Persuasion, Manipulation or Just Good Sense?

My book, Chief Life Officer (CLO), published by Morgan James, will be coming out within the next few months, and I will be doing a seminar in April called, “Create Unsinkable Relation-ships.” That makes this month perfect for a discussion on managing people and relationships.
Many times in my private practice and in my business consulting, when I first start teaching behavioral management, my clients stop me and ask, “Isn’t that manipulation?” The honest answer is “Yes.” The difference between us hard core behaviorists and the rest of the world, though, is that we engage in the psychology of persuasion mindfully and openly.
Nobody does anything that they are not being “paid” to do. Think of “payment” as meaning anything that a person wants, whether it is money, food, attention, esteem, warm and fuzzy feelings, power, sex, fun activities, etc. Every single behavior we engage in has some end. So every time you interact with another person, you are “getting paid.” And if they are interacting back, they too are getting paid. Unfortunately, if we leave all of this to chance, we end up with unthinking and mindless “payments.” For example, if a woman is nagging her teenage son to take the garbage out, the unspoken message is that the obnoxious nagging will stop when the garbage is taken out. If the mother is very smart, she will stop nagging, and start delivering praise, immediately at the point when the son engages in the desired behavior. Much to the chagrin of us behaviorists, however, so much of the time we see this mother’s uncontrolled emotions dictate her behavior. She continues to rant about why she has to ask the son so many times, so vehemently, to get him to do a simple chore, etc., etc. Take this scenario into the workplace and count the number of managers you have seen doing this same type of senseless ranting. They are trying to “manipulate,” and maybe for a good cause, like productivity, but they are just not any good at it.
The question becomes, “Since behavioral management is not rocket science, why does it not work all the time?” The important word here is “why.” The hows are easy, dating all the way back to the old expression, “You get more flies with honey than with vinegar.” Everyone knows how to praise, ignore and/or punish. But add to the mix our emotions and our hidden motivations and it becomes necessary to delve into the whys. When we do not engage in sensible behavioral manipulation, it is because we want something else more. For example, the mother and the manager in the previous examples want to be “right” and exercise power more than they want successful endings. So no matter how many times I run the “behavioral drills” with them, they will not do the thing that gets the job done (the garbage taken out, the project finished) until they want peace, harmony and results more than they want to be right.
It is amazing what happens when people admit and then stay mindfully aware of their real motivations. They transform from randomly operating, mindless, would-be people manipulators to sensible, mindful, successful behavior modifiers. The environment is peaceful and everyone is happier. For example, if we ramp up the mother’s intelligence one more step, she stops nagging altogether and implements some consequences. She would say, and then abide by the rule, “I will give you one reminder when the garbage needs to be taken out for two more weeks. If you take it out with just the one reminder, you can go out with your friends (watch TV, play your game station). After the two weeks, you must remember to do the chore without a reminder. No other activities will be allowed unless you comply.” Simple, really.
The principle is the same at home, at work, anywhere. Make sure that the desired behavior and any undesired behaviors are defined in terms that everyone understands. Refrain from ambiguous terms, like “be good” or “work quickly.” Measure what is occurring presently. For a lighthearted example, one of my husband’s chores in the morning is to open the blinds that cover the sliding glass door in our dining room. He started forgetting to do this for a while and I mentioned it. He insisted that my estimates of his failures were exaggerated. The simple solution in our psychological world is called “charting.” It is truly the only way for everyone to know exactly what is happening and to then know if it changes when some new program is implemented. The beauty of charting is that research shows that it alone improves performance by about 20%. Now, when you are charting the behavior of a psychologist, who finds being charted one of the most embarrassing things that could happen to him, the behavior actually improves by about 95 percent without ever having to introduce a rewards program. Just to reiterate the “payment theory,” though, review what happened here. Until I mentioned the charting threat, my husband found the payment better for racing out of the house without doing the blinds, believing that he was remembering to do the blinds most of the time. When there was no consequence, he was “home (or actually off to work) free.” As soon as I started charting, though, his pride got “short changed,” dashing out of the house did not seem to pay off quite as much, and opening the blinds carried a larger payoff.
As an interesting and revealing exercise, stop and think about what you are paying people to do. And keep in mind Rule #1 about behavior: avoidance of pain is the foremost motivator in the world. You may be doing things that scare people or cause them discomfort. They will avoid you then. You may be tempted, though, to use the first rule in order to coerce behavior, threatening people with some kind of pain or punishment to make them behave. If you are so tempted, remember Rule #2: Objects and people that cause pain can also create awful side effects, such as frustration, anger and a desire for revenge. Fear tactics may work to get someone “off the starting block,” but they need to be followed up immediately with positive motivators. If someone in your life or someone you manage is doing something that you hate, ask yourself if you have any part in the payment of this behavior. Are you enabling? If so, get some help to restructure the relationship.
Behavioral manipulation goes on every minute of every day and nobody is immune. So why not do it right? If you are managing someone’s behavior for the good of the system and you are doing it in such a way that everyone, including the “manipulated,” benefit, then be proud and do it mindfully, honestly and with a free conscience. And then you get to graduate from manipulation to management or leadership.