by Adam Grant
But maybe we’re stacking the deck in favor of givers. After all, opticians are selling in the health care industry, where it’s easy to believe in the product and care about patients in need. Can givers succeed in sales jobs where customers are more skeptical, like insurance? In one study, managers rated the giving behaviors of more than a thousand insurance salespeople. Even in insurance, the higher the salesperson’s giver score, the greater that salesperson’s revenue, policies sold, applications, sales quotas met, and commissions earned.
By asking questions and getting to know their customers, givers build trust and gain knowledge about their customers’ needs. Over time, this makes them better and better at selling. In one study, pharmaceutical salespeople were assigned to a new product with no existing client base. Each quarter, even though the salespeople were paid commission, the givers pulled further ahead of the others.* Moreover, giving was the only characteristic to predict performance: it didn’t matter whether the salespeople were conscientious or carefree, extroverted or introverted, emotionally stable or anxious, and open-minded or traditional. The defining quality of a top pharmaceutical salesperson was being a giver. And powerless communication, marked by questions, is the defining quality of how givers sell.
Out of curiosity, are you planning to vote in the next presidential election?
By asking you that one question, I’ve just increased the odds that you will actually vote by 41 percent.
That’s another benefit of powerless communication. Many people assume that the key to persuasive skill is to deliver a confident, assertive pitch. But in daily life, we’re bombarded by advertisers, telemarketers, salespeople, fund-raisers, and politicians trying to convince us that we want to buy their products, use their services, and support their causes. When we hear a powerful persuasive message, we get suspicious. In some cases, we’re concerned about being tricked, duped, or manipulated by a taker. In other situations, we just want to make our own free choices, rather than having our decisions controlled by someone else. So if I tell you to go out and vote, you might resist. But when I ask if you’re planning to vote, you don’t feel like I’m trying to influence you. It’s an innocent query, and instead of resisting my influence, you reflect on it. “Well, I do care about being a good citizen, and I want to support my candidate.” This doesn’t feel like I’m persuading you. As Aronson explains, you’ve been convinced by someone you already like and trust:
Yourself.
Dave Walton knows why questions are effective persuasive devices. He sees great lawyers as salespeople, and it’s important that they don’t sell their arguments too assertively, like takers. “The art of advocacy is to lead you to my conclusion on your terms. I want you to form your own conclusions: you’ll hold on to them more strongly. I try to walk jurors up to that line, drop them off, and let them make up their own minds.” Thoughtful questions pave the way for jurors to persuade themselves. According to Aronson, “in direct persuasion, the audience is constantly aware of the fact that they have been persuaded by another. Where self-persuasion occurs, people are convinced that the motivation for change has come from within.”
By asking people questions about their plans and intentions, we increase the likelihood that they actually act on these plans and intentions. Research shows that if I ask you whether you’re planning to buy a new computer in the next six months, you’ll be 18 percent more likely to go out and get one. But it only works if you already feel good about the intention that the question targets. Studies show that asking questions about your plans to floss your teeth and avoid fatty foods significantly enhances the odds that you will actually floss and eat healthy. These are desirable actions, so questions open the door for you to persuade yourself to engage in them.* But if I ask about your plans to do something undesirable, questions don’t work. For example, are you planning to eat some chocolate-covered grasshoppers this month?
After thinking about it, you’re probably even less likely to do it. In the examples that we’ve covered so far, the givers were selling desirable products to interested customers. When Bill Grumbles was selling HBO, he had customers who were open to a better cable product. When Kildare Escoto and Nancy Phelps sell glasses, they have patients who need new frames or lenses. How do givers change the minds of audiences who aren’t so receptive?
Persuading: The Technique of Tentative Talk
In 2004, Volkswagen’s retail theme was “Drive it. You’ll get it.” Consumers connected with the double meaning. The line conveyed that to fully appreciate a Volkswagen’s performance features, you had to sit behind the wheel. It also carried another message: if you take the car for a test drive, you’ll love it so much that you’ll end up buying it. It was just one of a string of memorable campaigns from Arnold Worldwide, Volkswagen’s advertising agency. But Don Lane, the man who generated the clever “Drive it. You’ll get it” theme, never appeared in the credits.
Lane was a senior account executive, not a member of the creative department. His job was to package and sell the creative team’s ideas. One day, while stuck on a strategic brief for the creative team, an idea popped into his head. Instead of writing the strategy, he wrote a sample script that ended with the line, “Drive it. You’ll get it.”
It wasn’t standard practice for an account person to come to the creative team with a solution, instead of a problem to solve. In fact, it was forbidden for an account guy to contribute to the creative process. So Lane had a dilemma: how could he get the creative team to listen? If he were a taker, he might have stormed into the creative director’s office to pitch the line, lobby powerfully for it, and demand full credit. If he were a matcher, he might have offered a favor to the creative team and hoped for reciprocity, or called in a favor owed. But Lane leaned in the giver direction. He wasn’t concerned about the credit; he just wanted to help the creative team and see a good line get implemented. “In our business, creative people are gifted and deserve to get most of, if not all of, the credit. Some account management people resent that,” Lane says. “I knew that my job was to help creative people and provide space for them to come up with ideas. I didn’t really care if anyone knew it was my idea. It didn’t matter where the idea came from. If it worked, we would all share in the success.”
Lane walked into the creative director’s office. Instead of using powerful communication—“I have a great line, you should use it”—he went with a softer approach. He presented a sample radio script to show how it would work. Then he said to the creative director, “I know this is against the rules, but I want to give you a sense of what I’m talking about. What do you think of this line? ‘Drive it, you’ll get it.’”
The creative director got it. He looked up at Lane, smiled, and said, “That’s our campaign.” The campaign sold many cars and won several advertising awards.
Alison Fragale, a professor at the University of North Carolina, is an expert on the form of powerless communication that Don Lane used effectively. Fragale finds that speech styles send signals about who’s a giver and who’s a taker. Takers tend to use powerful speech: they’re assertive and direct. Givers tend to use more powerless speech, talking with tentative markers like these:
Hesitations: “well,” “um,” “uh,” “you know”
Hedges: “kinda,” “sorta,” “maybe,” “probably,” “I think”
Disclaimers: “this may be a bad idea, but”
Tag questions: “that’s interesting, isn’t it?” or “that’s a good idea, right?”
Intensifiers: “really,” “very,” “quite”
These markers send a clear message to the audience: the speaker lacks confidence and authority. Lacking confidence is a bad thing, right?
If we break down how Don Lane pitched his idea, we can see two markers of powerless speech: a disclaimer and a tag question. His disclaimer was “I know this is against the rules, but,” and his tag question was “What do you think?�
�� Fragale shows that when people have to work closely together, such as in teams and service relationships, powerless speech is actually more influential than powerful speech.
To illustrate one of her studies, imagine that your plane has just crash-landed in the desert. You’re with your coworker, Jamie. You have to prioritize twelve items, including a flashlight and a map, in order of importance for survival. You share your rankings with Jamie, who disagrees. You’re not a fan of the flashlight. But Jamie thinks it’s critical, and decides to deliver a forceful message:
The flashlight needs to be rated higher. It is the only reliable night signaling device; also, the reflector and lens could be used to start a fire, which is another way to signal for help. Put it higher.
Jamie sounds like a taker—and probably is, since takers are inclined to give orders like this. Are you willing to listen to Jamie?
If you’re like most people, the answer is no. You’re supposed to be collaborating, and you don’t want to be told what to do, so you resist Jamie’s influence. In trying to establish dominance, Jamie has lost prestige. But what if Jamie makes the same suggestion, talking more tentatively, and adding some questions and hedges?
Do you think the flashlight should maybe be rated higher? It may be a pretty reliable night signaling device. Also, maybe the reflector and lens could be used to start a fire, which could possibly be another way to signal for help.
In Fragale’s study, people were much more receptive to this version. Powerless speech signals that Jamie is a giver. By talking tentatively, Jamie shows a willingness to defer to you, or at least take your opinion into consideration. Fragale finds that even when Jamie delivers the exact same message in the exact same tone both times, adding markers of tentative talk such as hedges, tag questions, and intensifiers earns greater respect and influence. This is why the creative director was so open to Don Lane’s idea: Lane signaled that he wasn’t trying to threaten the director’s authority. It was clear to the creative director that Lane was just trying to share a good idea, and the director knew a good idea when he saw it.*
Over time, talking tentatively paid off for Lane. He brought ideas up gently and didn’t ask for credit. “Creative people responded to this approach, and it gave me credibility when I had a creative idea worth sharing,” Lane explains. Whereas many of his peers had conflicts with creative people, Lane developed a reputation for being a rare account guy with whom creative people enjoyed working. Instead of seeing him as an outsider stepping on their toes, they saw him as a helpful contributor. They frequently requested him on projects, often saying, “He’s helping us. He’s not a typical account guy. Let’s keep him involved and give him more opportunities.” Knowing that he was generous and open, creative teams were willing to share ideas with him and welcome his input, rather than guarding their turf more closely.
Lane’s ability to contribute to creative teams attracted the attention of senior management. At an unusually early stage in his career, Lane was invited to play a key role in the world-renowned “Drivers wanted” campaign for Volkswagen. “Givers fear that they’ll become invisible,” Lane says. “But I’ve seen givers thrive because people like working with and trust them. Realizing this was a major turbo boost early in my career.” Lane was promoted more quickly than many of his peers, and he is now an executive vice president and executive director at Arnold. In the words of one creative vice president, “Don is a complete team player . . . If I have another opportunity to work with Don—I would jump at the chance.”
An analysis of tentative talk points to another reason why Dave Walton’s stutter might have helped him connect with the jury in the trade secrets trial. Hesitations, hedges, and intensifiers are built-in features of stuttering. When a jury hears Dave Walton stutter, he no longer sounds dominant and imposing. They don’t feel that he’s trying to convince them, so they lower their resistance. They become just a bit more open to being persuaded by him.
When givers use powerless speech, they show us that they have our best interests at heart. But there’s one role in which people tend to avoid talking tentatively: leadership. Not long ago, a marketing manager named Barton Hill found out why. He was leading a business unit at a financial services firm, and he was invited to interview for a major promotion to a higher-level position, where he would lead multiple business units. The interviewer opened with a softball question: tell us about your successes. Hill started talking about his team’s accomplishments, which were quite impressive.
Although Hill was the front-runner for the position, he didn’t get it. The interviewer told him he didn’t sound like a leader. “I kept using words like we and us,” Hill says. “I didn’t use enough first-person singular pronouns, like I and me. I found out later that it didn’t seem like I was a leader. He thought I didn’t drive the team’s success, and wanted someone who could.” The interviewer expected Hill to speak more assertively, and powerless communication cost him the job.
By speaking with greater speed, volume, assertiveness, and certainty, takers convince us that they know what they’re talking about. In one study conducted by psychologists in California, takers were judged by group members as more competent, but in reality, they weren’t more competent. Takers, the study’s authors report, “attain influence because they behave in ways that make them appear competent—even when they actually lack competence.”
By failing to use powerful speech in his interview, Barton Hill failed to create the impression of dominance. Yet the same powerless communication that cost him the promotion ended up earning prestige, making his teams successful. Whereas powerful communication might be effective in a one-shot job interview, in a team or a service relationship, it loses the respect and admiration of others. Psychologists in Amsterdam have shown that although group members perceive takers as highly effective leaders, takers actually undermine group performance. Speaking dominantly convinces group members that takers are powerful, but it stifles information sharing, preventing members from communicating good ideas. “Teams love it when their leader presents a work product as a collaborative effort. That’s what inspires them to contribute,” Hill reflects. “The paradox comes from people thinking an inclusive leader isn’t strong enough to lead a team, when in fact that leader is stronger, because he engenders the support of the team. People bond to givers, like electromagnetism.” Eventually, Hill left for another company, and three of his former employees approached him about joining his team. This type of loyalty has paid off in the long run: Hill’s teams have been wildly successful. He is now a managing director and global head of marketing at Citi Transaction Services, a division of more than twenty thousand people.
Of course, there’s a time and a place for leaders to use powerful speech. In a study of pizza franchises, colleagues Francesca Gino, Dave Hofmann, and I found that when most employees in a store are dutiful followers, managers are well served to speak powerfully. But when most employees are proactive, generating new ideas for cooking and delivering pizzas more efficiently, powerful speech backfires. When employees were proactive, managers who talked forcefully led their stores to 14 percent lower profits than managers who talked less assertively and more tentatively. By conveying dominance, the powerful speakers discouraged their proactive employees from contributing. When people use powerful communication, others perceive them as “preferring and pursuing individual accomplishments,” Fragale writes, “at the expense of group accomplishments.” Through talking tentatively, the powerless speakers earned prestige: they showed openness to proactive ideas that would benefit the group.
To see if this effect would hold up in a more controlled setting, my colleagues and I brought teams of people together to fold T-shirts. We instructed half of the team leaders to talk forcefully, and asked the other half to talk more tentatively. Once again, when team members were passive followers, the powerful speakers did just fine. But when team members were highly proactive, taking initiative to come up wit
h a faster way to fold T-shirts, the powerless speakers were much more effective. Proactive teams had 22 percent higher average output under leaders who spoke powerlessly than powerfully. Team members saw the powerful speakers as threatened by ideas, viewing the powerless speakers as more receptive to suggestions. Talking tentatively didn’t establish dominance, but it earned plenty of prestige. Team members worked more productively when the tentative talkers showed that they were open to advice.
To a taker, this receptivity to advice may sound like a weakness. By listening to other people’s suggestions, givers might end up being unduly influenced by their colleagues. But what if seeking advice is actually a strategy for influencing other people? When givers sit down at the bargaining table, they benefit from advice in unexpected ways.
Negotiating: Seeking Advice in the Shadow of a Doubt
In 2007, a Fortune 500 company closed a plant in the Midwest United States. One of the people to lose her position was an effervescent research scientist named Annie. The company offered Annie a transfer to the East Coast, but it would require her to give up on her education. While working full time, Annie was enrolled in a nighttime MBA program. She couldn’t afford to quit her job, and if she did, the company would no longer pay for her degree. Yet if she accepted the transfer, she wouldn’t be able to continue studying. She was in a bind, with little time and few options.
Two weeks later, something extraordinary happened: she was offered a seat on the company’s private jet, which was normally available only to top executives, with unlimited access until she finished her MBA. She accepted the transfer and spent the next nine months riding the corporate jet back and forth, twice a week, until she finished her degree. The company also paid for her rental car every week and commercial plane tickets when the corporate jet wasn’t running. How did she get the company to make such a big investment in her?