The power to positively influence our colleagues’ behaviour is one of the signs of a great leader, yet it’s not always easy to do. This is particularly true for the manager of a virtual team, who doesn’t always get to see their team on a daily basis.
Which is why it’s even more important than usual for virtual managers to brush up on their influencing skills.
How to get people to say yes
There’s a complex set of motivators that influence people to say yes- even when they think they don’t want to. Professor Robert Cialdini wrote a bestseller called the Psychology of Influence and Persuasion, in which he outlined 6 key influencing factors that are at play when people make decisions.
These are: reciprocity, commitment & consistency, liking, social proof, authority and scarcity.
These six powerful human drivers can be harnessed by the savvy leader who wishes to influence their team’s behaviour and productivity levels.
This is a big topic, so we’re going to break it down into two blogs for you. This week we’re dealing with the first three influencing strategies: Reciprocity, commitment, and liking.
Reciprocity
This is a fancy word, but it’s a simple concept that we probably use quite frequently without even realising it. It’s the idea that when someone does something for us or gives us something, we feel indebted to do something for them in return.
This concept has been so thoroughly proved as a powerful motivator in human behaviour that many big businesses use it to influence our buying patterns all the time. An example: Every time you’re given a sample of something in a store or accepted a free workout at a gym, that’s based on extensive research proving that you will be much more likely to feel ‘guilted-into’ buying something from them, to return what you consider was some kind of favour or indebtedness.
How can this work in your virtual team?
If you do someone in the team a favour-whether that’s giving them an early finish on a Friday, giving them an extension on a difficult deadline…or even sending them a cupcake on their birthday-you’re creating an instinctive feeling of reciprocity that makes them statistically much more likely to say yes the next time you ask something of them.
Commitment and Consistency
These interlinked motivators depend on the idea that humans like to look consistent. If we make a public commitment to something- whether that’s agreeing to fundraise for a charity or supporting a local event- our desire to appear consistent will drive us to contribute towards that thing- even if we’ve completely lost interest in helping out.
In practice, this might be someone thinking ‘I’ve publicly shown that I’m supportive of this cause in the past, so now I have to put my money where my mouth is even though I don’t want to.’ I’ve said I’ll do the marathon for the local kid’s football team, so I have to’ or ‘I agreed ages ago to help with the office party, so now I guess I just have to.’
How can this work in your virtual team?
Get verbal agreements for things you’ll need help for in the future. ‘Will you help me if this doesn’t go smoothly and we need to do it again in a hurry?’ ‘Will you help with the get-together party in November?’ In order for this to work, you need to get a ‘yes’ answer rather than a non-committal answer such as ‘Probably, as long as there’s not too much on.’
That won’t work as they’ve already given themselves an ‘out’, and therefore the desire to act consistently on their commitments won’t kick in. Professor Cialdini recommends pausing after requests to increase your chance of getting a solid affirmative answer.
Liking
As much as we might protest that we don’t do this at work, the simple truth is that humans will always do more for those they genuinely like than for those they don’t like, don’t know, or feel indifferent towards. Studies have even shown that we can be quickly led towards liking others based on shallow things like attractiveness, flattery and similarities with ourselves.
If your team like you they’ll be much more driven to say yes to your requests, even if they’re not keen on the task itself. But what if your team members don’t like you, or, (more likely in virtual teams), don’t know you very well?
How can this work in your virtual team?
You need to build good relationships with your team in order to influence them to say yes because they like you. In the past we’ve discussed many ways to create bonds with your virtual team, from a light-hearted chat to kick off meetings to creating an online chat/meeting group for everyone to get to know each other. You can easily do this on LinkedIn or Facebook.
Keep in mind that people are won over by attractiveness, similarities and flattery- so dress well for video calls, seek out similarities between you and your team members, and compliments about their great work never goes astray to get your relationship started!
Look out for part 2 where we cover the final three influencing motivators: Social Proof, Authority and Scarcity, and again outline how you could use these tactics in the team to great effect.
Until next time,
Julia
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