The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 287: Robert Greene - 5 Strategies For Becoming A Master Persuader (Part 1)

Episode Date: December 10, 2018

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk Episode #287: Robert Greene - 5 Strategies For Becoming A Master Persuader (Part 1) Robert Greene teaches the most important subject of all – understanding people's drives and motivations, even when they are unconscious of them themselves. Drawing from the ideas and examples of Pericles, Queen Elizabeth I, Martin Luther King Jr, and many others, Greene teaches us how to detach ourselves from our own emotions and master self-control. www.LearningLeader.com

As a leader, it is absolutely essential that you can judge people's character. Because the greatest sin, the greatest problem you will face it, believe me, I know about this in my consulting work, is that you hire the wrong people. You hire business partners or employees that you give responsibility to, and they have a bad character, a weak character. And you don't discover that right away because obviously you wouldn't have hired them. if you had known that. But you discover that to your chagrin, you know, months or years into working with them. And that can cause incredible amounts of damage. This episode is brought to you by Mugsy Jeans.

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It's lead, L-E-A-D. Type in the code L-E-A-D-L-A-D-E-A-D for $10 off at Mugsygreens.com. Welcome to the Learning Leader Show. I am Ryan Hawk. Thanks so much for being here. It is Mindful Monday. Text learners to 44222 in order to join thousands of other fellow learning leaders from all over the world. Text learners to 44222.

Also doing some cool giveaways and unique one-on-one opportunities coming soon. If you text learners to 44222. Now, on a nice feature leader, it's a big one. It's the great Robert Green, an indispensable guide for millions of readers distilling ancient wisdom and philosophy into essential texts. for seekers of power, influence, and mastery. His most recent book is The Laws of Human Nature in which he aims to answer the question,

What if we could dive below the surface and see deep within getting closer to the actual roots of what causes human behavior? This one was so good, in fact, that for the first time ever, we're doing a two-part episode. We want into great depth. It is quite long,

so you're listening right now to part one and part two, will be released as a special episode in a couple of days. Few of the topics we got into in part one. The five strategies for becoming a master persuader. Then how to determine the strength of someone's character in the hiring process. This is really good for managers. And then how to become a calmer and more strategic observer of people.

Ladies and gentlemen, you're going to love it. It's Robert Green. Robert Green. Thank you so much for coming back on the Learning Leaders Show. Welcome. Well, thank you for having me, Ryan. My pleasure. I always look forward to our conversations, both written form and certainly when we can record it like this one.

And to get us going, man, I want to look at leaders you've studied in history. And you think about the ones who have sustained excellence over an extended period of time, more so than the ones who are the one-hit wonder. and I'm curious from your perspective, what have you found to be the commonalities among those who have sustained excellence? Well, probably the single most important quality. I mean, there are many important qualities, but the ability to learn from experience and to adapt one's ideas, I do a lot of consulting work with leaders. And I'm always surprised that they hire me, pay a fair amount of money for advice. And yet really what they want is to just hear what they've wanted to hear in the first place.

They're not really open to being challenged to changing their opinions about what they're doing, to stir up their usual strategic approach and try something different to look at themselves and be able to criticize their own work. If you get to a position of power, it's not easy. And inevitably, you're going to have an ego. and inevitably that success is going to begin to go to your head and you're going to think that you have the golden touch and whatever you do is going to be great

and you have maybe a lot of people around you, sycophants, et cetera, who tell you how wonderful you are. And you build up this idea that's not really based in reality. So a really strong leader. And like you, I measure it by the ability to sustain power, to be able to sustain it over not just years but decades. A really good leader is able to adapt to circumstances, able to change, is able to take criticism and learn from experience. I compare it to a quality, they call it tensile, a metal that can bend but not break.

So you have an inner core of strength. You know what you're doing. You know what you believe in. You're not going to waver about that. It's not that you're just fluid and become anything. You have a core. But that core can bend a little bit. It can shift.

You can take criticism. You know, that's probably the most important quality. The other quality that I think a leader must have in this world, and I guess throughout history, is a vision, a sense of vision, what I call a third eye. So what we look to most in a leader is the ability to guide us to see the larger picture because the majority of people are trapped in their own little narrow perspective. They're focused on the present.

They're focused on their own agenda, their own issues. A leader is seeing the larger picture is not trapped in what I call tactical hell. Isn't sort of trapped in this sort of narrow vision about what needs to be done this week or next week or reacting constantly to what other people are doing and saying, a leader sees the larger picture and has a sense of where he or she is leading the group or the company. And, you know, as I said just before, this vision can adapt and change and it's fluid. But we look to a leader for someone who's not just like us, but who sees the whole picture. It's not an easy skill, and I describe in it.

So I give examples in all my books and I describe how you can cultivate that kind of larger grand strategic vision. Then beyond that, the ability to work with people. You know, the people around you are not just numbers. They're not autonomous tons. They have their own willpower, their own creative energy. And a good leader adapts him or herself to the energy of the people that are in the group and is able to focus on people as individual. individuals and not just assume that they're like everybody else they've ever dealt with. And in that vein, I'd also say to add one more thing here to my lengthy response to your question,

is that they set the right tone. It's not a matter of yelling and telling people what to do and being a bully. It's through your tone, through how hard you work, through your own conscientious work ethic, through the fact that you as a leader are willing to lead from the front and take the first bullets and sacrifice yourself for the group, that you're not a hypocrite, that you're not asking people to do things that you're not willing to do, sets the right tone in the group and creates the esprit of core that is necessary for maximum functioning of a group. So those would be the main qualities. I know that's a lot, but a leader who has those is destined to succeed.

Wow. Okay. We could unpack that and that'll be the whole conversation. That's really, it's helpful. It's useful. I think for the people who are listening. There's so many different parts of that I want to get to. I think of treating people as having a deeper understanding of their own individuality, their motivations, what they're about. I think that's being empathetic as well. Like having the ability to put yourself in their shoes. Right. It seems to be a very powerful. And I think of the best coaches and leaders I've ever had in my life.

And they do that pretty well. That seems it would be helpful to understand human nature. Somebody who wrote the book on this, which is you, it has to be a big deal. Yeah, I mean, one of the thing that I would include in that is the empathy part and in treating people as individuals is very important. But in relation to my book, I have a chapter on this, but the whole book is about understanding people on a deeper level. And part of that is gleaning their character. And I maintain a person has a character, a core. and that core sort of generates a lot of their behavior.

And there are people who have a weak character, and there are people who have a strong character. And some of the strength are the things that I mentioned, the ability to adapt, the ability to learn from experience to not give up at the first sign of adversity. And there are people who are weak who are really bad at that. And as a leader, it is absolutely essential that you can judge people's character.

Because the greatest sin, the greatest problem you will face it, believe me, I know about this in my consulting work, is that you hire the wrong people. You hire business partners or employees that you give responsibility to, and they have a bad character, a weak character. And you don't discover that right away, because obviously you wouldn't have hired them if you had known that. but you discover that to your to your chagrin you know months or years into working with them and that can cause incredible amounts of damage so the you want people you want to be able to judge people not by their glittering resume about how charming they are and how they flatter you but rather by their character because people of good character are like gold and you want to surround yourself with them you want to work with them you want to make them your partners

So that's one other essential skill of leader must have. And it's really what my entire book is about. Yeah, in that the strength of character chapter, I remember your story was about Howard Hughes. Really, the reason I like your books, because they're both entertaining and educational, they inform. So I learn, I'm entertained.

I learn about good stories and certain of people like that. The question, though, I want to get practical for a second, Robert, is that that seems. to be most people listening would say well of course I want to be surrounded by gold and by high high level high character people however people still make hiring mistakes they partner with the wrong individuals what are some of the tactical or practical ways let's say I am a midlevel manager at a company and I'm in charge of I'm a leader of 16 people on my team regardless of function and I am interviewing people to fill open spots on my team right now.

And I want to be surrounded by high character people to make sure that my team does what it needs to do to achieve and exceed the goals set. So how do we do this? How do we not get fooled in the interview process of building out our teams? Well, it's a very complicated question. And if I could answer it very simply, I would be a multi-billionaire because it is probably one of the most. important things in life. But I will tackle it in this way. The main problem that you'll have, the main source of mistakes, is that you judge people by their appearances. You're sitting there looking at, you know, how charming and pleasant and sociable they are and how many, you know,

people they know and all the connections and how well they talk about themselves. But you want to look deeper. People wear masks. They don't come into your office for an interview and they're, you know, just being who they are. They're trying to impress you. They're trying to present a front that will get what they want, which is the job. Now, some people are doing this in good faith. They present themselves as truthfully as possible. But toxic people, the people you don't want to hire, the narcissists, those who are out for themselves, they don't announce themselves like that. They don't come into your interview room and display their narcissistic qualities. They can be very charming. I have a chapter on narcissism. And narcissists are often very charming people,

very pleasant. They're good with words. The main thing you want to do is cut off that any sense of being charmed by people or looking at that kind of, you know, taking their appearance for reality. You want to look deeper. So I have a whole chapter. on nonverbal communication, which I'm very big on. Now, a lot of people might find that a little bit slippery and deceitful, but I don't agree. I think judging, looking at people's nonverbal communication will tell you an incredible amount about them and will help prevent some of these mistakes.

So you can judge a person's, you know, when they're talking so highly about themselves, You can see signs of nervousness, signs that they're not really confident about what they're saying. So you can pick up all kinds of details about whether they might even be lying or not. And I go into detail about what kind of signs you can pick up. But also notice that the main thing is you're looking for patterns of behavior. And you're not going to get that in the interview. You're going to have to be able to some way look at a person's past. You're going to maybe want to talk to people who worked with them before.

Those who are toxic, the ones you don't want to hire, are inevitably going to have a track record. So someone has left their job, their previous job nine months earlier, and they're coming to you. And they have a story about why they left and, oh, it wasn't a good fit and this, that, and the other. And you might think, oh, okay, that makes sense. but this could very well be the kind of person that can't stay at one job, that can't work well with other people that doesn't fit into a group. And a red flag should go up. So maybe it's totally innocent. Maybe they're right, but maybe not.

Maybe they're the kind of person that is just trouble. You put them in a group and they stir up a lot of problems. They're not a good team player. So looking at people's track records, their past, they're past. their patterns of behavior is absolutely essential. And, you know, maybe in the interview process, you can ask questions to sort of glean that from them, hoping that they'll be honest about it, but you also want to do some homework. And it might sound like this is too much work, but believe me, boy, will you regret the amount of work you'll have to put in if you hire the wrong person and have to fire them and have to go through this process yet again.

So I want you to look for red flags like that, where people, have a history of not being able to work with others or stay at one job or are too much, you know, trying to promote themselves at the expense of the group. Those are a few things. I mean, we could go on for, as you say, for 17 hours. I think, too, one of the things I've tried to implement is to get them outside of the office setting. There's still an interview mode even when you go out to dinner or even take them to a team happy hour, which I've tried both of those things. But over time, their guard can come down some and they get less in interview mode. Perhaps something goes wrong with the waiter, slow service, they bring out the wrong food.

I hope those things happen. I'd never orchestrated that, but I've thought of doing that before, of orchestrating them getting the wrong meal or something like that to see how they handle some very minor adversity like that because they're going to have to deal with so much more in real life. But I do think, yeah, go ahead. No, that's absolutely great. I completely agree. What I was going to say is people often reveal who they are in the little details. Yeah. So, you know, how somebody drives a car, it shows like how aggressive they are. And in a restaurant, you know, how impatient they are about the service or how they treat a waiter. These things are signs that are very, very eloquent and you want to pay attention to them. So everything that they say or do is something you're analyzing and looking at.

Not just you're trying to read between the lines of what they're actually telling you and not taking everything at face value. Yeah. And what was a process like? So I'm going to get into more of the book, but I want to zoom out for a second, Robert. So the book that we're talking about today is the laws of human nature. And it is like all of your books, it's a monster. I cannot, as I was telling you before we started recording, I cannot even imagine the process of putting this thing together. But it is so useful when it comes to one of the most important topics ever.

It's how to understand people. I mean, that's really what it's about it. It feels like, and I think these laws, as you've said, will work to transform you into a calmer and more strategic observer of people, helping free you from all the emotional drama that needlessly. drains you. I mean, I think that puts it perfectly. So I'm, I'm curious of to, at a high level, what it was that made you want to write about this and then how you want about putting it together. Well, I've been kind of writing about this for over 20 years now, a similar subject. You know, my first book is about power. And I'm kind of looking at not what we normally think about power, but what really goes on behind closed doors,

how people really operate who are truly successful in the world. So I've been studying this for a long time, and as I've also said, I've done a lot of consulting work. So I've accumulated a lot of knowledge about judging people. There are things that I'm not so good at in life. You know, I'm not good at fixing things around the house, but looking and judging people has been a study of mine for my whole life. So this was sort of the culmination of all of my studies.

And then in my last book, Mastery, I had a chapter on social intelligence. And the idea was you can master your field. You can be technically brilliant at computers or technology or business or your numbers person. And that can get you pretty far in life. But if you don't know how to work with people, if you don't have social intelligence, all of that will be neutralized by your bungling. with people and all of the mistakes that you make, including the bad hires that you have. And that chapter resonated with a lot of readers.

They said that was really interesting. I really enjoyed it, but I'm actually looking for more information. I think there could be a book out of that. And I could see that, you know, it's a problem for a lot of people. We live in a day and age where we're all kind of immersed in our smartphones. were sort of not so attuned and not so observant about people as we could be because we're not socializing as much as we used to. And I sensed out there in my audience of readers a kind of hunger for this sort of knowledge.

This was something that was missing in the world today, that people talk about a lot of other things about politics, about, you know, business and the stock markets. etc. But really your whole life is dependent on how you deal with people. It's the single most important skill that you can possibly develop. And few people really go into, a few books really go into that in any kind of practical depth while also trying to be entertaining. So that was sort of the spur to creating this book. The method was my usual method. I come to the subject with as open mind as possible. I have to admit that I tend, because of who I am, to have a slightly negative view of human nature. I tend to see, you know, some of the dark side, some of the

irrationality, some of the manipulations that people are up to. And I didn't want to make this book just reflect my own biases. So I read books that would kind of balance that out and sort of see things that are actually hopeful in human nature, such as our empathy. And I read hundreds of books on psychology, on neuroscience, on anthropology, on how we evolved as a species. And I saw what ended up being like 18 general patterns of human behavior. These are these kind of forces within us that are really deeply embedded in our psychology based on how we evolved. And these forces govern our behavior. in ways we're not aware of.

That is what I call human nature. And so I found these, I came up with these sort of 18 different patterns of behavior, and I create crafted chapters around them. But just to give you one simple idea, in reading a lot about primates, because we are a primate, I found that chimpanzees are very social animal, and they're extremely attuned to what other chimps in their group have. Like if someone's getting more food than the other,

they get very upset and create all kinds of problems. So that even among primates, they have this problem of envy. And I studied hunter-gatherers, our most ancient ancestors, and I learned that envy is a terrible problem among them, that if somebody gets a gift, that receives a gift, they're immediately the target of other people's envy and violence can ensue, so they have to be careful. So I'm thinking this need to constantly compare ourselves to others, to what other people have, is so deeply ingrained in our nature. We're doing it every day, thousands of times consciously and unconsciously comparing ourselves to what other people have, that this is an elemental force of human nature.

So I have a chapter on that. That gives you sort of an example of my method. All right. Let's get into some of them if you're cool. And I'm not going to expect you to memorize the entire book. Like I said, so how about this, Robert? I will tease some up and then ask you to go into more depth. Is that cool?

That's fine. All right, cool. So when I read something that says that our strategies to become a master persuader, I think that that piques the interest of probably everybody. We are all at certain times going to need to develop the skill to persuade other people and a variety of roles in our life. As I try to do this every day as a dad. I do this at work. I mean, I do this all the time.

And I know people listening are doing the same. We need to become a master persuader. And there are five strategies you write about I'll list them. And then I'd love for you to, like I said, zoom in a little bit more from me announcing a high level. Okay. So first, it's transform self into being a deep listener. In fact, people with the proper mood, confirm their self opinion, allay their insecurities, and use people's resistance and stubbornness. Well, starting from the top, which is, you know, kind of going in an order of how you need to approach this.

I'm talking about turning yourself into a better listener. Now, everybody talks about that. It's a very common. It's a banal bit of wisdom that you'll hear everywhere. And I think that we have sort of the wrong approach to it. It's not that you just have to sit there and listen. I want the quality of your listening to improve, not just the quantity of it.

And what I mean by that is the reason you're not listening, truly listening to other people and picking, up their nonverbal cues and really listening to what they're saying is because you're absorbed in yourself in that little interior monologue that is constantly going through your brain. And the reason that you do that is several. First of all, life is complicated and harsh and competitive and we naturally are thinking about ourselves a lot, trying to defend ourselves. But also, we generally find ourselves and our own thoughts more interesting than the ideas

and thoughts of other people. And so I want you to flip this around. I want you to think that maybe your interior monologue isn't so interesting where you're going constantly over your own problems, your own insecurities, and think that the other person is like this treasure chest full of secrets and very interesting things going on, that they have all this psychology that you're not picking up, that they're this kind of undiscovered country that you can explore and that you can explore and that you're, you know, you you are truly, truly excited to find out things about this person that you're talking to.

Even what you thought of is the most boring person, you know, the waiter who's bringing your coffee and morning, that barista at Starbucks, they're more interesting than you think. And I want you, you know, we love watching movies and reading books. And it's a kind of a voyeuristic thrill where we get to look inside of what people's lives are like. I want you to approach people like that, like it's a movie, like that you're going to find things out about their character. And so it's not that you just sit there and listen, but that you're excited and you are

motivated to discover something that you never knew about them. So a simple exercise would be, let's say you have a spouse or a partner that you've been with for years or months, I can tell you truthfully, there are many things you don't know about that person, that they have secrets that you don't know. I want you to take today, in your conversation with them, to try and cut off that monologue and listen deeply and glean some new bit of information about their character that you had never realized before. And believe me, you will if you start listening deeply and you pay attention to their nonverbals. So that's the first thing. And none of the other elements in persuasion will work unless you're able to listen to

people because they're going to reveal as they talk who they are, what their hidden desires are. They're going to reveal this mine of information that you can now use for any kind of attempt at influence. The second thing is extremely important as well is that we're animals as we're not just these rational intellectual creatures. We're also animals. and a lot of our behavior, a lot of what people express comes out non-verbally. And so we're extremely influenced by the moods and emotions of people, not just their words.

So when you're in a group, if you're dealing, if you're talking to your boss and he or she is very anxious and maybe slightly hostile, you're going to be picking up that feeling and it's going to make you react in a certain way that will probably be a bit negative and fearful yourself. Whereas if somebody who comes up to you and they're all cheerful and buoyant and happy to see you, they're going to make you feel happy and cheerful in response. So we respond to people's behavior in nonverbal ways to their attitude, to their tone of voice, to their body language. You must be aware of that.

Your anxiety, your insecurities are a big turnoff when you come up to someone you want to try and talk to them and get them interested in your idea, your insecurity and anxiety is going to infect them with the same mood. Knowing that gives you incredible power. So your ability to be calm, to feel happy and secure about your idea, to be almost sort of cheerful

and wanting desperately to explain your brilliant idea, it will communicate itself non-verbally and will have a relaxing positive effect on the people you were around. So be, aware that your tone of voice, your body language, all of those elements have an extremely important, play extremely important role in the effect you will have on other people. The third thing is...

Hold on, Robert, real quick. Can I cut in for a second? Sure. These are so good. Okay, so two things. One on infect people with the proper mood. From a very young age, my dad told me as I was new into leadership, he'd always say, it is your duty as the leader to be in a good mood. and that was, and he is notorious for infecting people with the proper mood.

And it was genuine. It was real. He almost had to flip a switch at times if need be, even if things were tough. But he knew that in power positions that he worked in, which he had for the bulk of his career, that the way that he responded, the way that he acted, the way that he showed up into the room, the way that he addressed the crowd, all of that had a significant impact on everybody else. So he was a multiplier. And so you can either multiply for good or multiply for bad. And you have to know that. So all of us listening who are leaders, and we're all leaders, and regardless of title, know that that is a big, big deal when it comes to persuasion is affecting them with the proper mood.

That's why I love that you shared that one. Yeah. And it also applies to as a parent dealing with your children and that your mood will also, you know, your children are extremely. are extremely sensitive and extremely, they pick up the subtlest signal about your mood to a degree you're not even aware of. And your anger or hostility towards them because you're in a bad mood is infecting them far more deeply than you could ever imagine. So just be aware of that.

It's just absolutely critical. Okay. Confirm their self-opinion. Well, this is sort of a slightly strange idea that I have to explain a little. bit, but it's very important. And the idea is that the people you deal with have an opinion about themselves. They have a self-image. And for everybody, it's different. We all, you know, over the years have developed particular form of what I call a self-opinion. But there's some certain universal traits that everybody basically wants to have about themselves or opinions about themselves.

The first one is that people generally think of themselves as intelligent. Now, this may mean, oh, they don't think that they're Albert Einstein. They realize that they don't know physics. They may just be a carpenter or a plumber. But everybody likes to think that they have superior knowledge about something in life, that they are not stupid, that they're stupider than other people. They know their own field. They have good practical wisdom.

So on some level, people have a deep need to feel that they are intelligent. The other is that they're autonomous, that they operate by their own willpower. When they do things, it's because they want to, not because of some advertiser who's secretly persuaded them to do it. People want to feel like they're the ones in control of their behavior. And third is that people are good. They're basically decent. They believe that they work well with other people. that they treat people well, et cetera.

Now, these opinions that I just laid out might be completely false. In other words, somebody might think that they're really intelligent, but they're not. They're actually quite foolish. Or they might think that they're good, but they're actually pretty nasty towards others. And they might feel that they're autonomous, but in fact, they're extremely susceptible to the influence of other people. But nobody likes to think of themselves as being bad, immoral, weak and dependent and stupid. Now, you must realize there are other factors that will be specific to the individual,

like their self-opinion can be, I'm really self-reliant, I don't depend on anybody else, or I'm a bohemian, I'm very free with my thinking, I have a free spirit. When you approach them, they have this opinion about themselves. And if you somehow challenge that opinion, if in what you say, or do, you make them feel like you believe that they are not intelligent, they're not good, they're not autonomous, they're not the other qualities that they have, you will create an enemy. You will, they will send up, push up walls that will never come down. And you may not be aware of this, that you're doing this.

But the slightest sense of what you're saying as challenging, you might think, okay, this person needs advice, they're messing up their life. I'm going to come in and I'm going to rescue them. And you come and you meet them and you tell them all the things they're doing wrong and you tell them what they need to do. And you think you're being such a good Samaritan. And you don't realize that weeks later they really resent you. They're not doing anything you said. They're not listening.

Why? Because you insulted their sense of intelligence and autonomy. You talked to them as if they were so stupid that only you could solve their problems for you. You want the opposite. You want to calm people down and make them feel. comfortable with this feeling that they are autonomous, good, and intelligent, or whatever the qualities. Once you've calmed them down, once you've validated their self-opinion, you now have room

to perhaps change some of their behavior. But you will not have any chance in hell of altering some of their obnoxious behavior if you have somehow violated or challenged the self-opinion that they have. How do you wait, how do we do that? Like, I mean, that sounds great. But how does one calm somebody down or especially when we're dealing with someone who, at least in our opinion, is we know for a fact is they're not acting rational or intelligent or they're flat out wrong? I mean, how do you, how do you work with somebody like that in order to persuade them when they're, when we confirm that their self opinion is just wrong? Well, you know, you have to realize that you're just like everybody else and you want to feel validated as being someone who's a worthy individual.

Well, you want to feel that way. So, so do the people around you. So it's all how you frame it, your initial response. If you want to say to someone that they have bad patterns of behavior and that you want to change them, you don't begin on that. note you begin by saying you know I know you've had a really hard time in life you you know and you had really things have really been against you and you lay out that case and you say it must you know you've done an incredible job just hanging together and coping with all of these issues and then you know once the conversation goes that way and

they relax and they feel validated then you can insinuate and be and suddenly begin to lay the groundwork for saying you know but maybe in that one instance, you know, if you had done this instead of that, but even then you have to be kind of in gentle and how you frame it. But, you know, it's how you approach them initially. You see, the thing is you're absorbed in yourself. You're thinking of what you want and you're so anxious to tell people what they need to do, what they need to do to change, how you know what is right for them, that you're not thinking about them and their actual needs. you're being selfish. Right.

But if you get inside their mentality, their framework, how they look at themselves, then, you know, then their defenses are down, their resistance is down, and they're more likely to listen to you. So I can't go through the entire script of how you would go through that. Yeah. Depends on the individual. But the initial approach must always be, particularly with people who are insecure, is to validate them and make them feel comfortable. and frame it as if you understand their circumstances. You know, everybody has a hard time in life.

Nobody has it easy, particularly in the world today, right? And so, but part of the problem, what makes us people so defensive is that nobody really takes the effort to understand the problems of that individual, what they're going through. If you make that effort in your initial contact and you make it clear and you connect empathetically, I don't mean this to be false, you connect to them empathetically. You understand why they're probably engaged in these bad patterns of behavior. And you show that you understand the roots of it. Believe me, you will make a connection that will be very deep within them. You will resonate and you will have room perhaps the next day or even later in the conversation

to begin to suggest some changes. And I think it's important, too, and to separate the actual person and their character from their potential actions. I've actually heard Joe Rogan do this very well on his podcast. He'll have people on that he doesn't agree with. And he'll say something like, man, I love you. Or even a UFC fighter who he thinks you're going to get pounded by somebody else.

And I don't necessarily watch all of that. But he'd say, I love you as a brother. You're the best. but that other guy is more skilled than you and he's going to beat you into the ground. And I've seen him and that's that's that's not exactly what we're talking about here. But you get my point. I think it's sometimes you have to separate the behavior or the choices from the person's inner character so that you're not.

So if you if they feel like their inner character is attacked, you have pretty much no shot of getting anywhere. However, if you let them know your feelings about them and their character and then and then potentially are critical of the action, of a specific poor choice, the chances of you guys connecting and potentially moving forward and you even helping them go dramatically up. Yeah, they have a name for this. I think it's called the attribution bias.

What it means is that if I make a mistake in life, something bad happens, my first instinct is to say, oh, my God, that wasn't my fault. It was circumstances. I couldn't help it. you know, just things mounted up and I reacted this way. It wasn't my fault. It's not who I am. But when other people do something stupid or bad or foolish, we attribute it to their character, that they're a bad person, that they did something wrong because there's something wrong with them. And we're not, we're less likely to look at our own mistakes and attribute it to our bad character. And we're

less likely to understand the circumstances that might have made another person create a mistake, make a mistake. So you want to reverse that. You want to be able to look at people just as you look at yourself and say maybe their behavior, not always, but sometimes, is a product of circumstances and they couldn't really help it. You know, so you can always frame it that way. Yeah. Again, a lot of this is coming back to empathy. And that's a big, big word here for leaders who are going to sustain excellence. Okay. allay their insecurities? Well, it's kind of simple.

I mean, everybody has insecurities. You know, I, let's say, for me, I won't be writing because I've had success in writing. But it might be in my swimming or my basketball skills, which are not nearly as refined or they're actually quite poor compared to anything else. So if you want to flatter me, if you want to compliment me, you want me, make me feel good. Don't say, Robert, you're an excellent writer, although that's always nice to hear. I don't deny that. But you say, you know, you're actually pretty damn good at basketball.

You have a really good jump shot. You could have been a good player. Wait, wait, wait, isn't that lying? Well, I mean, I don't know. I've never seen you play basketball. I'm not speaking of me and you playing basketball. I'm speaking, you just said you're not a good basketball player. But I would, if I tell you that you are and you're not, or I don't truly.

think that, I don't know, I don't, maybe I need you to expand because I, right, at a surface level, I don't feel like I agree. So let's, maybe you need to expand. Well, there is a fine line between deception and persuasion, you know, so what people are insecure about in their life is generally something they're not so good at or that they feel worried about. And you're not, you don't have to think of it as lying, but you have to think of it as making them feel not so bad about exactly what they're insecure about. So maybe, okay, maybe you don't have to say, Robert, you really could have been on the Lakers if you had just pursued that career. But you could say, you know, you're not as bad a basketball player as you think. You actually have some skills there.

And I do have some skills. I used to be pretty good at playing defense. I know that's not considered, that's not very thought of highly. but there's always some element that you could find some good in. But just be aware that if people are insecure about something, you have to realize that. And so we're all into flattery. You know, I mean, I know we deny it.

We think we're lying. We think we're manipulation. But you can't go through a day without flattering someone and saying, boy, you look good today. Boy, you know, that was a great screenplay. You don't really mean it, but if you didn't do that, you know, social life would ground to a halt. We're always telling things, flattering people when we, you know, we're not exactly 100% feeling the emotion that we're saying. So all I'm trying to do is to make you aware of the fact that if you are going to flatter people, if you are going to compliment them, if you are going to make them feel better about themselves as a means for lowering their resistance, look at what they are most insecure about, not about what they're,

secure about. So, you know, if they're a great politician and they're pretty Machiavellian and that's how they got ahead in life, you don't want to compliment them for how devious and cunning they are. And one of their hobbies is painting or they've written a couple books. That's where you want to aim your flattery at. Now, you may not like that. You might find that manipulative and deceptive. That's fine. Don't do it. But I'm just saying flattery is a tool that is in your, that you have in your arsenal for influencing people. But it has to be strategic, not just laying it on thick or flattering them about what everybody else flatters. I got you. This is one where I'm not 100% on board.

Here's, let me bring a different example into play. I think this is good. This is healthy when this happens. So for example, my wife, are you married by chance? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So she probably asked you at times if the alpha.

it looks good. Does that happen for you? Right? How does this look? How does this look? The one thing that I have kind of a rule with my wife, Miranda, when this happens, is that I always tell her the truth. And there are times where I will take a short-term hit, short-term pain for being brutally honest. And I should take the word brutal out, just for being honest. Because I've seen the look on her face when I, when things are, when it's, when she looks great, right? So it's never that she looks bad. It's perhaps the outfit isn't as flattering as a different outfit. But I'll be very honest with her. And now I think it's made our relationship better, even though there are short term hits where she may not love my response, but she will always know that I'll be honest with

her and I'll tell her the truth. And so I'm willing to take some pain every once in a while of her being not satisfied or upset because I love the high of the other side that she knows when it when it when it when it when it when she looks good you know what I'm saying yeah but Ryan um maybe her insecurity isn't about the outfits that she wears but it's about her body and and you know her relative thinness or whatever it might the issue might be so you're not we're not talking about the same thing so that's not really an insecurity of her but if you said something where you said, I forgot her name, but Miranda. Miranda, you said, you know, it looks like you're putting on some way today. Okay, you're being honest, but you're not going to get that same response about the outfit, okay?

I don't do that. Because that is the real insecurity here. So we weren't, you know, we're kind of talking in a different angles. I got you. Okay. Okay. Because that is her real insecurity. And I know, you know, my wife and I know other women.

And that is not a bit of honesty that tends to work very well. I got you. Well, do you say it always looks good then? The outfit always looks good? No, no. I'm like you. She values. Okay.

So you'll tell her the truth. Like, no, you look better in something else. Of course. Gotcha. But I will not cross that line when it comes to the other body issue. I got you. I'll have hell to pay for days later. You know, it won't go away.

Yeah. Well, that's human nature. Okay. All right. Use people. resistance and stubbornness. Well, this is, you know, we're now getting into more kind of advanced

forms of persuasion, but people are resistant and stubborn, particularly certain types of people. You know, like, let's take a teenage boy, 15 years old, whatever you tell him, he will do the opposite of, right? Because that's his psychology. I know I was like that at one point. Whatever my parents told me,

I would tend at a certain age I would want and say, oh, that's ridiculous. I'm going to do the exact opposite. So with people like that, you have to be aware of this nature of theirs, and you have to actually go with their resistance and work with it and not try and violate it and almost sort of trick them. It's called reverse psychology. I talk in the book about an example about a teenage boy who'd been caught dealing drugs in school, and the principal threw him out and said,

for the next six months, you're going to have to study at home. I don't want you around school because you're a menace, you're dealing drugs, but you have to continue your studies and you have to do it at home. And the mother was really worried about this, and she was going to really push her son to study hard and get back into school. But she saw a therapist first, And the therapist versed in the ideas of reverse psychology said,

no, don't do any of that. You must play into his worldview, how he looks at things. And really what you need to tell him is this principle who you hate and who clearly doesn't like you, is actually trying to punish you and is trying to make you fail. He is certain that in those six months you will not study at home because you're such a bad person. and he's going to glowed at your failure and you son must prove this principle wrong you prove him wrong and you will have a great victory over him

and you prove him wrong by studying really really hard and showing how wrong he was about you and it worked and this might seem like a simple example and you might think well I don't know but actually you know working understanding people's resistances and working within that frame

is much more powerful than pushing again She had said, God damn, you better study hard now that you messed up. He would have just rebelled. He wanted to rebel. But she channeled his rebellious energy into rebelling against the principle and studying hard into something productive. You know, I have other examples in there of this man who he's a Zen master. And one of his pupil says, my father hates anything having to do with chanting or Buddhism. him, how can I help him?

And the master said, well, what does this man? What does he really value? And the son said he really values money. So he said, all right, every time you say, every time you do a chant in the morning, a Buddhist chant, I, the master, will pay him, you know, a certain sum of money. And naturally, the father got very excited about that. So he started chanting. And after several weeks of doing that, he realized how amazing.

and wonderful it felt for him to pray and chant and do these things. They didn't care anymore about the money. He stopped asking about it. So he tricked him using his resistance and what he hated most to kind of get him to do the right behavior that he wanted. But you work with people's defenses and stubbornness and you find a way to turn that into productive behavior. I know it's a bit subtle, but I have examples.

And if you get to that level, you are what I would call a master person. later. All right, that's where we're going to cut it off for part one. Again, as I mentioned, this went into so much depth. We wanted to break it up into two parts. In part two, we're going to cover how to master our emotional self, how to resist the law of conformity and differentiate ourselves from the crowd. And then what we can learn from Queen Elizabeth to make us a better leader and create

a desire for others to follow us, it's going to be good. Thanks again for being here. I really appreciate the fact that you invest your time with me listening and learning to the Learning Leaders Show. I love it if you would write a review, subscribe, and rate the show wherever you listen. That's write a review, subscribe, and rate the show. Five stars of its iTunes, Apple Podcasts. It really helps spread the message and continues to give me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. Thank you so much.

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