Influence Is Your Superpower: The Science of Winning Hearts, Sparking Change, and Making Good Things Happen

But when you make an invitation without any pressure whatsoever, people become inclined to lean forward. It’s one of the aikido moves for handling resistance. All you have to do is add a softener to your request like, “I know you’re probably busy,” or “please don’t say yes unless you really want to do this,” or “would you feel comfortable?”

Keep in mind that people are more likely to say yes to a face-to-face request, and far less likely to respond to a social media post. The pressure and likelihood of saying yes depend on the closeness of the interaction. Use your own judgment about balancing the two, and focus on the long run. Conversion doesn’t happen in one conversation—it happens in a relationship.

Influence doesn’t work the way you think because you don’t think the way you think.

In a nutshell, there are two internal systems governing all our thinking and behavior. Behavioral economists call them System 1 and System 2. System 1 is fast, unconscious, emotional, and instinctive; these are your gut reactions. System 2 is slow, conscious, effortful, and seemingly rational; these are your deliberate decisions.

Because the unconscious mind (system 1) is fast, it is the first responder. The conscious mind (system 2) being slow, is the second-guesser. This means the unconscious mind has more influence on the conscious mind than vice versa. Gut reactions can, and often do, influence reasoning. Furthermore, because the conscious mind can focus on only one thing at a time, it has to ignore most of what’s going on in the world. As a result, people tend to make choices that require the least effort.

We tend to overestimate the conscious mind because it’s the only one we can experience, but the unconscious mind is far more powerful. Being influential requires us to focus first and foremost on people’s gut reactions, and on making their path to a choice as easy as possible.

The biggest misperception about changing minds is that you need to do it at all.

A lot of our behavior doesn’t reflect any conscious thinking; that’s why the best predictor of behavior is ease. It’s more powerful than motivation, price, quality, satisfaction, or intentions.

You might not be selling something, but you can still take inspiration from a little-known marketing metric for measuring ease called the Customer Effort Score, which comes down to a simple question: How easy was it?

How customers answer this question explains one-third of their willingness to buy again, increase their business with the company, or rave about it to others. The Customer Effort Score is 12% more predictive of customer loyalty than customer satisfaction.

Ease makes people happy, and effort can really annoy people. In a study of 75,000 customer service calls, researchers found that 81% of customers who reported a difficult experience said they intended to complain to friends or post negative reviews, while only 1% customers who reported having an easy experience said they would do the same. So, whenever you want to influence behavior, make that behavior as easy as possible.

When Zoe Chance asks people which influence skill they’d like to master, the most common answer is charisma. When she asks what that means, they tell her charisma means people pay attention to you.

So how do we get people to pay attention to us? You could run through the office in your underwear, but that’s not exactly charismatic, is it?

Being charismatic isn’t something you are - it’s something you do. And you can become more charismatic–someone people want to pay attention to–with a few tweaks to your language, body language, and your attention.

The simplest charisma hack is to practice focusing your attention on people one at a time. Start by asking questions and using people’s names more often. Pronouns reveal where your attention is focused (not gender pronouns).

To have charisma is to shine so that other people feel like they’re the only one in the room, and people want to say yes to you.

As our paths cross, entwine, diverge, and reconnect, we form a greater whole—an interconnected web of influence. You are already part of this collective power. The root of the word “influence” is the Latin influere, to flow in—as a river, a current. Your influence flows from other people and to other people, and from them to others, and so on. Sometimes you’re aware of your own ripple effects, sometimes not.

In 2005, the “Cajun Navy” rescued 10,000 of their neighbors from Hurricane Katrina. Rebecca Solnit writes in Hope in the Dark:

“In Hurricane Katrina, hundreds of boat-owners rescued people—single moms, toddlers, grandfathers—stranded in attics, on roofs, in flooded housing projects, hospitals, and school buildings. None of these people said, ‘I can’t rescue them all.’ All of them said, ‘I can rescue someone, and that’s work so meaningful and important I will risk my life and defy the authorities to do it.’ And they did.”

Sometimes we succeed, and sometimes our hearts break open. Sometimes inspiration strikes, our timing is perfect, luck is on our side, and the gates of heaven part for us. And all the time, the seeds of our influence are floating off like the tufts of a dandelion, carried on the wind. Whether we mean to or not, we are planting seeds. We are making history.