 How many project managers will they continue to lightbulb? One, turning it on or the virus go changing? Nice. Nice. Thank you very much. All right. Well, let's get started. So my name is Carrie Peppy. I am the project manager at Electric Citizen. Electric Citizen is a digital strategy design build agency in Minneapolis. And before I start telling you the story of my process of joining the dark-ish side, I want to tell you a little bit more about myself. So me, most days, right? I wake up in the morning and I try to just be a decent person. The person my cat thinks I am, right? Treat people well. When you see people doing good things, scratching behind the ears, give them treats, just treat people well, right? I mean, that gets us quite a distance in life. And then as a project manager, I have some additional values that I think are really important for us to embody. First, being a very good listener and empathic or empathetic rather, empathic would be great. But empathetic, and someone who really listens well, who asks lots of questions. Because in the end, what I want to do during the course of a project is understand what it is that both my team and our clients want to get from the project. And I'm not just talking about user stories. It's like, what is personally bringing everybody to the table? What do they need in order to feel successful and like they've contributed to the project in a meaningful way? And so that means that I really prioritize building an authentic relationship with people. I want them to enjoy coming to meetings. I want them to enjoy working with me. And I really do find that if I've invested into the relationship up front, then when we hit the tricky bits of a project, like the part where there are difficult decisions to make, slightly challenging conversations to be had, all the effort that I've put into a relationship on the front end means that people are a little more willing to listen to me when I need them to or to trust my judgment or go the extra mile when I need them to go out on a limb for me. And as it turns out, that tool set of mine is nothing new. This is exactly what Dale Carnegie recommended over 80 years ago in his book, How to Make Friends and Influence People. He said, be friendly, be authentic, be positive, show an interest in people. And I'm sure it's obvious, but I really do believe that it's a project manager's job to just be relentlessly positive about the project and the people involved and our power to do something really awesome. I solidly believe that the Dale Carnegie slash Carrie Peppy approach works 90% of the time. But there is that 10% of the time, right? That 10% of the time when gosh darn it, people aren't doing what I want them to do. They're not making the decisions I want them to make. And I'm the project manager. I don't have direct power over people. I've got influence, hopefully. But I can't go in there and take names and kick patootie across the room, or hopefully. And so it's in those moments that I just feel like being nice and positive just isn't enough. That Dale Carnegie toolbox is falling short. Now, I'm not somebody who's going to go for the nuclear option, right? I'm not going to do an end run to somebody's boss or just unload on somebody during a meeting. I have no interest in developing an inner Walter White. That's not me. But there are moments when my inner hag really, really needs to have to make herself heard. And when I want to get people to do things or to make specific decisions, and there's a problem person, a problem person who's giving me a whole lot of nope. And I want that person, my inner hag, just wants that person to utter the most three magical words in the entire English language as you wish, right? I want people to be my sweet Wesley. So last year, I started reading books on online marketing. Have folks heard of Evil by Design at all? It's just outlines. It's a book that outlines different strategies that are employed in online experiences to nudge people to do certain things, to shape the way that we think about things, to persuade us to take specific actions. And as I'm reading all of this, I'm just like, huh? You know, why aren't I using some of these tools in my job for that special 10% of the time? And so it, asking that question, then prompted me to read a few additional books. There's a great one called How to Get People to Do Stuff. Highly recommended as well. And so anyway, I thought to myself, well, how can I use some of these techniques to help me in moments when I need to influence decisions, influence actions, and manage or shape relationships? So let's walk through some of these tools and how they can be helpful. So that first moment, when somebody's maybe not exactly on board with what you're suggesting, maybe they've got some doubt lingering in their mind. Again, if I've invested in the relationship, hopefully people are predisposed to trust me, but if they aren't, there's a little tool that marketers use called social proof. So the deal is that as human beings, we look to others for validation of our decisions and actions. There's a whole herd mentality that we just, we will follow right along if given enough evidence. And we see this all the time online, right? We see reviews and ratings and testimonials and white papers and just all that stuff that we're adding to websites. Well, we can employ this same technique when we're working with clients. So as you're promoting a strategy that you can see somebody's not quite on board with, make sure that you're giving them evidence, proof that indeed your idea will work. It's even more powerful if you present your proof with images and names attached to them so that people are making a connection to the folks that you're using as evidence. It's also really helpful to make sure that the person who is the decision maker hears the message multiple times from different sources. So, and I'm not proud of this, but I, you know, might, if I know I've got somebody who's a problem, I might reach out to someone who I know is their colleague and just prep them for a potential conversation with this decision maker to review that how the strategy has worked for them. Social proof is really most helpful if it's coming from our peers and our allies, for example. So, again, reaching out to clients to help you or other people within the organization to help you move somebody past doubt or good strategies which I've used. And it's also, the other thing I want to point out is the value of having the right person at the table. Now, this is going to sound kind of ishy, but the deal is that we've got our reptile brain and we've got our conscious brain, right? And our reptile brain is just in the background all the time assessing the people around us and trying to decide if they're safe, if they're not, if they're good, if they're not, if we should trust them, if we shouldn't. And we are more likely to trust people who are the same age as us, who dress the same way that we do and who just seem more like us. So, you want to make sure that whoever's on your team delivering the message is a good match for the decision maker. Now, sometimes it's not just about doubt. Sometimes it's about really facing a head-on difference of opinion. And social proof really might not be enough if you're facing the cliffs of insanity kind of augured in person. The deal is that people do not like to admit that they're wrong. And it's really hard to get us to change our minds. Dale Carnegie talks about how you don't ever really win an argument. If you lose it, you've lost it. And if you win it, you've lost the person that you're arguing with, right? So, how can we work around these? Well, there are two concepts in persuasion psychology that can be helpful. And that is those are cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias. And you can use both of those to your advantage. So, when someone is augured in, be aware of confirmation bias. The deal is that once we've got an opinion, we are going to do everything we can to interpret facts and find information that supports our existing beliefs. And actually, the smarter that people are, the better they are at doing that. I always pride myself on being a very rational person. And it turns out I'm probably not. None of us really are. We've got our beliefs and we hang on to them. You aren't going to change somebody's fundamental beliefs, but you can work your way around it. Don't go up the cliffs of insanity, switch back your way up them. Bye. First of all, pointing out the areas of similarity and consensus and demonstrate if there are places, find them. Find the places where people are doing exactly what you want them to do. Point that out. And that those two steps are going to help you build the affinity that that reptile brain is looking for. And throughout this, don't go negative. Be positive. Be aspirational. Highlight the advantages and the wins that your solution gives the decision maker. I'm going to talk even more about come back to this, but I want to move ahead now to cognitive dissonance. So cognitive dissonance is that in the gut discomfort that happens when our attitudes and beliefs and actions are out of sync. The perfect example of that is, like my mother-in-law, she smokes. She smokes a lot. And she also prides herself on being a healthy person, which doesn't exactly jive with all the advice about how bad smoking is for you. But her rationale is that smoking helps her maintain a healthy weight. And so they are good for her. And she can maintain that inner story of I'm a healthy person and get rid of the cognitive dissonance. If we as project managers have been acute observers of the decision makers and the people around the table with us, we hopefully know something of the story that people are telling themselves. I'm a healthy person or I am a forward thinking leader or I value X. If you can pick out the threads of a story, you can then start wearing away or manipulating cognitive dissonance. Additional strategies for dealing with this? Well, first of all, you can manipulate. So I want to make a point. First, you can manipulate cognitive dissonance. I also want to point that you can, if you think somebody is kind of iffy, you want to give them reasons to be happy with the decision and just bypass that cognitive dissonance altogether, right? If that's not possible, then we move into the part where we're thinking, okay, what's going through this person's brain? What is the story? What are the threads that are coming together here that are creating the cognitive dissonance? And as you're talking with people, reinforce the parts of the story that are aligned with your goal. And then finally, walk people through steps that increase their commitment to a decision. So again, you're not coming head-on at someone. You're not trying to just change them like that, but you're just inching them along the path toward the decision that you want them to make. And a really easy example of this is like design decisions, right? Okay, you like this layout. You like this color, this set of colors. You like the way that this is presented. You like that as presented. And as you gain more and more commitment to the elements of the design pretty soon, the person is going to be on board with the whole thing. And if there is something that they're just not quite comfortable with, well, okay, that's some cognitive dissonance. I really like this, and I like what you're saying, but what about that part? Well, they will internally make the shift away from the problem part, the part that there's a dislike. They will diminish the extent to which that influences their decisions as the commitment to the parts that they like increases. And having somebody walk through this, make these kind of commitments publicly, really just augurs somebody in. Once you say you're on board with something, it's really hard to dial back from it, right? So you can tailor a meeting around this, right? Now, I want to share a case study. An example, a very vague example, but an instance where we ran into this. So we have a client who is really committed to a specific way of managing content and a specific kind of editorial experience. And one that involves lots of hand-entered markup on pages. And that's not our approach, right? We want to do paragraphs and bricks and all kinds of good things that you shouldn't need to do a lot of HTML and it's not good to have all, I mean, this is the old argument, right? We don't want a lot of that hand-constructed code on pages. So this person, his story, his story was that he's a power editor, that he is a really good content manager and creates great pages and great websites. And his strategies worked all the time. Like, that's what he wanted. And the conflict was around the fact that we didn't want to build that because we didn't think it was sustainable. And there were just these, you know, voluminous base posts and continuing conversations about where he really, really, really harped on how important it was. Well, we needed to stop spending time on that. So we had a meeting and our tactics were one, to put the right person in charge of the conversation. I wasn't the match. There was a person on our team who was the same age range and shared some very similar experiences so could speak to that and develop that very important rapport and affinity with the person. Through the presentation, we accentuated the positive and the reinforces, excuse me, the experiences and history that this person had and how, yes, yes, you know, you've been very successful at this. You've done great work. It definitely was an approach in the past that worked. We understand that. Again, we're not hitting any of this head on. We're just constantly sidling up to it and developing, again, increasing the affinity between both of us. Then we walked him through our preferred methods and approach and definitely highlighted how they were going to help him meet his desire to produce good pages. It was another part of his story. He's a power user who produces really good pages. We have the tools that are going to help you produce that. We're reinforcing the important points of his story. But then we're left with a bit of cognitive dissonance, right? Because he's clinging to the old methods and yet, here we've got these new tools. Again, we were able to, by reinforcing the connection between his story and his goals and aspirations, we were able to move him past that lingering dissonance, that lingering, like, ah, I don't know if I can do this, to a point where he really just fully embraced him. The takeaway from me, from that experience, is just recognizing how important it is to be really clear about how people are representing themselves and how we can use shape a conversation to then move people past conflict into a, like, where we want them to be. A choice of last resort is to plant seeds of doubt. We're familiar with push-pull techniques, where they frame up a situation as, if this politician were found to be sleeping with people outside of his marriage, would you still vote for him? Now, that whole scenario that I outlined as the negative one, the sleeping situation, a politician having an affair, that might not be true. And it usually isn't in push-pulls. They outline something that's not actually ever happened. But by planting that seed of doubt, it stays in our minds and actually lingers and has a reverberating effect on our decisions. And I'll confess, as a tactic of last resort, I will start framing questions as, well, now, what is a user going to, how is a user going to feel if, blah, blah, blah? How is a person higher up in the position of power going to feel, or what is that person going to think if negative situation happens? Boy, what do you think you're going to do? I mean, I don't think it's totally fair, but it's a good tactic to have in your back pocket. And then also, another strategy is to make references to loss. As human beings, we are more concerned with preventing loss than with big wins. And so if you can identify ways in which the solution that you don't want somebody to take has some very negative consequences and means that they would be giving up time, money, whatever, be sure to mention those. It means taking a step back from all the positive that I talked about earlier. So again, I would keep it as a tactic of last resort. So then, my second question, how can I get people to do my bidding? First, make it easy for them to do it. When you're presenting options on documents that you're putting in front of clients, maybe agendas or putting together a presentation, make sure that you prime people to choose your preferred option through the use of labels. Note when something is recommended or preferred. And put that option at the top of a short list of other alternatives. Adding imagery can also strengthen something. When I see an image, I'm more likely to hang on to it. Let's see, list it as the first option. And then limit the choices that people have and use concise language. If you don't want people to spend a lot of time thinking about something, be concise. If you want them to slow down and really take time to process things, use dense language that they just can't zip through during a meeting. Outline how it's difficult to not take your preferred option. And then consider changing the agenda so that this decision that you want to be made is one of the last things that you deal with. People run out of energy. They run out of bandwidth, right? So take advantage of the fact that they're not going to be able to put as much into a conversation if they've run out of it. Give something to get something. And again, this is another one of those, I realize I do it more than I thought I did. Do a favor for a client. And call it out is that. The deal is that as human beings, we don't like feeling that we're in debt to people. And by doing somebody a favor, you've just put them in the clutches, in your clutches, in your debt, and they are then going to be predisposed to do something when you ask for it later. This is why they hand out samples in stores, right? This is why on websites we offer people white papers and books and that kind of thing. Once I do something for you, you are more likely to do what I need you to do, to do the action I want you to take down the road. And if some time has passed in between, be sure to remind people of what you did for them. It can still be powerful. Another strategy is to go big and then ask for what you want. When you want, if you're looking for a commitment to a certain size project, don't start there. Start as something that you know they really aren't likely to say yes to. They'll feel guilty about not doing it and then offer up your alternative as, well, here's a better position. How about this? And because people will feel guilty about saying no the first time, they're more likely to say yes to you and you'll get the thing that you actually want. It's all about just taking advantage of guilt. Make sure that the big ask is... acknowledge rather that the big ask is uncomfortable and as I said, present your new request as a compromise and as you are putting it out there, make sure that you share what you have in common. Again, reinforce affinity, a herd mentality, the connection that you have with your client as you're doing that. So then the last thing, how do I manage, can I use these techniques to manage relationships? Okay, this is what I'm trying to avoid, right? Running around calling people a liar, being called a liar myself. As it turns out, flattery is one of the most effective tools for getting on somebody's good side. The deal is that we as human beings, we know when people are flattering us. I'm no Princess Buttercup. I know that. But my goodness, if somebody wants to tell me that I am a striking beauty, my brain is going to go, why yes, I am. And I'm going to know, even though I know that it is not true and that it is false praise, I'm going to feel all warm and fuzzy toward that person. I'm going to feel connected toward that person and I'm going to be more likely to do something nice for that person. The effect carries last much longer than we expect. And it's also, if you're going to use flattery, the trick is to flatter them in a way that matches kind of what you want to get out of them. So, if I need somebody to do something, I'm going to say, oh, now I remember when you did this thing really, really well. The code that you wrote, this, the way you built this, was just, oh my goodness, it was just so awesome. I am totally going to reference that. And then I'm going to throw out my big ask at the same time as the flattery. Another strategy is to ask a favor. So, if you think that somebody's maybe not, like quite in sync, maybe you're not really feeling the love between each other, ask the person to do you a favor. It doesn't have to be just a small one. What happens is, again, we're invoking cognitive dissonance to our advantage. We have just put the person in the position of going, huh, I don't like you, but I did something nice for you, but I don't like you, but I did something nice to you. Well, I don't do things for people I dislike, so I must like you. I mean, honest to goodness, this really does happen. It's called the Ben Franklin effect. So, finally, exploit your own mistakes. People will trust you more if you're willing to be open about your flaws. And even if you're tempted to hide it, just put it out there, and again, use it as an opportunity to create a relationship with someone and build trust upon it. The best advice I ever got when I was younger is bad news doesn't get better with age, right? Owning up to a problem or a mistake makes us seem more human. And if you're really desperate, go ahead and manufacture something. I know, shocking. It's a Machiavellian approach, but manufacturing a problem gives people a reason to come back and trust you. So, I'm running really close on time. Takeaways from this. Look for cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias as you're working with people. Understand their stories in a way that lets you exploit the threads, the pieces that you can, and shift them out of the space where you don't want them to be. Use reciprocity to your advantage. Do favors for people. Ask them for favors. Exploit flattery. Definitely exploit flattery. But now then, with all of that, 90% of the time, be a nice person, keep the Prince Humperdick card in your back pocket, the 10% for when you need it, and have fun storming the castle. All right, thank you. Not your only great representation, but you also have great character. Do you know how you are going to be equally fabulous with your presentation? Thank you. Let's talk offshore. All right, all right. All right, do you have what you need? Yes, I do.