Ethical Persuasion in Education with Patrick van der Burght (Cialdini Institute)

Mark Taylor 00:00:23

Hello and welcome back to Education on Fire. Today, I'm delighted to be chatting to Patrick Van der Burt and he's a business partner of Dr. Robert Cialdini, who wrote the book Influence the Psychology of Persuasion. Now, Patrick is a founder member of the Cialdini Institute, one of the few active Cialdini Institute licensed trainers from around the world. He has been teaching ethical persuasion to professionals and teams since 2000, which help them accelerate towards their goals, build strong relationships, leaderships and team management. He co authored the book how to Hear yes more often in 2024 and has his own podcast show called Ethical Persuasion Unlocked. Now, I thought this would be such an interesting conversation for us to really appreciate what's going on when we are leading, starting a new project or building a team in education. Now, this understanding is obviously going to help you, but also the young people that you influence. Hello, my name is Mark Taylor and welcome to the Education on Far podcast, The place for creative and inspiring learning from around the world. Listen to teachers, parents and mentors show how they are supporting children to live their best, authentic life and are proving to be a guiding light to us all. Hi, Patrick, thank you so much for joining us. Here on the Education on Fire podcast, we chat to people from around the world. I think this might only be my second or third conversation all the way to Australia. And then I have these conversations about is technology good, bad or indifferent? I kind of think if I can have these conversations, then it's got to be good. And it's great to be able to see you in and sort of dive into this important concept, I think today for many people, because it's something which people are aware of, but I don't think they quite know the power of. So, yeah, thanks so much for being here.

Patrick van der Burght 00:02:03

I'm really excited to be here, as always. I can. I can still remember the first time that persuasion science or the science of human decision making sort of became apparent to me, as in when I was learning it and I couldn't believe my ears. As in, is this how it works? And I see that same reaction when I do a keynote or I do a workshop and I'm explaining this stuff. I see the eyes get bigger in the audience, like, are you serious? And I'd love. I remember how that felt for me. And so I love seeing that in the audience. And whilst, of course, we can't see your audience today, I'm sure we're getting some big. Some big eyes and ears on the other side. So thank you very much for putting me in this position.

Mark Taylor 00:02:50

And I guess we should start with that distinction between persuasion is one thing, ethical persuasion sounds like something different. But decision making and understanding that overall concept is probably a good place to start because I think that frames it in a, in a, in a good way for people to understand what we're going to be chatting about.

Patrick van der Burght 00:03:08

Yeah, let's, let's start there. And maybe just before that, maybe we should touch on that. What is the difference between persuasion, ethical persuasion and there's other sort of words. Most people, I think have the tendency when you say the word persuasion that what they sort of feel is manipulation, as in, I'm trying to change somebody's, you know, opinions or thoughts in a way that might be, you know, sort of forcing them to do that. That's not actually the case. Manipulation is actually taking choice away from people. You're forcing them to do something where persuasion is actually giving somebody options and, and trying to bring to the surface information that resonates with what's within them so that the change comes from within them. There's really no difference between persuasion and ethical persuasion. It's just because a lot of people sort of. Hang on a second. Is this manipulation? We tend to wedge that word ethical in front of it to let people know that, you know, there's no lying, no twisting, no twisting anybody's arm. So all good stuff here today. And research also shows, I mean, you can use persuasion science in a way to manipulate and to, you know, to try and force people. But research shows, thank goodness, that unethical use of persuasion science might produce short term benefit, but it is long term disaster because nobody comes back to a situation where they didn't do good in the, in the bargaining. And within businesses, the use of unethical practices actually has other costs associated to it. A little bit too deep to go into that, but Dr. Cialdini calls that the three sort of hidden cancers of unethical persuasion. And research also showed that if we use this in ethical ways, we produce both short term results and long term successes because it builds strong relationships with our partners. You know, we really aiming for a win on both sides. But yeah, let's dive into the science of human decision making because I think that will explain properly why the principles of perspective persuasion are so powerful and why they're actually getting more powerful as our environment is getting more overloaded with stimuli. So let me, let me venture, interrupt me if you want to or take notes. Circle me back to something. It's all good. All right, so when it comes to decision making, Going to lean on the work of a professor, Daniel Kahneman, who unfortunately died a couple of years ago. But he was a professor in psychology and a behavioral scientist, and he won a Nobel Prize in 2002 in economics, which is a little bit unexpected, right? I mean, you would expect, you know, a professor in psychology and behavioral science. Science. Behavioral science to. To get the Nobel Prize in psychology, but that doesn't exist. But what did he come up with that had such an impact on economics? Well, most of his work had to do with decision making and decisions shape economics. That's where the link is. But he basically won the Nobel Prize for disproving a popular belief that old economics used to have. Old economics thought that human beings are logical, rational creatures and we would therefore use logic and reason to formulate our decisions. And Daniel Kahneman proved that I was wrong. He says when it comes to decision making, our brain, the brain of our audience has two parts. And when I say audience, audience is not like, you know, like in a theater or presentation sort of style audience, as in the recipient of your message. So for teachers listening, that might be the students that you're talking to, they are your audience. Or it might be, you know, somebody higher in the hierarchy of the school that you're trying to get your ideas looked, looked at by or accepted by. For parents, well, it might be your children that are your audience. Right. If you're trying to get an 18 year old to clean up their room, that can be challenging. Right? You have to be persuasive. But in the same token, it could also be that, you know, if you're trying to talk to the school to accomplish things or to get cooperation on a particular topic, you're also trying to be persuasive. And of course, you know, if there's students listening to that, you know, of course, you know, your peers, your, your fellow students are people that you might be communicating with, trying to get cooperation with your ideas. Maybe you need to get an extension on some work that needs to get done. Right. You need a few more days and you're going to have to try and persuade your teacher to grant you that extension. Right. And you have to be persuasive. So whoever is receiving your message, that's your audience. Okay? So when it comes to our decision making brain, Daniel Kahneman says we have two parts. First, we have system one. System one is the intuitive part of the brain. It works very fast, it is always on, and it makes decisions automatically outside of your conscious control. Now, system one works largely on shortcuts Rules of thumb that either are hardwired in us or we have learned from experience. Give you an example. So we might have a rule somewhere in the back of our head that expensive equals good. Right? Right. We've learned from experience that if you buy something, if you buy something cheap, it doesn't tend to last that long, it's not that good, and it might not be that great for the purpose you bought it for, where if we spend more money, we tend to get better quality, better suited to purpose is going to last us longer. And because most of the time this is true, we get this rule of thumb, expensive equals good. So if we're looking at making a purchase of, I don't know, a new monitor for your computer setup or something, you might not know anything about the technical side of producing a quality monitor. Now, you're in the hi Fi store or in the, in the computer shop and you could delay your decision. You could leave the store, you could go to the library, you could start borrowing books on monitor construction and all that sort of stuff and read those for about three months. And then three months later, you might be in good shape to go back to that shop and make an educated decision about which monitor to buy. But I don't know about you, I don't have the time for that. So in that moment of judging, okay, well, which monitor should I pick? I might choose this rule of thumb that I've got in the back of my head and go, hang on a second. If I just spend a little bit more money than I was initially thinking, I will probably have done the right thing here. And that's exactly what will happen. You will probably have done the right thing because most of the time something that's more expensive is better. It's not always true. Sometimes more expensive things are still rubbish. Right? So we do say system one is error prone, but it allows us a shortcut to a quicker decision. Otherwise I'll have to delay my decision or I have to go and do something else. So that's system one. The intuitive part of the brain makes quick decisions largely on shortcuts, rules of thumb. On the other side, then we have system two. That is the logical, rational part of the brain. Now, system two is slow. It is conscious thinking. Where system one is outside of our conscious control. System two is conscious thinking. It takes a lot of effort, takes a lot of energy. And Professor Daniel Kahneman actually called it the lazy controller. It doesn't actually want to engage. It's quite happy for system one to take decisions only when Red flags go off. System two kicks in. Now, System two does have a prerequisite. It needs our attention. I can give you a good example. Sometimes, if you know we're old enough to drive a car, sometimes you drive home and you can't actually remember how you got home. You can't actually remember which turn off you took or which street you took. You just got home. That's because you were not driving System one was. But if you're parking a car in a tight parking spot, if you don't pay attention, that's not going to turn out so well. So while system one can drive a car on a relatively empty road, system two is what we need to park in a tight parking spot. So system two can look at all the available options. We do have to pay it with our attention. It takes effort, costs energy, and doesn't really want to engage. Okay. Now, Daniel Kahneman demonstrates in 2002 that 90% of our decisions are made by system one. That's 9, 0, 90% now, because 2002 is a while back now that's said to be 95% and that that percentage keeps increasing. Now, some people argue with that a little bit. They say, well, I mean, goodness, maybe if it's an everyday decision on, you know, where am I going to sit, right? Maybe then I'll use the intuitive part of my brain. But when it's really important, I would use logic and reason. And let's unpack that a little bit real quick. So if we have to make a large decision and the adults will relate to this, if we look, for example, at buying a house, then that's a big decision. We don't do that that often. And so we might research which suburb we want to buy into. We might compare its value and how it improves with the suburbs around it. We'll then go and visit the schools in the area because the children have to go somewhere. So what's a good decision? And then once we've honed it down on where we want to be, now we're going to go to open homes and we're going to look at these houses and we'll come in with a notepad or a tablet and we'll make notes of absolutely everything. How large the garden is or the balcony, the garage, bedrooms, how many bathrooms. We'll make notes of everything. And all that is system to work. But how many times have you met somebody that have just bought a house and they say something along the lines of, well, it was a bit above the budget, but we just fell in love with the place, had to buy it. That's not logic and reason. They did do all the system to work, but when decision making time came, system one took over, right? There were other decision triggers involved. And herein lies the, the, the big problem. System two is only in charge of about 5% of the decision now nowadays. And if we don't know the science, when we sit there thinking, how am I going to convince my students to stay the course and to do the tasks that they need to do so I can prepare them properly for that exam that's coming, right? That's a behavior that you trying to get them to do. I mean, persuasion is not about sales, advertising and marketing exclusively. It's about actually behavior. So you might be saying, how am I going to achieve that with my students? Or maybe as a parent, how am I going to get my teenage child to commit to this project or something. Let's say when we don't know the science and we're thinking how are we going to achieve that? We are using conscious thought. And conscious thought is system two. And system two has a tendency to come up with rationale, with reasons that needs system two in our audience to process it. And here is the problem. Our audience doesn't have the time for this anymore. Because the reason that this percentage is shifting from 90% now, 95% is because our attention span is getting shorter. Our attention span used to be 20 minutes in the 80s. Mark, do you have any idea what the attention span of the famous goldfish.

Mark Taylor 00:17:25

Is supposed to be meant to be? A second, isn't it? Or something like that?

Patrick van der Burght 00:17:30

Well, I'll give him a little bit of credit. Nine seconds for the goldfish. Nine seconds. Our attention span is now seven seconds. Wow, we've been beaten by the goldfish. And that has to do with our environment. More things are coming at us than ever before. Dr. Cialdini says we live in the most information overloaded, stimulus saturated environment that has ever existed on the planet. And of course, I mean the Internet had a big impact on us, right? We got to information more quickly and therefore decisions had to be made. But the, the smartphone was like the nail in the coffin, wasn't it? I mean, you know, you pick that thing up because you need to make a phone call, right? You unlock it now there's 25 apps that are popping up asking your attention if you want to interact with them. There's 25 decisions that you have to make right there. Goodness. You might click on something right now. Something opens and there's a Message from him. Message from her. Link to this, link to that video here. Twenty minutes later, you put the phone down and you go, what did I pick that thing up for? Have you done that? Right?

Mark Taylor 00:18:39

Definitely.

Patrick van der Burght 00:18:41

You didn't even last seven seconds, right? Two seconds you were gone. And so here is the problem that when we're trying to convince people, trying to persuade people to do something, to accept what it is we have to say, unless we know the science, we will come up with logical, rational arguments that are going to cause them to push back from your proposal. They decide not to decide. And the other flip of the coin, if we actually do know the science and we just present people with a little bit of information that has to do with System 1, allowing System 1 to make an easy decision, now we get more cooperation, and that can be. Have a big impact. Actually, one of my favorite examples has to do with children in school. I think this was in a university. There were a number of students and. And they were facing expulsion. And only if they were able to raise their grades by a full letter would they be able to stay in school. And so the students in that situation were randomly divided into three groups and they were given different instructions. They were all given access to the exact same assistance from the educational staff, the same materials. The only thing that was different was, was the instructions that they were given. The first group was not asked to set any study goals. The second group was asked to think about study goals and sort of keep them in their head. The third group was asked to set study goals, to write them down on a piece of paper, to sign it, to then go make photocopies, and to hand a copy of these goals to each of their fellow students in their class. Now, they were all treated the same, except for the instructions that they were given. And we could argue that for each student, the impact of the outcome of this was going to change the trajectory of their life. Let's imagine that they really wanted to stay in that educational institution and they were faced with being expelled, which will probably have a decent impact on their future. So let's assume that they all wanted to stay and they were all very keen to do the best they could. Now, the first group that wasn't asked to set any study goals, how successful were they? Well, 14% of them were successful enough to raise their grades by a full letter and were able to stay in school. 86% Were told to leave. What about the second group? It seems like a good idea, right? Ask people to set study goals. They actually didn't do any better. Also, 14% of them raised their grades enough to stay in school and the rest was expelled. What about the third group? They did better. Out of the third group, who were asked to write down their study goals, sign it, print it out, and hand it to everybody in class, out of them, 86% raised their grades enough to stay in school. Now, the reason why I like this, because it hits the point home so nicely, is that because we did this study or because they did the study? We didn't because that study was done. We now know that. And this is linked to the principle of consistency. We'll get into that. Because that third group was treated differently and they were asked to make an active public commitment to what they were doing. They were far more, they had more internal pressure to follow through with that decision where the other two groups didn't. So because of this study, we now know that we can have an impact on somebody's follow through in getting to a goal that arguably everyone wanted to achieve just as badly. But because the study was done, we now know that we could do better. Without the study, we wouldn't have known. I mean, after the study, can you imagine being one of the parents of the kids who were in the 14% group? How pissed off would you be? Right. Just at random. Your child ended up in those two experimental conditions and as a result, 86% of them were asked to leave. Now, I'd hate to bring it to everybody, but unless you know the science of ethical persuasion and knowing is one thing, but having application skills to use it, unless you know this, you are in the 14% group right now. Right. So I'm looking forward to changing that. Does that all sound exciting so far, Mark?

Mark Taylor 00:24:18

Yeah, I think, I think it's great. And I think like you say, it's very easy to just get in your lane. You know what you know, it's what you've experienced and you replicate it and it works or doesn't work. And your experience kind of keeps gauges what that might look like going forward. But like you say, once you understand what's happening, you understand the science and you can be intentional about what you're doing, then it really feels like, like you say you can, you can change that on a dime because you're doing it with intention and knowledge and then being able to put it into practice. Yeah. So I'm excited to see where you're going to take us with this now.

Patrick van der Burght 00:24:51

Yeah. And so the, the thing to realize is that all of us have a certain amount of possibilities, success that is right there on the table. If we only communicate in a way that allows that success to realize. If we don't do that, like, arguably, out of every child, every student that was in that study, Everybody in the three groups were able. 86% Of them should have been able to achieve high enough grades the same school. But because we didn't know the science or two groups weren't using it, we suffered a loss that was avoidable. Right. And so I sort of see the world like this. I hear people communicate, and I hear them missing the ingredients that would get their audience to lean in or to trust them or to have more loyalty or to build relationship. And so there's so much that we can have that we're letting slip through our fingers. That's why I was so excited to get on your show, Mark, is that there's the World Economic Forum at the moment. They put a report out every two years, and last year they put a report out. It's called the Future of Jobs. You can look it up. And they ranked leadership and social influence as the third most urgent skill for businesses to develop in their employees. Now, that's great, right? As in, you're in the middle of your career and now you're. You're shaping these skills or you're learning them. But we should be learning this before we go into the workforce. I mean, think about it. Why would you. Why would you write a job application with that without knowing how to be persuasive? How or why would you go to a job interview without knowing how to be persuasive? And goodness, if you get hired now, you're gonna have wage negotiations without knowing how to be persuasive. Right. This is a very important soft skill we need to learn early in life, not halfway through. It's great. If you learn it halfway through, you're really excited. But it really should happen early on. That's why I'm so excited to be here, to hopefully have some impact on some young individuals as well. All right, so let's dive into principles. I'm excited. There are seven universal principles of persuasion, and we call them universal because they work in all languages, all cultures, and all countries, which is incredibly powerful. Right, because our cultures are intermixed. But it's also very easy to interact with people in other countries. So this is something that works everywhere. So there's seven. Let's go through them, and I'll give you the rules of what powers and why they work. Let's start with one that we all know actually you probably know most of these, but you might not know what activates them or what amplifies them. So reciprocity is one of them. You know, as in do something for someone, help someone, and things flow back to you. Why does that work? Because people have a tendency to want to give back the same type of behavior that was first given to them. And in the context of compliance, people are more likely to say yes to someone, to agree with someone, to move forward with someone if they feel they owe that person something. And so in business, for example, we've taken that as in, oh, we got to give people stuff, which is, in essence, correct. Right. If you give something to other people, things flow back. We've all been to the supermarket and there's somebody there with a tray of cheese or pieces of sausage or cups of yogurt. You can take a sample. Most people that take the sample think that that does not change their behavior. But the data is very clear. If we look at, like, sales figures from companies like Costco and something, it doesn't matter what you give away, sales go up. And what I find fascinating is that let's say it's cheese, and let's say that you try a sample and you don't like it. Doesn't matter. Still works, because you'll just buy more of something else, because it's not about the cheese, it's about the behavior. You were nice to me, now I need to be nice to you. Right? And so from reciprocity, what we learned there is that basically we should think how we. How can we help the other party genuinely and seek to assist them without purposely trying to create a situation where they feel they need to reciprocate to you. As in, you're not doing it to get a return, but you're genuinely trying to help people. So that's reciprocity. Again, I'll let you take notes. And if you want to circle back, if we have got time, be delighted to. For now, I'll jump on to the next principle. Principle of liking. We like people that are like us. We like people that like us, and we like people that like us and say so. That's a big mouthful. So let's dissect that a little bit. People like people that are like them is similarities. People that like, you know, we like people that like us. I think we're all familiar with that, you know, concept, right? If you have a friend that likes you and you say, hey, I'm moving house on Saturday, there's a good chance they'll Say yes. Where if you walk up to a perfect stranger, well, you ask them if they'll help you to move, they'll probably say no. Right? But then we also like people that like us and say so. And so that's compliments. We are suckers for compliments. Even compliments that, you know, are brought up to try and convince you they still work. We love compliments. But there's no need to, you know, come up with false compliments. You could just genuinely look for something you can compliment someone on. And seriously, it's a. It's a really cool experience. I can challenge every. Everyone listening. The very first person that you meet, not even necessarily speak to, meet after this podcast, pay a genuine compliment. You might meet somebody in the elevator when you've arrived at work or something. Look for something you genuinely like. Might be a tie, might be a pair of earrings or a handbag or something. If you like it, pay a compliment. See their energy change, their shoulders drop, smile, appear. It's a great habit to get into. And liking is a good relationship builder. So what we learned from liking, for example, is that that can have a big impact on our success rate. Kpmg, which is a big accounting firm, they did some research on this. They looked at the relationship between account managers and their clients and how strong. They had an algorithm for that to measure how strong the relationship was. And. And then they looked at how successful they were in getting agreement from those clients. And so if there was a weak relationship, the agents were only about 30% successful in getting agreement when there was an average relationship was 45% success rate. And for those account managers that had a strong relationship, they were 70% successful in getting agreement from their clients. That's more than double. And other studies say that as well, that if you can, if you have liking, if you have a strong relationship with people, you can easily double the chances that you'll get compliance or get a yes from someone. And I'm pretty sure, intuitively we also know that, right, when you meet someone, you have a bit of a chat, or, you know, you ask, you know, what's your hobbies, what are you into, what's your favorite food, right? And you have a bit of a chat. That's good. But what's hidden behind the surface is that the more similarities you uncover, that's when the liking starts to grow. So it's not about how much you share, it's about how many similarities you find. All right, let's move on then. There's a principle of unity, which is the last principle, Dr. Cialdini, after much additional research brought to us, first appeared in his revision of his book Influence the Psychology of Persuasion, that was published in 2015. Unity is about a sense of community that we have. If we, you know, have you ever sat in an airport and you talk to somebody who's from the same town as you, or you were born in the same suburb or something, all of a sudden you got this familiarity with each other. You could have that with the next person that is on a review board considering if you should be accepted in a university or if the principal of the school, making life harder for the teachers. If you can figure out what you have in common, that's good for liking. But if you're part of a community that you both feel part of, that activates unity. Very powerful principle. All right, I'll move on. So then we have this principle of social proof. Social proof, that word a lot of people have heard of. It was actually Dr. Cialdini that coined the phrase before that used to be referred to as consensus. Social proof explains it a little bit easier in the name already. We follow the actions of other others, especially when they are numerous and when they are similar to us and when we are uncertain. And in business, you see, there's a lot of businesses, they have testimonials and reviews which are the opinions of other people, right? And they use that because it's a very important motivator and it reduces uncertainty. So that's good that they use that. But social proof has a lot more things to offer. I have got a cool example related to social proof. Dutch high school students, they were told that a lot of students like them would eat fruit to stay healthy. And the students said, well, I don't care that you've told me that I'm not going to change my behavior. I'm not going to eat more fruit just because you told me right. But then when later the consumption of fruit was measured, it had gone up by 35% because it's one of those shortcuts, right? If other people like me are doing, must be the right course of action. So social proof is very, very powerful. I've got some other stuff. As I told you, Mark, I made some notes before we started. When college students were told, which wasn't true, but they were told that other students like them thought that torture was acceptable. During interrogations, 80% of those college students then also agreed that that would be acceptable. So we follow what other people do. Students who were worried when they started at a new school or university about their performance and how they would fit in. When they were told that a lot of students like them had experienced similar sort of feelings but overcame them and did very well, those students calmed right down and also did very well. So we follow the actions of others, all right, Then we have the principle of authority. So authority works because we have a tendency to follow the advice of other people who know more than us on a particular topic, people who are experts in a particular field. That's why, you know, when somebody wears a white coat and a stethoscope, we don't even ask them if they're, you know, if they paid attention in school when they got their, you know, they studied to be a doctor, we might have a problem with our big toe. How do we know they even paid attention when it was big toe day in medical school? We don't know. But they've got the white coat on, they've got the stethoscope on, and we therefore accept what they have to say. And sometimes that is also wrong. System one, it's error prone. Some people take the advice blindly and pay for it with their lives. But yeah, we follow the actions of people who have more knowledge or wisdom than us, which makes sense because we can't possibly know everything about everything. And if there's someone in the room who knows more about it, it makes sense to follow their advice. So in terms of when we are presenting something to someone, if we have information that an expert has said that this was a good thing, then that makes that message stick or people pay more attention to it. With authority, it's also on us, as in, we have a certain level of expertise. And so how do you convey that to your audience? So they, early on respect that you have knowledge and wisdom and should take what, what it is you have to say with the gravity that it deserves. One common mistake people make is that when they meet somebody, they, they start singing their own praises. They come in and say, hi, my name is Patrick. Let me tell you the 34 reasons why you should listen to me today. And the subconscious goes, you're full of yourself. Right? We lose authority, we hope to get more authority. We will lose on authority and, and we lose liking. Which is why I can't introduce myself and talk about my credentials. That's why Mark's done that, right? Because that's one of the socially acceptable ways you can get someone else to introduce you, introduce you and your credentials. So for example, if one teacher is meeting with parents and another teacher is, let's say, met first, and let me introduce you to my colleague. The colleague cannot sing their own praises or credentials, but the first teacher, if they're doing the introduction, they have a beautiful opportunity to bring to the surface some genuine information about this colleague of theirs. Oh, great, you're here. Let me introduce you to Michael. Michael's been at the school for 12 years. He's won multiple awards and he's got this and this and this. And he's a really, really great guy. The students love him. Right now, that parent is going to listen to that colleague in a much different way than if they didn't know any of that background. And Michael was not able to introduce himself like that. All right, two more principles left. So consistency. People have a tendency to want to stay true to past actions and statements that they've made. Because if we say we'll do one thing and then we do something else, people don't like that. We have nasty names for people that say they do one thing and then do something totally different. Because we don't want to be labeled like that. Actually, we know we're harsh labeling other people like that. We don't want to be labeled like that. So we will go to great lengths to stay true to past actions and behaviors. Now, that explains my earlier example with the schools, with the students that were facing expulsion, Group one didn't set any study goals. Group two set study goals but kept them to themselves. Group three wrote them down. And then, I mean, that's good because it's active. But by making photocopies and sharing it with the other students. Now, other people knew the intention that they had made, the statement that they have made, as in, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that, I'm going to do that to raise that grade enough. And because other people knew, it produced more internal pressure to stay true with that decision. Even though for all the students in all the three groups, the impact, the importance of doing that action was just as large. Right. But it was that internal pressure that got people to stick to it more and they achieved their goals. So that's consistency. And then lastly is this principle of scarcity. We value things more that are rare, that are scarce, that are dwindling in availability, and things that are unique. Again, educational related. Example, there was a school that had a campus cafeteria and students were asked to rank their satisfaction with the cafeteria and they were not happy at all. It was generally they were dissatisfied with the quality of food and drink that they got at the cafeteria. Nine days later, they did Another survey, and it had dramatically changed. They now really valued the food and the drink that they could get at the cafeteria. What had changed was, well, on the day of the second survey, they had been told that there had been a fire in the cafeteria and they would not be able to have any food or drinks there for the coming two weeks. Now it was scarce, now it was more valuable. And therefore their appreciation, the value that they experienced, increased. Nothing changed in the food, but now they valued it more. Are. So those are the seven principles. And so if we know how. And of course, I can only, you know, give you a little bit here, right. Just a brief introduction. There's a. A lot more to this that doesn't take that much to. To study this properly. But what we need to do is we need to look at the situation that we're in. And we need to. We say we need to be sleuths of influence or detectives of influence. We need to look in the situation which bits of information are genuinely there in the situation that we can bring to the surface. Have I done something for this person in the past? So now that they, you know, they sort of owe me something. Is there similarity between us that I can bring to the surface, or can I pay a compliment to them? Unity? Is there community that we both feel part of? Are there actions of other people similar to them that I could bring to the surface, which would be social proof, right? Have I done what I can to increase my authority and trust and credibility, which is also part of authority, but I haven't touched on? Is there any previous commitments that people have made that I can remind them of that they did, or can I create a situation where I allowed them to make a statement earlier so that later on I can work that in my proposal? I'll give you, give you an example. Your friend comes up to you and goes, hey, you're an adventurous kind of person, aren't you? Most people think they're adventurous, right? And so you probably go, oh, yeah, I'm adventurous. Oh, that's awesome. That's great. Hey, we're going on a bike ride in two weeks. You want to come with us? I've just put my foot in it saying I'm adventurous. It's now harder to say no, right? You can feel it. So consistency, or is there something about this situation that is genuinely rare, square of a rare, dwindling in availability, scarce, you know, is time running out? Is there a certain quantity running out? Right. We can bring that to the surface. And there's, of course, a Lot more to that. Not every principle is right at the right time, but we can use these principles to raise information, to make it easier for people to make a yes decision. Does that make sense so far?

Mark Taylor 00:48:05

Yeah, absolutely. I think, I think it's really, really good because as you were talking though, I was thinking, you know, as a musician myself, as someone who educates people into learning drums and percussion, that sort of thing, there were certain parts of that I thought, oh, yeah, I've obviously done that naturally in some way, but there was also other parts where I thought I could really lean into that. It's something I'm sort of aware of, but I could definitely make more of. And I didn't know enough about it to be able to kind of articulate it in a way which now even just from our sort of brief conversation of explaining these sort of principles, I think. Ah, right. I can see where that benefit would come and how different people that I'm dealing with would respond in different ways. Like you say, it's taking some of those depending on the situation and I guess the personalities and, and how you're sort of interacting with people, that's going to make the bigger difference.

Patrick van der Burght 00:48:52

Yeah, and. And often just being a nice, genuine, interested individual, that's already makes you. That's a nice foot in the door. And being more persuasive if you, if you genuinely try to help people. I mean, if you're a student and you know there's a teacher and, you know, I don't know, you do things in the classroom to sort of help them out or that sort of stuff, you can't help that. That teacher will have favoritism towards you. So if you're just a nice person, that helps if you're interested in people, if you try and have a little chat, genuinely interested in what they like, you might uncover similarities, things like that. But then, of course, sometimes we do it and then often we do not. Right. And that's where some skill and some learning comes in. I know that we're probably running a little out of time. We're probably going a little bit longer than you usually do. And I hope everybody's still glued to their speakers. I just wanted to. Before you. I'm happy to take any questions. I just wanted to make sure I raised this. How we dress has an impact in how people perceive us. This has to do with the principle of authority. And incidentally, I've got a podcast channel myself, Mark knows. It's called Ethical Persuasion Unlocked. And as we're recording this, just this Week I we published an episode number 19 about trappings, as in the outward clues of success and how you dress, how you portray yourself, how that impacts you. And it can have a big impact. And there's one thing I wanted to bring to the surface because it's related to getting a job. In this research that looked at people who went to a job interview and what they were wearing, and if the person was wearing a designer outfit or a well styled outfit, they were hired more quickly. And on average they got a 10% higher starting wage just because of what they wore. Because when we, especially when we meet someone, we are uncertain about what to think, think of them. And we look for clues to give that away. And if somebody's well dressed, it gives an aura of economic standing and ability that we know what we're doing. And we know from research as well that for example, pretty people are experiencing a lot of favoritism and we see them as more intelligent and having more capabilities. But by just dressing well and mean, the old saying, dress to impress, it's really true. You want to look your best. We don't want to go and hire an Armani suit to go to an interview, right, that'd be unethical because then you'd have to return it and the next time you turn up in your tracksuit pants, right, and it's all go out, goes out the window. But with the clothing you have, it's okay to dress up and you know, make people look how successful you are or what sort of, you know, what sort of background you come from. All right, cool. Fantastic questions.

Mark Taylor 00:52:18

Yeah, I think my question would be actually to people listening, is that kind of from having sort of gone through those, those seven principles and understanding that to actually be able to articulate a bit, like you said about the three lots of students, it's one I've just thought about. Like I mentioned to you, I was thinking about this, this time and actually now I'm aware. But actually, you know, going away, writing down which one of those really struck you, an idea that comes to you that you can step into or lean into when you're doing a next class or, or next project with something or how you're going to interact with somebody differently because you know, you want to have a better relationship or you want to, for better words, you want to make their decision, making about their learning or you want to persuade them to, to take more interest in what they're doing because you know, they have the potential, but you haven't quite managed to do that. I Think actually, maybe actually making those things a bit more concrete, like I said, writing them down, sharing them with a colleague, sharing them with. With somebody around you, that you can actually put those things into place yourself. Having just heard what we said and then actually seeing how that then influences the people that you're teaching or the people around you or, or the circumstances you're doing, that'd be really interesting and, and do let me know as well. And it'd be fascinating to see how that, how that comes about.

Patrick van der Burght 00:53:38

I don't know how often this happens, but I mean, from a. Normally I work with companies, right? So when we have team members and let's say, you know, I want a team member to perform a certain task by a particular time, I could talk to that person one on one and say, hey, can you get this thing done on Wednesday? And they might say to me, yeah, I think I can do this on Wednesday. But in terms of how public that commitment was, it was just me and them talking, where if instead I have a staff meeting and everybody's sitting around the table and they go, sally, can you get this thing done on Wednesday? Yeah, okay, great. And Bob, can you do that thing we talked about before Thursday? Now their commitment is made in front of other people and it's more public, and then we know that more of this stuff is going to get done. So the same thing, you know, could happen in the classroom instead of having a student sort of, you know, when everybody else has left and say, hey, we really need to get down into this, or you're going to commit to study. Da da da da da. If you do that one on one, you'll have a certain level of success. But the science would say if you ask somebody when the other students are listening, you should get more success.

Mark Taylor 00:54:56

Yeah, I love that. And there's one example I just wanted to share based on that social proof, because as a, As a musician, especially young people, when they start to do their first performances, you. They get. They get comfortable in the practice room. You know, we've had lessons. It all feels good. Then it's kind of. And now we're going to do a really nice informal concert in front of parents and some of the staff and, and sort of the people that are learning instruments as well. That feels very different. You know, the heart's racing, the adrenaline's going, and they're not sure. And it's a really hard thing to get over other than to say, I know what you're going through. It's an experience that I've had, but I think because that you have the opportunity there to see other people performing, to be able to say, I remember when this child was in your age bracket who was really nervous with their first one but understood what that was, stepped into it, got the experience they needed, and now look at what they're able to achieve because they're, you know, a few years older, they've been playing for longer and like say that social proof of kind of this is possible and they under you now understand what they went through. It wasn't it they're different to you or that wasn't an experience that they had. But you can sort of see that sort of next step. And I sort of love that as a way of being able to sort of share maybe something which feels quite scary, obviously, because it's an emotional thing they're doing, but something they, they'll understand and then sort of see the next step, even if they haven't quite walked through it yet themselves.

Patrick van der Burght 00:56:20

And it's a perfect example. And similarity amplifies social proof, right? So let's say if you have a, you know, a young woman or a young girl who is going to perform publicly, if you got, say some more advanced students who were all male to tell her, oh, you know, you'll be okay, we had the same feeling, but you know, you get over it and, and we love it now. Right, That'll be good. That's social proof. But if instead you had three girls saying that to the girl, it's more similar. I mean, you can feel it, right? Then it'll be more impactful and you'll get the, the desired behavior more. So.

Mark Taylor 00:57:13

Absolutely. Now, obviously the acronym FIRE is important to us here at Education on Fire, and by that we mean feedback, inspiration, resilience and empowerment. What is it that strikes you when you see and hear that? And, and, and what would you like to share in relation to it?

Patrick van der Burght 00:57:32

Okay, well, I have to, I am a trainer and a teacher. I can't help it. You've got the word feedback on there. And this, this in a way is linked to the principle of unity. When you ask somebody to give you feedback or help or assistance, you tend to get a critic, as in they're now going to look at your situation and tell you, you know, well, you could do this better this way where if you use this is what, I don't know if you ever heard this. The word because is, you know, if anything, let's say magical. Right? Because when we were younger, our arguments with our, our mum and dad used to end up in it because we kept asking why, why, why? Right. Well, just because was normally the end of the discussion. Right. So the word because a sort of magical power. It's one of our favorite words. But in a similar way, the word advice has a similar sort of power. When you ask someone for advice, not a review, not feedback, not help, you ask for advice, you get someone who aligns with you, you get a partner. So stop asking for feedback, help or a review. Ask people for advice. A whole different energy. But I'm gonna have to pick the word empowerment, of course, which is very much what I'm about. All of us have so much potential for success. It's right there on the table. We just need to know in a better way how to communicate. And I'm all for that. And in line with that and I'm sure you will supply that in the show notes as well. I'll provide a hyperlink where you can go to my website and help yourself to some complimentary educational materials including an ebook that you can download. You don't even have to give your name or your email address, just right click and download. We've got some one week email challenge where you get a piece of persuasive insights every day. And there's also some information there for schools that might be or schools universities. I'm happy to donate my time up to a certain point to help introduce these topics in schools. I mean you're in Australia, of course I can go locally, I travel a lot so I might be able to visit internationally as well. But otherwise via Zoom. Quite happy to zoom into a session in schools and introduce this topic to empower kids to first of all be introduced to it. But also give them some helpful things to use as they're preparing to go into the next school which they might have to apply for or maybe looking to land that dream job that's going to change their entire future. So all that information will be there on that, on that hyperlink.

Mark Taylor 01:00:42

Fantastic. Patrick, thank you so much indeed for sharing or thank you for that offer as well. As you said, we'll make sure that all the details to how to connect with you and all of that will be in the show notes so people can can easily do that, get in touch, take him up on, on that offer and take him up on, on the things that he has available for you so that you can grow, learn and, and share that with the people around you. And I think it's such an important thing in this world of AI where knowledge is less understanding each other and connecting and all the things we've spoken about today are going to be the key things for people to thrive going forward. So yeah, thank you so much indeed.

Patrick van der Burght 01:01:17

That's great. And yeah, so the podcast is also a great place to start. Ethical Persuasion Unlocked. Please follow it. And yeah, my website, ethicalpersuasion.com because I'm based in Australia, lots of information there as well. So anyway, thank you, Mark, for the opportunity to introduce us to everybody and if I can ask those listening a favor. Making podcasts is a lot of work I know now, and we don't have that much of actually direct contact with you as listeners. Mark would love it if you took 2, 3 minutes to write a little review about his podcast on the various places where you listen to podcasts. Something with a little bit of details in it in terms of your experience and how valuable you think it is for other people to also pay attention to his podcast. I'm sure Mark would appreciate it very much and so would I.

Mark Taylor 01:02:16

Thank you so much indeed. Great to chat to you and, and likewise, let's reciprocate that and make sure you've listened to Patrick's as well, because we're all podcast lovers here. So that is indeed a great place to start. So yeah, thanks so much, Patrick.