Informing Does Not Equal Influencing

In my previous article, I described the distinction between informing and influencing and emphasized the importance of not relying on information alone to persuade an audience.

So – are there any situations where “informing” does reign supreme? How about the world of science? Aren’t scientists swayed only by the weight of factually proven information?

Not necessarily – and once again we turn to the story of the University of Wisconsin psychologist Harry Harlow for an example.

In my previous article on Harlow, I described his experiments with baby monkeys who preferred a terrycloth-covered wire “mother” to an uncovered wire “mother.” As I mentioned, at the time of the experiments, Harlow faced a huge uphill battle to get his revolutionary conclusions on the importance of parental nurturing accepted by the psychology establishment – and by the public at large.

So, even in the supposedly data-driven world of science, Harry Harlow clearly understood that he needed to persuade as much as inform. And he did so in a most ingenious way that brought his experiments home to generations of people – in the scientific community and the lay community alike. As author Deborah Blum describes it:

“[Harlow] needed the surrogate [mother] to look like more than a bundle [of cloth]. It needed personality. It needed a head and a face. If monkeys were going to look at this substitute mother, it needed to look back at them. And it needed to look back at the human observers, too; it needed to mean something real to people. Harry wanted them all – not just psychologists but mothers and fathers and aunts and uncles and stepparents and grandparents – to think about connection and affection.”

At the time, many people within Harry’s scientific team resisted the idea of fabricating a monkey-like head for the terrycloth “mother,” calling it “showmanship,” something beneath a real scientist. But as one of his team members later recalled:

“So [the head] might not have been [scientifically] relevant. But it was to the outside world, because once people looked at the surrogate like a mother – made a connection to human mothers as well – then you could start talking about things like mother love.” [emphasis added]

In this way, Harry anticipated one of the key points of the Heath brothers’ SUCCES principle in the book Made to Stick: To influence people, you need to get them to care about your message. And one way to do that is to connect your message with something else they care about.

Certainly Harry’s act of “showmanship” wouldn’t have been enough to persuade people if he didn’t have solid data to support his message (again, consistent with the Heaths’ point about creating Credible messages). But the point is that Harry knew that, without connecting his research to something the lay person could relate to and cared about, the data itself wouldn’t have had the impact he wanted to make on the wider world.

REFLECTIONS FOR THE YES! LEADER

A Yes! Leader flexes his perspective in order to see the world through others’ eyes. In your own leadership practice, what would happen if you were to:

·         First inquire about others’ concerns, motivators, and values rather than immediately try to sway them to a certain point of view?

·         Think about creative things you can do to really bring your message home to others in a concrete way?

·         Research examples (from business, history, and elsewhere) of people who successfully translated an abstract concept into a concrete communication that connected with people “where they lived”?