In the prior post, “Increase Tips with Persuasion,” I outlined a Cue-based approach for servers to increase their tips.  That post describes simple action examples of the CLARCCS Cues.  The nice feature is that the information goes beyond the common and widely used practices that focus upon various Liking and Authority (Expertise) moves many servers already know and use.  I’ll extend my thinking about persuasion and tips in this post by thinking not about a specific persuasion play, but the strategy and planning for persuasion plays.

A Persuasion Strategy is not a particular Cue or play, but rather a way to organize and plan how you do plays.  Think about three:  Teams, Scripts, and Ding Dongs.

1.  Consider a team approach to all of this.  Coordinate tactics with other servers in your immediate area and help each other.  Remember the Comparison play?  Well, when one server sees a couple having a great experience, that server tells all the other servers that there’s a great Comparison Model in the room.  Then in a coordinated fashion that server goes over to the Great Experience couple and makes a noisy observation about “Gee, you are having a great time!” or “Gee, looks like this is going great!”  Other servers in the area now have an obvious positive model and they can make the Comparison play.

A team approach obviously requires coordination and cooperation from several different people.  You also have management in on this.  Team Persuasion does not require a financial investment, but does require time for people to sit down with each other and think about this.  Better organizations do this as a matter of course.  Before servers hit the floor, everyone gets together for a few minutes and goes over the latest dishes, prices, policy changes, etc.  We’re just giving you a new agenda item for these planning meetings.

I’d recommend that everyone read and discuss the CLARRCS Cues, then talk about specific examples they’ve seen of the Cues happening in the bar or restaurant.  Once everyone understands the Cue and how it works, then start developing Team plans.  It could start with the “Greet and Seat” function where folks doing this set up persuasion plays with key phrases or observations of customer characteristics.  This gets shared with the service function that takes orders, serves, and bills.  And, it concludes with the “Bye, Y’All” function.  Think about it.  The opportunities are boundless.

A team approach obviously requires coordination and cooperation from several different people.  You also have management in on this.  Team Persuasion does not require a financial investment, but does require time for people to sit down with each other and think about this.  Better organizations do this as a matter of course.  Before servers hit the floor, everyone gets together for a few minutes and goes over the latest dishes, prices, policy changes, etc.  We’re just giving you a new agenda item for these planning meetings.

Here’s an example torn from the pages of a practical persuasion project done in 1995.  A young woman taking my persuasion course saw the value of using CLARRCS Cues in her part time job.  She’d organized the West Virginia Bikini Team, composed of four fit, shapely, and attractive women who worked the High Street party bars in Morgantown.

Susan’s team contracted with various beer distributors and worked bars with her team promoting new products.  As part of a class assignment, she added a health and safety behavior to the team’s for-profit function.  Her team received training in alcohol management and during their regular work, they used persuasion Cues to get drunk customers to take a taxi home rather than try and drive.  Here’s a pamphlet they handed out as customers arrived on the scene and before they’d started drinking.

And some people wonder why WVU is always one of the top party schools in those notorious surveys.  We work at it.

If you’ve got good eyes and a high resolution screen you can make out the hook line Susan and her team used to organize things:

Party to Survive!  Don’t Drink and Drive!

Susan wrote a paper on this and described the various Cues the team employed, plus all the coordination the team used to keep each other informed about each other’s knowledge and action.  If one woman spotted a customer who appeared to be past the legal limit, she might hand the customer off to another team member who would use one Cue.  If that didn’t work, another team member would glide by a bit later.  She detailed how they assessed the persuasion campaign and provided anecdotal evidence.  She also included a lot of photographs and posters of the Team in action and frankly, my mind’s a haze after that, and I don’t recall the exact statistics, but I was impressed!

The crucial lessons from this example are two:  1) plan it and 2) communicate while doing it.  The Bikini Team got on the same page with CLARRCS Cues, knew what they were, how they operated, and, more importantly, how the Team wanted to employ them.  Then, during the event, the Team engaged in a lot of on-task communication sharing with each other key information that helped everyone run persuasion plays.

Whether you wear a bikini or a suit when you serve, get the point.  Team work makes Cues more effective.

2.  Think about making simple Tip Scripts.  A script is a written sequence of dialog and action that describes a persuasion scene.  You make make detailed scripts with Sighs, Gasps, and Worried Looks with instructions for movements, props, and lighting effects.  You can make a simple Script with just a brief line describe each CLARRCS Cue.  The crucial thing here is that you write it down first.

Scripts make you think about your work and how you can make persuasion a routine part of it, just like your greeting, recitation of specials, and any other standardized palaver.  You can practice your Script before you execute it.  If you’ve written it down, you can erase, underline, or modify it after you’ve tried it out.

But write it down.  Begin with . . .

. . . a customer enters my station . . .

And go from there.

3.  Something I have not found in the research lit (but I’ve read ideas in popular press) is what play to make at the crucial moment:  When the customer is paying the bill.  That’s when your tip is on the line and we know that the closer you play the Cue to the desired behavior the more impact the Cue has.  And given that we’re dealing with Low WATT processors, we are talking about just a few minutes here.  You need to develop a killer Cue near the end of the meal, but just moments before the check arrives.

A smart strategy here would be to use a preplanned set of Cues during service and associate each with a Ding Dong.  The Ding Dong is, of course, classical conditioning where a previously neutral signal is able to elicit a response as in that most famous of instances, Pavlov’s dog, whom Professor Pavlov conditioned to salivate when a bell rang.  As a server you could do several of the previous Cues and each time you enact them successfully, you offer a catch phrase like, “This is good for you!” or “Happy to be here” or “That makes it right!” or some other phrase that is friendly, simple, and functionally meaningless.  Then when you provide the bill, you offer the same catch phrase.

Assuming you have delivered good service that produced a positive attitude in your customers with each Cue, that catch phrase acts as an accumulator that adds up each instance into one memory – the server’s doing a good job.  Then when you present the bill and run the Ding Dong, you should trigger that positive accumulation across all the Cues.

Let’s hit the Outro with this long post.

1.  CLARCCS Cues provides a wider base of operations for servers.  Learn the Cues.

2.  While any one Cue may be effective, your persuasion plays become more powerful when you combine them in a strategy.  Whether you use Teams, Scripts, or a Ding Dong Close, you can plan ahead to reap largers tips.

3.  Sit down and write this out.  Think about it.  Talk with another server.  Plot. Plan.  Strategize.  Remember the Rule:

Persuasion is strategic or it is not.

How do we understand the persuasive impact of the situation upon the key figure in this photo?

The President is participating in the ceremony that honors war dead returning home.  Is this a facile photo op? (Everything a President says or does is always considered first through the lens of calculation.)  Did he instead willingly put himself into this painful situation?  (Even Presidents choose for themselves.)  Consider the attribution and dissonance explanations here.

Attribution first. When Mr. Obama asks himself, “Why did I attend this ceremony?” does he provide an external or an internal attribution?

Does he feel the press of externalities (everyone expects this; if I underplay it, it will play bigger; it’s duty, just part of the job description; my family expects me to do this)?  If yes, then he’s making an external attribution or assigning the causality for his action to outside forces (the “situation”).

Does he feel the press of internalities (I want to honor these citizens; I love my country; I owe everyone the symbolic meaning of my attendance)?  If yes, then he’s making an internal attribution or assigning the causality for his action to inside forces (the “person”).

Certainly there is a mix, but for something this intense, personal, and painful, one category of attribution probably dominates.  And he may have entered the situation with one attribution, but left it with another.  But, this situation must have had psychological meaning and impact for Mr. Obama and he must have made his attributional decision.

Then, let’s mix in the painful emotional consequences of this situation.  One tends to think that most people and probably the President would find this situation emotionally intense, conflicted, and difficult.  Moving around, through, and with several flag draped coffins in the presence of other uniformed, solemn, and serious men and women in the dead of night on a large, open, and windy airfield is not a joyful occasion.

Under the psychological terminology of dissonance, this is an “aversive consequence.”  It hurts.  It hurts worse than a blow or a wound.  It strikes at your fundamental beliefs – the meaning of life, the meaning of death, questions about afterlife.

Now, how do we understand this?

If Mr. Obama walked away from this event with strong external attributions, it’s likely that the event activated and strengthened his existing beliefs and values.  The ceremony triggered deep elaboration over basic beliefs, reinforcing those beliefs and connecting them to the symbols and meaning of the moment.

If Mr. Obama, however, walked away with strong internal attributions, he put himself on the dissonance path, taking personal responsibility for a painful consequence.  If so, then his beliefs will change in the direction of the meaning of the event.  He walked with warriors and marched in their ceremony.  The meaning of the moment moves Mr. Obama’s deepest beliefs in that direction.

I cannot know the President’s mind.  I can only observe action and situation and think with the concepts of persuasion.  How Mr. Obama responds to this moment only he knows and since he’s human like the rest of us, even then, he probably understands some, but not all of his reaction.  It could visibly play out in his decisions and actions in the Long War.

Persuasion is the psychology of everyday life.  We persuade others, others persuade us, and sometimes we persuade ourselves.

Persuasion certainly provides an interesting way to think about ourselves and others.

In a prior post I noted the persuasive value and effect of self affirmation.  Today we can extend our knowledge of this play.  Consider first as good a description of a concept as you’re going to read.

”Self-affirmation theory begins with the premise that people are motivated to maintain the perceived worth and integrity of the self and examines how people respond to information and events that threaten a valued self-image.”

Now, stand on the log of “motivated to maintain perceived worth and integrity of the self” and let persuasion gravity pull you to the ground.  A persuasion play almost always threatens the receivers “perceived worth” and “integrity of the self.”  A play makes at least a request and sometimes a demand for change and implies the receiver has been thinking, feeling, or acting “incorrectly” and needs to change to remedy the flaw.  Any concept that helps persuasion confront the inherent threat to worth and integrity contained in a play is a Good Thing.

We know that self affirming moves act as WATTage dimmer switches that accomplishes two goals:  First, receivers go High WATT and second, they are much more amenable to hearing that request for change.  Today’s research finding extends our knowledge past this very helpful news.

David K. Sherman, Geoffrey L. Cohen, Leif D. Nelson, A. David Nussbaum, Debra P. Bunyan, and Julio Garcia conducted several studies with self affirmation that tested two important extensions to the idea.  First, they used priming (that below conscious awareness message) to produce self affirmation effects.  Second, they manipulated receiver awareness of self affirmation and found that such awareness diminshes the effectiveness of the play.

Let’s consider each point.

First, priming is always a useful way to understand how something works.  If you can prime something (have people do a word scramble or sentence completion task that activates self affirmation; present subliminal self affirmations) and get the usual effect, then you know that the process involves the preconscious or unconscious mind.  You do not not have to know that you are actually doing the thing – in this case self affirming – to get the effect of it.  Prior research had manipulated self affirmation out in the open and all the participants knew what they were doing while they were doing it.  Now we know that “what you don’t see is what you get.”  Self affirmation can operate subliminally.

Second, the results of “awareness” are one of those constant findings with many persuasion concepts.  When people see the trick, understand the manipulation, watch that man behind the curtain, the effect is reduced.  Thus, if people realize that you are trying to make them feel better about themselves, the persuasive impact will moderate.  Now, in the prior studies, participants knew that they were thinking positive thoughts about the self, but they do not realize that this was aimed at changing them.  These awareness tests from Sherman et al. precisely did aim at making sure the participants knew everything that was going on.

Now, let’s color outside the lines and go way beyond the data.

The greater the change you want from the receiver, the greater the self affirmation you should first run.  You might actually get traction on intensely strong attitudes, beliefs, values, intentions, etc. if you first provide intensely strong self affirmation.  Consider cognitions about abortion, school prayer, or gay rights.  Typically with people who hold strong beliefs on these topics, all you have to do is say a word like “abortion” or “prayer” and there’s no hope of persuasion only a long shouting match.  The results from self affirmation suggest that if you first got your target to engage in words and actions that affirm the self (talk about heroic or deeply unselfish acts you’ve done in the past; talk about how you stood up at personal risk to defend someone under attack), you might actually be able to engage relatively Objective High WATT processing and proceed to strong Arguments on the Central Route.

The art of self affirmation lies in the source’s skill at eliciting the affirmation from the receiver.  These research studies provide great examples of manipulation, but occur in a lab where you can easily ask people to do these things or have them do things with the aid of computers loaded with the appropriate software.  “Here, complete this values scale.”  Or “Here, write an essay about an important value.”  You’ve got to know how to ask the right questions of your receivers to pull from them a natural and unsuspecting statement of affirmation.  You have to build a comfortable relationship as quickly as you can so that you can naturally ask your receiver to discuss key values they hold.

Consider the Rules for doing self affirmation as a WATTage dimmer switch.

All persuasion is local.  You need to understand the particular context with this receiver right now.  Use that local knowledge to setup and execute the play.

Persuasion is strategic or it is not.  The self affirmation play is an indirect move, a setup that proceeds the actually tool that will create the change.  Instead of just launching into the Arguments, you have to first maneuver the receiver into a state of mind that permits discussion about key values and beliefs.  Only after that setup can you move to the direct and obvious presentation of Arguments.

Let’s get to the Outro.

1.  Self affirmation can operate as a skillful WATTage dimmer switch that reduces defensive responding.

2.  It can operate through priming or subliminal means.

3.  If receivers see the “trick” then it will not work.

4.  This is a great series of studies by Sherman et al. and if you’re interested in doing excellent persuasion research I highly recommend the paper to you.

I warned you about it.

“WASHINGTON — The moment a novel strain of swine flu emerged in Mexico last spring, President Obama instructed his top advisers that his administration would not be caught flat-footed in the event of a deadly pandemic. Now, despite months of planning and preparation, a vaccine shortage is threatening to undermine public confidence in government, creating a very public test of Mr. Obama’s competence.”

As you probably know, the Obama administration publicly announced several weeks ago that 120 million doses of the vaccine would be easily and widely available making the vaccine convenient.  The Administration then engaged in a deliberate and comprehensive persuasion campaign to get people in favor of getting the vaccines.  The problem arises because about 20 million doses are now available when the Administration confidently declared 120 million would be.  That’s an effect size difference that requires no statistician to compute.

The article further details the extensive White House planning for this vaccine campaign seeing it as an opportunity to demonstrate how Obama could run things better than that much derided, despised, and discredited former occupant.  Obama made the topic a regular part of his security briefings, convened panels of experts to advise him, made serious study of past epidemics and vaccines, and in general demonstrated an excellent grad school approach to the problem.

Yet through it all, and as I’ve noted, the Obama campaign managed to inflame and scare large segments of the population while at the same time over promising deliverables.  Add to the mix the confident, professional, and tone deaf risk communication skills of Secretary Sebelius and you’ve got a problem.  The Times notes,

“But the administration, and in particular Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, have come in for strong criticism from those who say they created a false sense of expectations with overly optimistic predictions about the availability of the vaccine.”

There are at least two major issues in this case.  First, consider the over optimistic control beliefs by Obama and his Administration.  Second, reconsider the poor risk communication performance by key sources, especially Sebelius.

Smart people believe they can study problems and develop smart solutions that will work.  That’s what they learn in grad school whether as lawyers, engineers, physicians, or scientists.  Obama seems particularly well trained in that regard.  Unfortunately, the functioning of 300 million citizens in America is not as well understood as they teach you in grad school.  Further, a detailed, comprehensive, and highly predictable description of epidemics and vaccines also eludes us.  Yet, if you’re trained in the grad school model, there is no limit to your knowledge and research.

Except when you hit the wall like Obama just did.

(I hope he’s coming to realize the same limits with Afghanistan planning.  There is no smart, correct solution.  You just bang at the problem as well as you can and try to survive the beating you’re going to get while doing it.  Perhaps he’ll learn he needs to rally support for the effort and not to promise surefire goals and aims statements.)

And, the second concern with less than stellar risk communication:  Obama is held to be Persuasion Central, another Great Communicator, and now this communication mishap.  Sebelius is a politician and a governor.  She is not a risk communicator.  Mr. Obama is a politician and a Senator now President.  He, too, is not a risk communicator.  This requires a special skill set and Obama needs to learn that soon.

Or else everyone will find this funny and accurate.

Remember the Rules!

More is the enemy of less.

Power corrupts persuasion.

All bad persuasion is sincere.

If you can’t succeed, don’t try.

It’s about the other guy, stupid.

All people always resist significant change.

Persuaders can either be famous or effective, but not both.

The New York Times is reporting that Mr. Obama will accept the primary focus of the McChrystal report and send more troops to Afghanistan.  Of course, this is just a news report and not from the horse’s mouth, not that Mr. Obama is a horse, but, just a metaphor, folks.  I find this most interesting from the NYT:

“WASHINGTON — President Obama’s advisers are focusing on a strategy for Afghanistan aimed at protecting about 10 top population centers, administration officials said Tuesday, describing an approach that would stop short of an all-out assault on the Taliban while still seeking to nurture long-term stability.”

While I’ve predicted that Mr. Obama will follow essentially the same strategy from Mr. Bush (the facts on the ground, folks), and that he will employ a variety of persuasion theories and concepts to move his base, I never figured that Dave Letterman was part of it.

The Top 10 Population Centers?

It’s possible that a Top 10 message structure might actually produce persuasion effects as either a dimmer switch for WATTage or as a simple Cue.  If Top 10 is a dimmer switch then Argument quality matters.  I’m not sure if the ten largest communities in Afghanistan need more American troops.  My understanding is that the conflict is more rural than urban, so the 10 largest population centers do not contain the strong Arguments.  Thus, it appears that this approach, while consistent with the McChrystal report, is being used as a persuasion Cue.  Hey, if it hits the Top 10 it must be good.

Look to see how anti-war and the political left respond to this.