All right, SIAS archive, thank you.
Our second session today has to do with delegation, negotiation and influence.
These are very problematic issues for two reasons.
First of all, we tend to misrepresent and misinterpret these skills internally. The internal representation of these skills is frequently negative.
For example, when we want to delegate something to someone, we ask ourselves, is it a problem with me? Is it because I cannot cope with the work? Is it because I'm overwhelmed?
You also ask, the person I'm delegating to, is he adequate? Is he skilled? Is she up to it?
So there's a lot of negativity involved in delegation.
When we come to negotiations, there's always the feeling of losing something. Compromise is often perceived as defeat. I'm going to be defeated. My interests are going to be jeopardized.
So compromise is often linked associatively in the brain, in the mind. Compromise, I mean negotiations and compromise are linked to defeat.
Delegation is linked to inadequacy.
And when we discuss influence, there's a question of manipulativeness.
When I influence someone, am I manipulating them? Is influence a form of manipulation?
Indeed, in psychology, there's a concept of Machiavellianism. Machiavellianism is the tendency to influence people all the time in ways which are self-beneficial, self-interested manipulation.
So, these words are not neutral words. They are not objective words. They are words with a lot of emotional baggage.
And they require contradictory skills.
Because when you delegate to someone, then you give up your influence.
When you influence someone, then you give up your influence.
When you influence someone, you prevent a state of negotiation. There's no compromise here.
It's you. You're in charge by influencing someone. Your interests, your worldview, they take over.
So there's no negotiation here.
When you negotiate, you need to know how to compromise. You need to minimize your influence to some extent.
So these three situations are contradictory and they tend to provoke a lot of negative effects, negative emotions, negative visceral, instinctual reactions.
And therefore, we will have to tackle them very, very carefully, because it's like a minefield.
Delegation requires trust.
If you have a trust deficit, if your view is that other people are not trustworthy, other people dissimulate, other people are dishonest. Other people are inadequate. They're all fake. If you have a view of other people that is essentially hostile or defensive or aggressive, you are not likely to delegate, because delegation requires trust.
But trust is the precondition for delegation.
There is another condition.
You need to be able to analyze costs, in other words, risks, and rewards, in other words, benefits.
You need to ask yourself, if I delegate this task, if I delegate this job, if I delegate this assignment to someone, what are the costs, what are the risks, for example, risk of failure, risk of betrayal?
So what are the risks and the costs and what are the benefits and rewards?
Delegation saves time. When you delegate, you save time. You have free time to do other things, which maybe are more beneficial to you or to the organization you work in or to the business you are employed by, etc.
Delegation builds skills by delegating to others. You help them to build skills. You help them to become more experience. And so you create a group of people who are able to help you more in the future. So there's skill building.
Delegation helps you to prepare successors.
For example, if you're in a business or if you're in an institution and you're moving up the corporate ladder, you're moving up. You would like to have someone who can take over your job, your old job. You have a new job, but someone has to take over your old job. You would like to have a successor.
Delegation is excellent in succession building.
So it saves time, it builds skills, it allows you to appoint successes and train them and give them experience, it reduces the workload and it reduces stress. These are the benefits of delegation.
The risks, as I mentioned, failure in case you've delegated to the wrong person who is really incapable, who is really inadequate. There will be failure and it will be your fault.
Delegation does not exempt you from responsibility and accountability. The buck stops with you, with the delegator.
So you need to be sure who you're delegating to. We'll come to it in a minute.
And there's a possibility of betrayal. Simply betrayal. That the person you delegate to will go behind your back, conspire with others against you.
So these are risks and benefits.
We should distinguish between effective, efficacious and efficient.
These words are used interchangeably, and it's wrong to use them interchangeably because they're not the same.
Effective means that you obtain results as you predicted, as you have foreseen. You define goals, you define aims, and you obtain outcomes that correspond to these goals and aims.
When we say effective, it's not the same as efficient, because you may be very inefficient, but very effective.
What is efficient?
Efficient is being effective with minimal resources, optimizing the use of scarce resources in the process of accomplishing goals.
So, efficient is one level up.
And efficacious is someone who is able to realize, actualize, favorable outcomes, guarantee favorable consequences by acting in a way which is both effective and efficient.
Now, when you delegate, you need to make sure that you are both effective and efficient.
And you need to ask yourself the following questions.
This task, this assignment that I want to delegate, can someone else do it? Or do I have to do it myself?
Now here's a problem, because you need to be very careful. To not be arrogant, to not be grandiose. You need to answer honestly. The answer needs to be honest.
Are you the only one who can do it or can other people do it equally well?
And this requires a lot of modesty, a lot of reality testing. You need to be highly grounded, highly realistic. It needs to be, you need to have a lot of self-awareness. You need to be self-aware, aware of your limitations, for example.
So in answering these questions, you need to go to the point of essentially denigrating yourself, saying, I'm one of many. I'm interchangeable. I'm interchangeable. I can do it. Someone else can do it. I'm not special. I'm not unique.
It takes a lot of courage, a lot of personal integrity and a lot, a lot, a lot of courage, a lot of personal integrity, and a lot, a lot, a lot of sincerity and honesty to answer this question.
But if you overcome this obstacle and you decide that someone else can do the assignment of the task as well as you. That's the first hurdle.
The second one.
This skill, the set of skills, the knowledge, institutional knowledge or personal knowledge, are they available in your environment, in your organization, in your institution, in your relationship?
These skills that are needed to accomplish the goal, are they out there?
If they are not out there, then you need to train people. If they are out there, you can proceed smoothly into delegation. You can proceed smoothly to delegate.
Training takes time.
So one of the questions is, if people are not skilled, if people are not trained, if people are not experienced, and I need to train them in order to delegate, do I have time, do I have enough time to do that? Do I have enough time to do that?
If you don't have enough time to train other people to take your place, then you cannot delegate.
Delegation is an opportunity to develop the skills of other people, to give them experience, and to prepare them for a career, a future in a career, for a career path.
And in this sense, delegation is a positive thing.
But your attitude to delegation is very critical.
Are you delegating because you want to offloaddrudgery, offloadunpleasant, road, repetitive tasks? Is this the reason you're delegating? You want to make your life more entertaining, more diverse, more pluralistic, more fun? Are you delegating because you want to remove from your life everything that is onerous, everything that is repetitive, everything that is boring, is this the main motivation?
Then it's a wrong motivation. It's a wrong motivation. It's a wrong motivation.
Because when you delegate, you need to think not only about yourself.
You need to think about the person you're delegating to.
You're a team.
When you delegate, it's not like you have offloaded something. It's not like from that moment on, it's none of your business, you're not involved, you're out of here. That's the wrong approach to delegation.
When you delegate, you are creating a team. It's teamwork. You're creating a team of yourself and the person you've delegated to. And you can't delegate only the routine, only drudgery, only boring things to the other guy or to the other girl. You can't do that.
You need to work together. You need to work together.
So it is wrong to delegate only recurring automatic tasks. And it's wrong to delegate complex tasks equally.
These two extremes of the professional life should not be delegated. The day-to-day repetitive routine tasks, they are better resolved with automation, with computing, and the super complex tasks that require a lot of training, a lot of knowledge, a lot of information, and a lot of experience, this you should not delegate.
The delegation has to do with a one-time task or assignment that require some skill and allows the delegate, allows the person who is delegated to, delegate, whatever the word is, allows the recipient of the delegation to develop skills and acquire experience. That's the aim of delegation.
There's a balance of resources that you need to consider. A balance of resources required for teaching and training and supervision versus dedicating your time to the task or assignment on your own.
You need to weigh these alternatives in your mind.
Resources are scarce. All resources are scarce. Time is scarce.
You won't live forever. For example, everything is scarce, money, time.
Now, most tasks and assignments, they have deadlines, they have time constraints.
As I mentioned, there is resource scarcity, space, secretarian resources, bandwidth, I mean, there's always scarcity.
But the number one scarcity is time. And time scarcity is expressed in deadlines.
There's always a deadline. Every task and every assignment contain an explicit or implicit deadline.
You cannot drag an assignment or a task forever. At some point, it has to end.
And so time constraints and deadlines are also crucial questions when you come to delegate.
Can you meet the deadline if you delegate? Can you comply with the time constraint?
Sometimes delegation is such a convoluted experience, requires so much training and teaching and supervision and so on, that it's better to do it yourself.
Sometimes delegation destroys timetables. Sometimes delegation subverts deadlines. Sometimes delegations is less efficient and less effective than doing things yourself.
And you need to ask these questions.
No matter how tempting it is, to let someone else do the job, you need to ask what would be the outcomes of delegating. Maybe I will make things worse, not better.
How easy it is to delegate. What's the potential for abuse, exploitation, malfeasance? How about monitoring and supervising?
You can't just delegate and walk away to the beach, on a summer vacation. You need to supervise and monitor the delegate, the person who is who you delegated to.
And this raises another question.
If you need to supervise and monitor the delegatee, the person you delegated to, why delegate?
Sometimes supervision and monitoring of an underling or a subordinate or an employee is more time consuming and less efficient than doing things yourself.
You know the famous saying? If you want to do something well, you have to do it yourself.
So the question of monitoring and supervision. How independent is the person? How much initiative does he or she have? How likely is he or she to react appropriately in crisis situations, to improvise?
The psychology of the delegate, the psychology of the person you're delegating to is very crucial here.
You would not want to delegate to someone who is pusillanimous, someone who is craven, who is a coward, someone is afraid of his own shadow, someone who would never take initiatives, someone who would avoid an avoidance person, someone who is passive aggressive, and definitely you would not want to delegate to someone who is traitorous, abusive and manipulative.
So the psychology of the delegatees is very crucial because ultimately don't forget the responsibility, the accountability, the blame, the guilt, if something goes wrong, lies at your door.
You are responsible. The buck stops with you.
You can delegate till doomsday come. You can delegate to your heart's content. It will not absolve you. When there's failure, when there's defeat, when there's a catastrophic mistake, you will pay the price.
The delegatee or delegati, I'm not quite sure, is your extension. It's you. It's a long arm. It's your long arm.
So because ultimately you're going to pay the price, and you're going to take the credit as well, because ultimately it's your doorstep, you need to be very sure who you are delegating to.
And so as I mentioned, you need to take into account time needed for training, deadlines, and so on so forth, but you need to establish quality control procedures.
You need to establish quality control procedures and the person you choose needs to have a modicum of experience in the field, never choose someone who is a total novice, someone who has never been in the field, never done anything of the sort.
Never give someone his first assignment ever. Do not work with newbies. Price is too high.
Work with someone with a modicum of experience, knowledge, skills. Choose someone who is a team worker, not arrogant, not haughty, not grandiose, not traitorous, not manipulative, a team worker. Someone who is motivated, but not motivated simply to be promoted, not motivated by money, not motivated by appearances, not motivated by reputation, someone who is motivated because they want to do the job well.
Not a narcissist. Don't choose a narcissist. Choose someone who is committed to the job and invested in the assignment and the task because they find the assignment and the task uplifting, elevating. They believe that completing the assignment and tasks will render them more whole, more knowledgeable, more skillful.
And, above all, choose someone who is available.
That sounds very stupid and very basic. Of course, the guy or the girl has to be available.
But it's important to make sure that the person you're delegating to has the time, resources, presence of mind, and absence of external problems such as family problems. In other words, that the person is totally available and could be dedicated to the task and the assignment.
The reason you're delegating is because you don't have time. The reason you're delegating is because your resources are too scarce. You're spread too thin. You can't accomplish everything by yourself.
So the person you're choosing needs to be at your disposal available to fulfill the task to interact with you 24-7.
If you find someone who has family problems, someone who is an alcoholic, someone who is a narcissist, it's doomed, it's bad, because this kind of person will never be available.
Availability doesn't mean submissiveness, but it means a tendency to collaborate, a will and wish and delight in working together on a task and an assignment until they are completed in a good way.
The process starts with goals. You have to define goals.
But goals are not enough because you have to define the quality of the end result.
The quality of the product or the quality of the process or the quality of the service.
You have to define the qualitative element.
The quantitative element is not enough.
The temporal element, the time element is not enough.
Objective neutral elements are not enough.
You need to define and focus on subjective elements.
For example, customer satisfaction. For example, reputation. For example, desirability of the results.
You need to articulate this. For example, expectations, expectations of stakeholders.
These are intangibles. These are not things you can measure. These are not things you can touch or you can put in your pocket, but they are much more important than everything else.
So when you define goals, define quality as well and demand quality.
The goal should be desired, not only there, but desired, hoped for, awaited breathlessly. Goals should be the Holy Grail of the process.
Now, you can imbue even the most mundane, boring, routine tasks. You can imbue them with beauty and charm by revealing the context.
If you're doing something boring and mundane, you have an assignment that is repetitive and recurrent, if you focus only on the task, only in the assignment, you will be bored. You will be bored and distracted because it's boring and repetitive and routine.
But if you see the bigger picture, if you understand that this assignment, this task has to do with clients and customers all over the world, has to do with services that can better the lives of people or change the lives of people. If you tackle the context, everything comes alive. Everything suddenly is charmed and enchanted.
And this creates motivation. Make the results desirable by working on the big picture, by embedding the delegation process in a big picture.
At the same time, you need to keep a rigid framework, because delegation could easily go out of control and become wild.
So in order to avoid chaos and anarchy, you need to establish and communicate boundaries. Sanctions if the boundaries are breached, authority, chains of authority, responsibility, accountability, accountability, monitoring process with interim objectives, which are measurable, and so on and so forth.
Everything needs to be structured. You need to agree on and so forth. Everything needs to be structured.
You need to agree on timetables. You need to agree on interim goals. You need to agree on deadlines. You need to agree on checkpoints and benchmarks. All these need to be built into the delegation process.
It is very recommended to delegate in writing. Don't just call someone into your office and say, listen, I'm too busy to do this, you do this. That's bad delegation and bound to fail.
Take the time to prepare a document and in the document, it doesn't have to be the Bible, could be a one-page document, half-page document, written, and in the document specify what is the task, what is the assignment, what is the context, what is the deadline, what is the quality expected, what is the authority, chain of authority, what are the benchmarks and the interim goals, what is the supervision process, and the monitoring, etc.
This is the first act of communication between you and the person you're delegating to.
And from that moment on, maintain an open channel of communication, a pipeline of communication between you and the delegatee, or delegatee, one of you will correct me later.
Maintain this chain channel of communication, maintain this pipeline.
Never cut off the person you've delegated to. Never make it difficult for that person to reach you, to talk to you, to seek input, to interact with you.
Always keep yourself utterly available and accessible to the person you've delegated to.
Why?
Because remember, if anything goes wrong, you will pay the price, not the delegate.
So, bear that in mind and keep the communication open with a person who is essentially your long arm, your extension.
Monitor for results.
The process is much less interesting.
Do not micromanage.
Once you have delegated, don't constantly interrogate the other party.
What did you do today? What did you do yesterday? What did you do at 12-653? What did you do at 144?
Stop that. Stop micromanaging. Don't micromanage. It defeats the very reason for delegating.
You have entrusted someone to accomplish goals and to come up with results.
So focus on the goals and the results.
How that person accomplishes these goals, how that person ascertains the results, is none of your business.
You tell the person you're delegating to, by tomorrow at 2 o'clock, I want to have this report on my desk.
Do you really care if that person prepared the report at night, in the morning, or while walking the dog?
It's none of your business. None of your business.
Stop controlling. Stop being anxious.
You get the report. If it's good, good. If it's not qualitative, let him do it again. If needs be, it should be punished.
But focus on results, focus on goals, focus on accomplishments, ignore processes.
Do not micromanage, do not over-control, do not be overprotective and do not be overbearing. These are not good things.
Review the work, provide feedback when asked, and express satisfaction or dissatisfaction results and goals, redirect if necessary, end of story.
You are not the delegate's father, you are not the delegate's wife, you are just workers, co-workers.
So this is delegation in a nutshell.
There are many pitfalls in delegation because it's a clash of personalities, clash of egos.
Sometimes you delegate and then you criticize the end result.
You delegate. The person you've delegated to comes up with the work, who fulfills the assignment, who feeds the task, and then you criticize them.
You could have done it better. If you could have done it better, why did you bother to delegate?
I mean, stop it. This is not an ego trip. This is not a clash of personnel.
It's not who is more clever and who is stronger and who is more accomplished and who is more experience.
It's the wrong way to go about it.
Just delegate.
Because delegation is the ultimate form of teamwork.
If you don't know to delegate, you're a bad manager. If you don't know to delegate, you are a bad partner in a relationship. If you don't know to delegate, you are a bad parent. If you don't know to delegate, you're a bad parent. If you do not to delegate, you should remain all alone in life.
Delegating is the first precondition for collaboration, working with others.
When you work with others, when you collaborate, when you have a partnership, there's a division of labor.
What is a division of labor? Delegation. Recognizing that other people may be a more qualified or when they're trained, they could do the job. I mean, it's delegation.
Delegation is the core of collaboration. If you're incapable of collaborating, stay at home, watch Netflix and have a cat or a dog.
Now, next, negotiations.
Again, the trap in negotiations, the risk in negotiations, is that it will become an ego trip.
I negotiate because I want to have the upper hand.
I negotiate because it's a form of come up and I negotiate because in order to show how clever I am, how amazingly smart, how I can outmaneuver the adversary or the other party, and how I can secure outcomes that are unbelievable.
And so it's an ego trip. It's a narcissistic ego trip. Negotiations.
If you enter negotiations with these things in mind, forget about it. The negotiation will fail.
Negotiation involves two or more parties and they are equal parties.
Negotiation implies equality.
There are points of difference between the parties and they need to be resolved, but as far as powers, they are equal. The parties are equal.
Now, either the interests of the parties could be reconciled, they are reconcilable, and then this is what is known as win-win situation, or the interests of the parties are irreconcilable, cannot be reconciled. And this is what is known as win-lose or zero-sum situations. It's also known as divorce in some situations.
So these are the two outcomes of negotiations. Either you discover that you can reach a modus operandi, some kind of compromise, or you discover that you cannot.
Now this is something that many people, including theoreticians, scholars, they missed the point.
Negotiation is not about, not about, necessarily reaching a compromise and an outcome.
The main role of negotiation is to find out whether you can reach a compromise, whether you can live together, coexist, whether your interests can somehow survive in the same environment.
Negotiation is espionage, is reconnaissance. Negotiation is about finding, discovering the other party, discovering the adversary and then deciding whether there's any middle ground, any common denominator, any possibility to coexist or not.
When the outcome of negotiation is a failure, it is as instructive and as useful as success.
When you fail in a negotiation, you have learned a lot about your adversary.
For example, you have learned that there's no way you can survive with the other party. No way and you need to take steps.
When you succeed, of course, there's compromise and both of you live and let live. That's a good outcome.
But failure is built into negotiation as a totally acceptable result.
Negotiation is a process of intelligence gathering. It's not about the outcome.
But again, there's a mistake. Even in literature, even in literature about negotiation, there's a mistake.
Because they teach you to analyze the costs and benefits of action.
If I take these actions, what would be the costs? And if I take these actions, what would be the rewards or the benefits?
That's true.
But at the same time, you need to analyze the costs and benefits of inaction.
If I don't do this, what are the costs? If I don't do this, if I refuse to act, what are the benefits? What are the rewards?
Action and inaction.
The compromise, therefore, the compromise embedded in the concept of negotiation, is a compromise between action and inaction, not between the parties.
You are negotiating not with the other party. You are negotiating with yourself. You are negotiating between an option to act and an option to not act.
And then you strike the right balance between action and inaction, while the other party is doing exactly the same.
Striking the right balance between action and inaction, and what emerges is a compromise which is hopefully long term.
And that is the real dynamic of negotiation.
Negotiation is a process like everything else, and the process includes stages like everything else.
So the first stage is preparation.
You gather intelligence on the rival, but you gather intelligence on yourself as well.
You get to know yourself better, self-awareness, self-consciousness, things you might have overlooked, things you've forgotten, things you've neglected, facts, counter-facts, arguments.
You learn about yourself as much as you learn about the adversary.
At stage number one, preparation.
Stage number two, you clarify your goals.
What do you want?
Why are you negotiating?
Can't you survive without negotiating? Can't you accomplish the very same goals without negotiating? Is negotiation necessary? Did negotiation become a goal on its own, which is very bad?
Negotiations should not be a goal. The goal is not to negotiate. Negotiation is a means, it's an instrument.
Ask yourself, honestly. Be honest with yourself.
What are my goals? Am I using negotiations as a smokescreen? Am I using negotiations just to give the impression that I'm doing something, to have an alibi or an excuse? Am I using negotiations to postpone an inevitable decision, which I find unpalatable and unacceptable?
What am I doing here? What is this all about?
Number three, presentation.
Should you be transparent about who you are, what you want, what are your goals, why you're negotiating? Should you be transparent? Or should you withhold information? Should you be evasive, not transparent, openly defiant, saying, I'm not releasing this information?
It's all a question of timing. It's a delicate choreography.
You need to know when to release information. You need to know when to release information and you need to know when to withhold information. And you need to know what information to release and you need to know which information to withhold. It's very delicate.
Information serves two purposes.
Signaling, you signal to the adversary or to the rival or to the counterparty. There's some form of signaling involved when you release specific selected types of information.
And the second reason is to enhance transparency and reduce paranoia and anxiety and so.
So, what should you aspire to?
Should you aspire to vanquish the other party? Should you aspire to take away everything the other party has? Should you aspire to prevail and win? Do you regard negotiations a competition? The winner takes all?
You know, the Native Americans used to be known as Indians. The Native Americans had the same.
When you besiege an enemy, when you circumlocute an enemy, when you surround an enemy, surround an enemy on three sides leave the foreside open, never surround the enemy completely, always leave a space or a place to escape.
That's not me, that's Native Americans in India. They knew a thing or two about fighting.
It's the same with negotiation.
Never ever vanquish the other party. Never humiliate the other party. Never take away everything the other party has. Never reduce the other party to penury or to defeat or to destruction, never ruin the other party.
That's not the aim of negotiation.
Never, in other words, engage in a win-lose strategy, a zero-sum strategy. Everything you win is everything the other party loses.
It's bad. That's bad. That's bad. That's a wrong strategy in negotiation.
Negotiation is not arms wrestling. Arm wrestling.
Negotiation is a win-win. It should be a win-win situation.
You should give the other party the motivation and the incentive to stick to the compromise that you've agreed on, to stick to the terms and conditions you've negotiated.
When the other party believes that they have won some and you have won some, the other party will stick to the agreement. They will not breach or violate the compromise.
But when the other party feels that they have been vanquished and humiliated and destroyed and ruined and you... It won't survive for long. The other party will rebel. The other party will destroy everything. It reminds me of the Versailles Agreement after the First World War, after the First World War, when Germany has surrendered. The Allies imposed on Germany terms and conditions, reparations and so, that was so horrible, so destructive, that the outcome was Adolf Hitler.
Simple.
The other party deserves respect, the other party deserves consideration, the other party deserves respect. The other party deserves consideration. The other party deserves compassion and empathy exactly like you. Let the other party win something. Win some and you win some. Fend off the tendency to destroy the other party. It's not a competition again. And don't let third parties, don't let other people interfere between you and your partner for negotiation. You're negotiating with someone. Don't listen to others. Don't let other people intervene or interfere. Spoil it for you. Spoil it for them. You're negotiating with someone negotiating, negotiate only with them. You're talking to someone, talk only with them. You're compromising with someone. Compromise only with them.
Other people have no role in this, no place in this. You should not listen to them. You should tell them to go away. Do not convert the negotiation process into a symposium. That's bad practice.
Agreements have three layers.
The first layer is the context. It's unwritten. It's unspoken. It's unmentioned. But it's there.
The agreement you've made with your adversary, what's the context? What is the history that preceded it? What is the future that you both foresee? What are the compromises you have made and are not reflected in the agreement? This is the context. And then there's an informal agreement. The chemistry between the personalities, the small talk, the human anecdotes, the agreements which are unspoken and unwritten, but as valid as the agreement is.
I mean, this is all the informal aspect of the agreement.
And finally, there's a formal aspect which is usually embedded in a text. So there's a text. The implementation of the agreement is very important because when you implement the agreement, you are sending a signal. A signal. How honest are you? How loyal are you? How faithful are you? How reliable are you? The implementation of the agreement is an indicator of your integrity, an indicator of the intentions that drove you to make the agreement. So it's a form of signaling. There are many types of signaling. You can signal that you are not vulnerable. This is known as invulnerability signaling. There's nothing you can do to me. I'm the strongest. I'm crazy. I'm, you know, I'm untouchable. That's invulnerability signaling. There's a virtue signaling. I'm the moral party. I'm the ethical party. I never do. I'm a virtue signaling. I'm the moral party, I'm the ethical party. I never do, I'm a good person or a good institution or a good company. I'm good. And the essence of goodness. It's another kind of signaling. Third kind of signaling, I'm open-minded. I'm open-minded. I'm agreeable, I'm nice, I'm pleasant, I'm good, you know, I'm open-minded, I'm open-minded, I'm agreeable, I'm nice, I'm pleasant, I'm a good, you know, I'm open to conversation, I'm open to learn, I'm open to change. All these signals are very crucial, and these signals take place in the negotiation phase, but they're much more relevant and much more prevalent in the implementation phase. Are you implementing the agreement from a position of strength? Ostentatious strength, in your face strength, defiant strength, my way or the high way, you do it this way or I will fight you? Is this the way to implement an agreement? Are you implementing the agreement by claiming that you are the good party and the other, your adversary, is evil, evil incarnate? I'm moral, I'm ethical, I'm good, and my foe, my rival, my adversary, the person I've signed the agreement with is evil, wicked, malicious, malevolent.
Is this a way to implement an agreement? Are you implementing an agreement by claiming that you are open, you're flexible, you're transigent, you're agreeable, you're this, you're that, up to a point that you become malleable and naive and gullible and vulnerable?
So the implementation is very crucial and the signaling within the implementation is very crucial.
Indeed, when you negotiate, signaling is crucial.
Every word you say in a negotiation, every phrase you use, every body language element, every facial expression and every micro expression are captured by the other party and interpreted.
What's the problem with that?
The problem with that is that the other party may misinterpret what you're doing. Misunderstand what you're saying.
Be careful with your signaling because it can induce conflict. It can create bad blood between you and the other party.
Your signaling, body language or verbal or pre-verbal or otherwise, your signaling is very, very private, very idiosyncratic, very unique to you. You can't expect the other party to understand it as well as you do.
I'll give you a few examples of sentences that people say in a negotiation and are very bad. Bad sentences, errors.
So they say, I can go between this and this, I can go between 10 and 60.
That's a bad sentence because it establishes your minimum and your maximum and your counterparty will push you to the maximum.
If you say I'm willing to go between 10 and 60, your counterparty now will insist on 60, will never accept 10. So you've limited yourself.
Another example.
I'm looking for, I want this, I'm soliciting.
When you're soliciting something, a reaction, for example, you're soliciting a reaction from the other party. You'll never know what you get.
There is a famous dictum, a famous maxim in law school when you study law. The professor would tell you, as a law student, never ask a question in court that you don't know the answer to.
If you ask a question that you don't know the answer to, you may be badly surprised by the answer, so don't ask it.
Similar in negotiation. Never solicit, never invite something if you don't know precisely what it is.
If you invite a bid, if you invite a reaction, you may be utterly shocked by the outcome.
So why do it?
Never say the word, this is my minimum position.
Because if you say this is my minimum position, it means it's not your maximum position. It invites pressure.
If you say this is my minimum position, that minimum position is dead in the water.
Because now your adversary knows that it can press you and push you to a much higher outcome.
Never say, don't worry, I'm the final decision maker.
Because if you say this, you give up a major tool, a major instrument in negotiations.
In negotiations very frequently, you need to say, I need to consult, I should consult with someone. I need to talk to my boss.
It buys you time. Time in negotiations is the most precious commodity. Most of the time spent in negotiations is spent on buying more time.
The parties try to obtain time, to secure time, to generate time.
If you say I'm the final decision maker, then you can't say later, I have to consult with someone, or I have to talk to my boss.
That's it. You gave up the option of buying more time.
Never say, I think we are pretty close. I think we are close to an agreement.
Because it's like poker. You're disclosing your cards. Never disclose your cards.
If you say, I think we are close to an agreement, means the other side now knows what is your position.
So these are examples of signaling that can go awry and is very bad and should never be done in a negotiation.
Now let's talk about influence.
People confuse influence with manipulation.
Say if you have influence over me, you have the power to manipulate me.
This is a very pessimistic view and cynical view of human nature, and I wouldn't say that it's entirely unjustified.
But one can influence another person for the better, not only for the worse. One can influence another person in a manner which is not self-interested, which is not manipulative.
Influence is any transfer of information that modifies behaviors, actions, opinions, choices and decisions.
The transfer of information embodies, the information embodies some kind of power, some kind of ability. And the information induces, fosters and gendersmodification, change, transformation.
So influence is transformative. It has two components.
It has language, but powerful language, potent language, language with potency, motivating language. Soancy, motivating language.
So it has motivating language and transformation. The result.
This is influence.
And we have all kinds of influence. Some of them are bad, some of them good.
There was a philosopher by the name of Louis Althusser. Louis Althusser was a neo-Marxist philosopher in France, in the 60s. He ended up in a mental asylum, like every good philosopher, like Nietzsche and others.
But before he went crazy, he came up with the idea of interpolation.
Interpolation is the kind of information that tells you to do something.
Example, advertising. Example, propaganda.
Propaganda is an influence campaign. Advertising is an influence campaign.
And today on social media, we have people who are known as influencers.
Why?
They tell you to do something. They tell you buy this product. Behave this way. Try this medicine.
Influencers. They interpolate you, to use Althusser's term.
But there's another example of information that modifies behavior, other people's behavior.
Anger.
When you're angry, you're communicating information. And you're communicating information to other people, and this information that you're angry changes their behaviors. Anger changes other people's behavior.
So we could say that anger is a form of influence.
And of course, as I said, there are negative forms of influence, positive forms of influence and so on.
Influence has to overcome resistance, has to overcome doubt.
These are not minor issues, not minor obstacles.
You overcome resistance in doubts in a variety of ways.
I will not go right now into the psychology or deep psychology of influencing people.
There are books, even my very own books by Napoleon Hill and Dale Carnegie, and so on about influence. Still very excellent, excellent reads and very relevant.
But the fact is that when you talk to someone in a manner which conveys an attempt to modify behavior, when you talk to someone in order to cause that someone to do something, there is immediately resistance.
These are the boundaries of the self. This is a firewall. We all have this. We all have boundaries, if we are healthy at least. We all have firewalls.
And someone tries to cross the boundary by telling us what to do or convincing us to behave differently when someone tries to influence us.
We fight back. We resist. we doubt, we question.
And influence has to overcome these impediments. And it has to result, influence has to result in compliance and collaboration.
Compliance with a message embedded in the influence campaign, compliance with the language element, do this, buy this, think that way, don't think that way, etc.
So this is a compliance element.
But good influence usually yields collaboration, some kind of collaboration. Collaboration with you as the influencer, collaboration with others. Collaboration in institutions, collaborations in teams, collaborations in politics, collaborations in a relationship.
But influence is not self-centered, it's not egotistical. When someone tries to influence you in a good way, they try to cause you to integrate yourself with other people. They try to motivate you to become part of a larger group.
So compliance and collaboration.
And a good influence also causes you to invest, invest emotionally, invest otherwise, but invest and commit yourself. There's investment and commitment, not necessarily financial. In most cases, it's emotional, psychological.
And these are the three components of good influence.
The ability to overcome resistance and doubt, the ability to foster compliance by way of collaboration with others or with you, and the ability to encourage or incentivize investment and commitment.
Influence can be 100% emotive.
For example, an influencer can approach you and show you pictures of refugees and ask you for your financial contribution. That is an emotive appeal. It's based on emotions. This is emotional influence.
There's also logical appeal, reasoning. You could influence someone by appealing to their reason, to their logic. Emotional appeal and logical appeal.
Both of them, taken to extremes, become pernicious, nefarious and malignant.
If you take emotional influence and push it too far, exaggerate it, make it overwhelming, it becomes emotional blackmail.
And if you take logical appeal, reasoning, push it too far, exaggerated, it becomes heartless, it becomes cruel, it becomes inhuman, robotic.
There is a lot of appeal in collaboration, in cooperation, in mutuality, in altruism, good influence incorporates these elements almost invariably.
If you want to identify which influence is good and which influence is not so good, then the good influence, the beneficial influence would include cooperation, mutuality, altruism.
This would include integration in the community somehow, or with others. Maybe not in the community, but with others. It would integrate others, not only you.
And influence, a message of influence, which focuses on you, on your needs, on your benefits, on your money, on your power, on sex, this kind of influence is less honest, less integral, more narcissistic, and much more open to manipulation and abuse should be very wary of such messages, of you should be wary of interpolation.
All influence involves the following elements.
Trust building, influence builds trust between people, the influencer and the influencee.
Understanding the other. If you don't understand the recipient of the influence, you can't influence.
Therefore, empathy is a precondition for influence. Even bad influence, even malevolent influence, even propaganda, they rely on empathy, a type of empathy which is known as cognitive empathy or cold empathy.
But empathy is a prerequisite. You can't do it without empathy.
Competence, you have to know what you're doing.
Perspicacity, the ability to predict the future, the ability to get it right.
All influence campaigns are the same, resemble scientific theories. Influence campaign are the same, resemble scientific theories.
Influence campaign present to you a theory about the world.
And influence campaigns make predictions.
The influencer tells you, if you vote for Joe Biden, things are going to get bad.
So it's a theory. It's like a scientific theory. If A, then B, there's a prediction.
Getting it right is very important in an influence campaign.
Compassion, service, humility, openness, agreeableness, big picture thinking, context, passion, and sometimes non-verbal cues.
I'll give you two examples.
If you are tall, tall. Like tall tall you are much more likely to convince people and influence them than if you're short. If you're beautiful or handsome you're much more likely to convince people than if you're ugly and deformed.
This is not something you can help with. These are the gifts or the curses of nature.
But as you see, there's a lot going on under the surface. It's not just the explicit message. The explicit text is the hidden text and it's even body language and body structure. Messages, there's a lot of messaging going on, there's a huge iceberg under the water.
Influence is not straightforward, it's not mathematics, it's not an algorithm.
The interaction is crucial. It's a form of bonding, creates attachment. It's a mini love affair, if you wish. The other person gives you access to their minds, to their brains.
And they're much more likely to do it if they think you're handsome. And if you're tall, you're overpowering, then you're an authority figure. It's convincing to start with.
Just one funny statistic. The overwhelming vast majority of American presidents have been very tall. Fact.
Okay, we continue.
Some personalities are more amenable to being influenced, and some personalities are less amenable to being influenced.
Some fields of life, some areas of life are more open to influence and others are much less open to influence.
When you try to influence someone or when someone is trying to influence you, you need to ask these questions.
The person who is trying to influence me. What type of personality is you? What type of personality am I?
Maybe I don't have strong boundaries. Maybe I feel I'm in a crisis and I feel broken and damaged and vulnerable, so I'm much more open to influence.
You need to ask questions, a lot of questions about the influencer, about you, or if you are the influencer, about the other party.
There are all types of influences, social, professional, religious, family-related, self-related.
Influence is not a monolithic quilt, a whole cloth. Influence is a very intricate and very nuanced phenomenon because it involves behavior modification and there are umpteen techniques to modify behavior and influences all of them.
The influencer observes you, influencer probes you, analyzes you, locks onto your vulnerabilities, your chinks in the armor, access points, vectors of invasion and intrusion and contagion, approaches you, and then is inside your head. Or she's inside your head.
It takes communication skills, sometimes communication tools like social media, and it takes impression management and reception management.
So it's not as simple as it sounds.
Some people do influence him instinctively, reflexively. They're built for it. They're natural-born influences, and this is known as charisma. They're charismatic.
And some people need to work on it.
But here's a fact, establishing numerous psychological studies. You can learn how to influence. You can learn how to be charismatic.
It takes a lot of acting, Thespian skills. It takes a lot of learning, psychology especially. It takes a lot of practice and many failures in the beginning.
But ultimately, you can build yourself to become charismatic, never mind how shy you are, how fragile you are, how anxious you are, how introverted you are, you can become charismatic.
Charisma, therefore, is an acquired skill. It's an acquired skill.
And in the background of charismatic personalities, who allegedly were born with charisma, we discover fathers and mothers who have idolized them, pedestalized them, treated them as gods.
We discover, in short, background for narcissism. Charisma and narcissism go hand in hand.
So these children grew up with parents who told them that they're perfect. They can do no wrong with parents who were easily influenced by these babies and children and infants.
And when they grew up, they were naturally conditioned to be charismatic.
So you're probably not born with charisma. Either you get it in childhood with the wrong kind of parents, who idolize you and so on, make you into narcissists. Or you can learn this skill later in life.
But you don't need charisma to influence. You don't need charisma to influence.
All you need is self-awareness, sincerity, integrity, and a message that makes sense, emotional sense, logical sense, and preferably both.
Thank you for listening. Now, I have to run because my session started an hour late.
Those of you who would like to ask me questions, I'm open and willing and be delighted to answer.
My email is VakninSam@caps.org.
I would appreciate if someone could put it on the screen, Siaps Archive. You can put it on the screen.
You can write to me at VakninSam. That's my name, Vaknin Sam, at caps.org.
If Siaps Archive is listening, if you could put up the email address, I would appreciate it.
If not, you could get it later from SIAPS.
And you're all absolutely welcome to write to me and I promise to answer.
I apologize that I don't have much time for questions and answers, or no time actually, for questions and answers because my sessions were scheduled to begin one hour earlier than they actually did there was a misunderstanding with time and I wish you all the best and a cool summer and I hope to hear from some of you in my email inbox take care email inbox. Take care. You know,.