The Seven Levers of Influence

Book Review:

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (new and expanded); Harper Business, 2021

Book recapitulation by Ross Clennett ( August 2021 )
Mr. Clennett is an influential U Esteemed Alumni and serves on our staff .

A couple of years ago, I acquired a modern customer based on, what appeared to be, one e-mail substitute. A CEO who makes a solid commitment to a whole-of-company leadership program without requesting a conversation is a highly unusual occurrence, even more so when I have never spoken to the decision-maker before .
A immediate decision is always welcome because as a freelance adviser and coach I do not have a capital softwood of time to invest in a drawn-out sales process. Most of my work time is used to prepare and deliver coach and discipline programs for my clients – typically owners of small recruitment and staffing agencies in Australia and New Zealand .
When I met my new client for the foremost time three months later, I asked her the question that had been playing on my mind since our initial exchange : “ Why did you make such a promptly decision ? ”
“ I have been reading your blogs for a long time and it was clear that you and I have very similar philosophies on recruitment and leadership. After I read a few of your 46 LinkedIn recommendations I was certain you were merely the flight simulator I was looking for, ” she said .
That newly customer has subsequently become my largest client by sum sales .
Thank you, Influential U and Dr. Robert Cialdini.
In the first Influential U program, The Fundamentals of Transaction, I was introduced to the Conditions of Life™ and reacquainted with Dr. Cialdini ’ s celebrated ledger, Influence .
A condition of Life is a circumstance, submit, or situation that adults must tend to live a felicitous life. One of the 15 Conditions of Life is Career ; the condition of our identity of value and help oneself in specific ecologies .
Before becoming a student of Influential U programs, I regarded myself as respected and sanely good known in the local recruitment diligence, but the question I now asked myself was :

“ I know I am valuable but am I seen as valuable in the marketplace ? ”

To maximise the likelihood that the answer was “ yes, ” I applied focus to my commercialize identity by using two of Dr. Cialdini ’ s principles of opinion : authority and social proof .
Dr. Cialdini ’ s book asserts that conformity practitioners use one or more of the seven principles of persuasion ( or levers as he labels them ) to have us accept their invitations, offers, and requests willingly and cursorily .

1. Authority 
2. Social Proof 
3. Reciprocation
4. Liking
5. Scarcity
6. Commitment & Consistency
7. Unity 

These levers activate the shortcut mechanism in our mind that allows an individual to decide on a right class of military action without having to analyse carefully and wholly each of the other pieces of information available. Dr. Cialdini labels the shortcut mechanism as “ chink, run. ”

Authority

The lever of influence authority flows from being viewed as either in authority ( which I was not ) or an agency ( which my new client distinctly viewed me as ) .
As a blogger who posts content weekly, I focused my material on the, according to Dr. Cialdini, two components of an authority : being perceived as both adept ( intimate on the relevant topic ) and trustworthy ( honest in the display of one ’ south cognition ) .
The tactics that I used in my blogs were sharing an emergence that was outstanding in industry circles or sharing a error I had made, stating my opinion as to what could or should be done, and drawing on research or other credible sources to support my impression. It was this approach that had impressed my new client sufficiently that she concluded we shared a park philosophy about success in the recruitment diligence .

Social Proof

The principle of social validation states that, specially when they are uncertain, people will look to the actions and behaviors of others to determine their own when faced with a like decision .
My raw client ’ s perusal of my 46 Linkedin recommendations provided her with a wide array of other, identifiable and confirmable, recruitment means owners and leaders who had endorsed me. My expertness and competence as a trainer and coach were both credible and publicly available .
The Influential U course of study asserts that a respect career identity gives us the ability to transact promptly and at a lower monetary value. Embodying the rehearse and habits of preserve and continually seeking to expand our public identity is key to increasing the value of our offers to others and, more importantly, increasing the phone number of offers others make to transact with us .
My fresh customer ’ s immediate committedness enabled me to transact cursorily and at a identical abject cost, in contrast to many sales processes that involve submitting drawn-out and time-consuming proposals and responding to tender requests .
I infrequently submit proposals. When I do they are never more than one page in length. My success rate with proposals in the concluding five years is 80 percentage .
My concentrate and deliberate function of agency and social proof has been highly effective not barely in the delivery of modern clients but besides in raising my stand in the local anesthetic recruitment diligence .
In 2019 I was approached to be one of eight members appointed to the recruitment diligence ’ s national Professional Practice Council, responsible for, among other things, “ …acting in the capacity of a subject matter technical and to review the information and education provided to members with obedience to Professional Practice. ”

Dr. Cialdini’s levers of influence are the gifts that keep on giving.

The levers of influence are woven throughout Influential U ’ mho course of study and are included as a particular step ( Step 9 : Apply Levers of Influence ) in the thirteen-step process. ( The Thirteen Steps offers a roadmap to thinking accurately about the construction of the simpleton or complex transactions required to satisfy your aims. )
The five early levers of influence are interchange ( people are obliged to give back to others the form of a behavior, endowment, or servicing that they have received inaugural ) ; liking ( people prefer to say yes to those that they like ) ; scarcity ( people want more of those things they can have less of ) ; committedness & consistency ( people like to be reproducible with the things they have previously said or done ) ; and integrity ( people are more likely to say yes to person they consider to be one of them ) .
As I have continued my study with Influential U I have become thoroughly schooled in ethically applying the levers of influence at the appropriate time in a transaction. Just as importantly, I now recognise when one of these levers is being used to seek submission from me .

Reciprocation

survive week I received parallelism in the mail from an environment group ( whose deputation I support with a monthly contribution ) outlining how they were utilising donor funds in the fulfillment of current projects. Enclosed with the symmetry were two blank birthday cards and accompanying envelopes, a To Do List pad, and self-addressed stickers .
I immediately recognised the principle of reciprocation implicit in in these small gifts and the potential potency of the specific characteristics of these gifts .
Cialdini asserts that submission practitioners seeking to leverage the reciprocity rule will frequently give something before asking for a refund favor. The exploitability of this tactic is due to three characteristics of the predominate. First, the dominion becomes peculiarly potent when the giving, favor or service is personalised or customised to the recipients ’ current preferences or needs. Second, the rule applies even to uninvited first favor, thereby reducing our ability to decide whom we wish to owe and putting the choice in the hands of others. ultimately, the rule can spur inadequate exchanges ; to be rid of the uncomfortable feel of indebtedness, an individual much agrees to a request for a substantially larger party favor than the one he or she has received .
distinctly this particular lotion of the reciprocality rule works cost-effectively for charities in generating donations .
How do I know ? In the two months anterior to receiving these gifts from the environment group, I received about identical gifts in the mail from a lead dogs charity, a front cancer charity, and a disadvantage children ’ s department of education jacob’s ladder .

Liking

As a person who specially values, and actively cultivates, relationships ( as is characteristic of a Performer, one of the four transactional personalities studied across all Influential U programs ), I am specially wary of a person attempting to use the lever of liking in their attack to gain my conformity .
In visiting a dwelling entertainment store recently with the intention of purchasing a fathom system, I was immediately cautious when the retail assistant, in response to asking me what type of music I liked, sky-high agreed with the three artists whose names I offered up, even though each artist was from a generation slightly distant from the retail adjunct ’ s .
Praising people and acknowledging their contribution towards the skill of reciprocal goals maximises the lever of like .
I found this specific tactic has been specially helpful in gaining conformity from my 13 year-old son. “ Thanks for cleaning your board, James. It makes florist’s chrysanthemum and me identical felicitous that you besides take pride in having a home that ’ mho clean and tidy. ”

Scarcity

The scarcity principle leverages the human tendency for loss antipathy. We are motivated to have something or assign greater value to it if opportunities to acquire it are becoming more limit, or could be lost altogether. The scarcity of something is amplified when access is limited or restricted ( particularly if it ’ sulfur newly limited or restricted ) and when we compete with others for that resource ( real estate auctions are, in adult animation, the most coarse application of this principle ). Humans use scarcity as shortcut ( chink, play ) in assessing value .
prospective clients act with much greater haste in committing to an individual coach program since I started advising them they will need to wait at least four weeks before I have handiness in my schedule to take on a new customer. last calendar month was something of a record when the latest addition to my coaching roll returned his signed sign within 25 minutes and then paid the inaugural invoice 12 minutes after I sent it to him.

Commitment and Consistency

commitment and consistency work as a lever of influence because most people strive to be reproducible with their words, beliefs, attitudes, and behavior. This tendency for consistency is fed from three sources. first dependable personal consistency is highly valued by society. Second, generally consistent impart provides a beneficial approach to day by day life. Third, a reproducible orientation affords a valuable shortcut through the complexity of advanced being. By being consistent with earlier decisions one reduces the necessitate to process all the relevant information in future like situations ; alternatively one merely needs to recall the earlier decision and respond systematically with it .
many complaisance practitioners attempt to induce a person to take an initial place that is reproducible with behavior they will late request from that same person .
I noticed that when I was recently called by one of the wine club I subscribe to. The telemarketer referenced a conversation from last year in which, according to the notes in her database, I had stated that “ wine manufacturer X ’ s pinot noir was one of the best I had tasted. ” Unsurprisingly that vintner ’ sulfur latest passing pinot noir just happened to be on extra that calendar month, which was the reason offered by the telemarketer for her call .
Of class, I recognised the wine cabaret ’ mho conformity tactics, but I was closely extinct of pinot noir…..and…. it was very good…. and…. it was good value. I mean why spend more time seeking out alternatives when it made perfectly good sense to equitable pull out my citation card and in three days ’ time the wine would equitable arrive on my doorsill ( as it did ) ? Click, operate .

Unity

The integrity principle was included for the first time in the newly and expanded May 2021 edition of Influence as the first base addition to the levers of influence, since the original six levers ( or weapons as they were then called ) were outlined in the original edition of Influence .
automatically and endlessly, everyone watershed people into those to whom the pronoun we does and does not apply. The implications for influence are great because, inside our tribes ( or in-groups ), everything influence-related is easier to achieve. Those within the boundaries of “ we ” gain more agreement, trust, help, liking, cooperation, aroused support, and forgiveness and are seen judged as being more creative, moral, and humanist .
The experience of integrity is not about bare similarities ( although these can work excessively, via the liking principle ). It ’ s about identities, shared identities. It ’ mho about tribe-like categories that individuals use to define themselves and their groups such as race, ethnicity, nationality, and syndicate vitamin a well as political and religious affiliations .
People are much more probably to say yes to person they consider one of them .
Although I am an australian and hot in Australia, I have a disproportionate count of New Zealand clients. New Zealand ’ mho population is one fifth the size of Australia ’ second ; yet, New Zealand customers account for about 40 percentage of my tax income. This is strange happening for an australian coach or adviser. In my experience, New Zealanders are wary of an australian who peddles their expertness across the Tasman Sea in a way that suggests New Zealand is akin to a seventh australian state .
I believe a large depart of my success in being given a clean listen by New Zealand prospects is in my tactic of emphasising my tasmanian origins when I first base meet them .
Tasmania is the smallest australian department of state and many Tasmanians have had the have, similar to New Zealanders, of being ignored or patronised by Australians from other states, specially residents of Sydney and Melbourne .
In expressing my kinship as a colleague house physician of non-mainland Australia, I create a sense of “ we ” -ness that builds quick and impregnable rapport, regardless of the fact that I have not been a permanent house physician of Tasmania since 1988 .
For readers familiar with influence from earlier editions, the pry of one will, I suspect, be promptly regarded as a valid and useful extra pry of influence .

Weapons Vs. Levers

Another significant change to earlier editions of Influence is the replacement of “ weapons ” with “ levers ” to categorise the six ( now seven ) levers of influence. In the gloss on This edition of Influence, Cialdini does not offer an explanation as to the motivation underlying this change of categorization. aside from the potentially aggressive or masculine tonicity that the son “ weapons ” conjures, I suspect that pry is a more accurate news to describe the common functionality of reciprocation, wish, agency, sociable proof, scarcity, committedness & consistency, and oneness in seeking conformity from another .
Examining how complaisance practitioners use the internet besides appears in Influence for the first time. consequently, each chapter includes, in particularly created eBoxes, illustrations of how this migration into current technologies has been accomplished .
A third and final component making its beginning appearance in Influence is the enhanced practice of endnotes as the place where readers can find citations for the inquiry described in the textbook adenine well as citations and descriptions of relate work .
As a person whose self-employment involves a component of sales, I found one of the most helpful elements of Cialdini ’ s work was one he shared in a live workshop held in Melbourne that I attended in June 2017 .

The Core Motives

The Core Motives Model is one in which each lever of charm has a specific place in the compliance-seeking work, as follows :

About Dr. Robert Cialdini

Dr. Robert Cialdini is the Regents ’ Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Marketing at Arizona State University and was a visit professor of market, business, and psychology at Stanford University, a well as at the University of California at Santa Cruz. His books Fortune Magazine lists Influence in their 75 Smartest Business Books. CEO Read lists Influence in their 100 Best Business Books of All Time.
In recognition of his outstanding research achievements and contributions in behavioral science, Dr. Cialdini was elected to the american Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2018 and the National Academy of Sciences in 2019 .
influence is an astonishing scholarly and literary accomplishment. Since its original issue in 1984, Influence has sold more than 4 million copies in 41 languages. It ’ s a rigorous piece of academic scholarship that has found a batch audience because of the core truth of the conformity techniques that readers immediately recognise from their own lives
The ethical application of Cialdini ’ s seven levers of influence has made an enormous difference in the speed with which I complete many, highly valuable, transactions and I know many other graduates of Influential U ’ randomness program feel precisely the lapp way .
About the reviewer:
Ross Clennett is a high-performance recruitment coach and recruitment industry blogger and observer .
Ross ’ s original reservation was gained in economics ( B.Ec. 1988 ). He is a Master Practitioner of Neuro-Linguistic Programming ( NLP, 2006 ) and holds Esteemed Alumni status having completed the Influential U course of study.

As a master recruiter, between 1989 and 2003, Ross screened over 80,000 resumes, interviewed over 3,000 people and successfully placed over 1,500 people in oeuvre. Over this meter he worked in London, Sydney, Adelaide, and Melbourne .
Since 2003 Ross has run his own business, RossClennett.com, providing a compass of services to the recruitment industry in Australia and New Zealand, predominantly high performance coaching and on-line recruitment and leadership programs .
Ross has been professionally recognised by the appointment, Fellow ( FRCSA ) awarded by the Recruitment & Consulting Services Association ( Aus & NZ ). In 2011 and 2012 Ross was a national finalist in the RCSA ’ s Outstanding Contribution Award given in recognition of, amongst other criteria, to a person who has raised the professionalism of the industry through their contribution .