KF #24. Persuades Archives - How to be Awesome at Your Job

Pete Mockaitis
Leslie, welcome.

Leslie Zane
Hi, Pete. It’s lovely to see you and to be here today. Thanks so much for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. I’m excited to hear your wisdom. And I’d love it if maybe you could kick us off with a particularly surprising or counterintuitive discovery you’ve made about us humans and persuasion and influence over the course of your illustrious career?

Leslie Zane
Well, that’s pretty easy because my entire book is about the fact that human beings are unpersuadable. We try really hard, we try to convince, cajole, we hammer people over the head with messages but, at the end of the day, we’re really just trying to convince a conscious mind that doesn’t want to be convinced because you really can’t persuade anybody of anything. But what you can do is kind of go around that and tap into their instincts, which is a completely different mechanism, and you have much more success there.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that is fascinating. Could you bring it home for us, if the listeners are saying, “I don’t know if that’s true. I could be convinced of some things.” Leslie, lay it on us, what’s the evidence that, in fact, we are not convincible?

Leslie Zane
Well, 95% of the decisions that we make are made on instinct. We may have a post-instinct rationalization of a decision that we made, so we may think that we were making that decision consciously, and with rational information, but most of the time, most of the decisions we make about brands and actually about many things in our lives, we make them on instinct.

And we see this over and over again, and we’ve seen it in every category, we’ve seen it in financial services, we’ve seen it in insurance, even doctors prescribe HCPs, healthcare providers prescribe medications on instinct. So, everybody thinks that they’re in control of their decisions, but for the most part they’re making decisions instinctively, and it’s their subconscious mind that takes over.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so now, if we all think that we’re making them consciously but we’re actually not, how does one learn, or know, or discover, or prove this phenomenon is, in fact, at play?

Leslie Zane
Well, so that goes to the question of, “How do we understand people’s drivers, their decision drivers?” And the answer to that is you really can’t trust what people say. And this is why most conscious surveys are misleading, many of them, why political polls are often wrong before a presidential election, because we are asking people conscious questions.

And they think they know the answers, but that’s not necessarily what takes over when it comes to the actual decision, let’s say, in the voting booth. They’re probably going to do something completely different than what they said they were going to do in the conscious survey. Does that make sense?

Pete Mockaitis
I hear you. I guess I’m thinking of the specific example of polling. I mean, maybe they made their decision, or maybe I’m nitpicking here, Leslie. So maybe folks have already made their decision and they’re honestly reporting it, but that decision was made previously based on instinct, like, “Oh, I like that. He’s handsome,” is maybe subconsciously what’s operating. Because, I guess, I’m thinking polling is like, eh, close-ish, right, in the ballpark?

Leslie Zane
In the world of marketing, when it comes to brands, when you think about the kinds of research that companies do, generally speaking, they do these very large-scale brand health tracking studies, and there’s a list of attributes about the brand and people sort of check off what are the attributes that they say yes or no for that particular brand.

And those kind of capture their conscious associations, their conscious thought about those brands. What it doesn’t uncover are some of those implicit negative associations that are lying in the unconscious mind that nobody is really aware of. And then several years later, down the road, the business falls out of bed and, lo and behold, the business leader is sort of surprised, “Oh, my God, what happened here?” And, in the meantime, all those conscious measures that were in the brand health tracker were humming along pretty well, unchanged.

So, what’s really going on is that these negative associations accumulate in the unconscious mind, and you’re unaware of it, the business leaders are unaware of it. And so, it’s really important to constantly monitor your implicit barriers and drivers, not just the conscious barriers and drivers that are easily accessible in these large-scale tracking studies.

Pete Mockaitis
Man, negative associations accumulating in the subconscious mind, whew. There is a phenomenon that I imagine is happening all the time about lots of things in our lives. And then in the context of business, I’m thinking about, I don’t know, like a cable company. It’s like, “Oh, I’m annoyed that I have to give a four-hour window for my installation. Ooh, I’m annoyed that it costs so much. And, ooh, I’m annoyed they don’t have these options.”

And then, lo and behold, ooh, you got some streaming options available, “Oh, this is way better,” and then all those negative associations come to the fore. It’s like, “At last, I am freed. Let’s cut this cable out of our life.”

Leslie Zane
Yeah, you’re really talking about there are whole industries that are sort of beset by negative associations, whether it’s the insurance industry or the cable industry. And what those companies need to do is they need to fight back and really displace those negative associations with positive ones. It’s the only way they can grow.

So, if your brand is not being selected, it means that the growth target, the people you don’t have, the prospective users, have some negative associations that are holding them back. And if you don’t constantly prune your negative associations, they eventually turn into barriers, and the barriers can be really large. At that point, it doesn’t matter how much you spend on marketing or advertising, you’re not going to bring those people over because those barriers are pretty high.

Pete Mockaitis
Could you give us an example of how an individual, a team, a company, a brand goes about pruning negative associations?

Leslie Zane
Well, first, you need to understand what the negative associations are, and the technique for doing that is to uncover their brand connectome. So, what is the brand connectome? This is a key construct in my book. It’s the cumulative memories that get stuck to your brand, that get glued to your brand in the unconscious mind, and this is a physical thing.

So, a brand is known by the associations it keeps. It’s, literally, it has physicality. A brand isn’t this wispy concept. It actually has roots and pathways that are connected to it. And every brand has a connectome, and the biggest brands have really large connectomes, and the smallest brands have very small connectomes. And their job is to grow the connectome in the mind of their growth target, the people they’re trying to get.

Pete Mockaitis
And when you say…oh, sorry.

Leslie Zane
No, you go.

Pete Mockaitis
When you say it’s physical, are you talking about, like, neural pathways inside my brain and spinal cord physical?

Leslie Zane
Yeah, there’s literally physical neural pathways that’s almost like paths in sand get dug in there, and whenever you sort of reach for a particular brand, those pathways kind of light up. And so, when you go to the supermarket, this is how instinct works, and you choose your go-to brands, you’re not really sitting there doing a lot of deciding, saying, “Oh, product A, product B, let me see which one I should buy.” There’s not a lot of that going on.

For the most part, you’re going directly to your go-to brands. You’re grabbing, you’re sticking them in your cart, and you’re walking out. And if you didn’t have the ability to do that, make those snap judgments, then you’d kind of be in the supermarket for like three weeks because there are so many products to choose from. But your brain has this ability to tune out everything that you’re not interested in, and your brand’s connectome, the brand connectome that is the largest in a category, is the one that you are going to reach for.

So, if you’re a loyal Pepsi user, as an example, your Pepsi connectome is going to be very large, it’s going to be very robust, it’s going to have a lot of positive associations. And we can talk more about the framework of how you analyze that in a minute. But the point is that, if you’re reaching for Pepsi, it’s because you have a large positive brand connectome for Pepsi, and your Coke connectome is probably a little smaller and probably has some negative associations because the brain is a relativity machine. So, if you’re up on Pepsi, you’re down on Coke, and if you’re up on Coke, you’re down on Pepsi, and they kind of work against each other.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that is intriguing. I was just thinking about Coke and its connectome. I guess I’m thinking inside me. I was thinking, “Okay, Coca-Cola,” there’s just like all of the things, like, Santa Claus, and the troops, and America, and Atlanta and southern hospitality. And so, it’s like I got all those things. And then, Pepsi, I got, I don’t know, like Beyonce and Britney Spears, and be young and have fun, Generation Next.

Leslie Zane
There you go.

Pete Mockaitis
And it doesn’t feel rational, but like these emotions and things, it’s like, in me, Coke feels more wholesome, even though it’s like sugar water, which is not really healthy for you, but relative to Pepsi, feels more wholesome. And Pepsi feels more like edgy and risky. But they’re almost the same thing.

Leslie Zane
But they manifest, as you just pointed out and dimensionalized so beautifully, they manifest very differently in people’s minds, and people have an inclination, a bias you could say, for one versus the other. And then, of course, there are people who go back and forth, but for the most part you’re either sort of pro Pepsi or you’re pro Coke.

And I don’t mean to just pick on Coke and Pepsi. We could talk about this for Apple and Samsung, for Nike and Adidas, for the Mets and the Yankees. I mean, this is literally every single category has this kind of dynamic, and these brands are basically vying against each other in people’s minds. And that’s what it is. It’s a battle for the terrain of your brain. And the brand that has the most terrain, the most territory, almost like a game of Monopoly, whoever wins the most real estate in the mind wins.

Because the three most important things, in terms of a framework that might be helpful to your listeners for the brand connectome, for you to have a healthy brand connectome it’s got to have three things. It’s got to be large. It’s got to be positive, lots of positive associations, not negative ones And, third, it needs to be distinctive. Those are the three things that you’re shooting for.

Large, because the more connections a brand has in the brain, the more salient it is, and the more it’s your instinctive go-to-choice, if that makes sense. So that’s critical. Two, positive associations, not negative ones. Negative ones hinder growth, so you want to get rid of those negative associations right away. And then, third, you want distinctiveness. You want to have some clarity and some distinctiveness, but that’s not nearly as important as the other two, the salience and the positivity. All three are important, but salience and relevance, positive association is really critical.

Pete Mockaitis
Also, if we zoom in to the experience of a typical professional, and we each in a way are a brand, a personal/professional brand, how might we apply these principles so that we are positively associated and featured in the brains of our colleagues, of our bosses, those who are deciding if we get raises or promotions or cool project opportunities?

Leslie Zane
I love that question. So, what you’re really talking about is the personal brand, and using your personal brand to make sure you get all those wonderful opportunities. I think of a brand as a seed that you plant in other people’s brains and other people’s minds. And what we want to do is we want to make that seed grow. So, the more positive associations we add to the seed, the more it lays down roots and pathways, and branches out. It turns into a seedling and then a plant. And then little by little, hopefully, a full-grown tree.

So really what we’re talking about is growth. We need to grow our brands in other people’s minds. And the way to do that is by keeping on adding lots and lots of positive associations and making more and more connections to those people’s lives. Not one dimensional, but multi-dimensional. And this is a key difference in our philosophy versus a lot of others, certainly, versus traditional marketing. Traditional marketing would say that every brand should stand for only one thing.

But I just told you, you need a myriad of connections in people’s minds to have a salient large brand connectome. So, it’s actually the opposite of what we’ve been taught, “Oh, Volvo should stand for safety.” No, Volvo should stand for safety, and advanced technology, and looking good, and having great styles, and great color.” Like, it needs all of those things, not just one thing. Because if your brand only stands for one thing, then it’s going to be basically invisible in people’s minds. It’s going to have a very tiny connectome.

So, in terms of your personal brand, you want to make as many connections as possible in people’s minds and just keep adding those positive associations, almost like nurturing it, nurturing your brand as if the associations are the soil, the water, and the sun that you would feed a plant.

Pete Mockaitis
All right, Leslie, so let’s say folks hear that and say, “Yes, I am so in. I am going to turbocharge my seed trajectory amongst my colleagues, boss, and stakeholders, collaborators at work.” What are some actions, behaviors, things that they might do so that we’ve got lots of very positive associations to us?

Leslie Zane
So, one of the first stories in my book, The Power of Instinct, is a story about a woman named Anna who’s trying to sell one of her ideas at a company. She’s trying to get them to use the marketing campaign that she wants them to use, and she’s having a lot of resistance, and the president of the company tells her that this is something that they’ve tried before and it didn’t work.

And so, she basically goes on a marketing campaign for her idea, and she goes to sales, and she goes to R&D, and she goes to the head of HR, and she starts to build, basically, build a marketing campaign around her idea by seeding positive associations with each one of those different audiences so that by the time they get into the big meeting everybody’s already positively predisposed.

Because the more, this is about early and often, the more times you seed your idea, and the more positive associations people receive about it, the more they’re going to buy in. And, little by little, your idea, that seed, is going to grow. And so, the same thing would be true, whether it’s your idea that you’re selling or if you’re talking about your personal brand itself.

Pete Mockaitis
So, when Anna’s doing this going around seeding positive associations, what does that mean in practice?

Leslie Zane
It means that she’s having conversations where she’s talking to the person about her idea, and she’s finding some shared common values that they can agree on. So, if she’s talking to sales, maybe she’ll be talking about the value of this idea to the selling process. If she’s talking to HR, she’ll be talking about the value of the idea for internally with employees and why this is going to be good for retention.

It really doesn’t matter what the specific case is, but basically what you want to do is you want to latch on to things that are already in your audience’s mind, and you want to leverage those and hook what you’re selling to that. This is all about leveraging the familiar and creating shared values between you and your audience, between you and your target, so that rather than selling against the conscious mind, which I told you is unpersuadable and only makes 5% of decisions, that is basically going up a brick wall.

If I tried to persuade you of something, you’re going to say, “I don’t think so. Thank you very much. I know what I’m doing. I know best.” You’re set in your ways. You’re stubborn. That’s just how the conscious mind works, and it’s true for everybody. So instead, what we want to do is we kind of want to go through this back door of the instinctive mind, which is much more malleable, it turns out, and I want to latch on to things that already exist in this target’s minds, and hook my messages and what I’m trying to sell to those things that already exist. That’s the path of least resistance, whereas, the conscious mind is the path of greatest resistance.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Leslie, I’d love it if you could zoom way in on a case study. So, someone has taken the appealing to the instinctive mind approach for their persuasion campaign, can you lay out a case, in particular, of this person had this idea, and they were trying to win over person A, person B, person C who had these different values or connected pieces, and here’s how the magic unfolded up close and personal?

Leslie Zane
Well, I will tell you a story that happened early in my career, which I do think demonstrates the unconscious approach to winning over an audience. And remember that at the time, I was very young and I didn’t know how to do this yet, but I’m going to show you how it ultimately worked. So, I was working on the Johnson’s Baby business, this was many moons ago, and the business was not doing all that well.

And so, I had noticed that dads were getting more involved in caregiving, but we were still showing just moms and babies in the traditional Madonna and Child pose in all of our advertising. And I also noticed that when dads walked down the street pushing a baby carriage, mom’s heads would turn. That’s what they paid attention to. Not so much a mother walking down the street, but a dad walking down the street pushing a baby carriage.

So, I marched myself into my boss’s office, and I said, “I know what we need to do to turn around this business. We need to put the first father in a Johnson’s Baby shampoo commercial.” And he said, “Leslie, you’re crazy. It’s moms that buy these brands, these products, not dads, and there’s no research to support anything that you’re saying.”

But I kept on advocating because I felt in my bones that I was right. And that year, I got my performance review, and it said, “Leslie is too passionate about putting fathers in advertising, and this is an executional concern, not a strategic one.” Now, Pete, you know I used to work at Bain & Company like you did, and I had been told that strategy was my superpower. So, this was like devastating to me, but because I’m a crazy person, you don’t know me very well yet, but I don’t take no for an answer.

I kept on advocating in spite of this, and I think at a certain point, they just gave in because they were exhausted, and they put the first father in a Johnson’s Baby Shampoo commercial, and the business took off. It was the highest-scoring commercial in the company’s history. What I had found was a trigger. I had found my first trigger, a cognitive shortcut. Father and baby was a creative twist, a distinctive twist on mother and baby, that brought all these new positive associations to the brand that it didn’t have before.

Progressive brand, giving mom a break, and a father tenderly taking care, the strength of the dad, tenderly taking care of a newborn was this phenomenal visual contrast that you didn’t get with mother and baby. There were just all these positive associations that just took Johnson’s Baby to a different level. And it worked at the subconscious level that wasn’t captured in any of their research because it was something that was operating at an implicit level.

And so, that is a really good example of something you can use, whether it’s for a brand or a business that you’re on in your in your work, or you could also look for triggers like that to sell your ideas. But that’s what it’s all about, verbal triggers, visual triggers, finding those cognitive shortcuts that already exist in people’s minds, and sort of co-opting them and linking your business, your brand to that thing. That make sense?

Pete Mockaitis
It does, and I love it. And what’s flashing into my mind, look, I guess that’s my connectome, right? The associations here is I’m thinking of the movie, “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles,” and we’ll link it in the show notes, this clip, when I think they’re stuck in an airport, and they need to get some cash? Have you seen this?

And John Candy, he’s a sales guy, that’s what he does, and so he has a bunch of shower curtain rings. And so, he goes from group to group to group, just saying exactly what they want to hear. So, there’s a bunch of teenage girls, and he put the shower curtain rings on their ears like earrings. He said, “Wow, boy, these really make you look older. Boy, you can really pass for 20 or 21 even.” And so, they just hand out their money, because he’s connecting to something, like, “Yes, I am trying to get into, I don’t know, dance clubs I shouldn’t be going to at my age, but I can’t get into.”

And we’re just sort of connecting to the desire. They had no desire for shower curtain rings before, but now, by golly, you have linked that to something that they want, that they want deeply. So, well, now, Leslie, I’m thinking, well, the hard part is figuring out, well, what is it that people want deeply and that we can trigger to get this effect going for us?

Leslie Zane
Yeah, and that takes research, and I can’t give you the magic bullet to that. I can only just give you examples from different categories of what are great triggers, and then I think that could kind of get the ball rolling. So, for example in the bottled water category, the snow-capped mountain is a growth trigger. It’s an amazing succinct device that has all of these positive associations associated with it.

So, you just look at a snow-capped mountain, and if you’re in the bottled water category, you know that stands for pure, pristine, water from the glaciers, fresh, natural, cold, clean, all these positive associations. So, you take that little snow-capped mountain and you put it on your bottle and, now, suddenly, the bottled water inherits all of those positive associations. And you don’t have to save them because they are already built into our brains over time from our learning, from our education, society, culture has done all that for us.

And so, that’s really the beauty of triggers. This is a way to leverage what already exists in the mind because human beings are hardwired to connect with the familiar, with the things that we already know, and you latch on to these things, and it enables your message to go down into people’s memory structure much faster, much more easily, without confronting that conscious mind that’s resistant to change.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, and what’s kind of wild is that snow-capped mountains have good associations like clean, pristine nature, whatever. When in fact, bottled water can be kind of problematic for the environment, and it’s sort of like, “Oh, I feel like this is wholesome and pure.” It’s like, “Well, you know, there’s many things you could point to that says this is destructive and evil from some business practices or value systems that you evaluate it.” But none of that is consciously happening, it’s like, “Ooh, that looks pure and wholesome. I like that.”

And I’m also thinking about carpets. Carpets always got to have a baby on them. There’s always a baby on the carpet because it must be soft and pure and wholesome and homey and cozy if this little baby is on that carpet, right, because this baby wouldn’t be on a toxic, harsh, troubling surface, would it? And so, in a way, well, Leslie, it feels like there’s a way of real responsibility to behave ethically with this powerful force that we’re playing with here.

Leslie Zane
I mean, that’s definitely true, and it goes really way beyond these cognitive shortcuts and these triggers. There’s really a whole philosophy that I talk about in the book. The fact is marketing is really doing it all wrong today. Traditional marketing has it upside down because when you think about it, the rules of marketing were created like 50-60 years ago when we thought the conscious mind made decisions, but that’s not the case.

The real case is that our instinct of mind is making most of our decisions, so we really need a whole new rulebook for how to go about changing people’s minds, changing their behavior, getting them to buy our brand, getting them to hire us, enabling us to get into the college we want, whatever it is that you’re trying to achieve. My book kind of lays out the rules, the new rules of marketing that displace the old rules.

So, here’s another example. The old rule of marketing would be that your core customer is most important and you should spend all of your time on your core customer. Well, the fact is the core customer is really a trap. Your core customer is never going to tell you what you really need to know about your negative associations because they’re happy with you as you are.

They’re not going to help you evolve. It’s going to really be hard to get more sales out of them because how many bottles of shampoo can one person use? You can only get so much out of your core existing customers. And so, if you want to grow, the most important thing you can do, the best thing you can do is to reach out to the people you don’t have.

So, your growth target, the prospective customer, is really far more important to increasing growth at an exponential rate than your core customer. It doesn’t mean that we ignore our core customer. Of course, we take excellent care of them. But where we want to prioritize our resources is really the growth target because, otherwise, you have a leaky bucket. There’s always some people who are leaving you.

And so, if you’re not constantly replenishing your existing customer franchise, you will have a leaky bucket. So, that’s just one more example of how those traditional marketing rules kind of get it wrong. And the new rules are really critical for getting the growth that you want according to how instinct really works.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s really good. And I’m thinking about all sorts of elements of persuasion, whether you’re doing a presentation, or you’ve got a landing page and you’ve got your headline, your copy, and you’ve got your images. Tell me if this feels right to you, Leslie. It’s like the focus of this message should be less upon “This is the superior option for these six key reasons,” and more of just like getting the trigger that makes you go, “Yes!” like that moves my heart and soul. Like a snow-capped mountain, like a baby on a carpet.

And that is the hard part in terms of like, “What does it for you?” For someone, it might be flyfishing, it’s like, “Oh, the freedom, the escape, the peace, the adventure.” And for someone else, that totally doesn’t do anything. And so, to really understand what gets people going, any pro tips on how we do our research to elicit that?

Leslie Zane
Well, first of all, I want to validate what you’re saying because what you’re basically saying is that if we use very overt messages, like, “Here are the six reasons why you should listen to my podcast,” that is not going to work very well. But if you connect with your audience on shared values, on shared images, on fantasy, and we can talk about that, then you’re going to have this collaborative approach.

So, I think of that overt approach as sort of confrontational. You’re basically telling me what to do, and most humans don’t like to be told what to do, but this is about being collaborative and basically knitting your message, knitting your brand into the brains, almost like a symbiosis between the brains of your perspective users, because we’re talking about growing audiences, and growing your following, and growing your brand.

So, that’s really what we’re talking about, is being collaborative with them, and finding out things that they care about. But that doesn’t mean you want to lose your identity, and only show them things that they care about. You want to find the things where you have commonality while still keeping your own identity.

One of the biggest mistakes people make is they think, when I start talking about this, they think that I mean that they should be emotional in their messaging, and that actually doesn’t work at all, because emotion goes in one ear and out the other. And I also can’t tell people how to feel. That’s another example of being overt. So, what we really want to do is create distinctive brand assets, because distinctive brand assets and distinctive brand triggers, those are the things that are sticky that last in people’s memories, and that would be things like verbal triggers as well as image triggers.

So, we’ve already talked about image triggers like a snow-capped mountain, or like the dad with the baby, that’s an example of an image trigger. An example of a verbal trigger would be “Just do it” or “Do the Dew” from Mountain Dew. These are verbal triggers that get lodged in people’s minds and memories and are very, very sticky. They remain.

Pete Mockaitis
And it’s so funny, like, when I drink Red Bull, I think about all the marketing, or “Do the Dew, or “Red Bull gives you wings.” And so, sometimes I even say to myself, I’m just joking, “I’m going to slam a Red Bull because I’m so extreme,” and I’m just kind of being silly. But, in a way, there is something there in terms of, “Yeah, I’m about to get some pretty serious about the thing I’m about to do, and I would like to be caffeinated as I do so.”

And it’s funny, so we both have roots at Bain. I remember there was a bit of copy in the recruiting literature. They kept using it for years and years, and it might still be there, I haven’t checked. And it resonated with me, and I think that’s why they kept it around so much, and they said, they’re sort of like, “Hey, what’s it like to work at Bain?” or, “What are Bainies like?” And they’d said, “We laugh a lot.”

And I thought that was perfect, because, one, I like to laugh a lot, and who doesn’t, right, really? But I thought it was fantastic because it was distinctive. I didn’t see that in the other information sessions with companies that were recruiting on campus, and it was something that I wanted for my experience of work and colleagues, and I found it to be generally true, like, “Yeah, sure enough, we did. We did laugh a lot.”

In our collective analytical dork-dom, was able to find humor, shared humor and some stuff in a way that I don’t, still to this day, don’t find with many people. It was kind of special. We did laugh a lot. And so, that was money. That was magic. And they stuck with it for a long time, and again, it seems like you got to do the research to surface those things. Like, “What’s distinctive and resonant for folks?” And ChatGPT isn’t going to spit it out for you.

Leslie Zane
Yeah, no, I think that’s exactly right. And, really, where you want to do your research is with your growth target. So, most people would think you’re going to find it by talking to your existing customers. You’ll find what turns your existing customers on, but that’s not going to help you know how to win the new people over. So, you really have to find out what are the barriers, the implicit barriers in your growth targets’ minds.

I promise you that’s the key to growth because if you can take down those barriers with positive associations that overcome those barriers, you can get those people to come over. That is the freeing enlightenment that is out there to be understood. In fact, I would argue, you should not create a strategy for your company without knowing the implicit barriers of your growth target. And I tell you how to do this in my book. Each chapter is basically another rule or principle for how to go about this.

But another example is fantasy over reality. We’re told in marketing that you should show reality to your customers. That’s what they want to see. And if you ask consumers, they will tell you every single time, “I want to see reality.” But I told you, don’t listen to what people say, because what people say and what they do are two completely different things, because all of our research shows that people connect and go to fantasy every single time. Even that Red Bull example that you just used. The guy kind of going up in the air with the wings. That’s fantasy. And that’s what we want. We want fantasy. We want to fulfill our dreams.

Pete Mockaitis
So, just to make it all the more real, Leslie. Let’s just say I own a podcast production company, and I do. And let’s just say our core customer is wealth managers, and they are, but I’m seeing some opportunity with the growth zone amongst psychologists or mental health professionals, and I do. So, what might be an example of an implicit barrier of someone who has a psychology practice who’s thinking, “Oh, maybe we should launch a podcast for marketing, but I don’t know,” of like what an implicit barrier might be and how that might be addressed?

Leslie Zane
For them to create their own podcast or to come listen to yours?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, so the idea is like we sell a podcast launch service and they would launch a podcast as a means of promoting their practice.

Leslie Zane
I mean, I don’t know what their negative associations are. We need to go out and discover that. But we could guess, I wouldn’t rely on that, but we could guess that maybe they think this is too business-oriented, or that they wouldn’t have the expertise to do it, or that it would take up too much of their time, or they wouldn’t be able to get good guests, or any number of those things.

They may also have a certain image of what a podcast host is like, and maybe they feel disconnected with that image. Maybe they think it’s a certain type of person that’s a narrow persona, and they think of themselves as more mainstream. I don’t know. It could be any one of those things, or none, or something completely different.

But that is the discovery process, and it’s actually really exciting. Because once you understand what the negative associations are that are holding back the people you’re trying to get, you’re empowered. You actually know what you need to do from a business standpoint. Instead, you’re just throwing spaghetti against the wall guessing at your business strategy.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s cool. And then the implicit side of this is not so much like, “Hey, you could be a podcaster, too.” “You know what? I don’t care.” Like someone’s like, “You know what? I don’t care for Joe Rogan. That’s who I hear when I think of podcasts. I think of podcasts, I think of Joe Rogan. I don’t care for Joe Rogan.” And it’s like, “Oh, well, if we showed imagery of a 24-year-old tattooed woman, you’re like, ‘Oh, well, that’s not Joe Rogan. That’s more like me. Huh, what’s this about?’” You certainly got some curiosity going there.

Leslie Zane
Yeah, or even somebody, like, I know I’m making this up, but let’s say, I don’t think this is true, but Reese Witherspoon, who has this big company now, and she’s got a production company, and she’s got a million different things going on. We learned, for example, that she started out as a podcast host, right? So, like finding aspirational people and/or celebrities who actually started as podcast hosts and were able to build their business into a mega brand. That would be another way. People want fantasy and they want that aspiration, and they want all the possibilities, and they should have them.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, now, you’re talking about fantasy, this is making me think of, like, in the fitness communities. Like, folks will say, “Oh, this is a hardcore workout that equipped so-and-so to pass Special Forces or SEAL training or selection, or that this celebrity used to get jacked for his superhero role in a movie.” It’s like, “Oh, yeah, I want to get jacked like Chris Pratt or Wolverine or whomever.” And so, it is speaking to fantasy, and it’s powerful, even though it’s like, “I’m not going to be in a movie, but I think I should work out like that guy, because, wow, I could be so pumped and buff like him.”

Leslie Zane
That’s exactly right. We want to buy the dream, we want the aspiration, and those celebrities. And, obviously, you don’t only have to do this via celebrity because that’s very expensive. But the idea is to tap into people’s aspirations and what they want to be and where they want to see themselves a few years from now.

Pete Mockaitis
And it could totally be mundane. It’s like the manager dreams of a day in which he doesn’t have to fiddle with seven different software tools to get a simple thing done. And so, then we sort of just see what’s something that is simple and elegant and reliably just works in this person’s life and whatever, it’s a hammer, it’s a saw, it’s a favorite pencil or pen. And then we just sort of see how we can kind of get things linked up from the idea I have, “Hey, let’s use a single software platform to this simple tool that reliably works and delights you with that.”

Leslie Zane
A hundred percent. Sounds good to me.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, you got my wheels turning in so many ways. Leslie, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Leslie Zane
I would just say that I have another sort of construct that I find useful in terms of growing brands and growing, whether it’s your personal brand, your business, your idea, whatever it is you’re selling. By the way, we’re all marketers. I talk about marketing a lot, but everybody’s a marketer. Everybody’s selling something, even if it’s trying to get, sell your kids on doing their homework, you’re still selling something.

And that formula is keep, stop, add. Keep the positive associations you already have in people’s minds. Hold on to those and keep reinforcing those so that they’re not forgotten, because it’s like learning. The more you reinforce it, like studying, the more it stays sticky in people’s minds, and the more it’s remembered.

Stop the negative associations that you may be sending out inadvertently, that you may not even know you’re communicating, but they’ve collected in people’s minds because people connect the dots in their minds in ways that are very often competitively disadvantaged for you, but you want to understand what it is that those connections that they’re making that could be hurting you, and you want to replace those negative associations with positive ones.

And then the add, is add new positive triggers that are packed with so many positive associations that they sort of explode your brand connectome overnight, and increase the salience because salience means it’s the instinctive go-to-choice, and the moment that your brand is more salient than the next guy, it has a larger brand connectome, that’s the moment that people come over to you, or you get promoted, or your business grows double digits, etc.

So, keep, stop, add. It’s a very useful formula. The reason it’s useful is because some people, when they try to change their brand, they change too much and they forget the keep. So, this is about evolution, not revolution. You don’t want to lose your identity to the people that you already have. Keep, stop, add.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. Well, now could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Leslie Zane
Well, one of my favorite quotes, because it happens to fit with how I think personally as well as professionally, is, “When you stop growing, you start dying,” which is a quote from William Burroughs. I like that quote because I think all of us should always be learning and educating ourselves to grow. And I think it’s true, when you stop growing, you start dying.

But it also happens to also be true brands and the brand connectome that if you’re not constantly evolving and adding new positive associations to your connectome, little by little it atrophies. And so, it turns out that growth is what it’s all about. It’s important for us and it’s important for our brands in order to thrive.

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

Leslie Zane
So, my favorite research is the research that we do every day here at Triggers. We have so much of it. We’re literally doing research every day, and what we consistently find is that the growth target has a very different connectome than the core customer. The core customer has a myriad of connections, and the growth target is missing positive associations and has some negative associations. And it’s the contrast between the core and the growth target that you really want to examine.

So, it’s very useful to understand that the mind maps of those two targets are very different, and your job is to add positive associations to your growth target and to take down those negative associations so you can turn a growth target into a core customer.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Leslie Zane
My favorite fiction book right now is The Measure by Nikki Ehrlich. I highly recommend it. It’s phenomenal. In the book, everybody receives one day, a little box on their porch that has a thread in it, and the thread is a measure of how long your life is going to last. And each person decides whether they’re going to look in the box or not look in the box.

But from that premise, a whole bunch of things happen. It’s a phenomenal premise. She wrote it during the pandemic. Nikki, she’s a very young author in her early 20s, and it’s a bestseller. It’s being turned into a movie. It’s super exciting, and I would highly recommend it.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And favorite tool?

Leslie Zane
My favorite tool. I didn’t see that on your list. I’m going to ask you to… I don’t know what you mean by that.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure. That’s just something you use that helps you be awesome at your job. Sometimes people will point to an app or a platform or a thought framework.

Leslie Zane
My favorite tool is the brand connectome because it really helps you understand how the world works. Everybody has a brand connectome, everybody is a brand, whether it’s the candidates running for office right now for president of the United States, or the brand or business that you’re working on. If you understand the brand connectome, you kind of understand how to navigate the world and make success in it.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite habit?

Leslie Zane
My favorite habit is boxing. I do it four times a week. It helps me get all my stress out, and I love the metaphor of kind of overcoming challenges. And I think boxing kind of fits with my personality. I really love it. And it’s also a great way to get tremendous exercise without ruining your knees.

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

Leslie Zane
I’ve got three of those. These are some things that that I say in the book and that also people have quoted. First, “A brand is known by the associations it keeps.” That’s a really helpful way to think about a brand is. “You don’t make your choices. Your brand connectome does.” And, “You can’t persuade anybody of anything, but you can leverage their instincts.”

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

Leslie Zane
ThePowerOfInstinctBook.com is where they can see the various tiers of offers in terms of my book and get discounts, etc. So ThePowerOfInstinctBook.com. And you can also link with me on LinkedIn, Leslie Zane. I love meeting new people and I’m very responsive.

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

Leslie Zane
I would just say stop trying to persuade people to do what you want and instead grow your brand, your business, your idea, your personal brand by harnessing instincts, because if you do that, you can work with the brain instead of against it, and achieve anything you want.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Leslie, thank you. This is fun. I wish you all the best.

Leslie Zane
Thanks so much, Pete. Thanks for having me. This is a great conversation.

Pete Mockaitis

Scott, welcome.

Scott Walker

Thanks for having me. Good to be here.

Pete Mockaitis

Oh, it’s great to have you. And I think we must start with a thrilling hostage negotiation story.

Scott Walker

A thrilling hostage negotiation story, just like the movies obviously, because that’s how every single one where the helicopter gunship comes in and there’s a mass battle. I’d like to say, actually, before I get into the story is if there was a fly on the wall for 99% of these kidnap-for-ransom negotiation situations, people will be thinking, “Is that it?” in terms of, “Where’s the high drama? Where’s the high stakes?” but that’s the last thing we want if things are getting really off the chart, we’re kind of doing a job wrong.

But you want a story, let me give you a story. Okay. A few years ago, I was in Africa, on a case in West Africa, and six people have been taken off a ship by pirates and were being held to ransom by the kidnappers, by the pirates for several millions of dollars.

And my job was to work alongside the families and the company whom the hostages belong to. And, usually, there’s a bit of a delay until we hear from the kidnappers, their initial demands, “We’ve got your people.” But it’s taking a long time, I’m looking around the table, there’s lots of senior people here, and I’ve kind of given them, “This is how it’s going to play out. You trust me, follow me, this is how it’s all going to work out.” and it’s not. Nothing’s really happening.

But then, as if the universe is listening, the phone rings, and they say, “Yeah, we’ve got your people. We want five million dollars and we want it by the end of the week, or we’re going to kill them,” and then you can hear a pin drop. And I turn to the guy I’m using as the communicator, and we agree to a strategy about, “Okay, for the next few calls, we’re going to get a proof of life. We’re going to come back with an initial offer to manage their expectations, and everybody, family as well, we need to be prepared for some conflict, for some threats,” and this is standard practice. So, anyway, the next week or two, two and a half weeks goes by, and we get them from five million down to about half a million, I think it was.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, 10x, there you go. Good work, sir.

Scott Walker

And it’s not about saving money, and there’s a reason why we do that, and I can go into it afterwards, and it’s relevant to workplace negotiations as well. But it’s taking its toll. It’s taking its toll. It’s making the guy that I’m using super stressed. He’s a broken man, and I realized in that moment, “Actually, we need to do something here.” Kidnappers phoned again, and he’s like, “Hey, you need to give us more time. You’ve got our people, you must look after them, they’re your responsibility,” and then this booming voice comes out from the phone saying, “No, they’re yours. We want the money by Friday or we will execute them.”

And the communicator smashes his fist against the table, and I think, “That is going to come my way any second.” But he walks out and I realized, “Unless I can establish or re-establish the trust, make sure the rapport is there, influence and persuade, and bring about some kind of cooperation with him, we’re not going to get anywhere here, and the hostages are going to die.” The kidnappers can wait, they’re easy to deal with. At the end of the day, kidnappers are just businessmen looking for a great deal. That’s it.

And so, I need emotional intelligence 101, and over the course of 24-36 hours, I get the communicator around, he jumps on the next call and we agree to a deal of about $300,000 in the end. And then a few days later, the hostages come back, of which that is in itself was interesting. And depends how long the podcast is, I could go on and on about…maybe I can say the second part of the story for later on, but some key points from that as well. Hopefully, that whets your appetite.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, it does, and that’s really, really fascinating that you’re not so much worried about the kidnappers who are making demands and threatening to kill people, as you are about your relationship with the guy talking on the phone in the same room. That’s intriguing. And so, your experience, and you sort of know the stakes and what’s going on. And so, I’m intrigued, how did you solve that problem with that person that you’re working with communicating?

Scott Walker

Well, first of all, let’s just take a step back here, and just have a look at what is a negotiation. People get scared, they run a mile when the term negotiation gets bandied around. It’s simply a conversation with a purpose, okay? And I think it’s fair to say the world needs us all to be able to have better conversations right now. Everyone’s shouting, no one is listening. And so, there’s an art, there’s a skill to having better conversations with people, if they’re kidnappers, teenage kids, or you’re working for a big corporate.

But in terms of, let’s look at a negotiation per se, there are three elements of that. There’s the other side you’ve got to manage, there’s your own side, and then there’s your internal emotions, your own mindset. And so, we often overlook our own side and we call it the crisis within the crisis. So, this is when, again, let’s just take a business setting, where dealing with your clients and the customers is the easy bit. It is relatively straightforward, but you’ve got the egos, the internal politics, the competing demands, the silo mentality, the competing budgets, whatever it is, all vying for your attention. It’s just noise on your side of the table, and that actually would take 80% of my time to manage on a case on our own side.

But again, it’s taking a step back and looking, “Okay, what’s really going on here? What is this person’s underlying needs and wants? Is it they just want a save face? Is it they want a bit of control? Are they just an ego-driven boss that likes the sound of their own voice?” And they’re easy to deal with because it’s all about them and you can play to that. And we can go into that a bit later about some of those techniques about what we can do to achieve that.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Well, there’s already so much to dig into there. So, 80% internal stuff, that sounds annoying and frustrating to folks like myself. Activator is one of my top strengths, “I like to get stuff done, let’s make it happen. And this, ugh, dealing with all the internal stuff is a bummer,” and yet you understand that that is often necessary for it to take up the majority of your efforts, as unpleasant or annoying as that may be to some personalities, so as to get a good outcome. And so, in this instance, you need to sort through something with your communicator. And, Scott, the human person needs completion on a story. Lay it on us. How did you resolve that?

Scott Walker

Sure. Okay. Well, again, there’s two things to remember here as well. In a negotiation, yes, there’s problem solving. You want to gather some information to solve a problem, which, in your personality type there, the behavioral trait is you want to get stuff done, and that is a natural instinct, particularly in the corporate world, “Come on, let’s get it done,” but that can overlook the second fundamental aspect, which is about establishing and building relationships.

Because unless you can do that, the gold medal, the desired outcome of every negotiation, really, is some kind of cooperation or collaboration, and you can’t do that if it’s, “I’m going for my target. Get out of my way. I’m coming through.” That can serve sometimes, but if you want a long-term client for life, a great team culture, it’s about establishing those relationships.

Funny enough, on this case, obviously working lots of empathy, active listening, validating with the communicator, he comes on board, we get the deal, but just because we’ve got an agreement. It’s not the same as the safe and timely release of the hostages, because they could get picked up by another gang, they can fall ill or injured after being released, who knows. So, we get the money, the ransom money, 300,000 US dollars in two bags, and we’ve got to get across the border from one country to the next.

And we used a courier, some brave soul who’s had lots of courage for breakfast, who then follows instructions by the kidnappers to get to where they need to get to. Meanwhile, the kidnappers are phoning me and our team, checking in to make sure every four hours that it’s going according to plan. Four hours go by, we don’t hear anything from the courier. Eight hours go by, still nothing, and you can see where this is going now. Twelve hours, nothing. Thirteen and a bit hours later, we get a phone call. The courier has been intercepted by the local police who are refusing to let him go with the money.

Cut a very long story short, we managed to fly a very important person, a trusted community elder down to speak to the chief of police who then releases the courier and the money, well, most of the money, obviously local taxes. And we think, “Great. The courier can get back on the road. This is our problem solving, remember, easy,” but then the courier wants nothing to do with it. So, that relationship is shattered, and he does a runner.

So we have to find somebody else, but meanwhile the kidnappers are going apoplectic, they think we’re trying to rip them off, we’re trying to ambush them, they’re going to get killed, and I’m just thinking, “Oh, this is a bad day in the office, really.” But again, it’s about problem solving, but importantly, it’s about establishing trust and developing those relationships.

And, thankfully, over the course of the last month or so, we built up a really good working business relationship with the kidnappers. So, we got that in the bank. I was able to placate them. Eventually, we find somebody else who takes the money, goes out to sea to a waypoint where the kidnappers come out. And this is one of those very, very rare moments where there’s a near simultaneous exchange of ransom money for hostages.

And so, the hostages get back on our boat and the kidnappers hand them a mobile phone, a clean mobile phone, and they say, “If it’s okay with you, we’re going to escort you to safety in case you get intercepted or you get into trouble. And then even if you do so later on, give us a call on this phone and we’ll come and help you out, no extra charge.” And it’s, like, talk about customer service and client loyalty.

And so, they escorted them back to safety, and then we picked them up and everybody’s happy. So, there’s some key things there around trust, building those relationships, don’t be in a rush too quickly to problem solve, and until you can really identify and deal with those high powerful emotions, you can potentially land yourself in even more trouble.

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah. So, again, so much there. And then with your own communicator, rewinding a little bit, how did you resolve that issue there?

Scott Walker

Time. Suspending my own ego about what needs to happen. It’d be easy for me to go, “Come on, pull yourself together. Get in there. Get on the phone. Your friends are going to die unless you pull this out of the bag.” That’s probably the worst thing that I could’ve done. Thankfully, I didn’t. It is using techniques like lots of empathy and emotional labeling. Empathy, people can confuse that with sympathy or compassion, but really empathy is it’s a doing word. You do empathy rather than feel it. The other side feels trust and rapport if you can demonstrate empathy properly.

And empathy is really me with the communicator kind of reflecting back to him where I think he is at and what’s going on for him, “Okay, John, it seems like you’re taking this personally for what’s happened to your friends here, and that you feel personally responsible that they’ve found themselves in this situation, and that this is really not going to get anywhere.” Simple things, when we use terms like, “It looks like,” “It sounds like,” “It feels like,” and you can label, which anybody listening or watching this, with any kind of semblance of knowledge around communicating and an active listening, these are really powerful.

They’re simple but not easy to do. And particularly when the stakes can’t get any higher, when people’s lives are on the line, it works, but it also works with your kids and in the workplace. So, by doing lots of active listening with the communicator, he was able to come back on board, and basically, he felt, crucially, this is crucial, he felt seen, heard, and understood. And until we can feel that, particularly if we disagree with somebody, if we can get the other person to feel seen, heard, and understood, then we’ve earned the right to then start to look to influence and persuade them to our way of thinking.

Pete Mockaitis

That’s lovely. And two of my favorite guests on the show, we had Chris Voss, who wrote the book Never Split the Difference, and Michael Sorensen, who wrote the book I Hear You, all about validation. And they had some similar messages there associated with empathy and validation, and that “It seems like,” “It looks like,” “It feels like,” and how that is just magical, even in surprising situations, like someone has robbed a bank and they have hostages, and it’s like, “Oh, it seems like you feel kind of stuck and scared about the situation you’re in right now.” In some ways, it’s like, “Duh, yeah. What the heck am I supposed to do?”

But it’s kind of amazing that it does take some internal emotional mastery to get past the fact that, “They don’t deserve the dignity or honor or respect, or whatever nice goodness of this warm validation stuff,” like these kinds of rage thoughts can start circulating in these circumstances, even at work too, “My boss is a jerk! Like, he doesn’t deserve that I put in this extra effort to blah blah blah.” So, help us out, Scott. When we’re in that place, how should we think about it?

Scott Walker

Well, first thing that comes to mind there is when people say, “Find the common ground. Come on, find the common ground here so you can build that rapport.” But, Pete, from your previous guests, I’m sure they said something similar around common ground is the biggest load of BS you can have in a negotiation, because I had zero common ground with kidnappers. Anybody with kids listening to this, with siblings, that’s the biggest link, biggest common thread, common ground you’ll ever have with anybody as a sibling. But how often do they fight and look for attention and seeking invalidation?

And so, really, it’s about approaching any form of conversation or negotiation with the golden rule that it’s not about you. If I go in seeking to understand, “Okay, Pete, where are you at with this? What are your challenges and issues? How do you view me maybe in this deal?” If I can put myself there and then use the active listening, the empathy, the labelling to check that, and we keep working on that, time spent doing that and establishing that trust and that rapport, using that empathy, is time well spent because I’ve seen it so many times where people rush to problem-solve, and they allow their own egos to get in the way.

And so, it’s about realizing that you can’t separate the person from the problem.

Sometimes we hear that, don’t we? “Well, separate the person, the emotions, get them out of the way and actually we can look at it rationally, logically about how to approach this.” But, again, you may get one or two wins like that, but, ultimately, what you want is this long-term repeat business or establish this rapport and this friendship or this relationship that’s going to last. And that requires you to deal with the emotions first.

And I’d say the number one skill of all the top negotiators out there, in my experience, is this ability to emotionally self-regulate, because it’s no good if I’m there with a family who are losing it. They’re breaking down understandably, they’re highly emotional, highly strung and if I’m the same or haven’t got my own act together, it’s not going to come across very well.

And emotions are contagious if we let them, which is why, when I left, when I wrote the book as well, I called it Order Out of Chaos for that very reason. My job in a negotiation is simply to bring order out of the chaos that reigns, whether or not it’s in the family kitchen or in the boardroom where the negotiations are taking place from.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Scott, so number one is emotional regulation, okay. So, lay it on us, how do we do that effectively?

Scott Walker

And, again, I learned this the hard way. In my very first negotiation, where it nearly went wrong, where I allowed my own emotions to be hijacked, so to speak, and thankfully, a more senior negotiator, a colleague of mine, he kind of interrupted my pattern just by the little hand on my shoulder, and then I watched a master class as to how he really did that, how he regulated his own emotions and those of other people.

And over the years, over 10, 12, 13 years doing it, I came up with this immediate action drill. It’s a three-step process, i.e. drill, that I use to this day, even though I won’t be negotiating with kidnappers, I still use it in traffic or I’m in a line somewhere, or go on social media, and you get that triggered, you find that frustration, something really just, it presses your buttons. And so, the first step is interrupting that pattern.

And what that means is, if you’re sat down behind a laptop, actually just stand up and go outside and get some fresh air, or put some music on, or if it’s your thing, go and do some jumping jacks in the corner, or just do some deep breathing. Whatever it is for you to interrupt that spiral where you’re looking to name blame or shame, or to be overwhelmed by the urge to say or do something, which you may later regret.

Because once you’ve interrupted the patterns, it’s the first step, and the second step is, ride the wave. Ride the wave. And for any skiers, surfers, skateboarders out there, as you’re really surfing the waves or you’re skiing down the mountain, you are kind of riding the wave. And what that really alludes to is, when you get hit by that trigger, you have about 90 seconds, two minutes, where you’ve got cortisol, adrenaline, and other powerful drugs pouring through your body, coursing through your body. This is when you get tense, and this is when you say and do things which you later regret.

So, really, you’ve got to be able to expand your awareness, so to speak, at least internally, as to what’s going on for you, and it’s about feeling the feeling but dropping the story as to why you’re feeling it. So, it could be, “Do you know what? I’m feeling a real churning in my stomach or a tightness or tension in my shoulders. It doesn’t matter why I’m feeling it, it doesn’t matter that Pete has just said something that’s really annoyed me, it doesn’t matter. I need to, for now, I need to interrupt the pattern. I need to ride that wave for 90 seconds or two minutes. And then the third step, once I’ve allowed my nervous system and my body and my emotions to calm down, is to ask better questions.”

And you can only ask better questions, such as, “Okay, what am I missing here? What else could this mean? What’s the opportunity? What’s the learning here? How else could I look at this?” Questions that, when you’re in that fight or flight, when you just want to say something or you want to punch somebody, you’re not going to come up with those questions, or you’re going to dismiss them really quickly. So, you’re going to interrupt the pattern, you’re going to ride the wave, and then and only then can you ask really better open, really empowering questions that can maybe open up a new perspective of how you can present yourself, or actually how you can communicate to somebody else.

And you can do this before a really important negotiation or presentation. You can just check in with yourself and do that three-step process. Or in the middle of it, when the metaphorical bullets are flying, you can do it there. And no one needs to know you’re doing this. You could just do this, sat at the boardroom table, take a couple of breaths, ride the wave, and ask yourself internally a few better questions to give you some more insights.

Pete Mockaitis

Beautiful. Thank you. And I think my favorite part there was when you talk about riding the wave, you’re feeling the feeling but you’re not engaging the story. So, it’s sort of like you’re feeling anger and so you can recognize the bodily sensations of anger, it’s like, “Okay, my eyes want to squint, I have a bit of like a growling breathing, and my fists are getting a little tight, a little fist-like, and that’s…”

So, I can experience that feeling and just ride the wave, just experience it as it goes through me, instead of interrogating the emotion, like, “Why is this so ridiculous and unfair and bad and stupid, and yada, yada, yada?” I’m just experiencing those feelings without the story. So, then is your mind just kind of like empty-ish as you’re riding the wave?

Scott Walker

No, whilst riding the wave. No, it’d be full of judgment. It’s, “How on earth could they be so stupid to come up with that decision? What were they thinking of?” But then it’s being aware that you’re coming up with that story and just letting it go, and you’ve got to ride that wave. You’ve got to just tune into the body, the sensation of, “Right, just breathe through it.” And the more you can practice this, it’s like anything, it’s muscle memory, the easier it becomes.

Pete Mockaitis

And I guess what I’m saying there is as you’re tuning into your bodily sensations, you’re naturally tuning a bit away from your internal verbalizations of the words you’re hearing in your head about how this is ridiculous and enraging.

Scott Walker

Yes, because in 10, 20, 30, 50, 60 years’ time, you’re not going to be raging, or that story’s not going to be going around inside your head. If it is, you may need to let some stuff go, because you’re not going to worry about it then. So, actually, why don’t you bring in a mindset that you can come up with some solutions, you can resolve the issues from a grounded, balanced place of equanimity rather than, “That Pete, he’s to blame. I’m going to…” whatever? And that serves nobody.

We see it all the time now, people becoming far more polarized, and, “I’m right, you’re wrong. And I’m going to do everything I can to prove that, and I’m going to cancel you in the meantime.” Whereas, actually, it’s like, “Let me just stop for a second. Let me just try and clarify where I think you’re at with this particular topic, check in to make sure I’ve got that right. Is it okay now, because I’ve earned the right, to now offer my viewpoint? Great. And let’s see where we can find a way through this.” Simple, but not easy.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. So, we talked about emotional regulation. Now tell me, when it comes to identifying your counterpart’s underlying needs, what are your favorite approaches to elicit that information?

Scott Walker

Preparation is key. In the times of crisis and when you’re under distress, you rise or fall to the level of your preparation. Even though, as we know the best laid plans often don’t survive the first contact with the enemy, you still need to go through that, you still need to spend the time as much as you can. And one of those ways of doing that, there’s two steps really. The first one is A-B-C, and this was drilled into me as a young detective at Scotland Yard, the training school, was assume nothing, believe nothing, and challenge and clarify everything.

And so, if you and I, Pete, are going to enter into a business deal, the worst thing I can do is to assume I know where you’re at of how this is going to work out. And I need to clarify, I need to check my own understanding, I need to do my homework, and then I need to do what I call come up with a bunch of fives. So, you do your ABC, and then you come up with a bunch of fives as in the palm of your hand. And what that does is it reminds you that you’ve got to come up with, say, five challenges, issues, questions, threats, demands that you, on the other side, are likely to raise that might get in the way of this deal.

So, if I can identify what those are, it can help me to start to build a picture of “What is Pete really after here?” And I can test those hypotheses, and that’s all they are, at the start of our conversation, our negotiation, and you’ll either confirm, clarify, or say, “No, no, I don’t know where you got that from.” “Okay.” But through asking better questions and through that labelling and paraphrasing, quite quickly, the other side will signal, albeit subconsciously, what their real needs are.

For example, if somebody is going for a job interview and it’s all about the job title, it’s about the perks, you know really, really quickly that significance and a sense of control and certainty and a bit of ego are really important to them. So, if you want to get the best out of them, you can’t go in and judging them as to, “Well, they’re not a really good employer.” Well, actually, they could be a really good employer, but their needs are going to be different to yours, which may be, “Hey, it’s all about the team, it’s all about balance,” which is a completely different approach perhaps to that. So, it’s getting your ABCs, it’s coming up with your bunch of fives.

And then once the conversation, the negotiation has started, it’s really just, listen. I call it level five listening. The first couple of levels of where you’re just listening for the gist, or you’re listening so I can rebut what you’ve said because, “Hey, after all, I’m right and you’re wrong, and I’ve got the better deal.” And then you can kind of go down to level five which is I’m almost listening for what you’re not saying. I’m listening for the space in between the words, “What’s the tone? Like, is it incongruency and mismatch between what you’re saying and how you’re saying it, or even your body language, if we’re in person?”

Which is why, as part of the preparation and the planning, I would ideally, if we’re going to meet in person, is have somebody whose sole job was just to sit and observe, that we’re going to take part in the negotiation. Because when you’re in it, as happened with the communicator in that story I mentioned at the beginning, is you can become very focused on the challenge at hand and you can miss all these cues where somebody’s got a slight step back, they can spot these and afterwards when you go for a break they can go, “Hey, do you know what, there’s a real incongruency there. I think they’re hiding something. We need to perhaps dig a little deeper on that particular topic which, because you didn’t see it, you just skirted over and you moved on to the next one.” Does that make sense?

Pete Mockaitis

Certainly. And you mentioned a number of underlying needs there associated with control or significance. Can you share with us, do you have kind of a go-to menu or checklist you’re thinking about in terms of, “Oh, these things come up often in terms of people’s underlying needs, and I’m kind of looking out for”?

Scott Walker

Yeah, essentially, I mean, there’s many behavioral assessments you can take, and these profiles, they’re all very similar, as well as the needs that we want to experience as human beings. So, we know full well, a lot of us, we want a semblance of control. We want to be able to call the shots about what we do in our life. There’s an element of we want to feel important or different or we want that connection. It’s all about people. Or, actually, we’re just a lover and a giver, and all we want to do is give, give, give all the time and it’s about growing as a person.

And so, the more you engage with people and truly start listening to that deeper level-5 level, you can pick up these.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Thank you. When it comes to the validation, empathy, active listening, reflection, language, do you have any top do’s or don’ts we should keep in mind here?

Scott Walker

Well, first of all, there’s a mnemonic that I love using that just reminds me of this, that enables me to apply it when I need to. And I always advise people to eat more pies. You want to eat more pies. M-O-R-E P-I-E-S. And just very, very quickly what they are, and I’ve got stuff on my website that people can go to and actually have a look at that in more detail. These are things like the minimal encouragers, all the open questions, or using paraphrasing or silence or labeling, for example, or mirroring.

And so, these techniques are contained within that mnemonic. And the do’s and don’ts there are don’t treat them as a checklist. With any of these techniques, with any of these approaches, intention matters. You’ve got to be able to approach it from, “First of all, I just need to understand and demonstrate that understanding of where the other person is at.” Not, “Okay, tick rapport. Yeah, I’ve got rapport. Now I’m going to do a bit of labelling. Now I’m going to do a bit of mirroring.”

It’s actually approach it with the right intention, genuinely listen, and invariably you’ll be doing a lot of this stuff anyway. It’s just bringing a bit of consciousness, a bit of intentionality to it, and maybe just try one or two at a time, rather than trying to do all six, seven, eight different techniques.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. So, I don’t want to go through the checklist, but it is good to have in mind, “Here are some tools.” Lay it on us, Scott, this eat more pies. What are some of these components?

Scott Walker

Yeah, more pies. The M is the minimal encouragers. So, this would be things like what you’ve just done there, “Mm-hmm, okay.” It could be a head nod or a little bit of a laugh. It just encourages people to keep talking. And you know when people are out of sync, maybe you’re on the telephone to somebody and you think, “Are they watching TV? Are they watching television whilst I’m talking?” Because they’ll be like, “Uh-huh.” You’re like, “Hang on, I’ve already moved on, why are you uh-huh-ing?”

Pete Mockaitis

I was going to say, “Sounds good.” I was like, “I didn’t say anything. What is it that sounds good?”

Scott Walker

“Yeah, well, that was 30 seconds ago,” you know? And so, the O is the open questions, the what, the how, the which, the when. Try and avoid why if you can, but it just elicits more engagement there. The “R”, that’s the reflecting or the mirroring. This is when I might mirror or reflect back the last couple of words or the keyword within what they’ve just said that I want to focus on.

So, rather than it sounding like an interrogation, with me bombarding you with lots of questions, I can just mirror the last couple of words or keyword from what you’ve just said. So, M-O-R, E is the emotional labelling. It looks like, it sounds like, it feels like, and that can be described to emotions as well as behavior.

We’ll go through my alphabet here. Okay, yeah, Pete, paraphrasing. Paraphrasing is similar to summarizing. This is where I’d say, “Okay, Pete, is it okay if I just share with you where I think you’re at with this deal right now? You think that we’re asking for too much money, we’ve taken too long, and actually you’re going to hold out, or you want to hold out for a bit more equity in the business. Is that right?” That’s all I’ve done. I’ve just paraphrased and summarized back where I think you’re at. And that’s really important to get that validation.

That’s the “I” statements and this is when, this is particularly good for dealing with, well, I say it with my teenage kids when they’re leaving wet towels on the bathroom floor, for example. It would be, “When you leave towels on the floor, I feel a bit frustrated because we’ve all got to share the bathroom. And in future, would you mind just hanging them up on the towel rack when you’re finished?” So, “When you,” “I feel” because, it’s like you’re owning how you’re feeling, and it doesn’t sound too much like an accusation.

E is for effective pauses. Again, it’s great if you’ve got the confidence to sit or stand in a bit of silence. I can guarantee, as human beings we hate it, we’re so uncomfortable. It doesn’t take long before somebody will make a noise, utter some comment, ask a question, do something, shift. But I guess I’ve had years of practice of sitting across from criminals in interrogation rooms, of questioning them. The best skill we ever used was silence. We’d ask a question.

So, if you’re labeling something, for example, “Pete, it sounds like you’re frustrated right now.” I’m not going to verbally vomit and continue talking. I’m just going to sit there and allow that to sink in, and then it’s going to encourage you to then repeat. And then S is the summarizing, which is very similar to paraphrasing. It just depends whether or not you use your language or their language. But I just urge people to not get too hit up in all the different terms here. Just one or two that resonate.

Because for some people, they just can’t do mirroring. It just feels too awkward. Okay, well, practice paraphrasing. Well, just summarize when you have a conversation with somebody, particularly if they’re talking for a long time, it’s helpful for you to get an angle. Rather than going, “I’ve lost track where you are. Kind of just check in to make sure I’ve got this right,” and then you repeat what your understanding of it. So, that is MORE PIES.

Pete Mockaitis

What I love about that is sometimes someone says a bunch of stuff, and I’m thinking, “I have no idea how to respond to that.” And so, I think that’s just great to have in mind, MORE PIES, it’s like, “No. Well, here I have eight options as to how I might respond to that, and they’ll probably appreciate most of them more than me contributing my two cents to the matter.”

Scott Walker

You’ll be able to contribute your two cents once you’ve utilized some of the MORE PIES and they feel heard. They feel seen, heard, and understood, you’ve got yourself an open goal to have a free rein there.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Well, now could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Scott Walker

Marcus Aurelius, what gets in the way becomes the way.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Scott Walker

I’m a big fan also of Lisa Feldman Barrett. She’s a professor of psychiatry, psychology at Northeastern University, I think, and she talked all her studies around emotions. And it really turns how we view, and interpret, and apply emotions on its head from what we thought 50 years ago. And she’s doing some great research on how emotions are made and how we can best utilize them.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And a favorite book?

Scott Walker

I think the one that had the biggest impact on me was probably Nonviolent Communication.

Pete Mockaitis

Oh, that’s so good.

Scott Walker

Marshall B. Rosenberg.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Thank you. And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Scott Walker

I think the thing I use the most is my WHOOP score because it gives me a real-time reading of, “Oh, Scott, you probably need to take a bit of time out. You need to rest that nervous system because you’re in the red or the amber.” And I think, interestingly, dealing with the kidnappers, my scores were always pretty level. I was always getting good scores there in the feedback. It was dealing with maybe something closer to home, or as I said to you before, the crisis within the crisis, that can send the heartrate rocketing, or the nervous system out of whack.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks?

Scott Walker

It’s, “Seek out worthy opponents.” And what I mean by that is rather than seeing people as being difficult, if you can utilize what we’ve gone through on this recording today, and put that into practice, particularly with those worthy opponents, those difficult people, they will make you a negotiation and communication superstar because, actually, you’re going to have to really bring your A game, you have to get to that next level when you’re dealing with people like that.

Pete Mockaitis

And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Scott Walker

You can go to my website, ScottWalkerBooks.co.uk, and there’s a whole host of information on there about workshops and books and other bits and pieces and courses that they can enjoy.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Scott Walker

Regulate those emotions. If you can just become more conscious and more aware of when your emotions hit home. So, if you can practice, “Okay, my aim for today is to regulate as much as possible, i.e., feel the feeling, but drop the story,” the more you can do that, the more you’ll be able to just go through life with things, problems, challenges, issues, just bouncing off you and not landing.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Scott, this has been fun. I wish you many successful negotiations.

Scott Walker

Thank you very much.

Pete Mockaitis
Michael, welcome to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Michael McQueen
Thank you so much. Happy to be able to spend some time chatting.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to talk about your book Mindstuck: Mastering the Art of Changing Minds because that’s one of my favorite things to dork out about. But first, we got to hear the story of you meeting Bill Clinton when you were 17. What’s the tale?

Michael McQueen
I was 17, there was a group of us Aussies who were being sent to New Zealand for the APEC Summit, which is the gathering of political and business leaders, and we were part of this random youth delegation and had these name badges, like our little code, our security code no really knew what it meant. So, we could just basically sneak into any event, which was awesome.

And so, I snuck into one of the press conferences and I was probably about 15 meters or about 25 feet from Bill Clinton as he gave his address to wrap up the summit, and I’m surrounded by Secret Service agents, and I’m like, “This is cool and I shouldn’t be here.”

And so, it was one of those cool experiences where I feel like if you walk into a situation with certainty, it’s amazing how people don’t ask questions. And I think being 17 probably helped, but, yeah, it was a very, very cool experience.

Pete Mockaitis
So, you actually interacted with him?

Michael McQueen
Oh, no. There must’ve been about 60 Secret Service between me and him. And, in fact, I remember standing there as his motorcade arrived, and just being stunned. I think we counted like 14 armored cars, and I’m like, “How do you get all of that kit to the other side of the world?” I was in awe of the logistics involved in this. But, yeah, I was closer than anyone else pretty much. All the other fancy delegates were all sitting a lot further away. So, I certainly was in the wrong place but it was very cool.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that sounds like there is a mind-changing or influence, persuasion lesson right there when you marched in there with confidence, like, “Of course, I belong here. I’m supposed to be here.” It kind of works sometimes.

Michael McQueen
It certainly does. I feel like it’s this blend of humility and certainty. I feel like if you can nail that in life and in any role, it’s amazing how the doors that will open. Like, walking with that sense of, “I’m not embarrassed to be here. I own my space but I’m going to be courteous and polite and open to what other people are doing and saying.” It’s amazing. I feel like that’s sort of been my life.

Like, I started professional speaking full time at age 22, so I was pretty young. And so, trying to hold your own space and have credibility required that mixture of certainty and humility. And I feel like that’s worth a treat over the years.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Michael, could you kick us off with an extra-fascinating story that tees up this wisdom you’ve got for us in your book Mindstuck?

Michael McQueen
So, I was speaking at an industry association conference, all about disruption and future trends.

And I’ll never forget, at the end of the session, during the lunchbreak, this woman walked up to me at the back of the room, it was a big Hilton ballroom, and she was, and I can picture her now, she was the picture of exasperation. Like, I remember speaking with her, and she said, “I get it. I’m so on board with what you shared. I know that if we don’t change in my company, we’ve got like fight out of the game. Like, I’ve tried so many different ways to try to wake them up to the reality but they’re so fixed and so stubborn.”

And she’d been doing all the things that we’re told to do in all the books but it wasn’t working. And so, essentially, that was the moment where I’m like, “I want to delve into that and look at why is it so tricky to change people when they’ve got a very fixed mindset or stubborn mindset.”

For many of the listeners, some of them have been in leadership, and I met a lot of them. So, if you’re going to manage up, as well you’ve got to try to influence up, as well as influence in a parallel way and in your teams, and so that tricky thing of, “How do you persuade others when they just don’t want to budge?”

So, essentially, this book came from that one story, that one experience where I’m like, “Why don’t smart people change even when they want to and know they should? What causes us to get stubborn?” And that sort of led to the entire process of this book coming together.

Pete Mockaitis
Intriguing. So, she had a deep frustration that she knew it, “We’re in trouble, and I’m telling them we’re in trouble but no one’s having it.”

Michael McQueen
Correct.

Pete Mockaitis
And that is a common experience that many people have from high stakes to low stakes, it’s like this answer is so clear but you’re not having it.

Michael McQueen
I just didn’t know what to tell her because I felt all the things that she’d done is what I would, I guess, advise, generally, but I didn’t really know. And that’s essentially what kicked off this process, I’m like, “I want to have better answers. I want to have stuff that’s useful for clients.”

Because I feel like if I go in and help an organization, or help a group of leaders figure out what’s changing, what their strategy needs to be, the job is only half done if I don’t give them the tools and the techniques to bring people around them on the journey of change with them. And that’s, essentially, where this book has landed.

And I think the challenge is many of us have an idea about what it takes to persuade others that’s about 300 or 400 years old, and this notion has been around since the early 1600s, and it’s this idea that was typified by a guy named Francis Bacon. And Francis Bacon was one of the founding fathers of the enlightenment, and his big idea was that humans are, essentially, reasonable, and if you just give him enough evidence and enough logic, eventually, they’ll see the light, they’ll come to their senses, and they’ll change their mind.

And that whole idea shaped the next 300 or 400 years of academia, of education, of the way we do public policy, and it would be nice if that’s true but it’s just not. And what we’ve found in the last few years is actually the opposite is true. The more evidence and the more data you give to someone who is locked in a certain way of thinking, the more they dig their heels in as opposed to opening their minds up.

And so, we give them all the rational evidence, we’re like, “How can they not see this?” And the harder you push, the more they dig their heels in and the more stubborn they become. And so, that’s a dynamic that’s so tricky to navigate, and that’s really what I want to, hopefully, help readers with this book do.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Michael, that’s a fascinating assertion. Can you share with us the most compelling evidence that confirms that’s, in fact, true? It’s like, “More good evidence does not help. In fact, it often hurts.” Lay it on us.

Michael McQueen
We’ve seen that play out. So, when you expose people to ideas that are unfamiliar or inconvenient, the stuff we just don’t want to hear, we’ll do a couple of things. One of the things we’ll instantly jump to is denial, like, “This idea, I just don’t want to hear it. I would like to think that seeing is believing.” And it’s not true.

If you’re exposed to stuff that you don’t want to see or hear or understand, it’s amazing, your cognitive abilities to just ignore it, or deny it entirely, or you get defensive, you go on the attack sometimes. The big thing we see people do, and this particularly happens in political discourse, and you see this on social media all the time, is they defer. So, they’ll look at, “What are other people like me think about ideas like this?”

And so, there’s almost that sense of tribalism that comes into play, like, “Is the idea from someone that’s on my side or my team, someone I would naturally agree with? Or is it from the opposition?” And it’s almost like we would dismiss the idea if it comes from the opposition as opposed to someone that we like. And so, rather than actually engaging faithfully or honestly with an idea, an idea worthy of consideration, it’s like we want to know who shared it first. That’s the first port of call.

And so, that’s tricky in an organization because sometimes the best and most innovative ideas will come from places where you wouldn’t expect it, and that’s often where innovation emerges. And yet we so often see that stubbornness comes because, like, “Well, how would you know? You’ve only been in the organization for three months,” or, “You’re in the wrong sort of department. You’re not in a department in the company that’s responsible for that sort of critical thinking. You’re in accounts. So, how could you have an idea that it’d be worthwhile considering?”

They’re the moments we miss the best ideas and the best thinking because we’re stubborn and we have an assumption about where the best ideas will come from.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Michael, there’s a lot there. That rings true experientially. I’m curious if we have any cool scientific evidence as well, whether it’s, I don’t know, fMRI scans or fascinating social psychology experiments.

Michael McQueen
One of the most formative ones, and it’s a bit dated now, was what we saw happen with people who wanted to believe that weapons of mass destruction had, in fact, been found in Iraq. And so, back when that was all playing out, they actually exposed people to fake newspapers or fake evidence of that.

And so, when people were already predisposed to wanting to believe that was true, the part of their brain that essentially was a confirmation dopamine release, it’s like, “Yup, absolutely. I already thought this was true. Now, I’ve got evidence to back up what I think to be true.” When they then said, “Actually, sorry, this was actually a fabricated news story. It’s part of an experiment. This is actually not true. We haven’t found the evidence of weapons of mass destruction,” what’s interesting is what people then did is their brain, essentially, went into hunker down in defensive mode.

And so, it’s like they weren’t even able to be willing to consider other things that might challenge what they assume to be true. It’s right across the ideological spectrum.

These same things have been played out. We’ve seen studies where if it’s genetically modified crops, or nuclear power, you’ve got people who might be on the left end of spectrum who would just be as unwilling to listen to really good evidence and really good data. If you look at what happens in their brain scans, the same dynamic evolves. And so, we’ve seen this played out.

In fact, there was a great UCLA study a few years ago that actually measured the response times of people when they’re exposed to information that they just didn’t want to read or hear. In other words, it’s typically political. So, what they found is people responded far more quickly when it was information they didn’t want to hear. In other words, there was no genuine consideration involved.

And so, they’re far more willing to think about and mull over stuff that, initially, they agreed with. It’s almost like they thought they were being objective but, actually, they were reacting in a far more impulsive way, particularly if it was stuff they didn’t want to hear, which indicated that actually there was not a lot of real thought going into it.

Pete Mockaitis
In terms of the reaction times, with what we hear, that’s we agree with versus disagree with, are we a smidge slower or faster? Or is it just massive, like triple, quadruple? Like, what’s sort of the magnitude of the difference we’re looking at here?

Michael McQueen
I think the difference in times is somewhat significant but it’s more about the way our bodies respond to information that we don’t want to hear. So, not only do we react more quickly, in other words, we don’t really consider, but also that sense of we actually get a dopamine release, we get a hit. And so, I think the bottom line is it’s not about just how quickly we respond but it’s about the type of response we have.

So, when we’re exposed to things that we don’t want to hear, not only is it a quick response but it’s a shutting down response, it’s a defensive response, it’s a, “I don’t want to hear this. I want to deny reality.” And yet, when we’re exposed to something we do want to hear, or agrees with what we agree with, not only is it a slower response, but there’s also that sense of we get joy out of the fact that this is confirming something we believe to be true.

In the book, I look at the two main thinking systems or engines that we use, and this will be similar to some things that people have read in other books.

So, the two minds that I look at are the inquiring mind and the instinctive mind. So, the inquiring mind is the part of our brain, or the part of our mind, that lives in the front of our brain, the frontal lobe. It loves logical, linear, reason, thought. It loves evidence. It loves data. This is the part of our brain that Francis Bacon was speaking about.

So, if you look at some of the research from Zoe Chance, who’s a researcher at Yale, she would suggest that we only use our inquiring mind, part of our brain, for like five to ten percent of our thinking. So, where does the rest of our thinking happen? It happens in a part of our brain I refer to as the instinctive mind. And that’s the bit of our mind that’s typically associated with the limbic system. So, in our brain, it’s located near the top of the brain stem.

It’s where our tribal instincts live. It’s where we process emotion. It’s also where the fight and flight reactions tend to reside. So, the tricky thing is if we’re doing 95% of our thinking in our instinctive mind, when you’re trying to change someone’s mind, the question is, “Which mind are you trying to change?” because most of us try to change the instinctive mind, which is where stubbornness lives, but they’re actually using techniques or tactics that appeal to the inquiring mind. They’re using evidence and logic and data, and those things don’t work. We wonder why we feel like we’re hitting our head up against a brick wall.

And I think that’s one of the key things, is that the instinctive mind would rather feel right than be right, and that’s a really difficult dynamic because you’re trying to, essentially, challenge people to do something that is uncomfortable. It’s an inconvenient truth you might be exposing them to. And so, therefore, a lot of the book looks at, “How do you communicate that in a way that doesn’t trigger that defensive response?”

And that’s a skill in and of itself, because if you approached persuasion the wrong way, the right message delivered by the wrong person at the wrong time, will be the wrong message. And so, a lot of persuasion is about trying to find the right time, the right tone, the right posture, with which you can present ideas.

Pete Mockaitis
This is so powerful. And, for me, even personally right now, I had a number of discoveries recently that just blew me away in terms of, so, for example, my sleep has been a little weird. So, I’ve got a full-blown sleep study done, and then they told me that I had sleep apnea. And so, here I am, I was connected to all of these wires and medical technology, all these things, there’s like a full-blown neurologist from Vanderbilt is telling me this.

So, you’d think they would know, you’d think we could probably bank on them. And you know what my first response was, I actually said in the little health chat platform, “Could you show me the footage?” And it took me another day before I realized how silly I was being. They’re measuring all of these things associated with my brainwaves and my breathing and my blood oxygen with a full-blown award-winning sleep laboratory, they give me the assessment, and I said, “I don’t believe it. I got to see the video footage.” And so, I was like, “Never mind. Just tell me what I have to do.” And so, that was surprising to me.

Michael McQueen
In that point, if they had given you the answer you wanted to hear, you would’ve been like, “Bring it on. Awesome. No need to ask any more questions.” It’s like you wouldn’t want to see the footage at all if it was information you wanted to hear. And Daniel Gilbert, who’s a psychologist at Harvard has this great story. He says of like what you’ve described there is the same dynamic that many of us approach the bathroom scales in the morning with.

Like, if you go to the bathroom scales and they give you the number you’re hoping to see, or hoping to get, you’re like, “Brilliant. I’ll get off quick as I can, straight into the shower, get on with the day. It’s a good day.” But if you get on those bathroom scales and it’s not a number you want to see, it’s amazing how you start to bargain with reality, it’s like, “Oh, maybe I put too much weight on one foot or the other. Or maybe I need to hop off and get back on again. Or maybe the scales aren’t sitting flat on the tiles or they need to be recalibrated.”

It’s like we set the burden of proof so much higher for information when it doesn’t match what we want to hear or learn. Whereas, when it matches what we want, it’s like, “Brilliant. Ask no more questions.” And so, that’s so much of how we respond to life, and that’s certainly your experience there, but that’s for so many of us, so many of the things that we have to make decisions about. And so, persuading people in a work context particularly, like you’ve got to take that into account.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, absolutely. And it’s funny how, for me, I just had all these associations, like, “Oh, sleep apnea is for super unhealthy people. I’m not overweight and I go to the gym. Surely, someone would’ve made me aware of this over the course of my life if I just stopped breathing in my sleep,” but, yeah, I was incredulous.

And then a similar situation, I was talking to a physical therapist about some foot pain, and he’s like, “Okay, well, how about we do some one-legged calf raises?” And so, I did and I was getting fatigued in about 12 of them. He’s like, “Okay, so that’s what’s going on. You’ve got some weakness in the calves. We look for about 30 or 40 of these.” And I was like, “You’re telling me the average American male is capable of doing 30 to 40 single-leg calf raises?” Like, “Well, yeah, that’s the standard.” I didn’t believe him. I, straight up, pulled up the scientific journal article, and it’s like, “Wow!” So, it’s just mind-blowing.

And, in a way, this has been a huge upgrade in humility for me because it’s just like, “If I don’t know what’s going on in my own body, like how could I purport to be the authority on, say, a news item in a foreign land that I’ve never been to, and say, ‘Well, this is what’s really going on with the conflict of…’?” Like, what do I know? I don’t even know my own body.

Michael McQueen
Yeah. And I think what this speaks to is one of the most important dynamics we’ve got to take into account when trying to persuade someone to think differently, and this is where doctors who do this well, any medical person you engage with, those two things will last a while. If they approach it well, what they do is they allow you to preserve dignity or save face in the process of having to upgrade your beliefs or upgrade the way you see yourself.

This is where that reflex to get defensive tends to kick off when we feel like we’ve been cornered, or we’ve been embarrassed, or we’ve got no ability to maybe change our mind without thinking we have to acknowledge we were an idiot or we were wrong beforehand. And I think that’s what we so often do. We don’t allow or give people grace or space to, yeah, change their mind while still preserving their dignity and their ego because that’s so many of the reasons.

You have that conversation with someone at work, and you’ve made the case about why things need to change, what they need to do, and even if they agree with you, deep down often they’ll still do is dig their heels in because it’d be like they don’t want to feel like they were told, or they don’t want to feel like it wasn’t their idea. And this is, like, it can feel a bit childish at times but these are actually techniques.

The question is, “Do you want to make a difference or win the argument in that moment?” And if you want to make a difference and see progress, sometimes you’ve got to actually approach this far more strategically and allow for people’s ego because deep down we’ve all got one.

Pete Mockaitis
So, lay it on us, how do we play the game just right in terms of we are trying to change some minds? What are the most impactful practices and tactics and tips you got for us?

Michael McQueen
Well, the first thing that we need to bear in mind is, “What is it that causes people to be stubborn?” And it’s fear. But fear plays out in a way that most of us don’t expect. Because we’ve been told for years that humans are naturally afraid of change. That’s actually not true. Humans are not inherently afraid of change. What we’re afraid of, and this is the key distinction, is loss.

So, the moment that change is associated with a sense of loss, and that can be a loss of dignity as we’ve talked about, maybe a loss of certainty, or loss of power. The moment those things feel like it’s going to be a loss, that’s when we dig our heels in even if what’s been suggested to us feels like a good idea. And so, therefore, rather than trying to sell the benefits of change, we’d be better to minimize or lessen the loss.

And so, a lot about that is allowing people to feel at the end like their dignity is intact or preserved, that they have psychological safety to change their mind without feeling like they’re an idiot, but also giving people that sense of agency or choice, that they feel like they are in the driver’s seat. Sheena Iyengar, who’s a professor at Columbia, says the way the human mind works is that we equate choice with control. So, the moment people feel like they don’t have options, they’ll push back even if the idea suggested to them is a good one.

And so, there’s so much about realizing, “What is it that causes this sense of stubbornness?” And often it is that fear. In fact, one of the dynamics I look at that really plays into this is something I call psychological sunk cost, and most of us are familiar with economic sunk cost, that idea of, “I’ve spent so much money and so much time on this one idea, or this one course of action, even if I know it’s not going to work, and a better option has emerged, I’ll stick with the original one because I’ve spent so much money and time.”

We do the same stuff with our mindset and our thinking. We’ll stick with ideas or beliefs that are no longer serving us and actually might be working against us. When we’ve invested so much of our time and money and our ego, our reputation in them is advocates for those ideas, there’s that sense that we’ll actually allow our past decisions or thinking to sabotage our future. And so, bearing in mind that sense of psychological sunk cost, we need to be careful and allow people to change their mind, again, without feeling embarrassed but also feel like they are the ones in the driver’s seat of that change.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, can you give us some examples of that in practice? So, let’s say you’re the neurologist, you’re going to break it to me, it’s like, “All right, Pete, we found out you have sleep apnea,” in a way that invokes all of these principles well.

Michael McQueen
Yeah. A good place to start would be to ask questions. So, your sleep doctor could say, “Now, have you heard much about sleep apnea? What do you know about it?” And you would then share what you know about sleep apnea, which is it’s old people, it’s overweight people, it’s all the things that, in your mind, that’s your imagined reality.

And your doctor will go, “You know what, that’s actually pretty common. Most people think that’s not uncommon at all.” So, you’re preserving dignity. In other words, you’re not wrong, you’re not weird, but what you might be surprised to learn is that, actually, there’s a lot of people who have that. And even if that doctor could share a story about an ultra-fit person who’s even younger than you…

Pete Mockaitis
“Yeah, show me an Olympic Gold medalist, please.”

Michael McQueen
Correct. Suddenly, you’re like, “Oh, okay. Now I can change my thinking without being embarrassed.” So, that’s one way you can do this. Another really simple way you can affirm people’s autonomy or agency and their dignity is by asking for their advice, asking for their input.

In fact, there’s some great research I came across in the book that looked at if you want to get a new project pushed through at work, and you ask your boss to give advice, even if you know already, like how it’s going to look, what the pricing point or the pricing model will be, or the design for the brand, or whatever it is, by asking your boss for advice and giving their input, typically, they’ll often land in a very similar spot to where you’re going, even if you incorporate just a few elements of what they’ve suggested, they’re going to be, I think, like 50% or 60% more likely to say, “This is a great idea.”

Whereas, if you go to them with, like, the lock and loaded proposal, what’s their first thing, they’re going to start picking holes, they’re like, “What about this? And I don’t know if you’ve really considered this perspective,” because it’s not their own idea. And so, even just by giving people that chance to give advice or input, it can make a huge difference and them feeling able to embrace an idea that they actually know to be good, being you gave them the ability to acknowledge that in a way that they feel safe, psychologically safe in doing.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s funny because, in some ways, it’s hard to know what someone’s issue, beef, defensiveness, hangup is in advance, but you gave us some categories there in terms of loss, loss of power. Give us some more categories and maybe how we might deduce what the potential hangup that gets people not wanting to listen to what we got to say.

Michael McQueen
Well, I think one of the key things we got to be aware of is if people think an idea is so unfamiliar in that that they’ve got no common reference point with where they’ve been, how they’ve thought, who they are, and what you’re wanting them to move towards, there’s a lot of uncertainty involved in that. And so, trying to find a common frame of reference in presenting your ideas is really effective. In classic rhetoric, they call it the common place, and that’s where you got to start when you’re trying to persuade or influence anyone.

And an example of this would be I was speaking in Hamburg, Germany a few years ago at a global Rotary summit. So, Rotary International, they just do the most amazing things.

So, I was speaking at this conference all about the future of the organization, how to make sure that they continue to stay strong and flourishing. The tricky thing is you look at some of their most mature markets, so certainly North America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, these are markets where the average age of a Rotarian is, like, 75, 76, in some cases, it’s older even. And so, they’re aging out and they realized they’ve got to change fast.

And so, I was, essentially, trying to present a change message to these groups of Rotarians who love Rotary, who love the brand, who are committed to it, they’re all volunteers. And the thing is the moment you suggest change, there’s often that pushback, like, “That’s not the way we do things. There’s a lot of tradition at Rotary,” like a lot of organizations in that same sort of category.

And so, what I wanted to do is find a common place. And so, if you look at Rotary’s core ethos, the phrase that’s been their core message from day one is, “Service above self.” And so, I was able to frame change as that. So, I was saying, “I get it. There are many of our clubs, you’ve got things working the way that you like. You’ve got a certain rhythm and pattern, and almost a liturgy that you have in your clubs, a tradition of the way you go through meetings.”

“But if that means you’re not relevant to younger people, it might be serving your needs and the club you want, but it’s actually robbing the organization of future relevance. Service above self means maybe changing our clubs to be less what we want but more about being relevant to those we’re looking to engage.”

And by starting with something that was common place, “That we all agree that’s the issue, that’s the goal, but actually what we’re doing in practice is we’re creating things that’s more about serving ourselves and our needs as opposed to growing membership,” and that was really effective. Instead of what could’ve been a very prickly situation trying to present change and argue a case for change, then became something different, like, “We’re in this together.”

I saw a similar example recently. One of the things we’re finding in Australia right now is this push to using AI to do marking of assessments in essays, particularly for senior students. But a lot of teachers have this natural resistance, this pushback to using artificial intelligence, it’s like, “No way. We’re people-based. It’s all about humans, human engagement, particularly for marking assessments.”

But I had a really compelling example that really shifted the thinking for one school in particular. They were trying to have this debate of, “Do we use AI or not?” And they used the equity argument, they said, “What we need to be realizing is that in an English essay,” and they actually asked for a show of hands. The English teachers, “When you get an essay, you can tell pretty quickly if it’s a guy or a girl that’s written the essay, can’t you?” And they all, like, raised their hands, like, “Of course. Typically, guys’ handwriting is just woeful. Whereas, the girls have slightly better handwriting.”

And they said, “We’ve actually got often an unconscious bias when we are marking assessments that we’re not even aware of. And if we can make sure AI doesn’t have that unconscious bias, we’ll actually be making assessments more fair, which benefits the students.” And rather than making the case for efficiency or saving costs, when they put it in the frame of equity and student first, it was something that the teachers were already on board with, they were willing to consider it.

And I think that’s that challenge, is “How do we find that common place?” the thing that we’re sharing common as a value, start there with a discussion, and then go from there.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s really cool. The common place, what we share, reframing it with a value. That’s awesome. And I remember a time, I was doing a Myers-Briggs workshop for some senior executives at a sausage-casing company. I was very excited because they had executives from all over the world flying in. They’re having their big meeting, and I was a part of it, I was like, “Oh, this is really cool.”

But then there was a crisis in the world of sausage casings. They had a factory with exploding sausages, so I showed up raring to go, and they said, “Pete, we’re so sorry. We’re going to have to reschedule because they’ve got this factory with exploding sausages.” And I was upset, I was like, “First of all, what are you all going to do about it? You’re not on the factory floor. And is this even an executive-level issue? Shouldn’t you have the manufacturing guru?”

And so, I was really sort of, “Hey, man, I came all the way out here. I got things to do. I feel this is maybe kind of rude. I was fired up, I planned everything, so my energy would be just at its peak right when I’m delivering the goods for you,” and then they say, “Well, let’s change everything around.” But she delivered the news to me so masterfully, she’s like, “You know, what you’re going to share is very important, and I want to make sure that everybody can give you their full attention. And right now, we don’t have any of that because they’re all freaked out about these exploding sausages. But I think if we get a chance to address or handle this, and then regroup in four hours, it’ll be great.

So, I was totally cool with it because she reframed it in terms of my value, like I really am all about the impact. And so, that was cool when we hit it from my common place as opposed to, “Hey, look, you’re the contractor, we’re the executives, and we’re going to do it our way.” That wouldn’t land so well for me.

Michael McQueen
And what’s interesting about her is I imagine she would’ve done that intuitively. And the reality is people who are highly persuasive often don’t know what they do that works and why it works. And that’s what I wanted to do in this book is try and decode that because when you look at someone who is highly persuasive, it can be like they’ve got this magic sauce, this ability to just get through to people and diffuse tense situations, and get people on board. You’re like, “How do they do that?”

And so, for those who’ve got that naturally, they don’t even know how it works or why it works, so those of us who are trying to learn, it often can be like very opaque, dark magic almost. So, I wanted to demystify that and make it, like, hopefully, really simple. Like, even some very tactical things that I’ve put in the book, one of them I learned from a guy named Michael Pantalon who’s at Yale University, and he uses a technique they call motivational interviewing, but it’s a little bit sort of clinical in the examples he uses.

So, I’ve sort of reframed that and talked about it as the rate and reflect process. So, if you’re trying to get someone to shift their thinking about an issue or an idea, the rate and reflect process is simply about asking two questions in a very specific order. And I’ve seen this play out beautifully personally in relationships, interpersonal ones, but also with clients as well.

So, the first question you ask is, “Hey, so I’m just curious, from one to ten, how likely or willing are you to…?” and then fill in the blank. So, I get them to say, “Give a number between one and ten, how open are they to your idea or perspective or the thing you’re asking them to consider?” And often, if they’re stubborn or resistant, they’ll give you a two or a three. Very few people will give you a one or a zero. They want to, at least, appear to be a little bit open minded but they’ll give you maybe a two or a three, and that’s okay.

What you do next is the second question, it becomes, “Hey, so I’m just curious, how come you didn’t give a lower number?” And in that moment, the whole deal changes because now the focus isn’t on, like, “The eight or the ten reasons I don’t want to change, or I think what you’ve suggested is rubbish,” it’s like there’s a part of me, even if it’s just a small part of me that thinks there’s value in what you’re suggesting, and that’s where you start the conversation.

And, I saw this play out in a personal relationship. Recently, one of my best mates, like a group of us fled away for a weekend and one of the guys said, “Hey, so let’s have an honest conversation, just go around the group. I’m curious, like one to ten, how your marriage is going?” So, went around the group and everyone shared their numbers, like, a really vulnerable honest insight into life for them at the time.

And the last guy in the circle is one of my best mates, and he said, “Ah, yeah, probably like a three out of ten right now,” and he started to get quiet, upset, and just share some of the stuff that was going on. It was pretty heavy stuff. So, we spent, like, 40 minutes just chatting about that as a group and encouraging him and hearing him out. But it was this really negative spiral, it wasn’t going great.

And so, I’m like, “I’ve got to turn this around. Maybe I’ll try one of the techniques from the book but just in an organic way so it doesn’t feel like I’m turning it into a teaching exercise.” So, I was like, “Hey, I’m just curious, so you said you’re like three out of ten. How come you didn’t give a lower number?” And in that moment, like everything changed. It was like I was speaking to a different person who was in a different marriage because he’s like, “Well, not everything is bad. There’s some great stuff. Like, we make a great partnership as parents.”

Like, in that moment, it didn’t negate all the other stuff we talked about but it shifted the frame, and that was focusing on what were some of the good things, and then building on that. And it was just one of those moments where I thought, “This stuff really works. Like, it can change the entire direction, the flow, the momentum of a conversation if we use these techniques well.” This is as useful in a marriage, or a partnership, relationship at home where we’ve got kids, or work, but it’s really designed to be pretty practical. That’s my goal.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, we previously interviewed David McRaney who talked about this kind of an approach utilized in street epistemology and other contexts.

And I think it is super effective in that it goes directly to the person’s personal stuff in terms of it’s like we go right to, “Hey, I made an honest assessment, and it was the totality of the evidence on one side was considered.” And you’re asking, “Hey, go ahead and read that forth for me. All right.” So, it’s very efficient.

I think that something about the one-to-ten scale in conversation can feel, to me, a little bit like, I don’t know, clinical or, “We’ve put you into a survey box form,” and I just sort of don’t like it. If someone says that to me, not like I’m going to throw a fit or fall into a rage, but just like, “Ugh, I don’t like this question and how we’re talking here.” I don’t know, it almost feels like a little bit dramatic, a little bit dehumanizing, depersonalizing. Is there another way I can get the magic without the numbers?

Michael McQueen
It can feel very formal. I think you’re exactly right. You need to choose the right relationship to do that. So, if you’re speaking to, like, a superior, who might be three or four levels higher in the company, and you’re in their office, say, “So, I’m just curious, from one to ten…” that probably wouldn’t go down great. So, there are certainly environments where that will work but others where it won’t.

But I think one of the most effective things that will work across the board is to really start trying to build high trust, high affinity, and that’s regardless whether you’re managing up or managing down. So much of influence or persuasion has got to start with trust and that sense of affinity. And this goes back to what Aristotle talked about two and a half thousand years ago. We got logos, pathos, and the big one was ethos. Ethos was that argument by character, or argument by credibility and trust.

And so, the person who’s done the best research in this over the last few years, I think, can be worth listeners checking out is a guy named Paul Zak. And Paul Zak has looked up, particularly how we build trust with other human beings and why that trust becomes the key foundation for influence. And so, what’s interesting is we look at what builds trust with other people, it’s actually really simple stuff. It can be as simple as us just being really upfront and self-deprecating, being very vulnerable, very authentic.

But, also, one of the things that Paul Zak’s work has looked at is the importance of synchronicity, getting in sync with the people you’re trying to influence. I’ve heard over the years, and you probably heard this, too, like, “Match the body language with the person you’re speaking with. If they cross their legs, you cross your legs. And if they scratch their ears, you scratch yours.” To me, I’ve always felt that’s very contrived and very icky, really. It had never set well with me.

And I was chatting with Paul recently, I said, “How do you do synchronicity in a non-icky way?” And the thing that he said I thought was so interesting is if you’ve got a high-stakes conversation, one of the best things you can do is go for a walk with that individual. Because what happens when you’re walking side by side with someone, eventually, you’ll match their cadence and their pace. You get in sync with them. And in that moment, they will be far more open to communicating with you rather than if it’s opposite each other at a board table or a coffee table.

And I actually saw this play out recently with a client who had a high-stakes conversation the next day after the event I was running, and I’ve shared this research about going for a walk and how powerful that can be for disarming tense situations. And she tried it, and emailed me the next day, and she said, “The difference this made was massive. Like, the other person went into this discussion ready for a fight, ready for a debate. And the moment I started walking, it just changed the entire tone.”

And so, a lot about this is just, “How do we build that sense of we’re on the same page together, not trying to combat each other, or beat each other in an argument but we’re trying to make progress together by sharing different opinions?” And so, I think the importance of building affinity, that is not so clinical. It’s actually something anyone can do. And self-deprecation, self-disclosure, incredibly powerful. In fact, one of the studies I love that we’ve got in the book was one from Kip Williams, who’s a social psychologist.

He did an analysis of legal cases, and looked at, “When was the moment when a jury turns to favor one side’s argument over another?” And what he found was typically was when one side, one attorney, came to the table sharing all the weaknesses, the things that might give the evidence that worked against their case.

Pete Mockaitis
I can see the procedural television scene in my mind’s eye right now, Michael, “Look, my client is a dirtbag, but being a dirtbag’s not a crime.”

Michael McQueen
But that whole thing, like the moment they do that, and the key was you have to acknowledge if there was information that didn’t sort of make your case for you, actually worked against you, you have to acknowledge it before your opponents had a chance to bring that up because what it did in that moment is that it disarmed the jury. Instead of sitting there, listening for all holes in your argument, it was like, by being upfront, just like, “Hey, you know what, this is not cut-and-dry black-and-white. There’s nuance here, but even with that nuance, I want you to consider our case.”

It presented you as a fair-minded, open, objective, honest, trustworthy person. And we can all do that. Like, the reality is life is nuanced and complex. And one of the best things we can do is when we’re approaching other people, acknowledge that, call it out. And something about that posture disarms the other person. It means you’re far more likely to have a fruitful conversation.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Well, Michael, tell me, any other valuable gems you got to drop on us before we shift and hear about your favorite things?

Michael McQueen
Well, I think the gem that I love, I came across recently in an interview with Gretchen Rubin, and she was talking about the importance of listening. It only occurred to her recently, and she shared this in the interview, she said, “There’s something about the fact that the words listen and silent are made up of the same letters.” She said, “I can’t believe I never noticed it before but that’s actually profoundly insightful.” And it is.

And I feel like so much of what we do when we try to go in and change people’s minds is we go in with our arguments without actually having taken the time to listen and genuinely understand maybe what those points of resistance are, and where the other person is actually coming from. And I think that’d be the last encouragement I give, is that the truth is people who are listened to are far more likely to listen. And so, do we actually give people the dignity of our attention? Do we listen to them long enough to understand their perspective before we go in trying to change their mind? So, that’d be certainly one encouragement I’d give.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. Now, could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Michael McQueen
One of the quotes I came across writing this book that was most impactful for me was from Andy Stanley who’s a leadership expert.

He said, “In any relationship, when one person wins, the relationship loses.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And could you share a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Michael McQueen
Yes, one that I came across, actually, from a university back in Australia, named Monash University, what they did is they got a series of students, so university or college students, to put on some headphones and listen to a standup comedian. So, the first group listened to the standup comedian, and it was just the audio track of the comedian. And what they’re looking for in the experiment was the levels of laughter, so how they engaged with the content. And so, the researchers were monitoring that, the volume of laughter, the intensity of laughter.

The second group listened to the same standup comedian set but with canned laughter over the top. And, as you would expect, the laughter increased because that’s just the way canned laughter works, that’s not particularly earth-shattering. What’s interesting is the next group, the audience that were listening to who are laughing at canned laugh, they described a persona, an identity.

So, as those who are listening, in this third group, said the people who are laughing are actually just like you. They agree with you politically, for instance. The laughter increased significantly. Now, as you can probably guess where this goes next. The fourth group were told the people who are laughing at that standup comedian were people they wouldn’t agree with, they were from the other side, the other end of the political divide.

And what was interesting is the level of laughter of those people listening to that standup comedian was actually at about the same level or a thatch lower than the first group where there was no canned laughter at all. And so, it’s almost that the moment we thought other people are laughing at something and they weren’t like us, they weren’t from our tribe, it’s like, “I can’t laugh. Even if I think the joke is funny, I will not laugh because someone who’s not like me thinks this is funny.”

And I thought it just really showed how powerful those tribal instincts are, and it’s often how dangerous in terms of the way we think, the way we approach ideas that can be.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Michael McQueen
On Being Certain by Robert Burton. And it’s a book looking at this notion of what Robert Burton calls the feeling of knowing, “How do we get to the point of certainty where we just know something to be true but we don’t know how we got there?”

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

Michael McQueen
There’s one called SaneBox. And SaneBox uses AI to, essentially, curate your emails so that you can make your inbox far more manageable.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Michael McQueen
Daily habit for me is journaling, an old-school journaling like with a pen and paper.

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?

Michael McQueen
Yeah, one would be something I encourage people to do, which is to unsell instead of upselling your ideas. And it’s sort of goes to that thing we talked about before of being self-deprecating, and what’s the posture with which you share ideas. And so, for instance, if you preface an idea you’re going to suggest to someone with, almost this notion of, like, “Hey, I’m maybe way off here. I’m not sure,” or, “This is just my sense on things.”

It’s amazing how by sort of underplaying it, you encourage the other person to lean forward and be more willing. Whereas, if I’m, “I’ve got this brilliant idea. Wait till you hear it.” What do people instantly do? They get defensive. And I find that even from a speaking perspective, I’ll get speaking inquiries, and if I’m not the right fit, sometimes I’ll say to a client, “Hey, you know what, thank you for thinking of me but I actually don’t think I’m the right fit for your brief but I can think of another speaker who’d be great.”

In that moment, like it’s phenomenal how it happens, they’ll start and say, “No, no, no, we think you’d be brilliant. Here’s why.” They’ll start selling themselves to you, I’m like, “Well, we were going with this conversation where I had to sell myself, and now it’s flipped.” There’s something about just personally not being too needy, just like being really open and honest, but also unselling rather than upselling, it changes the entire posture of the conversation. I find that unselling versus upselling frame really helpful.

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

Michael McQueen
So my website is MichaelMcQueen.net. We also have a website for the book, which is Mindstuck.net. And one of the tools I’d encourage people have a look at on there is a thing we call a book bot. And so, it’s an AI bot using ChatGPT tech, and, basically, we put the book into a ring-fenced version of ChatGPT so you can ask the book some advice.

So, if you’ve got a situation at work, or in your personal life, you can put in as a question, it’ll search the content in the book and come back with advice or coaching as to how to persuade or shift the dial. So, if people have a look at Mindstuck.net and there’s information about the book bot on there. So, check that out. That might be useful.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And do you have any final challenges or calls to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Michael McQueen
I just think I’d be mindful for all of us, and I put myself in this category. Like, who do you find hard to listen to? How often do we get to that point where we find it difficult to take on an opinion that is uncomfortable or outside the box for the way we see the world? And deliberately try and expose yourself to people who just think really differently to you. There’s such value in that. And as uncomfortable as it can be, bear in mind that that posture of curiosity and humility, that’s how we think best, that’s how we learn.

And so, I’d just encourage people, look at your sphere of influence. If you’re surrounded by people who sort of think the same way you do and have the same perspective on life you do, that should be a bit of a red flag. Try and really keep your inputs as diverse as possible. That’s the best way to think well.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Michael, thank you. This has been a treat. I wish you much fun changing minds.

Michael McQueen
Thank you so much. Lovely to chat.