Welcome to Captain and the Clown. In this episode we talk about persuasion, how it
differs to influence and manipulation. We're going to learn a very powerful
two-step process for persuading people and Michelle's going to share with you
some strategies that she used on how to calm people down who had a fear of flying.
And at the end of the podcast we give a little hint to our upcoming
merch so enjoy. Why did it count backwards? Are they? We're now recording.
What? Hello Captain.
Come fly with me, let's fly, let's fly away.
What are we going to talk about? I don't know.
So leadership, life and everything else.
And we're live. No, we're recording.
Okay, I'm going to do it every time. Welcome aboard Captain and the Clown.
Sounds like Captain Steubing. Captain Steubing, I've got more hair than him thankfully.
So today we're talking about persuasion.
Ah, the art of. Yes, because I was reminded of something during the week.
It's a big topic but I just want to focus on one aspect of persuasion if that's alright.
So what do you define persuasion as?
Well, I guess there's three things in the influence and persuasion course.
There's three things that we talk about. So the first one is persuasion,
then there's influence and then there's manipulation.
So we talk about the difference between those three things and what they are.
So I guess from a definition perspective, persuasion is the skill of moving somebody off the way they currently think.
So they think one way and you want to persuade them to think or do something different.
Influence is similar but you don't need to even know the person to have influence over them.
So I've been influenced by many people who have no idea who I am.
And then manipulation is similar to persuasion where you're moving somebody off a thought or a,
so you're moving somebody to a different thought or a different course of action.
But when they get there, they wouldn't have liked the fact that they didn't really have much choice or in other words,
none of us like being manipulated. We have no problem being persuaded or influenced.
So manipulation, it only benefits the manipulator, not the person who has been manipulated.
Whereas influence and persuasion, it benefits both parties, I guess.
So can you, do you feel or know when you're being persuaded, influenced or manipulated?
I think, yeah, later on when you look back and you think, oh, I was manipulated.
I don't really like how that went or, you know, I'm now in a position that I wouldn't have chosen for myself
and it only benefited the manipulator. Whereas influence and persuasion, you feel some sort of control.
And so why this topic?
Well, during the week, I was watching this video of a psychologist who had an experience at a dog park
and the way he handled it or the way he described that he handled it was brilliant.
And so I want to tell you that story about that video first and then unpack it
and show you what the technique is that he's using.
So imagine this, this psychologist is walking his dog through a dog park somewhere.
Somebody walks up to him and with quite an agitated state,
looks at the psychologist who's walking his dog and said, is that a rescue?
And so with a quite a, you know, a forceful tone of voice, obviously implying it better be a rescue.
You better not have bought that dog from a dog breeder, a designer dog or whatever.
And so that psychologist had a choice in that moment to get defensive, to ignore the person.
But clearly being a psychologist, he used his training.
And what he did is he said to this person who's verbally accusing him of having a designer dog, I guess,
he said, yeah, it's an awful situation, isn't it, that there's so many dogs in shelters
and they need somebody to rescue them.
And it's such an awful situation that so many dogs bought for Christmas and then discarded
and they end up in shelters and they're being put down in large numbers.
It's a horrible situation, isn't it?
And the guy that had obviously come up and said, you know, is that a rescue?
Then calmed down and was starting to become a little bit more peaceful in that interaction.
And then the psychologist said, can I ask you a question?
And so the accuser said, yeah.
And then the psychologist said, what do you do when your family has been asking you for a particular type of dog for years?
They had a fantastic experience with a particular type of dog.
And you can't find that dog anywhere in any of the shelters.
What do you do there when your kids are begging you, your wife is begging you for a particular breed of dog,
you just can't find it anywhere.
And the guy apparently looked at him and said, yeah, yeah, that'd be a difficult situation.
And when he was telling this story, I thought, wow, what a fantastic example of something that we teach
in the Influence and Persuasion course about a two-step process called understand ask.
So rather than when being confronted, rather than trying to convince this person of his position,
he spent time really getting to understand the person that was accusing him.
So you think about it, he's come up with this aggression.
Is that a rescue? As if to say, you better be walking a dog that's been rescued.
And instead of defending himself, arguing with the guy, he just simply spent some time on the guy's side saying,
yeah, it's a horrible situation, isn't it, with so many dogs?
Because when you feel understood, it changes your emotional state.
One of the biggest frustrations of humans is not feeling understood.
I'd imagine this is exactly what marketers do when they're advertising.
Yeah, yeah, we give you understanding, not just insurance.
That's right. And then, yes.
It's one of the most successful ad campaigns because every night on TV, they said to their customers,
we give you what you want. Do you remember who it was?
We give you understanding, not just insurance.
It was APIA, Australian Pensioners Insurance Agency.
Very successful ad campaign because they said to their customers, their hopeful future customers,
we give you what you want and everybody wants to be understood.
Psychologists use a technique that I think is very simple but very powerful.
Before you persuade anyone to change their thinking, change their mind, change their behaviour,
you've got to spend time proving to them that you understand them.
Because when you feel understood, it's almost like a relief, a release of pressure.
You go, oh, they understand me sort of thing. So I loved it.
It was a great example.
And yeah, I would never have thought of going down that path myself if I was walking a dog
and somebody starts accusing me of having a dog that's not a rescue.
I don't know if instinctively.
You would go into defensive mode, don't you?
You would go into defensive mode, but the psychologist didn't.
And yeah, so if you want to persuade somebody to change their thinking, change their mind,
the first step is to prove to them that you understand them.
Get them into a state where they feel heard, they feel received.
There's a connection.
There's a connection, exactly.
But did you hear what his second step was, the question that he asked?
Yeah, he gave a different perspective, but in a compassionate way based on what he understood of that person.
And then the question that sits between that compassion and proving he understood
was I think one of the most powerful questions we have at our disposal, and that is, can I ask you a question?
Now, people who have attended your courses would have a visual of you putting your hand up to your brain
and opening the door, can I ask you a question?
And then it opens up the brain.
Yeah, thinking, yeah.
It's me being silly in a training room.
But yeah, when you ask somebody, can I ask you a question, you're getting their permission,
which gives them a sense of control.
And when they say yes, they're opening up their brain to receive new information, to be asked something.
So when you, I think, I call it the most powerful question we have.
Can I ask you a question?
Can I have your permission to ask you a question to get you to think differently?
It's essentially what you're doing, but you're not obviously saying that.
And then once he said, can I ask you a question, and this accuser gave him permission, his brain's now open.
It's open to listening.
And so then he said, what do you do?
So he's asking his advice.
What do you do when your kids, your wife, have been asking you for a particular type of dog?
What do you do?
So in other words, please put yourself in my position to understand it from my perspective.
I want to get your take on what you would do if you were me.
Is that like putting skin in the game?
It is. It is.
Like you come and sit, stand, I've just stood in your shoes.
Stay colder now.
Yeah. I've just stood in your shoes.
I've understood it from your perspective about how these dogs in rescue centers.
Now, please, can you please come and step into my shoes and understand it from my perspective?
And it was just a fantastic little video that I watched that showed the art of persuasion.
Understand somebody first, ask permission, and then ask questions to get them to look at something different.
I like that.
Yeah. It's beautiful.
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So have you ever had to use these sort of techniques in aviation?
Yeah. So I was involved in a fear of flying course, not for myself, but...
I hope not. What am I doing at the punch?
That's a different story.
Yeah.
And part of it was, and also when I used to sit, paxing around in uniform, people always come up and give their opinion and want to tell you that they're scared of flying and they don't like when it does, you know, takeoff, landing, turbulence, et cetera.
So when you're, sorry, paxing is when you're...
A passenger deadheading to somewhere else. So flying from, you know, you might be transported.
Yep.
In uniform to another port to then commence your flying.
Oh, okay. So you may have done a flight, but then you've got to go to another airport to fly a plane somewhere else.
Correct.
Okay. So paxing. Yep. Okay.
Yes. Yes.
And so the fear of flying, what I tended to do, whether it was officially or just as a passenger, is understand why have they had a bad experience? Is there... have they heard from, you know, someone in their family or friends?
Have they watched air crash investigations, all these things, and then work out... and generally, I am generalizing, it all came down to a lack of control, a lack of understanding, a lack of knowledge about what was actually happening.
So I break it down and tell them, you know, it's air pressure and it's basically just a change. And then to break it down even further to make it more relatable to something that they know, I'd give them the example that it's like a pothole.
You don't fear a pothole. Okay. It can be jarring, which turbulence can be as well.
Yeah.
But it's in control. You know that out of the pothole, there's road and solid road and you're contained within your car and you're safe.
Yeah.
So then when there was turbulence and they, you know, grabbed the arm rests with this deathly, you know, white knuckle grip, they could reason and you could see them. They were reasoning, it's just like a pothole. It's just like a pothole.
I love this.
Yeah. They came out of it and it was, it doesn't cure anything, but it gives it more of an understanding.
More context.
So they have that, you know, they can go into the researching of the air pressure changes, et cetera.
Yeah.
And you're not going to plummet to the ground.
Yeah.
But the quick go-to is the pothole.
So you're, you're Paxing, I know your term.
I know.
You're sitting there, you're in uniform. You might be sitting next to somebody who's got a fear of flying.
Obviously they see you as a pilot because you've got the uniform on and they start asking you questions about their fear.
And so your first instinct is to show that you understand them.
Yes.
Get some background. I love this. So you get some understanding of where their fear comes from. You're listening to them. You're, yeah, you're spending some time in their shoes.
And then you give them some context to think about it differently. So you're almost asking them, I presume you'd say, have you ever been in a car and driven over a pothole?
And they're going, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. So then you're saying it's similar in the air where that pothole is a change in air pressure.
Yeah.
And so potholes in the sky.
Yeah.
What a fantastic way to help somebody who's got a fear of flying when you're going through turbulence. It's okay.
Just a pothole, just like on a road, we drive over a hole. And, but then we get past the pothole, we're back on the road again.
Yeah.
What a great analogy.
I suppose as far as persuasion goes, it's just, again, like you said, changing their state and their understanding from what their initial was to maybe tweaking it a little to something that sits better with them.
But it started with you understanding them.
Yes.
And then when you introduce the concept of the pothole, they can now move off the old thinking with some new context.
I really like that.
Did you ever have to persuade people in your crew when you were flying?
Yeah. I saw an example of this with a captain I used to fly with.
And so I used that technique myself where I would offer out if you like anyone to come up with a solution. So there would have been, you know, how much fuel do we need if we need to calculate alternates on route, et cetera, if the weather's bad.
And I would come up with a fuel solution and a fuel figure.
And then you offer it out to your crew as well.
So to your first officer.
And if it was a different thing, it could even be where we go for dinner on an overnight with the cabin crew as well.
Everyone gets a say.
And then so not the dinner, but ultimately the captain makes the final decision.
So rather than being autocratic where this is what it is, and I think we actually spoke about a situation where I had a fuel situation and it was very autocratic.
So rather than having that and distancing myself, making it approachable and having the crew feel like they had input and also being able to then see their perspective and gather information, gather data that I might not have thought of, might not have had access to.
It also then persuades people to be more forthcoming.
So even approaching the cabin crew when you first board the aircraft, please tell me anything you see, hear, smell, feel, and nothing is silly.
You know, giving that expectation and persuading them that they are part of the crew and their input is valued.
So they're feeling included in decision making.
So I presume on a plane, it ultimately comes down to the captain's decision, you're in charge, but you're including other people, which then persuades them to think that they're part of a team.
They're part of the decision making process.
I like that.
Yeah, we could probably go much deeper into that topic about decision making as a leader in teams, incorporating the opinions of all those that are in your team.
Without being too flat gradient, it is ultimately the captain's decision or the leader's decision.
However, if you have people on board with you, and I mean metaphorically as well, that it does make that component easier.
So to influence, to persuade is a lot easier.
And I don't mean it in a manipulative way.
No, no, no.
So I guess they feel as though they've got input.
Yes.
Yeah.
So when we talk about manipulation, you didn't have input is often the case.
You felt like you were moved off your position.
You were manipulated off your position, but you didn't have any input.
So therefore you didn't have any control.
So you're giving people a sense of input, which gives them a sense of control, which means that they feel persuaded or influenced.
Yes.
I really like that, Michelle.
So just wrapping up what I loved from that video of the guy in the dog park was he just absolutely demonstrated a very simple process.
Before you want to move somebody off the way they currently think or the way they act, spend time proving to them that you understand them.
Get into their shoes, understand it from their perspective, and don't try and move them off that position until you've shown that you categorically understand their perspective.
Because what it does is it triggers the reciprocation response.
So when I do something for you, because we're humans, you instantly want to reciprocate.
Yeah.
So if I prove to you that I understand you, then when it comes to my turn to talk, you'll reciprocate and listen to me.
So understand first.
The second step is ask questions.
And the most powerful question we have is, can I ask you a question?
And then when you ask your next question, you've got their permission, their listening, and most likely going to be taking into account your position in whatever it is that you're talking about.
Yeah.
Like it.
That's good.
So let's finish up this podcast by talking about why we think the world will be a better place with more dogs.
Oh, well, OK, where we live is in Sydney, in a peninsula, and it's a great little community.
And everybody, and that's an absolute, not everybody has dogs, but there are many dogs.
And they're typically small and have oodles somewhere in the breed, which is quite ironic, I suppose, and quite poignant.
That is topic of designer dogs and rescue dogs.
Yeah.
I think there's too many oodles in rescue centers because that's what everyone wants these days.
I do, although there are a lot of rescue dogs around here, which is lovely.
Yeah, it's beautiful.
And when I've been asked to dog sit, because I can't have a dog travel lots around, even though the kids would really love a dog, when we've been asked to dog sit, we find that when we're walking, people talk to us.
They come approach us with a smile.
They're approaching the dog with a smile, but they approach with a smile.
So they're talking to the dog first, probably?
They do, they talk to the dog.
They approach and they're so excited to see the dog and then look up and smile, keep smiling at us.
And we get to know their names and it's all lovely.
And then when the dog goes home to its owner, the very next day, these same people don't even see us.
Oh, no, so the dog is the canvas for the chat.
That's it. And so dogs, people see dogs unless something's aggressive, attacking them, but people see dogs and they just, I don't know, everything's just beautiful and people are smiling.
And so I think the world needs more dogs because then everybody approaches everyone with smiles.
And that's just my belief.
And I think we should put that on the t-shirt, Michelle, your idea of more dogs.
Maybe a hat as well.
Yeah, funny you should mention that.
Oh, some merch on the way.
Yes.
Yeah, okay.
All right, well, maybe we'll make some announcements when your merch has been produced.
I love that. I love that. More dogs.
I think the world will be a better place with more dogs.
Yes.
Yes, awesome. So good to see you again.
Lovely to see you.
Have a great week.
You too. Bye.
Bye.
So Michelle, where can they find us?
Captainandtheclown.com.
Where you'll find links to our websites for keynote speaking and corporate training.
Yes, that's Captainandtheclown.com.
Well, that was fun.
That was fun.
You're such a clown.
The clown.
Lady captain.
And who's going to listen to this?
Maybe our mums.
Thanks, mum.