3 insights from behavioral science that will help you better Influence others

1. When a person can say "no", he wants to say "yes".

What do you want? Perhaps you are hoping to find a decent job, lead a successful team, get promoted, share your art, fall in love and build a happy relationship, change politics, change politics, or save the planet. Or maybe right now you just want to put your kids to bed before you get tired. The only way to make your dreams come true is to influence other people to change their behavior.

2. Influence doesn't work the way you think, because you don't think the way you think.

Influence is not advanced math, it's science, which is great news because it means it can be mastered by nerds like us. If you have read other books on "big ideas", you may have learned something about what behavioral economists call System 1 and System 2. In short, there are two internal systems that govern all of our thinking and behavior. The first is fast, unconscious, emotional and instinctive; these are your internal reactions. The second is slow, conscious, effortful, and apparently rational; these are your deliberate decisions.

3. The best indicator of behavior is lightness.

The biggest misconception about mindset change is that you need to do it at all. Our behavior largely does not reflect any conscious thought; This is why ease is the best predictor of behavior. It is more powerful than motivation, price, quality, satisfaction, or intent. You may not be selling anything, but you can still draw inspiration from a little-known marketing metric for measuring ease called “Customer Effort Score,” which boils down to a simple question: How easy was it?