Persuasion & Negotiation Archives - How to be Awesome at Your Job

Pete Mockaitis
Josh, welcome!

Josh Bandoch
Pete, it is a pleasure to be here. Thank you so much.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. I’m excited to talk persuasion. And can you tell us what’s perhaps the most surprising and fascinating thing you’ve discovered about persuasion from all your years of studying it?

Josh Bandoch
Maybe we’ll start with this one, which is that persuasion, people think persuasion is about getting somebody to do something. And it’s actually much more about removing barriers to doing things.

And if you don’t understand what’s stopping somebody, they’re never going to actually do what you want them to do. So unless you remove those barriers, you’re not going to persuade anybody to anything, because there’s always that thing somewhere stopping them.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s about removing barriers instead of, I guess, incepting them, like, “That’s never occurred to me before. How wonderful. I’d love to do that.” It’s less of that and more of, “Oh, you got to hangup over here. Well, let’s address that.”

Josh Bandoch
Well, so it could be, and sometimes, “That’s an amazing idea,” and still, they’re not going to do it unless you remove a barrier. It’s something that we don’t think about. So we can talk a lot today about things you can say and do to increase the chances of getting people to do what you want.

My book is called How to Get What You Want, and there’s a lot that goes into that. And one thing that we don’t think about is, no matter how brilliant we are, and how tight our reasoning is, and how high our emotional intelligence is, how great all the other tools and strategies that we can talk about today, if we don’t remove that barrier, someone is going to stay stuck and they won’t do what you want them to do.

So you have to look for those barriers and we can talk about how you can do that.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, yeah, I do want to get into that. And maybe to zoom out a little bit, what would you say is sort of the big idea or core thesis of your book, How to Get What You Want?

Josh Bandoch
So maybe let’s start by thinking about what persuasion isn’t and what it is. So I think another thing that’s kind of related to this is that people tend to misunderstand persuasion.

There are three really common misconceptions that I encounter whenever I talk about this – workshops, lectures, whatever. The first is that people think that persuasion is about winning. And, Pete, if I win against you, what does that make you?

Pete Mockaitis
I’m a loser.

Josh Bandoch
“Loser!” And do you want to work with somebody who makes you feel like a loser?

Pete Mockaitis
No.

Josh Bandoch
No, not at all. And then people think it’s about convincing somebody to think just like them. And the trouble with that is that the Latin root of the word convince actually means to vanquish or to conquer. And conquest is barbaric, it’s not persuasive.

And then people think that persuasion is all about just making the right arguments. Well, I got into this, but the reality of how this thing, the human brain works, is that we feel first then reason. And so when you just start by launching your logic at people, you’re missing the entire boat.

So kind of big picture, staying zoomed out for a minute, I think persuasion has three parts or three steps. Step one is to adopt what I call the persuader’s mindset. And this is a little bit counterintuitive because it’s not how we’re wired. And we’re wired to think about ourselves, and you need to put them first because you’re trying to persuade someone else to do something. You’ve already persuaded yourself that you’re right.

Step two is to use knowledge of how the human brain works to your advantage. So what I dive into in part two of the book is all the ways that we’re wired, and just accepting those cognitive realities, challenging some of them more like, I hate some of the things that are there. I absolutely hate it.

And yet, that’s just how all 8 billion of us are wired. And so my recommendation is navigate those cognitive realities instead of fighting them. And then the third part goes into it’s a little more tactical, some techniques you can use to further enhance your chances of getting what you want. That’s the super zoom out version of it all.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, super. Well, that all sounds really fun. I’d love to dig into some of those, you know, tactical tidbits. But can you tell us, really, what’s at stake in terms of if we’ve mastered this well, that’s your subtitle, “Mastering the Art and Science of Persuasion,” what do we stand to gain or lose if we master this art and science versus if we kind of continue chugging along, you know, as mediocrely persuasive in our professional lives?

Josh Bandoch
Yeah, the difference between having a great idea and having someone else embrace that idea is persuasion. You might go to your boss and say, “Boss, I have a great idea.” It might truly be a great idea. And if you don’t present that idea persuasively, then it’s not going to land the way you want it to.

And then, I mean, sometimes we think we’re being persuasive and it’s actually the exact opposite – we’re being aversive. And one of the big motivations of writing this book is that I’ve just encountered so many brilliant people, whether it’s in academia or in sales or fundraising or whatever, that are super smart and it’s not what they’re saying. It’s how they say it.

And because they don’t deliver their information, their ideas, persuasively, they either don’t get anywhere or they don’t get nearly as far as they could. So that’s the difference. Do you want people to embrace your good ideas?

Pete Mockaitis
Could you tell us a story of someone who upgraded their persuasion art and science skills and saw cool things come from it?

Josh Bandoch
I’ve coached people close to me on getting raises and getting promotions. And these are people who are terrified to advocate for themselves, even though they were doing great work.

Consistently got great reviews and paltry raises. Especially when the opportunity presented themselves, when they were asked to take on more responsibility, I coached them to advocate for themselves persuasively, to really understand what their organization needed.

And then to show how they could just over-deliver on those needs, especially if they were being asked to adopt more responsibility, and then say, “By the way, since I’m adopting more responsibility, and I’ve been over-delivering, like, maybe now is the time for a salary increase or a promotion or both.”

Pete Mockaitis
Very cool. Well, can you tell us like what kinds of promotions we’re talking, or what kinds of money dollar increases we’re talking?

Josh Bandoch
In one case, it was just basically, “Hi, we need you to take on this new role. It’s going be a lot more responsibility, and we’re going to give you a title that, at best, would seem like it’s a lateral move” to getting a title that was two levels up.

And instead of getting no pay increase, I think it ended up being about an $8,000-pay increase plus like a $5,000 bonus. That’s not bad when none of that was on the table. All those gains compound over time.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. And it’s so funny, I think I’ve been learning recently, with regard to titles, like, I used to not care. I was like, “Oh, who cares? It’s just a title, whatever.” I’m coming to learn, you know, who cares is the next person hiring you. That’s who cares. And then the money dollars attached to those roles. So that’s who cares.

Josh Bandoch
A hundred percent. And it doesn’t cost your current employer anything to give you a better title right now. And then two things happen, when you apply for that next job, then you have that better title and they don’t know that you’re underpaid.

So, also, once you are in a higher title, even if you tell your employer, “Look, just give me a better title,” six months down the road when you’re over-delivering, then you say, “Look, this is the pay range for this title, and I’m below or at the very bottom of this pay range, and I’ve been over-delivering,” and now they see you in that role and they can pay you in that role.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Very good. Well, let’s walk us through these three components then. So, the persuader’s mindset.

Josh Bandoch
We are wired to think about ourselves, which makes sense. It’s a survival mechanism.  If we didn’t think about ourselves, who would? So when our ancestors, many moons ago, they were wired to be sensitive to threats and take care of themselves, and that’s why we’re here today.

And actually, we love talking about ourselves, too. People talk about themselves 60% of the time, and on social media that raises to 80% of the time. Talking about ourselves generates the same sensations in our brain as sex and money. So it feels great.

So we adopt what I call a me-first mindset. The trouble with that is that, Pete, if I’m bringing my me-first mindset to our conversation, what does that mean for you?

Pete Mockaitis
Then I’m second.

Josh Bandoch
At best, right? At worst, it’s going to be extremely annoying, or you’re going to feel like neglected, disrespected, whatever, because you’re trying to share some of your feelings and thoughts with me, your perspective, and I’m just, “Nope, it’s all about me, it’s all about me, it’s all about me.”

And so my recommendation is that we flip this, we adopt a them-first approach, that we put them first, because the goal is to persuade somebody else to do something that you want them to do.

So how do you do this? Well, by putting them first, you’re really understanding them. So that starts with listening. And what you’re looking for when you listen is opportunities to share action, because that’s what persuasion is. And there’s always going to be overlap. And if you listen hard long enough, there’s going to be way more overlap than you expect.

And, ideally what you’re listening for is for your counterpart to recommend what you want to do. So instead of going to meet with your boss, and saying, “I think we should do X, Y, and Z,” or, “I want X, and Z,” you could just ask them, “How do you think we should proceed?” and then let them talk.

And then they’re going to probably identify a couple ways to proceed that are exactly what you wanted or even better than you wanted, and then you just do those things, and then maybe you can add a little bit on top of that.

But by listening and identifying areas for overlap, that’s the best way to share access with somebody because that’s what they want and overlaps with what you want.

Pete Mockaitis
Could you give us an example story of this in process?

Josh Bandoch
Yeah, so I used to work in fundraising, just sales for a nonprofit. And most fundraisers approach, and just most salesmen approach sales this way. They say, “Hey, I have this great product, and this is why you should want this product. This is why you should move over to our product, or whatever, buy from me.”

And the trouble with that is that, in fundraising, a lot of people kind of get it backwards. I think that fundraising is 99% about the investor, the potential donor, 1% about the organization, and 0% about the fundraiser.

But a lot of people make it way too much about the fundraiser, or the salesman way too much about the organization. And these donors, they see the organization as a vehicle to realizing their vision for a better, whatever it is, education, healthcare, whatever, pick your favorite nonprofit space.

So when you bring your why to them, that may not be their why. So what I always did is I just listened, listened, listened. And I actually thought that I failed once, and then I’ll give you a success story, but I went up to a guy in Wisconsin. He had given us money off of a letter.

People give money off of direct mail, which is wild, just, “Here, here’s money. I got a letter from you. Amazing. Cool.” So I drive up there, and I sit in this guy’s office, in his house, about an hour and a half, and he talked 85-90% of the time.

And I was new and I thought my job, selling my nonprofit, was to tell him all the amazing things that we were doing. And I’m like looking for ways to interject, and this guy just wouldn’t stop talking. I was like, “Oh, my God.”

So the meeting was pretty much over, and I’m like, “I am such a failure.” I went to my boss and she’s going to be like, “Dude, man, you messed up.” And then he said to me, he said, “I have such a better idea of what you all do now.” And I thought, “No, you don’t. How could you possibly?”

And then I realized I was dead wrong, and he was completely right, because he felt like he was connected to me and my organization. I had said just enough to help him understand, “Yeah, yeah, like, we’re on the same page,” and that was all he needed.

Pete Mockaitis
So in practice, when we’re making it all about them, what are the things we should do and not do in those conversations?

Josh Bandoch
Start by listening. And there are three ways to listen. You can listen passively, just, essentially, close the front door and open your ears, right? We have one mouth and two ears for a reason. So use the ears way more than the mouth.

And even in simply listening, you form that connection, and people love to be listened to and feel heard. So listen passively first, practice that, which is really hard for a lot of people.

The second step would be to actively listen. Ask them questions that really just open up information, say, like, how or what questions that can’t be answered yes or no, and just let them talk. But you’re gathering information about important topics.

Like,“What are your priorities in your philanthropy?” “What are your priorities with our team?” whatever it is, right? Eventually, you’re going to move to what I call proactive listening, which is moving the conversation in a way that is going to align with your needs but also really meets your needs.

So then you’re asking questions like, “How do you want to proceed?” And then they’re going to tell you, and at least part of how they would proceed is going to probably work for you really well.

And if they lay out something that is a complete disaster, then you say, “Nah, that doesn’t work for me.” And if you can do all these things, you become what I call the ultimate listener, and you’re a phenomenal listener who knows how to listen to get what you want.

And that’s the best way to put them first is to form those connections, demonstrate understanding, find all the ways you can work together. People think this is impossible, but, so, part of my work is in public policy.

And people who are on different sides of the aisle, some of the partisan warriors think, “I can never agree with that person.” And people who are on totally opposite sides of the aisle, I can look at many areas of overlap. I find it because I look for it.

And a lot of people just don’t want to look for it, but it’s always there, whether it’s on policy issues or sales or your boss or whatever. There’s always a ton of overlap there. So find that first.

Pete Mockaitis
I like that a lot, and particularly that question, “How do you want to proceed?” Because I’m thinking about when I’ve been on the receiving end of sales pitches, a lot of the conversation is not how I want to proceed.

I’m hearing a lot about, “Okay, all your features, the demo of the software, the history of the founder and the story, yada, yada.” And so I guess what I really, really want to know most of all is bring me the juiciest evidence that you can, in fact, solve my problem, make my world better.

And so a lot of times if that’s like a marketing or operations kind of a thing, it’s like, “Show me some amazing case studies with really rich, lots of numbers, and folks very much like me who did a thing and saw the result. Like, yes, like that gets me excited.” As opposed to, “Okay, I guess that’s cool that you can do that, but what I really want to know is that this is for real.”

I’m thinking about like AI stuff, for example. I don’t know how many times I said, “Wow, that sounds like an amazing AI tool. Oh, except it won’t actually do what I want it to do. So I guess I have to move on to the next.”

Josh Bandoch
Because it doesn’t meet your need, right? So unless I know what your needs are and I can frame things in terms of your needs, we aren’t going to get anywhere or we’re not going to get nearly as far as we could.

If I understand, “Okay, so like, what do you need from your AI tool? Okay. Like there are these three things. Does my AI tool deliver that? Oh, yeah, it does. And it delivers all them. And on one of these, we are best in the business. So, Pete, you know, cut me if I’m wrong, please, these are your three priorities with what you need from AI. Yeah, okay, cool.”

“Here’s how we can meet those needs. I want you to know we are best in the business with this first one, and it’s super important. And here’s what distinguishes our product. We’re really good with these other things, too.”

If I, instead, go in there thinking that there are three totally different features that you should want, and you don’t want them, oh, it’s like, “You know what you need to eat for lunch? Pizza.” And you’re like, “I don’t want pizza.” “No, no, like, you need to eat pizza.” It’s like, “Well, actually, I wanted a salad.” “Hey, you know what you need? Pizza,” right? Like this isn’t going to get us very far.

But if I understand that you want a salad, like, “Ah, what do you want in your salad? Oh, yeah, I can provide that.” And a lot of people try to force feed people to see things the way that they see them. And there’s only one person who sees things the way that you do anyways. That’s you.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, well said. Okay. Well, now let’s talk a little bit about understanding how we’re wired and accepting these cognitive realities. Tell us, what are these troubling realities that we want to fight against and not accept?

Josh Bandoch
So there are four cognitive realities that I dive into in part four, and it all starts with this first one. And I hate it because I’m a former academic, and academics are taught, you know, tight reasoning, well-written sentences, blah blah blah, that stuff, peer review.

So academics think, “Launch your logic at people and, you know, like, the best logic and reasoning and data will, like, win the day.” And this is how our brains are wired. We feel first, then reason.

Sometimes it’s feel but reason, sometimes it’s feel than reason, sometimes it’s feel and we never get to reasoning. We’ve all been there. I have. So what does that mean? That means that persuasion starts with feelings. So we need to start with feelings.

So it turns out that people who, through brain damage, lose the ability to emote. Their reasoning is actually impaired. So emotions actually improve our reasoning.

So what this means, partially, is that the logic-first approach to persuasion that a lot of people adopt, it’s actually illogical because it’s not how our brains are wired. And I fought this for a long time, and I’ve just embraced it because our feelings, our emotions, our intuitions, they’re really powerful, they’re really quick, and they’re grounded in reasons.

When you something doesn’t feel right, when you reflect on it, there’s almost always a good reason for that. So, boom, I just want to trust my intuition.

So you have to think about how you want your audience to feel and how you’re going to generate those feelings, and also understanding how your audience is feeling because maybe now is not the right time to engage somebody, or you just need to get a pulse on them.

So here’s a really stealthy way that your listeners can figure out how somebody is feeling. Ask them. So instead of asking, “What do you think about this product?” “What do you think about giving me a promotion?” “What do you think about…?” whatever it is, fill in the blank?

Ask somebody how they feel about something. And this generates a radically different answer. Because when you say, “Think,” okay, you have to pause, “Brain do this thing.” Feeling, it just comes out.

So just test this a couple times. I encourage your listeners, just test it on like a friend or a spouse or partner, whoever, “How would you feel about X?” And you’re going to get such different answers, their unguarded answers, the mask drops, and people just tell you truthfully. So then you know how they feel about something.

“How would you feel about doing this thing?” They’ll tell you. So you have to start with feelings and just accept that that’s a cognitive reality. It begs the question, “What feelings are persuasive?” and I’ll get there, but I’ll pause just for a second.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I like that distinction a lot, asking, “What do you feel about this?” as opposed to, “What do you think about this?” Because I’m just thinking about any number of questions, like business-to-business enterprise, you know, big kinds of transactions in terms of like, “What do you feel about this?”

Like, “Well, I guess I’m kind of worried that you’re going to go out of business in three years, and we’re going to be kind of in a tight spot because we’re already, like, roped into your solution.”

It’s like, “Oh, okay, that’s much better than ‘What do you think?’” It’s like, “Oh, this appears to meet our future needs.” You get very different answers and they’re probably the ones that you want, just by asking, “What do you feel about this?”

Josh Bandoch
The thinking question gives you guarded answers, “Well, I don’t know. I have to think about it. Let me go back to my team,” whatever.

People don’t, whether it’s buying a house, buying a car, you know, or making a big multi-billion dollar deal, those things, ultimately, they all start with feelings. Even if you just feel like, you know, “Ah, you know, I don’t know if I can trust this person,” or, “I trust Pete, unquestionably. So if he tells me we’re good, I feel good about this.”

So if I say, “Pete, look, I mean, how do you feel about this?” You say, “Josh, I feel great. You know, I think this is a great idea.” And you’re like, “Man, you know, it’s like…” And I’m like, “Well, what makes you feel that way?” “Here, look, we’ve been working together for years. I totally trust you. Cool.” Right? Like, what more do you need to know?

Two questions, the feeling question and the follow-up feeling question, “What makes you feel that way?” Okay, boom, there you go. And these are quick, unguarded, intuitive reactions that are grounded in reason, but they just come out, boom, and they’re so powerful.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, what’s next?

Josh Bandoch
So then the question is, “Well, what kinds of feelings are persuasive?” And we live in an age of toxic polarization. When I was writing the introduction to chapter four, which is where this comes from, I looked at the homepages of Fox News and MSNBC, and I found, collectively, over probably about 200 articles. I found one positive article. One.

So the data would indicate that negative feelings are persuasive because they were all negative. And I would ask you, I’ll kick it over to you. If you think about some of the most persuasive Americans of the 20th century, you don’t have to be partisan about it, because people go like, like, “Yeah, they were really persuasive.” Who are some of the folks who come to mind?

Pete Mockaitis
I guess I’m just thinking about, we say famous in 20th century, I’m just thinking about famous speeches, you know, JFK, MLK, they all have initials, I guess, you know.

Josh Bandoch
Exactly, yeah. And then could I add, like, Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama to that?

Pete Mockaitis
Sure.

Josh Bandoch
So JFK, he said, “Ask not.” Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “I have a dream.” Ronald Reagan saw America as a shining city. And Barack Obama talked about hope and change. And I said, “Okay, those are all positive things.”

No one ever says, “No, not JFK. Walter Mondale.” No one says, “Oh, no, no, not Martin Luther King, Jr. Malcolm X.” No one says, “Not Ronald Reagan. Barry Goldwater,” right?

So we know, intuitively, really, we know what kinds of feelings are persuasive. Positive feelings. And the best leaders, the most persuasive people, they are for things. So how do you generate positive feelings? You be for something. You think about what you are for and you lead with that.

So if you are a leader of a company, like what are you for as a leader? What is your company for? How do you lean in with those things? In my policy space, I work at opportunity policy. So I’m for opportunity. I’m for independence. I’m for dignity through work. I’m for strong families, I’m for communities, all these things.

In my personal life, I’m for empowering people to unleash their potential. That’s what this book is about, because it’s going from great idea to presenting that great idea persuasively. Boom! Potential unleashed. So it’s, like, what are you for? How do you lead with those things? And how do you use that to generate persuasive feelings?

Pete Mockaitis
That’s interesting. In terms of being legendary, long lasting, the positive being for something resonates and inspires. And yet, in terms of grabbing our immediate clicks, it seems like the negative does better.

Like, I’m just imagining like, let’s say I’ve got a YouTube, a sea of YouTube thumbnails and titles, and yours talks about what you’re for, that might be a bit of a snooze in terms of,  “Oh, man, this one is terrifying. What’s that about?” Click. As opposed to, if I’m actually strapped in for the speech, yeah, the inspirational stuff will linger for the ages.

Josh Bandoch
And the deep-down wiring reason for that is that we are wired, going back to the wiring again, so we are wired with something called negativity bias. And this is a survival mechanism.

The problem is while it helps us survive, it impedes thriving. Like, do you really want to follow somebody who is just negative all the time, who’s just tearing things down, and who doesn’t know how to build things up? That’s not a recipe for long-term success, either in your personal life or in your professional life.

If you’re a manager who just goes down and says, “Well, this is all terrible.” Maybe, but, like, what are you, what is organization, what is your team for? Like, where are you going? And what are these things?” Because it’s those positive things that motivate people to do things repeatedly over a long period of time.

So it’s, essentially, fighting your wiring, but also trusting your intuitions because people give the same answers that you did, JFK, Martin Luther King Jr. People like that. Like, we know deep down. So it’s fighting part of our wiring, but also kind of trusting our intuitions a little bit.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so we feel first, then reason, what feelings are persuasive. What’s the next piece about feelings?

Josh Bandoch
Well, so then how do you generate feelings for something?

Josh Bandoch
And then what are the best mechanisms for that? Okay. So, two. The first is to appeal to your audience’s values, to their moral taste. On our actual physical tongue, we have five or six tastes wired into it: sweet, salty, sour, bitter, umami, maybe fat, oleogustus.

In the same way, hundreds of thousands of survey responses, research from moral psychologists that’s been, I think, widely validated, show that just like we have these physical taste receptors on our tongue, we have six, maybe seven moral taste receptors that are wired, and that’s important, into our hearts and minds.

They are care, essentially sensitivity for suffering; equity, a concern for equal outcomes, proportionality, which is about hard work and merit; authority, which is about hierarchies; loyalty, which is in-group, out-group; purity, which is like things that are sacred or things that are disgusting; and then liberty, essentially being free to live how you want.

So I say wiring because research shows that 30-60% of our values are wired into us. We know this through studies of twins. So, like, our values are at least 30% genetic, which means that rather than hating somebody because they have different values than you, you just accept that that’s largely wired into them.

So what you’re trying to do is understand the sorts of values that resonate with your audience, and then appeal to those tastes. This is important because would you serve a vegetarian veal? Would you force feed bacon to somebody who keeps kosher? I hope not.

So in the same way, you’re simply accepting your audience’s values and trying to frame things in their terms. And then what’s the absolute best way to do that? It’s to tell stories.

So let me give you an example from the policy space to make this a little bit concrete. There are these things called occupational licenses. They are a government permission set to work in industry. So about one in four Americans need an occupational license to do a job.

Sometimes this makes sense. I don’t want my surgeon to not be licensed. Fine. In some cases, these burdens are either too big or even unnecessary altogether. So there are a lot of fields like in Illinois, it takes a year to go to cosmetology school to get a license to be a barber. And that’s just not necessary, I don’t think.

So when I present my recommendation, which is to reduce or eliminate these burdens, I have to still be really mindful of how I frame that. So if I’m talking to somebody who’s more progressive, then I’m going to talk about how the current laws are inequitable, right, the equity thing, and how they’re uncaring.

So here’s what I would say. And then I would ground this in data. Data is important, too, right? We feel first then reason, “So there’s data, I believe it’s from the Minneapolis Fed that shows that blacks and Hispanics are disproportionately hurt by, like, a really big gap by occupational licensing laws.” So it’s inequitable and it’s uncaring to these groups.

And these laws also hurt poor people more. This is all true grounded in a ton of data, and I’m framing it in their terms. If by contrast, I’m talking to a conservative or libertarian, I’m going to say that, “These laws are unfair because it impedes on somebody’s freedom to work in a space and hard work, proportionality, hard work should determine how successful you are.

I’m making the exact same recommendation, but if I go to the conservative, and I say, “This is inequitable,” they’re going to be like, “Ehh.” If I go to the progressive, and I say, “Freedom and hard work,” they’ll say, “Ehh, probably not,” right?

So if I understand their values, same recommendation, I’m authentic to myself, “I want to reduce these burdens,” and I frame that differently. I’m being really sensitive to my audience. And that’s, I think, a powerful way to connect.

So that’s a policy example of what that looks like. You can do that in your business space, your personal space, too, by understanding what some of these values are and appealing to them rather than beating them over the head and force feeding them with your values.

Pete Mockaitis
Right. I think these six are a phenomenal starting point and really good to stretch you, to flex you into different ways of speaking about the same suggestion for different audiences.

But then you might also have very specific things that totally vibe for someone, like someone super into safety, someone super into maximizing their wealth, someone super into having a really fun time. And so you could do the macro and the micro customization.

Josh Bandoch
Totally. That’s a total yes and, 100%. So these are kind of big picture things, just like in general things, people are sensitive to. And then, totally, like these things manifest themselves in people in different ways. Hard work and freedom might manifest themselves in some person, it’s like, “That feels a little greedy. Okay, fine.” Or like, “Super greedy.”

So they can manifest themselves in a different way, like care or loyalty isn’t only one thing. So you have to individualize it 100%. Because even if someone is like, you know, they’re sensitive to care, equity, like what exactly do they care about? What exactly sets them off? Absolutely.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so tell us about telling great stories.

Josh Bandoch
So before we are logic processors, we are story processors. And stories are, by far, the most persuasive tool that exists. If you can give a 30-minute PowerPoint presentation chock full of data in seven point font, airtight logic and everything, or you can tell a 30-second story, you got to tell the story. You got to tell the story.

So, just an example again from my policy space. There was a report that came out about a year and a half ago from a Harvard professor. It talks about social mobility. And it says that the single biggest driver of whether somebody experiences social mobility in their life is whether they grew up in an environment, not a home, but in an environment where adults work.

I’ve tried for a year and a half to explain that report clearly. That’s the best I can do. Even that’s a little confusing for me. So, instead, I could do this. Just after that report came out, I was at a conference, talking to a colleague of mine, and she was just talking to a foster mom.

And that foster mom said that her foster kid came up to her and said, “Where do you go all day?” You know what the answer is? Work. And an adult going to work was a foreign concept for that kid. How can you possibly expect that kid to understand how important work is to your professional and personal success if he’s never seen an adult go to work?

That’s the story version of that. So you got to start with stories. And the question is, “Well, what kinds of stories?” Because we hear stories, fine, stories, stories. There are hundreds, thousands of great books, tell stories. And I think one of the unique things about my book, really, is what kinds of stories.

It’s morally motivating, emotionally intelligent stories. So people need to feel something. What are you trying to get them to feel? And especially making these moral appeals gets them to feel those things, so tying back to the couple of things we’ve just discussed.

Pete Mockaitis
So you mentioned that stories are more impactful and persuasive than logic. Can you expand on that?

Josh Bandoch
Absolutely. One of the hats I wear is I work in opportunity policy and I’m working to alleviate poverty. So I get up and talk to all kinds of groups of people.

And they have to know that I, sure, I get it, but also that I’m authentic and that I care about this. And when I’m up there talking about poverty in a suit, this is not a very impoverished look. So I have to disarm them right away.

The last thing I would ever want to do is go up there and say, “The Census Bureau shows that 12% of Americans live below the poverty line, which is X dollars,” right? And just go into these sorts of things. Terrible, boring snooze. And they have to know that I care about this stuff.

So I just reach for the most authentic personal story that I have, and that’s my family. I tell them, I say, “Look, you all are wondering why I care about poverty. I don’t look impoverished. I’m wearing a suit. I get it. So I care about poverty because it’s seared into my family history.”

“My mom grew up dirt poor. My grandmother had to raise five kids by herself. They were so poor that my grandmother had to count pennies.” See, sometimes I even get emotional doing this, which I am right now, so I’m sorry.

“And every year my mom wondered if there were going be presents around the Christmas tree because most years there weren’t. And that poverty scarred my mom and her siblings.”

“And I don’t want anybody to suffer through poverty the way that my mom and her siblings and my grandmother did. So that’s why I care about poverty, because it’s a terrible scourge and I want to do everything I can to reduce or eliminate it.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, totally. And you could see, I mean, the story hits home and is memorable and touching and impactful. And the statistic is just like, “Okay, those are some numbers. It’d be nice if we had better numbers than that.” as opposed to something really heavy that sits with you with your story.

Josh Bandoch
And it’s so raw where I pause there. Sometimes I’ve just started crying because it’s authentic and it’s real and it’s emotional and I don’t do it on purpose. It’s kind of embarrassing.

And yet when it’s happened, people come to me afterwards and said, “Wow, man, like that was really powerful.” So they know, they feel so viscerally that, like, I am all in on this stuff. I am totally authentic.

They can trust me and they can work with me in a way that my presentation of the data, as exact and compelling as somebody might think it is, that will never come even close to what I can do with an emotionally intelligent, morally motivating story.

Pete Mockaitis
And I’m curious, just like in ordinary business-y world, it’s like, “I’ve got a cool idea. I would like my boss to do it. I would like for him to feel excited about my idea and the possibilities for what could happen if we did it.” So what kind of stories do I create in that context?

Josh Bandoch
Part of it is trying to just grab real stories. So, like, if you’re presenting, say your manager, tell stories about the great things that everyone on the team did, “Bob did this. Susie did that. Maria did this. Andre did that.”

Tell stories about what they did because it makes it real. It celebrates your teammates. Those are tangible actions that they took. You’re also trying to craft meta stories for an organization. If you’re like a leader, CEO on the board, whatever, that’s like the vision there.

They’re really big picture things about what you’re doing and who you are and what they care about. So try to tell real stories. You don’t even have to make things up. I mean, sometimes you can. Hey, like imagine a situation, but first try to grab real stories that are authentic to you.

Maybe it’s something personal, good or bad that happened, and start with that. Because if you’re trying to solve a problem, maybe you need to start with a story that’s like, “You know, our customer, or I, or somebody, like we had this problem. And here’s a story about that.” And then there’s a story about how you can solve that problem or how that product has solved the problem.

So if you’re talking to a client and they’re like, “Well, why would I buy it from you?” And you’re like, “Well, you know, let me tell you a story about another one of our clients.” And you can tell them a story about how your product solved their problem, which incidentally is the same problem that this potential client is having.

So instead of saying, “Let me show you the data, right? Our product is 27% better than the nearest competitor. On this metric, we are 12% better. On this metric, we are 37% better. On this metric, we’re 19% better,” just tell them a story about how one of your customers, their performance, their profit, whatever, just skyrocketed because of your product. And that’s going to stick.

Instead of the data, tell them about like, company X, “Company X did this. They worked with us. It was great for them.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, tell us, any other top do’s and don’ts to put out there before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Josh Bandoch
Yeah, so chapter eight is called “Go Beyond Words.” And we think that persuasion is all about words. They’re super important and there’s so much more that goes in persuasion than words. So I’ll flag two things. Three, because we have control over them.

The first is to be likable. It doesn’t mean that people will like you, but be as likable as possible. And we tend to underestimate how important this is. And just think about a time when you liked what somebody was saying, and because you didn’t like that person, you’re like, “Nah, I’m not going to work with them. I’m not going to do this.” So be likable.

The second is to be curious. And that actually makes you more likable. And that goes back to the questions, right, taking interest in the other person. People love talking about themselves. So be curious about them and about what their priorities are.

And the last is to control your tone. Because if I say, “Pete, that’s a great idea!” You’re like, “Okay, he probably thinks it’s a great idea.” If I say “Pete, ahh, that was a great idea.”

They’re the exact same words, and you got to, especially when you’re not calm, maybe you’re nervous, you’re overwhelmed with negative emotions, you got to control your tone because we can intuitively pick up on that tone, and it’s like, “Hmm, what’s going on there?” which also means listen for tone in your counterpart.

While you try to remain super calm, because that’s the best tone, calm, if you notice that somebody is a little anxious, again, that’s especially where those feeling questions, “You know, well, how do you feel about this?” “Oh, I don’t know, man. Like, I’m not sure if this works for me because of X, Y, and Z.” So watch your tone and watch their tone, too.

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

Josh Bandoch
It comes from a poem from Samuel Beckett. The six lines are, “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”

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

Josh Bandoch
The intuition stuff that we talked about a lot today. As reluctant as I was to accept it at first, A, it’s true, and, B, it’s really powerful. So I think our intuitions are just the coolest thing ever now, whereas, I used to think, “Ah, I don’t know about this stuff.” And there’s just an abundance of research that has showed that.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Josh Bandoch
Danny Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow. It’s one of the best books I’ve ever read.

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

Josh Bandoch
A notebook. I think in a digital age, we forget how powerful it is to pause, close a computer, get out your favorite pen – I’ve been using the same pens for 30 years – and just write your thoughts down and capture them. When you’re in a meeting, write things down in a notebook. It’s so powerful, and it’s a forgotten superpower to do that.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Josh Bandoch
My new favorite habit, I try to just add new habits in over time, is to meditate.

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

Josh Bandoch
Yeah, this is maybe a good concluding point. I think that, every day, in our personal and professional lives, throughout every day, we are faced with a decision, “Do I want to be right or do I want to make a difference?” It’s really easy to be right.

You go on Twitter X, whatever, you blog post something, right, send that email that you wish you hadn’t sent. Being right is really easy and, oftentimes, it’s counterproductive. Making a difference, by contrast, that’s what persuasion is all about.

And that’s a much more satisfying and, upfront, a more time-intensive enterprise. And that’s how you succeed time after time after time again. That’s how you get what you want.

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

Josh Bandoch
JoshuaBandoch.com, connect with me on LinkedIn. Check out the book, just go to my website or just Google How to Get What You Want. My last name, Bandoch, B-A-N-D-O-C-H. It’ll come right up, and check out the book.

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

Josh Bandoch
I would say it’s returning to that in every interaction, “Do you want to be right or do you want to make a difference? And if you want to make a difference, what do you do?” You have to put them first, be extremely attentive to feelings, and bring a lot of attention to generating the right feelings.

And if you do that, you’re going to grease the wheels for shared action time after time after time after time. It’s magical once you get it going.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Josh, thank you.

Josh Bandoch
Pete, thank you so much.

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.