He sought many things from his act of terror, but one was notoriety. And that is why you will never hear me mention his name. He is a terrorist, he is a criminal, he is an extremist—but he will, when I speak, be nameless. And to others, I implore you, speak the names of those who were lost rather than the name of the man who took them. He may have sought notoriety, but we in New Zealand will give him nothing, not even his name.56
By denying the terrorist a name known around the world, Prime Minister Ardern thwarted what likely motivated his act of hatred: the desperate need for self-esteem.57 She also took away his control of the narrative by focusing it not on his horror, but on others’ decency and worth.
Morality
Can someone influence us by giving us a way to feel morally upright? As Ardern demonstrated, it’s possible, because virtue—goodness and adherence to high standards of right and wrong—figures significantly in our pursuit of safety and self-esteem. Moral philosophy, sociology, biology, and evolutionary psychology provide at least three, not mutually exclusive, explanations for why we place so much value on morality.
The first explanation is that morality is born out of necessity and interdependence: We depend on one another to find refuge from danger and suffering, and our individual well-being is intertwined with the well-being of others.58 We value virtuous conduct because adhering to moral norms and conventions keeps us safe from the dangers of both the natural world and of a social world in which the only law is the “war of all against all.”59 According to this view, virtuous conduct has instrumental value.
The second explanation is evolutionary: An innate moral sense emerged and took hold in human nature because of its role in natural selection. The moral element of cooperative, prosocial behavior, for example, likely evolved in the context of shared infant care: If you help me protect and raise my children and I reciprocate, we both stand a better chance of keeping them alive and passing on our genes.60 Like the instrumental explanation for the value of morality, the evolutionary view is “greatly complicated by the ultimately self-serving quality of most forms of altruism,” as biologist Edward O. Wilson puts it.61 But ultimately selfish though it may be, morality has evolved to be at the core of our view of ourselves and our worth. We apply moral sentiments, such as sympathy and inclusivity, beyond our kin; and when our conduct diverges from what we consider moral, we feel the need to justify the deviation to ourselves, as well as to others.62
The third explanation sees morality as the highest expression of our humanity. To be moral is to be fully human. In Greek philosophy, for example, Epicurus—narrowly remembered for proclaiming that the highest goal of human life is the enhancement of pleasure and the reduction of pain—believed that it is impossible to live pleasurably “without living prudently and honorably and justly, and also without living courageously and temperately and magnanimously, and without making friends, and without being philanthropic.”63 In Aristotelean virtue ethics, living in accordance to virtue is necessary for human flourishing.64 In the modern philosophy of Immanuel Kant, being moral is a categorical imperative (that is, a rule of conduct that is unconditional for all of us), because, unlike all other beings, humans can use reason to articulate moral principles that have universal and intrinsic value.65 Despite their differences, these bodies of thought are congruent in one respect: People develop moral standards, and value adhering to them as an ideal of human fulfilment. Moreover, these moral principles appear in remarkably similar ways across epochs and traditions. In the philosophy of Confucius and Mencius, for example, rén (benevolence, compassion, and humanity), yì (honesty and righteousness), lĭ (propriety and good manners), xin (faithfulness and integrity), and zhi (knowledge and wisdom) are considered the five constant virtues.66
Whether being moral has instrumental, evolutionary, or intrinsic value, the individuals, organizations, institutions, and communities that enable us to develop and assert our moral sense can influence us, because we all strive to act in accordance with our moral principles and, when we fail to do so, we risk feeling uneasy, misaligned, or downright ashamed.67 We are drawn to groups that reflect what we value because we wish to associate ourselves with those values and consequently see ourselves as virtuous. In the realm of consumer behavior, brands, organizations, and leaders can gain or lose power because they align or fail to align with contemporary moral values.
Appealing to moral principles to mobilize people for change is also a universal source of power. If you think back to social change icons like Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, and Mother Teresa or, more recently, Malala Yousafzai, their ideals are what enabled them to influence others. This is also how, in 2019, sixteen-year-old Greta Thunberg’s Fridays for Future mobilized an estimated 4 million people in 163 countries to march, protest, and join strikes for climate action.68 But while moral appeals are powerful, they are not always virtuous. Painting “other” individuals or groups or nations as “immoral” is a tried-and-true strategy for mobilizing people. As Edward O. Wilson cleverly put it, “Human beings are consistent in their codes of honor, but endlessly fickle with reference to whom the codes apply.”69
Although the desire to be moral is universal, how highly each of us values and cultivates our moral self varies greatly.70 For some, the inordinate love of money or the desire to dominate crushes any aspiration to be virtuous. There is not much moral about the behavior of those who profited from fossil fuels for decades while knowing that their impact would pose an existential threat to humankind. For others, by contrast, morality is valued above all else. Think about all those resisting fascist occupation during World War II, the student protesters in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, and all who have died throughout the ages to uphold justice and freedom from tyranny. Unsurprisingly, people who see morality as important to their identity are less likely to use power for self-interested reasons.71
As is the case with status, affiliation, and achievement, the criteria we use to define morality are subject to social construction and interpretation. The nineteenth-century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche saw morality not as a timeless, objective truth, but rather as the product of cultural and historical circumstances.72 For example, we still embrace Aristotle’s cardinal virtues—prudence, temperance, courage, and justice—but we cannot condone his justification of slavery and rejection of human equality. Foot-binding was for centuries a marker of status for aristocratic Chinese families, but it eventually became seen as a barbaric and immoral practice. And while fur was a marker of social class and high style until the 1980s, in the 1990s its symbolic value began to plummet in the U.S. thanks to the public activism of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA),73 which tapped into people’s moral compass to transform it from a symbol of elegance to a symbol of cruelty.
DISCOVERING WHAT, EXACTLY, OTHER PEOPLE WANT
We have seen that people fulfill the basic human needs for safety and self-esteem in many ways: material possessions, status, achievement, affiliation, autonomy, and morality are all valued resources (as shown in the figure on page 58). But we have also seen that these resources are not equally compelling to every person, at every moment in time, or in every context. So, while these commonalities give us essential insights into what people value and why, knowing what, exactly, someone else wants often requires careful observation of their situation. Only then can you know whether your power hinges on giving them a badge of honor, a pot of gold, a measure of autonomy, a sense of virtue, or something else altogether.
A FRAMEWORK TO UNDERSTAND WHAT PEOPLE VALUE
To illustrate, let us tell you a story about Ning.74 A native of China, he accepted a position as a strategy advisor at a large Australian enterprise after receiving his MBA. His assignment—to improve the lackluster performance of the organization’s call centers—was a challenge, because despite his seemingly lofty title, he had no formal authority over the call-center manager or agents, nor did he have much knowledge about what motivated their behavior and how to change it. One thing he did k
now, though: Morale at call centers is always a major issue.
“Nobody ever calls in to say, ‘Hey, your service is working wonders, I love it!’ Callers are almost always angry,” he told us.75 “These agents hear people yell at them 24/7. You’re constantly fearful of yet another tense, unpleasant call; and you feel pretty crappy about yourself when you can’t solve the caller’s problem and make them happy—which is often. It’s no surprise that absenteeism and turnover are very high.”
Ning felt for the call-center agents. It was already clear to him that they were sorely lacking safety and self-esteem. Hard to feel safe when another screaming customer is always around the corner, and managers from headquarters regularly come in announcing job cuts. Hard to have high self-esteem when you’re paid very little for doing alienating work in a cubicle. Employees were miserable, and when Ning came to us for advice on how best to succeed in his new job, he was determined to figure out something to make their lives better.
Ning knew that his ability to make a positive difference depended on being able to understand what the call-center employees needed and delivering the resources they valued most. But some of those valued resources, like higher pay, weren’t an option because he had no control over them. What else, then, might these people want that he could give them?
To learn what the agents valued, he began visiting one of the centers, mindful that the people he met were suspicious of anyone from headquarters. “The moment I walked in,” Ning said, “everybody stopped talking; pin-drop silence.” He responded by adjusting his approach. He started spending every Wednesday there, working on his laptop at an empty cubicle on the main floor instead of asking agents about their work.
From his perch on the main floor, he noticed immediately that visual barriers around the sides and front of the cubicles made the agents feel alone while fending off callers. When Ning asked whether those barriers could be removed, HR at first refused, citing the confidential customer information on the agents’ screens. They relented, however, when he quickly pointed out that privacy screens on the agent’s monitors would address that concern, and high-quality headsets would protect agents from the sounds of calls around them. “All of a sudden, people were able to see each other, make eye contact, feel that their colleagues are right there.” It was a simple way to feed their need for safety and affiliation.
Noticing that the more formally he dressed, the more nervous people became, Ning also took to wearing jeans and a T-shirt like everyone else. As the agents became more relaxed around him, they started to feel bad that he always sat by himself and nobody talked to him. Soon enough, they invited him to join their lunches. “The first time it was very weird,” Ning recalled. “People didn’t want to say anything, so I started talking to them about my life, the problems I was having. Once they realized that I had problems similar to theirs, they started opening up.”
These conversations immediately made it clear that the agents found no purpose in their work—the job was nothing to them but a paycheck. But they were passionate about their second jobs and the volunteer activities they were involved in: a theater troupe, a dairy farm, a family bakery, an animal rescue. Ning thought about what he was hearing and came up with an ingenious idea: Why not replace the news shown on the cafeteria TV with photos and videos of the agents’ activities outside the call center? At first, he had to beg for submissions. But once he put together the first slideshow, the photos and videos poured in. Agents who couldn’t find their sense of worth in the call center found it by sharing their achievements, loved ones, and friends with their colleagues.
As the agents became more forthcoming about the problems they encountered at work, Ning took notes, keeping track of every single issue they mentioned, big and small. The callback information in a script they were required to follow was one of the irritants. While the script promised a call within two business days, Australia’s holiday schedule, which varies across its states and territories, often shrank the timeframe to one day, making it harder for the agents to solve the customer’s issue. Ning heard about the issue at lunch one Wednesday, and he had the authority to change the script; but revising the text had to be done at headquarters. Ning went back to his hotel room, called the corporate office where he had built a great network, and by lunchtime the next day, he was able to tell the agents, “The script has changed. You can go online right now and check. It’s done.” He also told them what, exactly, he had been doing to start solving the other issues they had brought up, and when he expected to resolve them.
The agents were impressed: “Holy shit. You’re efficient!” Without missing a beat, Ning replied, “That’s what I’m here for. Now, tell me, how can I help you more?” The floodgates opened because the agents no longer feared the emissary from headquarters who boosted their self-esteem by getting them the resources they needed to do their job well. In just six months, their self-reported engagement, empowerment, autonomy, and satisfaction all went up by 27 percent. Management was equally thrilled, because the call-center’s productivity doubled! Ning’s approach was so successful that the company asked him to do his magic at every one of the country’s call centers.
EARNING PEOPLE’S TRUST TO UNCOVER THEIR NEEDS
Ning navigated his challenging circumstances beautifully. At first, he had the title but not the power to influence call-center employees. But by figuring out what they valued that he did have access to, and finding clever ways to deliver those resources, he gained the power he needed to create the change he aspired to.
What made Ning’s accomplishments even more impressive is that he had to overcome massive skepticism and downright suspicion. As his trial by fire demonstrates, even when you know to ask people what they need, they don’t always tell you. Ning knew that he needed to gain the agents’ trust if he really wanted to understand their needs. He also realized that they were sizing him up. Across cultures and contexts, people judge other individuals and groups on two criteria: competence and warmth.76
Competence encompasses our perception of a person’s efficiency, skills, and ability. Warmth refers to our perception of a person’s sincerity, honesty, and benevolence. Warmth is trust in someone’s intentions; competence is trust in someone’s ability to act on their intentions. We pay a lot of attention to the warmth and competence of the people we interact with because they offer safety. If I can trust you to look out for me (and not stab me in the back), I feel safe. And if you can deliver the goods and not leave me in the lurch, I feel safer yet.
Warmth and competence also feed our self-esteem. People who have good intentions toward us make us feel respected and cared for; and if they respect and care for us, we feel worthy of their benevolence. Surrounding ourselves with competent people makes us more competent, too, which also increases our self-worth. It’s no wonder that these two attributes account for the lion’s share of our interpersonal perceptions.
Ning understood that, to help the agents, he needed them to trust him, both for his intentions and his ability to act on them. He also intuited that he had to establish his good intentions first, because he knew he was perceived as an outsider (as a Chinese national in Australia) and as someone to fear (since he came from corporate headquarters). While people value both competence and warmth in their colleagues, warmth rises to the top when people are forced to make tradeoffs.77 Given a choice between a competent jerk (a colleague who is skilled but not very nice) and a lovable fool (one with below-average expertise but warm and good-hearted), most people choose the lovable fool.78 We avoid working with jerks no matter how competent they are, and we value every bit of competence we can get out of lovable fools.
Ideally, of course, we’d like to have both warmth and competence. But at the margins, giving people more reassurance as to your good intentions and moral character makes you a more attractive work partner than competence does (provided a minimal level of both, as is typically the case in organizations that select people based on ability and interpersonal skills). You might th
ink that in highly competitive and profit-driven industries (such as consulting, investment banking, and private equity), or in technically demanding professions (such as surgery, software development, and the military), competence would override warmth. But we find the same dynamic across industries.
This is what Ning got so right. To overcome the suspicion of the call-center personnel, he used what social psychologists tell us are the most potent sources of interpersonal liking: familiarity (by plopping himself on the call-center floor right next to the other agents), and similarity (by showing that he and the agents had a lot more in common than met the eye).79 And he did so genuinely with a real desire to improve their working conditions. Once his benevolence was established and the call-center agents felt that they could confide in Ning, he was relentless in demonstrating his ability to act on his intentions, his competence. He attacked their issues head-on, fast, leveraging his contacts at headquarters and delivering for the agents, over and over. He became the lovable star everybody wanted to work with.
What we have constructed through this chapter is a roadmap to understanding which resources matter most to others at a given moment in time. The first step is to uncover what someone values in their context: Money or status? Friendship and supportive relationships or a feeling of competence and progress? A sense of autonomy or a desire to feel virtuous? You can count on most, if not all, of these to be relevant to some degree in most situations. The second step is to identify who controls access to these valued resources. Ning was brilliant at uncovering what the call-center employees wanted, but he was equally clever about figuring out how to get access to those resources and deliver them to the call-center agents. How can we discern who controls access to the requisite valued resources, and why, in any given setting? What follows are the tools required to map the distribution of power in any context by identifying who, in that environment, holds the keys to accessing what people value.
Power, for All Page 7