if you find out that somebody is going through some of these personal things, but they don’t specifically disclose it, so it’s like, “Oh, wow, this person is being professional and pressing on and, you know, doing their work despite all this other stuff they have going on.”

And that’s where you can find out, like, again, in a coffee shop outside of work or through word of mouth, suddenly, that makes us think, “Oh, wow, that’s a really competent person,” right?

And so, again, the idea is not to deny yourself asking for help for things that you actually need help for. When there’s an instrumental need, when it’s like, “I need support,” you should ask for that.

When you need advice, you can, ideally, you can go to, like, a mentor who is there to hear things that you need advice on. And that could be like work-life challenges and things like that.

But it’s one of these things that’s kind of tricky if you’re walking around your workplace regularly kind of talking about personal difficulties going on at home. It’s just worth knowing that there could be some risk that that could make you seem kind of less competent.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, it’s true and it’s good to know and to make an informed decision with regard to giving these trade-offs. And, sometimes, you might gather, “You know what? This team seems to think I’ve got competence in spades, but they think I’m kind of cold. So this is a trade well worth making in this context with this environment.”

Well, I’d also love to hear, what were some of the most mind-blowing experiments in terms of, “Wow, humans are like this? Hmm. I’m surprised.”

Vanessa Bohns
I think one kind of fun one, just because I love animals, I wouldn’t call it mind-blowing, but, is this study on zookeepers. And this was with respect to whether you should express your passion for your work.

And this study looked at zookeepers who see their job, really, as not just a job but a calling, which, you know, when you think about it, so many of us want to feel about our job. We want to love our job. We want to have passion for our job. And zookeepers feel this way.

And so they interviewed, these researchers interviewed a number of zookeepers, and they expressed their love for their job. But one thing that was really interesting is that they explicitly said that they would not tell their managers the kinds of things they were telling these researchers.

So expressing that they love their job, they’re passionate, because they felt like, if their managers knew how passionate they were about their job, they might exploit them, ask them to work extra hours, ask them for things that they felt like were unreasonable.

And one thing that’s really interesting about this is, when experimentalists have kind of taken this idea and tested it, we tend to think, if you just give people jobs that people tend to be passionate about, or jobs that tend to not have a lot of passion, or not be associated with passion.

Like, you take a zookeeper versus like an accountant, or, you know, someone in a creative industry versus like a financial industry, and you ask them like, “Would it be okay to ask this person to do things outside of their role, ask them to stay late, ask them to do things without pay, basically do these kind of, you know, borderline exploitative behaviors?”

People think it’s okay if you’re passionate about your job to ask people to stay late. But they’re like, “Oh, the accountant, the financial person, that’s not fair to ask them to stay late.”

They even have things like, you know, there was a strike, “Is it fair to ask these people to clean the bathroom?” And they’re like, “Okay, yeah, this person in a creative industry who’s passionate about their job, they can clean the bathroom. But this financial person, no, that wouldn’t be right to ask them to clean the bathroom.”

And so, once again, there’s this kind of trade-off in being passionate about your job where it’s really great to be passionate about your job, but it may not be so great to express it to people who might exploit it, for example, to managers.

And so I’ve just found that really, really interesting that these people who love their job were still kind of cagey at work about telling the people who are in charge that they did.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, and I imagine it comes from experience. Like, they’ve lived it, they’ve seen it, they’ve witnessed it, and that is a nice little gut-check for anyone who’s asking anyone to do anything. It’s like, you know, “Would you ask this of someone who had less passion for the job?” That’s handy.

And so then, within your zone of, “Should I say something?” It seems that I feel that trade-off yet again. I’ve known someone who was interviewing and he really wanted the job, and then the person interviewing did not give him the offer, and said, “Well, you just didn’t seem that interested.”

And he’s like, “I’m very interested. It’s, like, that’s just my personality.” It’s like, “Ahh.” And so it’s funny, like when you’re interviewing for a job, it seems like you want to show all kinds of enthusiasm and passion for it.

And yet, when you’re in the thick of it, you know, your manager may or may not exploit that knowledge. And, yeah, I guess it’s kind of case by case. Or do you have any pro tips for navigating it?

Vanessa Bohns
Yeah, so that’s exactly right. You kind of picked out the different points at which you should say that you love your job or shouldn’t say that you love your job, right? And so, for example, lots of job ads these days are like, “We want a passionate worker.”

So Jon Jachimowicz, who does a lot of this work on passion, has looked at job ads and shown this increase, right? So we do want to hire people who seem interested and passionate, particularly for certain kinds of jobs.

Like, again, if we go to like accountants, like we don’t care that much if our accountants are really passionate. But in some kinds of jobs, we’re really looking for someone who’s going to bring this passion and extra energy.

And so when you are interviewing, before you have the job, you do want to express your passion. Once you actually have the job, continuing to walk around being like, “I love my job,” you know, if you’re okay with getting extra work, that might be fine. But there should be this sort of awareness, once again, that there is this trade-off.

So people, there’s been recent research by one of my students, actually, and some other researchers, showing that bosses tend to give more work to employees they see as passionate and employees they see as intrinsically motivated.

And so, again, if that’s fine with you, you can express your intrinsic motivation and your passion. But it is one of those things to be aware of that also could set you up to, potentially, be exploited, to be the person who’s asked constantly to stay late, to do the extra work, etc.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, and then, I guess, there’s yet another layer in terms of, “And if you do those things,” is there some meritocratic force that’s going to result in, you know, good things flowing to you? It’s like, “Oh, wow, that person, they’re on it. I count on them. Of course, they’re going to get the promotion or the raise or the bonus or whatever,” versus, “There are none of those available for anybody, so we just appreciate them. Thanks.”

Vanessa Bohns
Yeah, and some of this research has specifically looked at, like, promotable and non-promotable tasks. So this is a distinction that’s been done in research looking at, like, the kinds of tasks certain groups of people, like women versus men, wind up taking on, and also people who express passion in, like, intrinsic motivation for the job.

And this research has shown that, specifically, it becomes a problem because these people wind up getting these jobs that don’t actually lead to promotions later on. They’re just, like, extra work.

It’s just, “Yes, I can count on that person to do it,” but it’s just like kind of the busy work that needs to get done, right? It’s the like pitch in and, you know, again like stay late, clean the bathroom in that one study, do things that are really outside of your role that may not actually help you down the line.

Yeah, and some other. I mean, this is really related to another section of the book, which is on asking and whether we should ask for things. Because one of the things I talk about is the fact that an ask really is inherently full of social pressure, particularly in the workplace.

And so, when we ask people to do things outside of their role, to stay late, to do something even, you know, borderline inappropriate, whatever it might be, it’s really hard for people to say no.

And so I have done research on that for about 20 years. My most recent research has really tried to push it to the extreme in the lab. And so you asked about, like, studies that make me say, “Wow, I can’t believe people are like that.”

I have to talk about one of my own because I’ve honestly been shocked that this has been happening in our lab. We have these studies where we ask participants to unlock their phones and hand it over to us to look through.

And when we tell people, “We’re going to run a study like this,” most people, like 75%, say, “I would never unlock my phone and just let you look through it.” But when we actually ask people, they immediately unlock it, hand it over, like over 80% of the time.

And so we think that, you know, if we’re asked to do something we’re uncomfortable with or we’re asked to do something we don’t want to do, we’ll just say no. But when we’re actually put in that immediate situation, we wind up complying.

And we even have people, so we had a study where we said, “We’re going to look through your web search history,” because no one really wants to share their web search history. And they would like blurt out random things they had shared rather than just say, “No, thank you. I don’t want to do that.”

And so this idea that, you know, the things we ask also, sometimes that means, “Go ahead and ask. There’s no harm. And people are more likely to say yes than you think,” sometimes it means like, “Think twice. Maybe don’t ask for that if that person is already overcommitted, and you know that by asking, they’re going to feel pressure to agree.”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yes, and then they may agree and they may do it and then they resent you and the relationship is damaged even though, like, ideally, they would have said no. So when you said they blurted out, what were they blurting?

Vanessa Bohns
So we had, you know, just random things that they had searched because they thought we were going to look through their web search history. So it’d be like, “I just searched how tall Peppa Pig is. I can tell you why if you want to know.” Or just like these random things.

Pete Mockaitis
“I had a wart on my foot, and it’s almost gone now.”

Vanessa Bohns
Yeah, I’m only sticking to the ones that are like less personal. But, yeah, those, too.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, good point. Thank you. Well, Vanessa, tell me, is there anything else you really want to make sure to put out there before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Vanessa Bohns
Well, I’ll just kind of finish this whole “When to ask? When not?” with a couple suggestions that I’ve been really excited about that we’ve been working on in our lab for how to get people to say yes but still feel like they are, you know, not resent you after the fact, feel like they actually genuinely committed.

And so one thing we’ve been testing is, if you give someone advanced notice, so, you know, you can try this when you’re asking for something at work, we often will just either email someone with an ask or show up and ask them in the moment.

The best thing is to combine those two things to tell them, “Okay, I want to come ask you this question, and actually ask them, but I want to ask you face-to-face because that’s the most effective way to ask.”

And we found that by giving someone a heads up, so that you walk into their office, you make the request, but they already know what you’re asking, it makes them feel like they had time to process, so they’re not like put on the spot.

And we found that it doesn’t actually change how much, like how likely they are to say yes very much, but it does make them feel like, “Okay, I know what I was getting into. I don’t feel like you kind of forced me into this. I didn’t feel obligated or compelled.” So I would recommend people trying out these different ways of asking for true consent and not just compliance.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, any final really cool stories that have come about in putting this together?

Vanessa Bohns
Okay, one thing I do talk about in the book is my own experience being ghosted on the academic job market. And this idea that, you know, when I was on the job market, I wound up having these interviews, and academic jobs are intense interviews where you have meals with tons of people and you spend tons of hours with people, and you really feel like you get to know these people.

And when I got rejected for this job that I was kind of holding out for, no one told me that I got rejected. I had to, like months later, I had to be like, “Is that job still happening?” Like, “Oh, no, we just wound up not hiring anybody.”

And so one of the things I talk about is this idea that we often let our anxiety about being honest about these things, particularly rejection and difficult feedback, convince us that the kind thing to do is not to reach out and tell someone, “Oh, you’ve been rejected.” But, in fact, it’s so much worse for the person on the receiving end.

And so one sort of point I make there is how important it is to actually explicitly reach out and tell people like, “I’m sorry. The position has been filled or we’re not hiring, etc.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, and I think that really exposes the truth of our sort of, I don’t know, pusillanimous interior avoidant self is that, “Is this really about kindness or is this really about your discomfort?” because just ghosting is clearly not kind, but it’s sure more comfortable for an individual in terms of, like, not saying the thing is more comfortable than saying the thing. Yet, ghosting is clearly less kind than saying the thing.

Vanessa Bohns
But, you know, the research shows that we know that when we’re on the receiving end and we clearly say, “That felt way less kind than actually just having someone tell me I was rejected.”

But the rejecters/ghosters don’t realize that it’s actually more kind. And, as you point out, I completely think it’s possible that we convince ourselves because it’s easier for us. And so I think one big takeaway is that, as we’re figuring out like, “What’s my goal here? What’s my motivation?” that we’re honest with ourselves.

Because, I think, if we were to put ourselves in the other, on the sort of the receiving end, we would realize that actually, “No, that’s really unkind to just have no communication.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, it takes one extra layer of thoughtful consideration. It’s like, “Oh, that’d be so mean to say you’re rejected.” It’s like, “Yes, but how mean would it be to say nothing?” It’s like, “Oh, yeah, I guess that would be even meaner. Okay.” So, yeah.

Vanessa Bohns
And I’ll tell you even more sort of realistic scenario. For example, when we have candidates come and interview, they interview with, you know, my entire department. And as department chair, if I’m telling someone they didn’t get the job, I’m the one who reaches out and says, like, “I’m really sorry, but we went with someone else.”

And I think there is a sense that if everybody else that person met with also sent them, like, a version of a rejection email, that that might not be kind. But I actually think that people would appreciate having someone reach out and say, “You know, I’m really sorry it didn’t work out, but it was a pleasure to meet you,” as opposed to like, “Oh, then I never heard from those other people I actually spent a lot of time with again.”

I think that’s a clearer place where you can imagine really not being sure, like, “Should we all, essentially, reach out and reject this person?” But you can do it in a way that is actually kind and says like, “Oh, no, I acknowledge that I met you. I’m sorry it didn’t work out. Like, good luck.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, agreed. Cool. Well, now can we hear about a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Vanessa Bohns
Yeah, so I will say this is not a quote I find inspiring, but it’s a quote I find enraging, which is kind of a type of inspiring. So there’s this Wayne Gretzky quote that you miss a hundred percent of the goals you don’t, or shots you don’t take. Yeah, I see it all the time.

People always have it in their like email signatures and it drives me crazy because, specifically, because the whole point of my research and this book is like it’s not about just always taking the shot, right?

There are times you shouldn’t be asking for things. There are times you want to think twice. And so that quote, particularly, always just rubs me the wrong way when I see it.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Vanessa Bohns
I’ll tell you one of my favorite studies from this book, is this one where the researchers had their research assistants put, like, a glob of chocolate on their face or a glob of lipstick. And they went up to people and they, you know, asked them to complete a survey and pretended they didn’t know they had something on their face.

And they wanted to see what the personality traits were of the people who said something and the people who didn’t say something. And, in the end, what they found was that they couldn’t even analyze the data because only, like, four people out of over a hundred said anything.

And so, for me, that study is it’s such a fun study, but also the fact that, like, the effect was so much stronger than even they imagined of, like, us not wanting to give feedback, that they couldn’t even use half their data.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And a favorite book?

Vanessa Bohns
Yeah, so I’m really obsessed with this kind of weird but amazing book called Why Fish Don’t Exist. It’s nonfiction. I love nonfiction. And it kind of transcends genres. It’s like a memoir of the author, but it’s also about the taxonomist who came up with, like, the taxonomy that we currently have to figure out, you know, where animals fit in their, like, genre and species, etc. And it’s just a fascinating read and fun.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job.

Vanessa Bohns
I mean, it’s just always, always going to be a pen because, I think, and I tell my students this, I tell my executive students, I tell my undergrad students, because it’s just true, based on the research,

Writing things down by hand helps you process more, helps you remember more. It’s just so much better for deep thinking. Like, typing is efficient, but if you actually want to process and think, like, pen is your best friend.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite habit?

Vanessa Bohns
Going for walks, that just clears my head and it helps me think.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks, they quote it back to you often?

Vanessa Bohns
I would say it’s always my research on asking in person. I get so many emails from people and, I mean, really, I respect that they read the research and they come up with, like, a cute intro, but I don’t know if they realize how many emails I get like this that says, “I know, based on your research, I really should be coming and asking you in person.” I’d say like 50% of the emails I get start with that. And so, yeah, that seems to have made a mark.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Vanessa Bohns
Almost everything you need to get in touch is on my website, VanessaBohns.com, but I’m also on LinkedIn, I’m on Instagram, most of the social media sites @profbohns.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Vanessa Bohns
Ask for things more, but when you do it, practice asking in ways that actually give the other person autonomy to say no. And I think the asking is a good thing, but I think also the giving the autonomy. So give a try, you know, give people, come up with a request, give people a heads-up that it’s coming, and just experiment, see if it works.

Pete Mockaitis
And do you have a favorite way that you, or script or preamble or move you like to do for that autonomy-granting accompaniment?

Vanessa Bohns
Yeah, so, I mean, there’s giving people time. There’s giving people a heads-up. Another one is you ask people in person, and then you say, “Don’t give me an answer right now. Let me know tomorrow. Let me know next week,” right? Again, so you give them time to actually think about something so you get their buy-in.

Another thing we’ve tried is giving people the words to say no. So one thing we found in our work is that it’s really hard for people to find the words to say no, and sometimes we’ll just say yes because we can’t think of a good excuse.

So when you ask for something, you actually give them sort of the script or like the thing you would accept in their no. And so I do this when, for example, I have graduate students and I want to ask them to start a new project.

So my goal with graduate students, I want them, you know, I may think that this is a really good project for them to start, but I do not want them to take on more than they can actually handle. And I want them to be honest if they don’t have time to do something or they’re not interested enough to do a good job at it.

And so we’ll have a meeting and I’ll say, “I have this idea for a project. I want you to think about it and decide whether you want to be part of it. I would love you to run it. So I’m very clear I’m actually asking you to do this if you’re interested. But I don’t want you to tell me right now. I want you to look at your schedule. I want you to think about it. Get back to me the next time we meet.”

And I’ll also give them an excuse, you know, “And if you can’t do it, just tell me, ‘I just have too much on my schedule,’ because it’s, like, I will accept that response.’” And so I try to model that my own requests.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. All right. Vanessa, thank you.

Vanessa Bohns
Yeah, thank you. It’s been a pleasure.