Name: Influence is Your Superpower
Rating: 4.6 (498 reviews)
Author: Zoe Chance

What’s in it for me? Reclaim your powers of influence.

Peter Parker was bitten by a radioactive spider. Bruce Banner turned into the hulk when he was exposed to gamma radiation rays. But the origin story for your superpower is simpler than that: you were born with it. When you were a baby you were tiny and vulnerable. You couldn’t feed, clothe, or bathe yourself. On your own, you wouldn’t have survived long. But you had a superpower: influence. You used your superpower to persuade your caretakers to look after you. At first, your tools of influence were rudimentary. Basically, you cried a lot. But it got the job done.

As a toddler you honed your powers of influence. Bargaining, charming, blackmailing, negotiating: you tried it all. You didn’t always get what you wanted. But often enough, you did.

As you grew up, however, you may have lost touch with your superpower.

Why? Well, we’re taught that it’s more important to be nice and to share than to get what we want. We’re not taught that we can still be nice, and share, while, at the same time, using our influence to manifest great outcomes for ourselves and for others. But maybe we can have it all.

Influence, wielded correctly, is transformative. It creates change, births movements, touches hearts, and changes minds. So, what will you do with yours?

In this Blink, you’ll learn

what humans and alligators have in common;
why Marie Kondo is a worldwide phenomenon; and
how a rainy day and quick thinking translated to a 37 percent sales increase.

To influence what people think, learn how people think.

Influencing what people think begins with understanding how people think. And there’s a good chance you’re thinking about thinking all wrong. Ready for a bit of cognitive science?

There are two basic modes of thought processing. Researchers have labeled these modes System 1 and System 2 but, because that’s not very catchy, we’re going to call them something else.

We’ll call System 1 the Gator Brain. Alligators can weigh up to 999 pound. But the average gator’s brain is the size of a half tablespoon. Because their small brains need to power their big, hungry bodies, alligators are all about conserving mental energy. To perform everyday tasks, they rely on instinct and learned reflex rather than complex cognition. Essentially, whether they’re sunbaking or swimming, alligators spend the majority of their time on autopilot. Their cognitive powers only really kick in when they spot a threat or an opportunity.

Your brain is definitely bigger than half a tablespoon. But it has more in common with an alligator’s brain than you might think. To conserve your mental energy, your brain spends a lot of time in Gator mode. Whenever you’re doing something habitual to you, like chopping onions, swimming laps, or reading a novel, you’re using instinct and reflex to power through the task. You’re using your Gator Brain.

We’ll call System 2 your Judge Brain. In Judge mode, your brain performs more complex cognitive feats, like analyzing, comparing, questioning, and concentrating. High-level tasks and tasks that you’re not yet proficient in will demand your Judge Brain take over.

Here’s the catch. Most people think that the Judge performs the bulk of the cognitive workload. In reality, we operate far more frequently in Gator mode. Gator Brain is actually your default setting, cognitively speaking. In fact, nothing even gets sent to your Judge Brain without your Gator Brain’s approval.

When we come to someone with a proposal, a pitch, or a request, we often try to appeal to the Judge. But we might see better results if we addressed the Gator instead. Remember: every cognitive input, without exception, has to go through the Gator. And the Gator is efficient. Less politely: your Gator brain is seriously lazy.

One corporation turned that laziness to its own advantage with stunning results. In 2015, Pizza Hut was the world’s largest pizza delivery company. Its rival, Dominoes, wanted the top spot.

So, Dominoes introduced the Anyware campaign. The goal? Make it easier than ever to order a pizza. The company figured they already had their customers' payment information and address. Here’s what they came up with: you could text, or tweet, an emoticon of a pizza to Dominos and – well, there is no and. That was it. Send a pizza emoji, get your usual order delivered to your door. Sales went up 10 percent in that quarter alone, and just three years later, Dominos knocked Pizza Hut off its perch and became the biggest pizza delivery company in the world.

When you make a proposal graspable, a call-to-action simple, a decision easy-to-make, you’ve already increased your chances of success, because you’re appealing directly to the Gator. So before you try and over-complicate things, see if you can find your pizza-emoji-equivalent.

To get what you want, try asking.

One day, recent MBA graduate Jia Jiang, walked into a Krispy Kreme in Austin, Texas, and ordered donuts in the shape of the Olympic rings. Now, Krispy Kreme doesn’t offer Olympic donuts on their menu. And Jia said he could only wait 15 minutes for his server, Jackie, to create this bespoke treat.

Anticipate resistance.

Have you ever heard of Aikido? It’s a modern Japanese martial art. The objective is to defend yourself from your opponent by redirecting their flow of movement in a way that also protects them from injury. As you exert your influence on others you will, sooner or later, meet resistance and objections. You don’t need to shut down the minute you’re met with resistance. At the same time, you don’t need to aggressively counter-attack others’ objections. Instead, like an Aikido master, you can respect and redirect resistance where you find it, to come to a mutually agreeable solution.

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Worum geht es in Influence is Your Superpower?

Influence is your Superpower (2022) is a deep dive on influence: how it works, why it's important, and how you can wield it for ethical, positive results. It explores how influence operates by drawing on insights from cognitive science, linguistics, market research, and more, empowering readers to unlock their own natural powers of influence.

Über den Autor

Zoe Chance is a writer, researcher, philanthropist, and teacher at Yale’s School of Management. Her expertise in influence was honed in a career that has taken her from door-to-door marketing and telesales to the upper echelons of corporate America. Now, she’s passionate about teaching others to harness their powers of interpersonal influence.