Vanessa Bohns on Using Your Influence

Vanessa Bohns is a social psychologist, Professor of Organizational Behavior at Cornell University, and author of the book You Have More Influence Than You Think. She is an expert on help-seeking, social influence, compliance, consent, and why it’s so hard to say no. Vanessa had a number of amazing insights during our conversation. Some of them include: “Influence is any kind of change in another person’s way of thinking, their emotions, their way of seeing things” (6:40). “You don’t have to be a leader in a leadership position to have influence” (7:00). “Even as a follower, you have a lot of influence” (7:10). “My idea of influence is broader than just leadership” (7:30). “Influence is also these more intimate moments between just you and one other person” (9:20). “Influence comes with responsibility” (11:40). “We’re not very good at telling when someone’s authentic or not, and if we’re hearing what we want to hear we’ll just kind of go with it” (16:30). “When we think about how someone else is going to react to something we say… we really focus on how competently we can express ourselves… to the point where we hold back and wind up saying nothing because we can’t find the right words” (19:05). “People respond much more to the emotion and the act of just saying something than they do to the precise words” (19:55). “Our fears of these negative reactions are so often overblown (22:55). “A lot of influence does happen emotionally and unconsciously” (25:50). “If we a trust a source, it doesn’t really matter what they’re saying on many occasions, we just kind of trust [what they’re saying] because we trust that person” (25:55). “Behavioral contagion is the idea that when we see somebody else doing something, we’re more likely to do it ourselves” (27:20). “Whether it’s a ‘no’ or a ‘yes,’ be mindful about what you agree to” (38:05). “Each time I say yes to one thing, I am saying no to something else” (38:45). “We often think that interactions are going much worse in our head, that we’re having much less of an impact than we’d like, than we actually are” (42:30). “A simple ask is the simplest form of influence. And it’s insanely powerful” (44:10). “It’s so hard to say no” (44:20). “We often hammer things that we are trying to get someone to do so much more than we need to” (47:30). “You don’t need to be so assertive when you’re trying to influence people. You can say something and trust that that message is in there and it will percolate for a while” (48:20). “We tend to underestimate the power of expressing gratitude, both for ourselves and for the other person” (56:00). Additionally, you can check out Vanessa’s website here and follow her on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. I’d also encourage you to check out Vanessa’s book, You Have More Influence Than You Think: How we underestimate our power of persuasion, and why it matters. Thank you so much to Vanessa for coming on the podcast! I wrote a book called “Shift Your Mind” that was released in October of 2020, and you can order it on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Additionally, I have launched a company called Strong Skills, and I encourage you to check out our new website https://www.strongskills.co/. If you liked this episode and/or any others, please follow me on Twitter: @brianlevenson or Instagram: @Intentional_Performers. Thanks for listening.