Design patterns for communication and influence (part 2)

The four patterns to build trust from the beginning

I usually use one of the four patterns to initiate trust building. They are ideal for people I already know and open to what I say, but don’t have strong connections with me yet. The goal is to naturally deepen the relationship. It usually takes a long time to build deep trust, so those patterns are not appropriate for fast, one time influence. Of course, powerful and meaningful relationships are worthy rewards by themselves.

Reciprocity

I use the repository pattern most often. The idea is dead simple: keep helping others and they will begin trusting us. Humans have a strong, older than civilization psychological drive to reciprocate. That’s why most people will feel uncomfortable by an outrageously expensive gift. Accepting it means being obligated to return a favor in equal. When they are not sure what to return, they are intimidated by the blank check. The theoretical base is described in depth at Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.

Notice that this is usually a process consisting of several iterations. The other party may return some favors during the process. This is part of the mechanism. By returning the favor, the counterpart did something for us, this effort will subconsciously strengthen her closeness and trust with us. The favor giving cycle can be initiated from asking a favor too, as I described in the next section.

Don Corleone built his mafia empire on top of a network of friends taking care of each other. The great Don never sees his effort helping friends as an expense, but as an investment on the most valuable asset. This is a fundamental perspective shared by all great leaders. One legendary general in ancient China, Wu Qi, once sucked with his mouth on his soider’s wounded leg to help the healing. The soldier’s mother was saddened because his son will return the general’s kindness by ultimate loyalty and likely die for him in the next battle.

How to counter manipulation by reciprocity? It’s very hard due to human nature. One needs a strong mind and to stay disciplined. Either reject an inappropriate gift when possible or negotiate accordingly when the other side begins to manipulate.

A bonus tip. There’s one variant of the reciprocity pattern which is used in negotiation and manipulation rather than building trust. It’s especially useful when the counterpart has no idea what the standard price is. This is how it works. First anchor with a proposed deal that’s way better than your goal, then slowly backoff. The counterpart will see your concessions as a gift and respond by accepting some deal slightly more favorable to them but still beyond your goal. Many merchants, like Jewelry dealers, mattress dealers, car dealers use this tactic very aggressively. Watch out next time buying a mattress and know the right price should be around ⅓ of the original asking price.

Asking for a (small) favor

This is the twin pattern of reciprocity. Sometimes, it’s more natural to start by asking for a favor. Human beings are born to be gratified from helping others.The small favor will trigger a subtle sense of helper which becomes a psychological drive to continue providing more favors.

For example, one common trick for salesmen is to knock on the door and ask for a glass of water. Once admitted, they will have around 5 minutes to admire the beautiful home, the kindness of the host and how cute their dog is. The host who had helped with a cup of water will self define herself as an enabling and generous person everyone wants to be. She will then be much more likely to buy whatever is being sold as a process of being the consistent helper.

Many years ago, I needed my design to be approved by a technical authority. I heard he was really tough and had stalled the review for months in a similar situation. I began with a request to learn from his recent work that’s relevant to mine. He very patiently explained to me at a detailed level. In the process, I admired how graceful his solution was and how challenging his work had been. After thanking him for his time and patience, I invited him to help improve my design that will be leveraging his work. He happily consented and made some small suggestions and personally blessed it. His signing off on my design is a greenlight in this area. My approval ended up taking less than half time than others. I believe this is because he subconsciously played a different role when reviewing my project:

Authority > Mentor for a junior engineer > Co-author of my design

In other cases, he was just the authority who needed to keep a high bar.

Asking for feedback

Feedback is a specific favor to ask. Genuine feedback is of high value by itself. On top of that, the action of humbly asking for feedback is a gesture of strong respect. The other parties will feel their opinions are valued and begin opening up. Remember to respond to feedback with ‘thank you’, even if you think the feedback is off. I would work hard to understand what I can learn from the feedback with an open mind, work hard to improve on it and come back to the person about my efforts and ask for re-evaluation. It will build a strong relationship.

This process of asking for feedback naturally introduced an opportunity of attentive listening. The other party will be sharing her opinion about us. This will make listening much easier than other topics.

Apology

Apology is the right approach to amend a broken relationship and build a deep trust on top of it. It means admitting significant wrongdoings in the past rather than trivial affairs like forgetting about an appointment. The reason to apologize including serious damage caused by our incompetence, wrong ideology or bad tempers.

It is the hardest pattern for me. It takes a big heart and psychological security to even recognize the opportunities to apologize properly. I constantly struggle with strong humiliation associated with prospective apology and the impact on my ego. There are occasions when I intended to formally apologize to the other party, but found me an alternative route or just saying how bad I was, without explicitly saying sorry and asking for forgiveness. Not apologizing enough is a flaw in my behavior.

Regretfully, I haven’t examples from my past experience that show the power of this pattern. I will revise this section with successful usages in the future.

Appreciation

Have you ever envied the money printing power of the government? It turns out everyone has the power to freely print one type of influence currency: appreciation. Some psychologists believe appreciation is a gift. It takes great empathy and humility to find other’s accomplishment, sacrifice, being responsible, warmhearted and considerate.

Appreciation has two types:

• Thank someone for their helpful behaviors
• Recognize someone’s good intention

The mechanism is that genuine appreciation will make the receiver see you as people who understand. Such perception will open him or her up to consider building a trust with you. I was able to recognize most opportunities to appreciate and never hesitate to pull off. Most of those appreciation won’t be a game changer alone, but they noticeably make later interactions easier.

Appreciation in advance

Appreciation in advance is a special variant I first learned from How to win friends and influence people. The idea is to appreciate someone before she showed some positive traits. In one of my intern jobs over ten years ago, my mentor sent a text to me: ‘Thanks for proactively reaching out to others and driving your project. I like your methodology!’ I actually didn’t feel I was proactive enough, but had great desire to uphold the perception by doing so.