Intro: This podcast was made on the lands of the Wurundjeri people,
Intro: the Woi Wurrung and the Bunurong. We'd like to pay
Intro: respects to their elders, past and present, and emerging.
Intro: From the Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences at the University
Intro: of Melbourne, this is PsychTalks.
Cassie: Hi and welcome back to PsychTalks, where we explore some
Cassie: of the most interesting ideas in psychology and neuroscience. I'm
Cassie: Associate Professor Cassie Hayward and I'm joined once again by
Cassie: my fantastic co-host, Professor Nick Haslam.
Nick: Thanks Cassie, and today we're talking about power, how it
Nick: works and how it's used. Whether it's in the workplace,
Nick: at home, or just in everyday conversations, our ability to
Nick: persuade and influence other people can have a lasting effect
Nick: on our lives and theirs.
Cassie: That's right, and guiding us through this exploration of power
Cassie: is Professor Jennifer Overbeck from Melbourne Business School. Jen's research
Cassie: explores how people experience and use power and what makes
Cassie: someone influential and why the best way to get people
Cassie: on board might not be as obvious as you think.
Cassie: Jen, welcome to PsychTalks. Um, I wonder if we can
Cassie: start just by you telling us a little bit about
Cassie: your background and how you ended up in Melbourne studying
Cassie: power and influence.
Jen: OK, I will start with the, the last part of that.
Jen: How did I end up studying power and influence and
Jen: then trace my way to Melbourne. So, uh, a long
Jen: time ago, before I ever went back to graduate school,
Jen: I was working and I was in Los Angeles for, uh,
Jen: a work event on the day that the Rodney King
Jen: riots broke out, and I don't know if you remember that,
Jen: but this is where
Jen: Uh, a black motorist had been pulled over and beaten
Jen: by white police officers. They were charged and tried, and
Jen: then the verdict came out that they were not guilty
Jen: in South Central LA exploded into violence and burning and
Jen: looting and that sort of thing. And the work colleague
Jen: I was with that day was complaining about how the
Jen: people in South Central were responding to injustice by just
Jen: destroying their own neighbourhoods and destroying where they lived.
Jen: He didn't understand it and it seemed really counterproductive and
Jen: irrational to him. And my response was, look, they, they
Jen: tried working the system, they tried going to court, didn't
Jen: work out for them. And now they're responding by seizing
Jen: whatever powers available to them, right? Which is to destroy
Jen: what's immediately in their context. And he didn't get that
Jen: and we never resolved our discussion. And the, the issue
Jen: stuck with me.
Jen: And a few years later, I found myself pursuing a
Jen: PhD in social psychology at the University of Colorado and
Jen: looking for, you know, research topics. And I just thought,
Jen: this is, this is something that's been on my mind
Jen: for years. I was working in a stereotyping lab and
Jen: I said, well, let's look at how power shows up in, um,
Jen: interracial context and interethnic contexts. And so that was the
Jen: beginning and it stuck with me, um, throughout my career.
Jen: So I did a PhD in social psych. I was
Jen: always interested in business and bringing the questions and answers
Jen: of research back into a business context. So I did
Jen: a postdoc in organisational behaviour at Stanford, which is where
Jen: I went, met you. Uh, you did the same postdoc
Jen: right after me. And so that was, it was a
Jen: great opportunity to meet you, Cassie.
Jen: And then, um, I was an academic in the US
Jen: at USC, University of Southern California, and Utah, and then
Jen: I got the opportunity to come here to Melbourne. It
Jen: was supposed to be just a few years, you know,
Jen: adventure overseas, but for lots of different reasons, it ended
Jen: up sticking. And so I've been in Melbourne now for
Jen: 11 years at Melbourne Business School
Cassie: and officially Australian.
Jen: Officially Australian since 2020. Yep.
Nick: Well that's great. So look, um, as the one person
Nick: who doesn't have a Stanford pedigree, can you explain to
Nick: me then what does a psychologist mean by power and influence?
Nick: Can you define what those terms mean?
Jen: Yeah, absolutely. Um, I was going to say, Nick, that
Jen: I would go very slowly so that, you know, you
Jen: can definitely understand it.
Jen: So these are actually terms that are debated more than
Jen: you might expect among psychologists, but I think at this
Jen: point there's a consensus that psychologists typically define power in
Jen: terms of asymmetrical control over valued resources. So this is where,
Jen: you know, person A controls resources that person B needs
Jen: and person B can't get them anywhere else. And
Jen: Um, then recently, uh, a few more psychologists have started
Jen: to say it's not just that you control the resources,
Jen: it's what you do with them. And so A is
Jen: using the fact that B relies on those resources to
Jen: make B do things that they don't necessarily want to do, right?
Jen: So power is the ability to compel somebody to engage
Jen: in an activity that they don't wish to or to
Jen: believe something that they don't believe, etc.
Jen: And we can distinguish that from influence and the language
Jen: gets a little bit messy because we tend to use
Jen: these terms to mean multiple different things. So influence on
Jen: a large scale means, or at a, at a high level,
Jen: means that we are trying to elicit a change in
Jen: another person.
Jen: And you can do that in various ways. So you
Jen: can use power to influence, I can make you do
Jen: something that elicits a change, but I can also try
Jen: to get you to change out of your own free
Jen: will and free choice. And that's where I'm not relying
Jen: on power to do that, but relying on something that
Jen: we'll call persuasive influence. That's something that, uh,a phrase that
Jen: I like to use to keep that distinction straight. And
Jen: persuasive influence is basically B has a choice, B can
Jen: do the thing A is asking or not do the thing.
Jen: And A is trying to set up the conditions to
Jen: bring B into alignment so that B will choose to
Jen: do the thing.
Cassie: And Jen, building on that definition, what's a good way
Cassie: to think about those differences between power and then persuasive influence?
Cassie: What are some examples that people might kind of recognise?
Jen: Yeah. So I think a really obvious context that many
Jen: people can relate to immediately is thinking about work, thinking
Jen: about your boss, for example. So your boss might want
Jen: you to do something. Maybe they want you to build
Jen: a new AI training program for your team. And so
Jen: they could ask you to do it.
Jen: They could tell you how great it would be for
Jen: your career progression. Um, they could even say that they
Jen: don't know how AI works and they really, really need
Jen: your help to do it. And these are all examples
Jen: of persuasive influence where it's up to you, at least
Jen: it sounds like you can say no. Um, you can
Jen: make the choice whether to do it, but the boss
Jen: is trying to get you to do it.
Jen: But then on the other hand, let's say you do
Jen: say no, the boss could come back and say, yeah, well, hm,
Jen: you know that other project you're working on, the one
Jen: that's really great for your career, and you think it's
Jen: going to put you in front of the CEO and
Jen: lead to a meteoric rise and you really want to
Jen: do it? If you don't do this AI project for me,
Jen: you're not going to be doing that project anymore. I'm
Jen: going to take you off of it.
Jen: And that's where the boss is using their ability to
Jen: control the work that you do, control where your efforts go. uh,
Jen: as a source of power so that they can compel
Jen: you to do something that you don't really want to do.
Jen: And so obviously we see that in a lot of
Jen: different contexts, but you know, it's that difference between I'll
Jen: find the levers that bring you into alignment versus, now
Jen: I'm just going to find something that I can hold
Jen: over your head and force you to do what I want.
Cassie: I'm getting very worried because Nick's actually my boss, so
Cassie: he might be getting a lot of ideas from this interview.
Nick: I already had lots of ideas, Cassie, and none of
Nick: them work. No, no, no power, no influence, um.
Nick: And why is this important? So how does power and
Nick: persuasive influence differ from power without persuasive influence? You know,
Nick: what do those two things look like?
Jen: So this harkens back to some of my favourite research
Jen: that I've done in 2011 with my colleagues Alison Fragale
Jen: and Maggie Neale. We ran a series of studies looking
Jen: at if you have power and status versus power without status,
Jen: and status is a it's a source of persuasive influence.
Jen: So one of the reasons that people respond to you
Jen: voluntarily is that they respect and admire you. They think
Jen: that you're worth following. And so if you say something,
Jen: they take it seriously, they find it persuasive and they
Jen: agree willingly, but, but they agree. And in that series
Jen: of studies, some of the, what we found was that
Jen: if you have power, that's something that could be regarded
Jen: negatively by other people.
Jen: But as long as you had status, it was regarded positively.
Jen: So people who had power and status were seen as dominant,
Jen: but also warm. And it was expected that if you're
Jen: going to interact with somebody like that, it's going to
Jen: be a positive interaction.
Jen: But if you interact with somebody who has power without status,
Jen: they're regarded as dominant, but cold, and people anticipate that
Jen: that interaction is going to be negative. They anticipate, it's,
Jen: it's something like, um, airport security, right? So I'm going
Jen: to go up and, and hopefully you get to walk
Jen: right by airport security and nothing happens. But if they
Jen: stop you and they're like, Excuse me, can you come
Jen: over here, you know, you immediately have that reaction like, oh,
Jen: this isn't going to be good.
Jen: Well, it's a high power person. They can control whether
Jen: you get to pass security and get on your plane,
Jen: but they, they're not in a high status role. And
Jen: that's actually one of the roles that we looked at
Jen: in our, in our research. You anticipate that this is
Jen: going to be a negative interaction that obstructs your goals.
Jen: And people actually have an anticipatory bad, um, approach to
Jen: somebody like that. So if, if you're in airport security,
Jen: I might come to that interaction with my own sense of, um,
Jen: bristliness and unfriendliness and that sort of thing.
Jen: And then there's other research by other colleagues, um, primarily
Jen: Nate Fast and Adam Galinsky, that says it's actually not
Jen: wrong to expect that kind of negative response from the
Jen: TSA agent. People who are in powerful roles but recognise
Jen: that they're not respected by others, tend to assign other
Jen: people like more humiliating and degrading activities.
Jen: Um, so they, they kind of restore the balance by
Jen: putting the other person down. So it has a lot
Jen: of consequences to try to interact in a way where
Jen: you're relying on your power, but you're not using any
Jen: of that persuasive influence because you can, um, you can
Jen: contribute to this perception that you're a difficult, unpleasant, cold
Jen: person and that somebody should be, um, resistant to you.
Jen: But there are a couple of other implications too, so I'll,
Jen: I'll just tell you two others. The first one is
Jen: that when we use power, we can achieve compliance. So
Jen: people will do the thing that we say because they
Jen: have to, right? If, if you tell me you have
Jen: to work on the AI project, or else you don't
Jen: get to do the other one, I'll do your AI project,
Jen: but I'm not going to put the best of myself
Jen: into it.
Jen: If it's something where the influence attempt is trying to
Jen: persuade me to believe something, probably not going to believe it.
Jen: I'll tell you I do. I'll spout all the right
Jen: words and then I'll walk away and go back to
Jen: what I used to believe. So we can get compliance
Jen: out of power. But if we want commitment, if we
Jen: want internalisation of the thing, then we really need to
Jen: use persuasive influence because the person has to come along
Jen: on that journey with us.
Jen: And then the, um, other point is that when people
Jen: primarily use power rather than adding in some of that
Jen: persuasive influence, you're really, they're, they're behaving as tyrants. And
Jen: work by Dacher Keltner tells us that when you have
Jen: a very tyrannical leader who doesn't give other people a
Jen: choice in how to behave and how to be led,
Jen: then you get more, um,
Jen: likelihood of organised resistance arising and of ultimately that leader
Jen: being taken down. So if you want to maintain your
Jen: leadership over a period of time, it's definitely more sustainable
Jen: to have both the persuasive influence and the power.
Nick: So any tyrannical leaders who are listening to this podcast
Nick: should think again.
Jen: And I hope all the tyrannical leaders do because they
Jen: really need to hear this.
Cassie: Before we, well, maybe instead of going down the tyrannical
Cassie: leader path, let's say a listener is trying to,
Cassie: convince their boss to take on an idea they have,
Cassie: so the power is with the boss. What can they
Cassie: do in that scenario, how can they put forward their
Cassie: idea in a way that's most likely to be approved?
Jen: Yeah.
Jen: It's a really great question. And part of what I
Jen: like about the question is what you didn't say, because
Jen: it highlights the way most people approach influencing and an
Jen: opportunity that they miss. So if you want to try
Jen: to persuade your boss of something, it's important not to
Jen: think of this as a one shot interaction, where if
Jen: I have the right message or if I pick the
Jen: right time or if I say it the right way,
Jen: then I'm going to persuade my boss.
Jen: Influence, when you don't have power or when you have
Jen: less power, it's a long game. So power is a
Jen: short term game. If you need to get something done
Jen: right away, power is the most efficient way to do it.
Jen: If you need to influence people and you need them
Jen: to accept what you're saying, then you have to have
Jen: established the foundation of that influence a long time before
Jen: you need it. So you have to see me if
Jen: I want to influence you, you have to see me
Jen: as a credible person. You have to respect me or
Jen: admire me. You have to think I'm legitimate. You have
Jen: to think that I'm worth listening to, that there's, there's
Jen: going to be a value in listening to me.
Jen: And so if I am trying to influence my boss,
Jen: if I show up late. I've just been watching the
Jen: show Enlightened on HBO and I don't know if either
Jen: of you have seen it, but there's this character, Amy Jellicoe,
Jen: who's full of idealism and really wants to influence people,
Jen: but at the same time, she shows up to work late,
Jen: she doesn't actually do her job when she's there. She's
Jen: very narcissistic and she doesn't pay attention to other people.
Jen: And so every time she asks for something, people just say, like,
Jen: why should I listen to you? And so over and
Jen: over and over she doesn't get what she wants. And
Jen: then finally there's a point in the, in the show
Jen: where she has something of value to offer and that
Jen: causes somebody to listen.
Jen: You have to think ahead. So what I would be
Jen: telling people who have trouble influencing their boss is stop
Jen: thinking about the immediate thing you want to influence about
Jen: and start thinking about your relationship with your boss. Can
Jen: you invest more in your relationship with your boss? Can
Jen: you show that you're on the team?
Jen: Can you exhibit some behaviours that show a common identity
Jen: and commitment to the team that you are on with
Jen: your boss? And can you demonstrate your competence? So really
Jen: maybe focus for a while on getting a few wins
Jen: and showing that you're somebody worth investing in. And once
Jen: you have that foundation, then you can go in and
Jen: you can have an ask and you just find that
Jen: the person's much more receptive to the things that you
Jen: have to say.
Jen: Now, obviously there are things you can do in the moment,
Jen: but my number one advice is to slow down, plan
Jen: ahead and build a relationship.
Nick: So that's a great scenario. How about another scenario that
Nick: a listener might be facing? Let's say they're trying to
Nick: go for a promotion. Do the same advice apply or
Nick: is there something different in that case?
Jen: Well, definitely I would say if you're going to go
Jen: in for a promotion, you want to have a history
Jen: of being a team player and, uh, showing competence, because
Jen: otherwise there's not going to be much of an argument
Jen: for that promotion.
Jen: But then of course, you also need some strategies for
Jen: making the ask, right? And we can think of this
Jen: a couple of different ways. Some of the recent research
Jen: that I've been doing with one of my PhD students,
Jen: Craig Lewis, is looking at the amount of power versus
Jen: the amount of persuasive influence that underlie particular influence tactics
Jen: that you might use. So asking politely is an influence tactic.
Jen: That's a very high-persuasive influence, very-low power tactic, and threatening to, um,
Jen: fire somebody, that's a very high-power, low-persuasion tactic. And so
Jen: you would want to be thinking about, um, you know, what's,
Jen: what's my boss's level of resistance likely to be? Chances
Jen: are they're going to resist a little bit giving you
Jen: a promotion. Chances are that's going to be costly. They're
Jen: going to need to know why it makes sense. You're
Jen: going to have to, to help them understand it.
Jen: But I would plan and think about a few arguments
Jen: that rely on different influence tactics that stay very much
Jen: in that choice space.
Jen: So one of the things you don't want to do,
Jen: going in with somebody who has a lot more power
Jen: than you is try to act like you have power
Jen: that you don't, or try to overreach on the amount
Jen: of power that you have. Um, we don't actually have
Jen: evidence about this yet. We're, we're testing this currently or,
Jen: or imminently, but, um, one of our hypotheses is that
Jen: if you try to use a tactic that you don't
Jen: have the power to use, it's going to backfire. It's
Jen: actually going to reduce your power for future influencing. So
Jen: you don't want to overreach, you want to stay in
Jen: that influencing space, pick a few different tactics.
Jen: And think about, all right, my boss says no when
Jen: I just ask for a raise, what do I come
Jen: back with? What's the next step? Well one of the,
Jen: one of my next things might be to explain why
Jen: it's good for the company. So here are the benefits
Jen: to the company of giving me a promotion and a raise,
Jen: and if that still doesn't get a yes, then I
Jen: can have a plan developed that says, here's how you
Jen: can promote me, here's how we backfill my position, here's
Jen: how my new position would work, and so I can
Jen: help them imagine it. And if that doesn't work, then
Jen: I can offer a compromise.
Jen: Well, maybe you don't give me a promotion now, but
Jen: maybe you agree to a set of benchmarks, and in
Jen: 6 months if I meet all those benchmarks, then maybe
Jen: I can have a promotion then. And so you, you
Jen: have a sequence of arguments ready, you anticipate what some
Jen: of the resistance is going to be, and you try
Jen: as much as possible to stay in that persuasive space,
Jen: instead of what some people do is say, well, you know,
Jen: other people would appreciate me, and if you don't, I'll
Jen: just have to go somewhere else. And so you're jumping
Jen: right up to high power, right? And you're trying to
Jen: make a threat and force them to do what you want.
Jen: But you're not the powerful party in the room, and
Jen: so you're just probably going to have a lot more
Jen: space and success if you stay, uh, with persuasive influence.
Cassie: My guess is that a lot of these tactics differ
Cassie: in their success as a function of gender and age
Cassie: and ethnicity and those other variables. Has your work looked
Cassie: at how those variables play out in these scenarios?
Jen: Yeah, so I haven't personally, but there is some really
Jen: great research by Nick Hayes, uh, at Michigan State, who
Jen: has looked at the fact that, um, men tend to
Jen: use more what we would call power and women more
Jen: what we would call status or persuasive influence. So, um,
Jen: there are, as I'm sure that you and listeners would
Jen: be familiar with, there are expectations for
Jen: agentic versus warmth-oriented behaviour from men and women, right? And
Jen: power is clearly more agentic and, um, persuasive influence also
Jen: has agency in it, but it's a warmer form of
Jen: agency because it recognises the importance of others.
Jen: And so if we look at Nick's work, men both
Jen: value and gravitate more toward power and then are rewarded
Jen: more for power related behaviour. And for women, um, status
Jen: is a much safer way to try to gain influence and, uh,
Jen: and leads to less backlash against women. So we don't
Jen: have data on the question yet, but based on that
Jen: past work, my clear prediction is that if you are, um,
Jen: a man, you're more likely to
Jen: be able to use power without as much penalty, although
Jen: I think everybody probably needs to balance power and persuasive influence.
Jen: But for women, it may be particularly important to be
Jen: able to use, um, persuasive influence and have those tactics available.
Jen: And then I think that should extend as well to,
Jen: you know, any member of a majority versus minority group
Jen: or minoritised group, as designated by society.
Jen: So if you're in a, a country's racial majority, you
Jen: should probably find it easier to act with power. And
Jen: if you're in a racial minority, then there are probably, um,
Jen: sanctions for using power that you're not seen as entitled
Jen: to use.
Nick: So having privilege allows you to use power more successfully,
Nick: but it's also true, isn't it, that there's a lot
Nick: of ambivalence about exercise of power, maybe less if it's a,
Nick: you know, white male leader than some other kinds, but
Nick: it's not as if power gives you a blank slate.
Jen: Not only does it not give you a blank slate,
Jen: I do a lot of executive education in my role
Jen: at the business school, and so I'm regularly talking to
Jen: CEOs and people who are at the very top levels
Jen: of companies and I bring up the word 'power'. And
Jen: you know, some people are perfectly comfortable with it, but
Jen: a lot of people just immediately, no, no, no, I
Jen: I'd like to be more influential, but I don't want power.
Jen: Like that's not the thing. Power, power is not where
Jen: I want to take my, my, uh, professional development. And
Jen: I see this all the time. A few years ago,
Jen: I was working with a, um, a prospective PhD student
Jen: and we were doing an interview project and just talking
Jen: to people who were in positions of power about how
Jen: they thought about power.
Jen: And I will always remember this one interviewee. She was
Jen: somebody we had advanced knowledge of the person, the prospective
Jen: student had worked with her, knew the people around her,
Jen: and knew how she used power in her role. And
Jen: she was really seen as a very coercive leader. Like
Jen: she just told everybody what to do. She was unsparing.
Jen: She could be very unpleasant and just, you know, a,
Jen: a taskmaster.
Jen: And we had a conversation with her, and her whole
Jen: philosophy of power was, you've got to involve people, you
Jen: have to have participation. You know I spent a tonne
Jen: of energy trying to make sure that everybody's happy, etc
Jen: etc etc.
Jen: And I've seen this repeatedly, that there are people who
Jen: value very much staying in that persuasive space, but they
Jen: don't really understand what the full range of influencing looks like.
Jen: And they, they try to be persuasive, they run into
Jen: some resistance and they don't know what to do. And
Jen: it's like, how do I move you, I don't know what
Jen: to do. So I'm just going to jump up here
Jen: and try to grab power and maybe that'll do something.
Jen: And they, they, they don't understand that there's a whole
Jen: range of tools that they might have between the two extremes, and,
Jen: and they tend to just jump.
Jen: And I think it's a very prevalent pattern. I mean,
Jen: I can't give you data about it yet. But I
Jen: think it's a really prevalent pattern.
Jen: And Jeff Pfeffer at Stanford has argued that the people
Jen: most successful at leading are the ones who are very
Jen: deliberate and very conscious about what their power is, where
Jen: it comes from, and how they want to use it.
Jen: And it, it makes them more effective. And I completely
Jen: agree with that.
Nick: And yet the more implemental ones get more respected.
Jen: They do.
Jen: Yes, there's a mismatch. In fact, Joe Magee at NYU
Jen: New York University has done a paper looking at how
Jen: people approach power and how others view them based on
Jen: how they approach power. And he found that people who
Jen: are implemental, meaning you take your power and you act
Jen: in a really decisive way, like just jump right in
Jen: and do it, are seen as more powerful and admired
Jen: more than power holders who are deliberative. In other words,
Jen: who are thoughtful and really think about it.
Jen: And although that's not exactly the same scenario, I really
Jen: think that it hits on this idea that when we
Jen: think of a leader, we think of strength. Certainly we
Jen: know from political science that when people think of political leaders,
Jen: especially when there's high threat in the environment, they're looking
Jen: for somebody who's strong because that's a protector, right? That's
Jen: somebody who's going to, that strength should be a shield
Jen: and an umbrella for the rest of us.
Jen: And somebody who's more thoughtful or somebody who's more collaborative
Jen: doesn't necessarily get the same support. So we have these
Jen: stereotypes about power that say you want somebody who's, you know,
Jen: going to crack heads, even though, as we said at
Jen: the very beginning, in a lot of ways that's the
Jen: less sustainable approach to power.
Jen: I'll veer just very briefly into politics for a moment
Jen: because my husband and I have all these discussions these
Jen: days about Joe Biden. We're recording this episode at a
Jen: time when there's a book that's just come out about
Jen: he was too old and maybe shouldn't have been in
Jen: his role. And you know, I had argued for a
Jen: very long time that Biden seemed like a somewhat ineffective campaigner.
Jen: He didn't communicate very much. He wasn't on the news
Jen: and he wasn't putting forth that, that impression of strength
Jen: that other candidates may have put forth.
Jen: But I was arguing that he might have been a very,
Jen: very effective leader because he's more focused on establishing partnerships
Jen: and working with people and getting things done. Now, um,
Jen: my husband's saying, well, what do you think now after
Jen: the book came out, so no comment on that. But, uh,
Jen: I do think that we look for the wrong signals
Jen: and leaders, and I think that's true not only in politics,
Jen: but in organisations. There's some great research by Cameron Anderson
Jen: at Berkeley.
Jen: That shows that if you have a group of people
Jen: engaging in problem solving, let's say they're doing math questions,
Jen: and there's a demonstrable answer, a correct and an incorrect
Jen: answer to the math question, but you look at who
Jen: delivers the answers more confidently. The most confident member of
Jen: the group is more likely to be accorded status, even
Jen: if their answer is demonstrably correct, uh, incorrect. And so yeah,
Jen: I think that our instincts about how to pick leaders
Jen: are very out of line with what serves us best
Jen: in terms of leadership.
Cassie: That's terrifying, um, and following on from this high-powered politics
Cassie: and negotiation and executive education, my next question is how
Cassie: do I use this at home with my kids? How
Cassie: do I get my kids in from playing soccer when
Cassie: I need them to come in for dinner?
Jen: Yeah, so, uh, Craig Lewis, my PhD student, uh, has
Jen: two young kids, and he has, uh, throughout the time
Jen: that we've worked together on this topic of influencing, I
Jen: think what happens with his kids has been a major
Jen: touchstone and inspiration for our work. So,
Jen: Craig has actually printed out the two dimensional graph that
Jen: we have showing all of the influence tactics as a
Jen: poster on the wall in his office for his own purposes,
Jen: but he found himself trying to get his kids to
Jen: brush his teeth, brush their teeth for, not his, theirs,
Jen: to brush their teeth before going to bed, and yeah, dad,
Jen: I'll do it, yeah, yeah, I'll do it, I'll do it.
Jen: and in the meanwhile they keep playing their games.
Jen: And after a while doing this work on influencing, he
Jen: started to bring it into his conversations with them and said, Look,
Jen: what I'm doing right now is I am asking you,
Jen: I'm asking you to brush your teeth and you have
Jen: the choice. Like it is still up to you whether
Jen: you comply with this. But ultimately I do have power,
Jen: which means I can make you do it. I can
Jen: pick you up and I can carry you in there.
Jen: I can take away the Game Boy. I, you know,
Jen: I can set up situations where you're going to have
Jen: to go brush your teeth.
Jen: Like as parents, I think it's very easy to start
Jen: in a, in an influential space. You want to be
Jen: respectful of your kids. You know, there's the whole love
Jen: and logic approach of giving them choices. It's very rational,
Jen: but kids are kids and they're, they're, they're doing what
Jen: they want to do. And so sometimes we have to
Jen: jump up to power.
Jen: And I think what Craig has tried to do is
Jen: to say, maybe there's a sequence of things that I
Jen: can do that stay in the sort of middle power
Jen: space where I've got 4 or 5 different tactics ready
Jen: to go, and if asking them politely doesn't work, well,
Jen: I kind of know my escalation pattern. And because we've
Jen: had the conversation, because they know that ultimately this could
Jen: get ugly, they often do choose at some point, but
Jen: they felt like they had a choice and they felt like,
Jen: you know, that they weren't just forced to do something.
Jen: And he's felt like the long term effects of that
Jen: have been really positive.
Nick: I mean, in the parenting area, do you think all
Nick: of this is partly because so many people now just
Nick: think power in general is illegitimate and they're wary of
Nick: using it even though they have it?
Jen: Well, I have watched with interest some of the articles
Jen: recently on gentle parenting and like the Gen Z, Gen
Jen: Z trend to, to gentle parenting, and, um, I'm concerned
Jen: about that because I think that there are power relations
Jen: in the world regardless of how squeamish we may be
Jen: about it.
Jen: We also have a need and a desire for that.
Jen: So there's a whole other line of research by, um,
Jen: Aaron Kay at Duke University on a concept called compensatory
Jen: control that says that when scary things happen in the world,
Jen: people actually look around them to see that there's an
Jen: agent in power.
Jen: So if there's a hurricane, belief in God spikes. And
Jen: so when bad things are happening, we want there to
Jen: be a strong leader. We want to believe that there's
Jen: somebody there who's watching out and there's order in the world,
Jen: and there's somebody who's going to take care of it.
Jen: And I think gentle parenting abdicates the power role in
Jen: a lot of ways so that kids don't see that
Jen: there is anybody to take that powerful role and it's
Jen: just them, right? And they're the ones with power. But
Jen: how scary is that? You don't know how the world,
Jen: you don't know how to handle all the random terrors
Jen: of the world. So I think, yeah, parents coming to
Jen: understand that they have power and that they can possess
Jen: that power, but they don't have to necessarily be using
Jen: it all the time.
Jen: That there's a choice and that they can interact with
Jen: their kids in a way that keeps them in a
Jen: space that respects their children, but with that boundary. Like
Jen: I think that would be a really effective way for
Jen: parents to be able to think. And, and there are
Jen: lots of scholars out there who've looked at authoritative parenting
Jen: and the benefits of it. And I just, I hope
Jen: that they're getting attention these days too.
Nick: Well, they've only been saying that for about 30 years,
Nick: so let's let's hope.
Jen: Yeah.
Cassie: And for some small goals for our listeners, what could
Cassie: they put into practise from today? Like what are 3
Cassie: things that they could do to, to maximise their, their
Cassie: influence in their life?
Jen: Yeah, um.
Jen: Well, I'll tell them what I often say when I'm
Jen: doing workshops on this topic. Number one, I think they
Jen: should do an audit of themselves to see what kind
Jen: of power they have, what kind of resources do they
Jen: control that, um, other people might value and give themselves
Jen: credit for anything that might count.
Jen: We talk in our research about 6 different kinds of resources,
Jen: so you could have money, lots of us don't have money,
Jen: so that's not the only source of power. You could
Jen: also have, um, intellectual capital, so you could know things that,
Jen: that other people need. You could have social capital, your relationships,
Jen: your reputation.
Jen: You could have human capital, which is your time and
Jen: energy and effort. You could have, um, material capital, which
Jen: as a parent, you control the iPad, you control the,
Jen: the access to the, you know, pool or the fun spaces. Um,
Jen: and you can have psychological capital through emotional intelligence, being
Jen: able to change how people feel.
Jen: And so all of those are things that could be
Jen: a source of power. What do you have? Where are
Jen: you strong? Where are you weak? What do other people
Jen: value in you? And just, just knowing that stuff before
Jen: you go into an interaction can be really helpful.
Jen: Number 2 would be, look ahead, 6 months, 12 months,
Jen: 18 months, and think about what relationships are going to
Jen: matter to your success and define that however you want.
Jen: It could be at work, it could be personally, it
Jen: could be, um, in some social domain or uh even
Jen: philanthropic activities, whatever.
Jen: Who am I going to need and am I tending
Jen: those relationships the way that I should? And if I'm not,
Jen: then let me, let me tend to them. And I
Jen: advise that people sit down every year and just sort
Jen: of do a little scan of of am I attending
Jen: my relationships.
Jen: Some people hear that and they think it sounds very instrumental. Like,
Jen: I'm just going to do this because I'm going to
Jen: need people, but you're not, I'm not saying do this
Jen: when you need something. I'm saying do it because you
Jen: know people are important to you and ask yourself, are
Jen: you showing up for them, which I think is just
Jen: a really good thing for all of us to do
Jen: as human beings. We tend to run our relationships kind
Jen: of on autopilot and I'm saying be a little bit
Jen: more intentional.
Jen: And then the third thing is to keep an eye
Jen: out for, uh, information on the amount of power and
Jen: persuasive influence that underlie different kinds of tactics, and think
Jen: about if I want to be softer, if I want
Jen: to be persuasive, if I want to give people a choice,
Jen: how can I plan for resistance? How can I expect
Jen: to be uh, told no 3 times, 4 times in
Jen: a row, and be ready to come back with something
Jen: each time I hear that without giving up and jumping
Jen: to power.
Nick: Such great advice, Jen. Thanks so much for spending time
Nick: with us today.
Jen: It's been an absolute pleasure. I'm a big fan of
Jen: both of you. Thanks for having me.
Nick: That brings us to the end of this episode of PsychTalks,
Nick: and it's time for me to thank our incredible guest,
Nick: Professor Jennifer Overbeck. This episode was produced by Carly Godden
Nick: with production support from Mairead Murray and Gemma Papprill. Sound
Nick: engineering was by Jack Palmer. Thanks for listening and we'll
Nick: catch you next time.