Ben talks with Lee Carter, author of Persuasion: Convincing Others When Facts Don’t Seem to Matter.
Lee has spent nearly twenty years advising and helping the world's most well-known companies and she shares her secrets to persuading anyone, at work and in life.
Whether it's convincing an employer you are right for the job, a customer that your product is the best, or your closed-minded uncle that good people can disagree, it takes the art--and science--of persuasion to move forward.
Among the counter intuitive lessons you'll learn:
* It's not enough to understand the person you're talking to--you must truly empathize with them (yes, even them).
* Logic alone doesn't work. Stories and emotions are what move us most.
* When communicating in a crisis, our first instinct is almost always wrong.
To learn more about Lee Carter visit, https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/576098/persuasion-by-lee-hartley-carter/9780143133476
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Good afternoon. Good evening, wherever you are, hey, I'm Ben Chodor. And I am really excited for a couple reasons. One is, I have Lee Carter with me and she wrote an incredible book book for, you know, persuasion. I actually read this, the coolest part about this. I had a flight last two weeks ago to Detroit. And I read this in one trip, like on my way there and a way back, finished a book, loved it. And then about a week ago, I started to reread it. One of the things that struck me when I first read it, one of the first lines is, it's not what you said, it's what they hear. Yeah. And I think about that, all the time, Lee, in everything I do as a communicator, running a team of 1300 people, globally in offices in 17 countries around the world, that sometimes even my own team, I can say something and I don't really think that they what they what they heard it What I said is not exactly what they heard exactly right. It's, and it made me really think inside. And I do a video every week to my team. And I actually started off with that exact saying from your company, right? And I said, I have to do a better job of saying what you hear right in, or at least delivering it, persuading you that what I'm what I said, and hearing it the right way. And so I'm just so happy to have you here. I'm so happy to be here. I think
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if you took that away, we're in good shape,
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then I'm starting in the right way. Yeah. And I actually think every executive, every leader, like you actually say it a couple times in the book. I never thought to go to someone like you and your organization. And now looking at now, forget about this. I want to introduce you to the Intrado global leadership team because we just internally selfishly, we were a company called West that was acquired by Apollo and no one knew who West was. And there's four operators in groups, and we've done close to eight acquisitions, and, you know, on my side and digital media side, we have over 13,000 customers and we're neither one we're number one, two and three in every area we play. But yet no one knows who you are. So people aren't here. You know what we're saying people aren't, it's not resonating with him. So it's there's
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just so much noise in the marketplace in our lives that we haven't How do you ever break through and get somebody to care about something, you have to make it relevant to them? We can't just be talking about what's important to us, it will never break through and connect,
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I think it should be mandatory reading for for all executives. So to tie to you title your book is very telling about what most people think is the key to good persuasion. Just throw up your facts and tell us you know, you'll win them over, right? Yeah. Why does it often backfire?
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So what's so interesting to me is so often when I'm sitting down with my clients will start the conversation and the first thing that they'll say
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is
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if they only knew x, y and z, they would know that we're a good company if they only understood x fact, y fact and z fact, then they would want to buy our product if they only and, and I've been telling them all of these facts and it's not I don't understand. So people just want to speak louder. They want to spend more money on the problem. And so what I often say to folks is, look, you know, it's not just about having the best product or the best service is the better offering. It's about having the right language, because our brains are hard wired right to reject things that don't fit into our narratives. Yep. And there's a lot of science behind it. But the bottom line is, in order to be more efficient, humans are designed to recognize patterns. And if things fit into your pattern, you pick it up, and if it doesn't fit in your pattern, you put it down, it's how we get through life. And so that's why if you're just putting facts out there and it doesn't fit into some narrative that's interesting to you already, it's just gonna get rejected. And, and our instincts are to say well I'll just let the product speak for itself. I'll just let these facts speak for themselves. And that's not the way to work. No,
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it does not work like building they will come it doesn't work. No, no. So what prompted you to write the book?
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Gosh, can you know? And there were, there's a lot of things, but I am. So I've been doing this for over 10 years now where I help clients communicate more effectively. And I've been tracking politics for a long time, too, and seeing what messages are resonating. And I during 2015 and 2016 election cycle I was tracking with all the candidates were saying, and how voters were reacting was you kind of predicted the winner too. I did predict the winner. And so a lot of people would,
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I would ask me, can you
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come in and talk to my my team about what you're seeing out there? And I wanted it to be something that people could take away and learn from because no one was understanding what's going on in front of them. And so I started a presentation It was about the five Lessons communicators can learn from Trump. It was very provocative. It was intentionally productive. And it just really resonated with folks. It helped people understand, oh my gosh, this is why in a crowded Republican field that Trump is standing out. And so between helping people understand that the art of persuasion that was happening there, and what I had done with with my clients for so long, I felt like I can teach this to folks and I want it to be very practical, I want it to be if you if you go through the steps, you don't do it yourself. So that's how I like
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in the back of the book, you actually do you have like, little step by steps. I do like a little workbook, a little homework assignment, and I kind of loved it. Yeah, because I found myself jotting down and figure out what I'm doing and what I'm not doing. So I got a question too tied into it, though. People often align, you know, persuasion with manipulation. Yeah. How's it different?
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Okay, so
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When when I was naming this book, it was, it was, you know, it wasn't going to be called empathy because empathy, nobody's gonna buy the book called empathy. But persuasion is actually what we're doing each and every day. Basically what persuasion is, is when you're trying to change somebody's mind, that's what we're trying to do. You're trying to say somebody either has a neutral or no opinion of you or a negative opinion of you, or whatever it is you're trying to communicate. You're trying to change their mind.
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manipulation is nefarious,
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persuasion is not persuasion is based on reality. It's based on facts. It's based on truth. It's not putting lipstick on a pig,
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right? manipulation is
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okay. How important is empathy now?
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empathy is everything. If you don't have empathy, you cannot win at persuasion. And, and the reason for that is so much of what we're trying what I'm talking about here is, you know, if I say it's not used, what matters is what people hear. You have to understand what somebody hears. And that means you have to have the ability to put yourself into somebody else's shoes now Oftentimes people will come to me and say, there's no way I'm going to have empathy for someone who is pro gun control, right? Or have empathy for someone who was so terrible that they don't care about the environment. And so I started out, I always want to make sure that I'm very, very clear empathy does not equal endorsement in any way, shape or form. Empathy means understanding. And in the book, I break it out into three different categories. Because empathy is, is it's not just a feeling thing. Empathy is really about being able to put yourself in the shoes of somebody else understand where they're coming from. So I say, in order to to create a message that works, you need to do three things. First, you need to understand why somebody feels the way they feel, you really need to understand their feelings. Second, you need to understand their behaviors, why they do what they do. And then the third is, what their beliefs and values are, why do they feel the way they feel? Why do they What do they value
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or what do they believe? And this is your triangle, right?
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So that emotions are why they feel the way for us all about the change triangle and that is, I think One of the most powerful tools that I learned in process. Sure. So in the book, when you're trying to uncover how somebody feels about an issue, I say, whenever you're communicating, you're tapping into motion, if you're going to persuade, you're going to have to have to tap into emotions. our emotions are all there for biological reason. And there's something called the change triangle that's used in a certain kind of therapy, that talks about the emotions that are a core emotions that are good emotions, all of them serve a need. And so anger isn't a core emotion. Anger tells you that there's a problem that needs to be solved. Fear is a core emotion. It tells you that there's something you need to get away from joy. That's a core emotion, something that you need to keep on doing. You want to tap into all of any of those emotions when you're communicating and persuasion. What you don't want to do is tap into what we call inhibitory emotions. inhibitory emotions are those emotions that are shame, anxiety and guilt. Those are the three emotions and when we disagree with people, the fastest thing that we do is try to shame, guilt or put them in anxiety. And it's just instinctual you'll say something like, how could you possibly believe that shame? You know, are you crazy? guilt you're going into these if those inhibitory emotions, inhibitory emotions actually drive people to do inhibitory behaviors, that means that they'll bury their head in the sand, they will go out and drink, they will get angry. There's a lot of things that are not productive that will happen when you're there. And yet, that's what we often do in and you'll see it in politics too, all the time. When you're having disagreements, or somebody's talking about the other, it's often creating whole category of people that you would try to shame, guilt or putting anxiety. And you cannot do that if you're going to effectively persuade someone because it's the fastest way to kill a conversation and
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shut things down. All right, so you did a whole chapter also on the haters.
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Yes. Why?
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So, you know, this, I think is really important. We Do there's two things that that I think we do wrong when we're talking about haters. One is we're likely to ignore them. And, and, and when we ignore them, I think that's to our own detriment because I think actually listening to them can make our message stronger and better and we're more likely to persuade. And the other thing we do is try to say, just give up all hope and say, You know what, we're never going to reach them. Let's just put them all on the other side. And so I find that in communication, so if you're a company that's got a huge you know, say you're a food and beverage company, and you're out there with certain ingredients that are that there's there's some people who would never use so say you have antibiotics or if you in your, in your dairy or say you have artificial sweeteners, there's people who just say I'm never going to a lot of those companies very likely to say we're never going to talk to our haters and detractors because we're never going to change their minds. But I would encourage them to actually listen to them and understand what is it that they're so afraid of? What is it, it's really going on there? And how might you reach them? Because in so doing, you might change more minds, you might need to neutralize more critics and you might be able to get more people on your side. And the same thing I think, applies to our politics, I think we want change to happen so badly. And there's so many people out there who want to see real change happen, whether it's about the current administration, or whether it's about things like climate change, or whether it's about gun control. People want things to happen. If we're not willing to engage with people who we completely disagree with change is not going to happen. We're just going to continue to be more and more to fit, you know, divided and divisive, and things won't change. And I think there's a couple of case studies in the book that I think are really important pieces of work that we did, where we found there is a way to change people's minds on climate change when you're talking to folks who might be traditionally called deniers. And there is a way to change people's minds when you're talking to people who you might even have at one point thought were somewhat racist. And it starts with listening and understanding.
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So how do you build if when someone comes to you, how do you build a persuasion strategy?
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So the way that we, you know, there's there's nine steps in the whole process. The first step is about getting a really clear big vision. Okay? And, and I find so often we short circuit on this, people just say the first sentence in a brief is like, our job is to get more customers to win in the marketplace, be number look, you know, be a $20 million in revenue by 2020. We have a lot of those aren't. Those aren't visions, those are goals and goals are important, but I want you to be able to picture crystal clear exactly what you're trying to achieve,
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does it it doesn't. I'm gonna guess for most organizations, if you asked me that question out, I don't think I'd have a clear and precise answer for you. Does it take a lot of coaching and a lot of meetings for them to come out because it's not. It's not sitting there, right?
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No, it you know, it. It's just not The way we're programmed we're programmed as business leaders to think in Excel spreadsheets. What is my goal? I want to grow, you know, revenue by 10%. This year, I need to cut costs. And whatever
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you might EBITA is a certain point. Right? Exactly. And
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that's,
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but what I encourage people to do is just slow down, picture it. If you can't picture it, your team can't picture it. If you can't picture it, your customers can't picture it. You really need I want, and I want it to be such a clear picture. I remember, I talked about this in the book, I have a friend who I was out with for drinks. And I had just gone through a really bad breakup. And he said, look Lee, none of this is going to none of this is gonna matter in a few years. Yep. And he said, he said, What's your dream in a few years time in 10 years time? What do you want to have happen? I was like, I don't know. You know, maybe I'll be married. How good job a couple kids and he was like, really. That's not a dream. That's lame. Let me tell you about a dream. It goes into Tell me the story. Picture, he paints this picture where he says, Listen, he said, in 10 years time, and you're taking my boat back, I'm going to have my dad and my, I'm gonna have my dad and my brother on the boat, we're just gonna be coming back from fishing. And I'm going to be playing. And I'm gonna be playing Bob Seger hollywood nights. And he said in, in, I'm going to be going back to the port. And just as that in that moment, I'm going to No, I'm just going to know,
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I succeeded,
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because there I am, I have my boat. My wife's waiting for me with my daughter, my dad, my brother, always fish. And I will know. And it was such a visual picture. And I was like that, and he says, Lee, that's a dream. And so what I'm telling people is you have to start out with saying, what is it that you really want to accomplish? Very, very clearly. And then you can go through the rest of the steps.
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Well, we didn't till the end of the story that you put in your book. What happened 10 years later when you spoke to him?
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Oh, well, he sent me a picture actually, just recently, from the deck sunset it was off the deck, but yeah, he has the boat.
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He has a boat and it has the family right and everything. So how incredible is that? And I think Part of it is you have to truly vision it to make it happen.
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You absolutely have to, and you have to be really clear on what it is. Because if you're not clear, you just might end up going off in the wrong direction. And this takes a lot of focus. And so much of this right, and persuasion is you can have your team's following along, you've gotta have everybody singing from the same song sheet. So that's a really important part of it. And then, and only then can you go through the rest of the process.
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Alright, so I want to bring it a little deeper now. So how do you integrate that knowledge into building an overall persuasion strategy? For a brand,
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the way that you go about doing this for a brand is you really work on exactly what it is they're trying to accomplish. You start from that, understand what their weaknesses are, be really clear on who the target audience is, understand that target audience in a very deep and meaningful way. And then once we have a deep understanding of who we who they are, why they feel the way they feel, why they believe what they believe, why they do what they do, then and only then can we create the persuasion strategy which begins with understanding what is the One thing you're going to stand for, right? What is your master narrative? Then you have to have a few support points, not too many, only three,
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right? And then
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once you have those things, then we talk about how do you make them visual so that they'll stick? How do you find anecdotes and stories to bring them to life? And then you repeat it over and over and over again. And the master narrative for a company is something you know, Nikes iconic, just do it as the example of a master narrative. But the master narrative that's underneath all of that, right is is about bringing out the inner athlete and all of us.
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Every time Nike shows up.
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That's how they show up. And so when you're trying to persuade, that's what this is all about. What is your one thing? So you know, in the book, I talked about an automotive client that we worked with, who had always relied on the fact that their cars sold themselves they stood for qtr. They were quality, reliable, dependable cars, and that's all they wanted to know. But when things got hard,
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you know, they had a crisis. They had a recall.
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They the cars couldn't sell themselves anymore. What's the story? What's behind them? So then they wanted to be, you know, the cars of the future. They want it to be something else. And what we talked about was like, No, no, what is your one thing? What do you do better than anybody else? So we spent a lot of time with a company and they took us all over their manufacturing plants and some of the nonprofit's they involved all the good things. What we saw is they had this laser focus on making things that you never thought you needed. It was like they had innovation. I mean, they're the first ones to make the cupholder. But their couplers always just work. they design their cars so that, you know, they knew that when you were in the backseat of the minivan that kids have their backpacks at their feet, and that, you know, you need to design them so that they would the seats can move back
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women who have purses they were talking about I love it. And I think the other one was like your
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sunglasses, sunglasses. And so their master narrative became this idea of, it's built for how you live for everything we've talked about. It's practical innovation, it's innovation. You're gonna be able to use if we're going to get into electric, you know, electric cars, they're actually going to work, they're going to be practical, affordable, attainable, and it's gonna be something that you can use. And so it gave them not only a persuasion strategy messaging that they could use, but it also gave them the ability to focus on what kind of examples you're going to bring to life. What kind of things are you going to tell people? And, and once they have that freedom, like then every engineer that's there, every employee can talk about what they do that ladders up to that vision. And this becomes so much easier to get known for something famous for something and so you have that one thing. It's a rallying cry, and and then everything else becomes so much easier from there. I think GE famously
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did that when they changed who they were and made it like you're not going to GE and I'm working in a factory when you're actually being creative and your developers, I think that whole campaign and how its spread socially was was pretty incredible.
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You know, I think Disney does an amazing job of that too, because and when you think about them, everything about them is an entertainment creating experience for us, right? So they have that clear master narrative. But then everything ladders up to it. You're not just an employee, they're your cast member, right? Like everything is about the one thing you stand for. And that makes everything else work. It makes marketing easier, it makes comms easier. It makes leadership easier. It makes
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all of it work. So cool. All right. So now let's take it the other way around. So when an individual comes to you, whether whether it's an individual politician or a CEO of an organization is looking for his own How does it different than when you when you set it up for a brand? It's
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really similar. I mean, that's the thing that was so interesting about writing this book is it started out to be corporate communication, this this book, no, no doubt, and that's what it was meant to be. And over time, it became more and more personal because the same steps of the process apply people come to me and say, you know, I, you know, I'm going to Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday, and I'm going to see my brother in law who is a diehard XYZ supporter. What am I saying, right? Like, and most people's response is to say, You know what? Don't say anything, go for a walk. And I see no have the conversation if your goal is to find common ground, if your goal is to say, maybe we can just find a kernel
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start go through the same process. So visualize what it's about.
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figure out why does he feel that way? What's most important to him? And then you can start moving along for the ride. It is so cool,
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especially when you sit back and you think about it. Yeah, everyone should do it. I got one more question for you. Who are some of the best examples of people who are really good at persuaders or who great persuaders.
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So I think some of my answers on the political side, I'm going to say Obama, right? And I'll say Donald Trump. But so the two last presidents. The thing that I think is really interesting about political persuaders, you will remember what their master narrative was years later. So you will still remember what Obama says hope and change. He was an amazing orator. Donald Trump, whether you like him or not make America great, again, was a rallying cry. If you think about all the past presidents with very, very few exceptions, they've got this down because it's almost a national. It's a very, it's a skill that politicians have to have, which is to empathize and great vision. And so you see that I think, as far as business leaders that are out there, I think Jamie Diamond as a financial service
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job, he has done an amazing job.
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He's done like in Detroit and all that other stuff. He's
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he's done all kinds of great things in Detroit, but navigating into the financial crisis. He was kind of the only CEO that was out there not really being defensive. He was like, I get it. This is hard times. Right? Right. We we messed up He, that that notion that he got it you just felt understood. You know, I think he, as a business leader to me really, really stands out. And he's not a client. So I can I can say this because my other clients and we'll talk about here, but I think he is one, I think Howard Schultz. He was he is a natural persuader. And, you know, he, I think that one of the things that was so interesting about him when he came back to Starbucks, after all these all that time, great story in the book, right? He, he didn't just, you know, he came back because Starbucks had lost its way. Right. And there was the, the, everybody's heard about the coffee. coffee's bitter, it's not the same. So what did he do? He didn't come back and say we have a new commitment to coffee. He said, close the doors for a couple hours. And I'm gonna retrain every barista to make the perfect cup of coffee, symbolic gesture. That to me is extremely powerful and those kinds of moments are rare and real. We all remember them, and they have a huge impact on changing our minds. So I think he's another one.
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I think one of my biggest takeaways when you did a bunch of examples in the book is the ones who were really successful. They didn't make it about them. So it wasn't Donald Trump saying, I'm gonna make America great. It says we're gonna make great and it wasn't Obama saying he was gonna do it was more about the message leads away. That's right.
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You can almost always, you know, one of the things that was really interesting back when Obama was running against Hillary, right in 2008. I did a I did an analysis of of speeches, and the language was used. Obama almost never said I he said we, Yes, we can. Never said Yes, I can. Hillary almost always said I, I'm ready to lead. I'm here to I'm and there's just something really powerful about that. When it's about you, and us versus me.
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Well, it's a way to get us all involved because we all want we want to be part of something we don't want to just be a follower. Someone. Yeah, no doubt amazing. I mean, I truly highly, highly, highly recommend the book. It's a really easy read. I just for my executive team, I bought a copy of this for everyone. They're all going to get it in the next few days. And we're actually going to talk about on one of my leadership call because I just think there's so many books out there on how to be a great sales leader. There's, there's lots of books on how to run a company and all financial stuff. There's not enough books that help you tell the story and everyone out there has to be telling a story. So it's just it's a pleasure to have you here. Thank you made my day.
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