Influencing Influencers – Rule 4 – Authority

When we meet another human being, we make judgements about them. We may not want to, but we do. Your conscious brain works slowly, thinking methodically, and we may foolishly think our conscious brain is the boss. Not so! Your subconscious works a billion times faster, and we make all sorts of instant decisions, inferences and judgements on every situation we encounter and person we meet.

Think of learning to ride a bike. At first, it involves conscious thoughts — pedal here, brake there and steer like that. Your conscious brain educates the subconscious until it’s effortless.

Many things, however, your subconscious already knows. The most important thing it knows is about other people and their brains!

These judgements are super-fast and you cannot choose to not make them. People will tell you otherwise as it’s not very PC, but they are arguing against 4 million years of evolutionary selection – so all the very best of luck with that!

When a person encounters someone new – a patient encounters you, for example – the two key questions their subconscious mind poses are:

1. Is this person a threat? (No, then are they kindly disposed?)
2. Is this person capable and competent? (What use are they to me and the tribe?)

More on that later, but Part 4 of this series concentrates on answering the second question. Are you of any use?

We call it Authority, but it should really be called Justified Authority. As in, you are genuinely so capable that people are completely justified and safe placing their trust in you.

I prefer the term Authentic Authority.

At the other end of the scale lies the abuse of authority. Authority is dangerous if held by the incompetent, the malevolent, the self-serving or the zealous-righteous as it can be wielded to inflict harm.

There are innumerable examples of power abuse by politicians and leaders from all of recorded history. And authority can certainly be used to abuse.

The best evidence of this is the classic Stanley Milgram experiments from 1974: Obedience to Authority.

This social psychologist placed people in white coats who then gave orders to people just like you and me, to painfully shock other people just like you and me if they failed to answer questions correctly.

The pain increased to the point that the people being tortured (actually actors feeling no real pain) were begging for the questions to stop and pleading to leave. But the shocks still came and they got worse and worse. The white coat and clipboard gave so much symbolic authority to the instructor that the unwitting torturers just did as they were told. Weird and unthinkable but repeatable, predictable and true.

So, authority can be abused. We can use and display authority – but we should do so only if it is earned.

Authentic and Justified Authority vs. Bullshit I-just-want-to-feel-like-a-boss Authority.

Authentic authority is what you want see in the airline pilot, the neurosurgeon, the defence lawyer, the mountaineer, and the kids’ bus driver.

Inauthentic authority is repulsive and belongs in the realm of the insecure, angry, weak and bitter people who sadly still seem to appear so often within our profession.

That’s the key part to this. Authority works as an influential tool, but ONLY if it’s authentic. Authentic authority displays genuine competence. With genuine competence comes relaxation, joy, and flow states.

Individuals who are authoritative, credible and knowledgeable experts in their field are more influential and persuasive than those who are not. Part of the reason for this is that authority and credibility are two of the core building blocks of trust. When we trust people, we are more likely to follow them. Patients who deeply trust their dentists show they value your expertise and time.

Authority, if not earned, may present as arrogance or overcompensated neediness. You compensate for the weak foundations with an oddly ornate or ostentatious exterior. It shows.

Authentic authority is not arrogance and it is a million miles removed from the ‘fake it until you make it’ bullshit.

BTW, that truly is bullshit. The only time ‘fake it till you make it’ works is when it comes to bravery. If you are scared but act brave then it truly does turn into actual bravery, but in all other spheres is just crap. If you are asked to translate Greek to Farsi and you speak neither language you really won’t get far.

Influencers actually are authority figures and there is no doubt they can make successful business just by ‘owning’ a subject or brand.

Dentists in pastel tunics are used to selling us toothpaste, airline staff wear uniforms to remind us of their authority and many an email signature is appended with a string of qualifications in an effort to increase the individual’s authority.

As a trainee we used to joke that you are only qualified when your qualifications after your name are longer than your name. Richard William James Porter….fail! My parents should have named me Bob Ng, then BDS Lond. would have done it! Winner winner, chicken dinner!

In reality, it’s less effective when individuals promote their own brilliance and authority than when others do it for them. Interestingly, though, it almost doesn’t matter who that other person is. Even if the person promoting you is known to benefit personally from doing so, their words of praise still increase your influence and ability to persuade. There are examples and explanations below which you may be able to get your staff involved in. Again, be sure that if they promote you, they actually do it because they genuinely rate you highly!

What this means in the world of work is that building trust and credibility is very important, but that it’s also possible to build some of that sense of authority through the recommendations and good words of others. Again, make sure their words are earned and heartfelt.

For a simple starter: If you have online booking for appointments for new patients, compare the wording:

I want a consultation about my teeth vs. I want an expert opinion about my teeth

Or

I want an appointment for my smile vs. I want an expert to help me get a beautiful smile

Here are some more detailed examples:

• Testimonials – testimonials leverage social proof (refer to the first blog in this series) and ever more so if you have lots of them. By far the most powerful testimonial for leveraging authority are video testimonials. These should showcase patients where your professionalism and expertise are highlighted to listeners. These take time to produce and should also be updated on a reasonably regular basis to reflect the most updated treatments. Also be aware that you cannot offer financial incentives to patients to act as models for you!!

 

• Diplomas, degrees and certifications – genuine expertise takes time, effort and dedication to achieve. It then takes maintenance. You are allowed to be proud of such achievements, and displaying them in letterheads, on a wall, or on the website are all reassuring signs that you are a dedicated professional trying to be the best version of you. We put faith in our institutions to quality-assure such awards!

 

• Published evidence of success – not just peer-reviewed journals, although these still are the prime source of evidence we use. Even a photographed case documenting what went well and what didn’t, as well as documenting the improvements you have implemented and the overall journey you took to become such an expert, is all candid and inspiring. Most companies have good or bad reputations based on how they react to problems and setbacks. This shows deep, authentic concern and offers the assurance of knowing you are always looking to improve. The eternal student is the best expert.

 

• Reception mentioning how excellent you are as a choice of expert – “Oh yes, good for you, you have an appointment with Dr Malik in 10 minutes, he is such a good dentist, he is so keen he has already completed an accredited diploma in restorative dentistry. Lucky you”.

 

• Communication delivery. This is obviously an enormous subject but, particularly pertinent to this blog, it is worth reminding ourselves that your communication is approximately 55% body language, 38% tone of voice and 7% words. You may therefore practise a sentence with the intent of sounding full of authority, but your body language is a massive giveaway. Body language is read by the observer’s subconscious mind, and the subconscious mind is fast and tireless. Body language includes stance, hands, arms, posture, breathing, eyes, facial expression and flexural extension. Learning to read body language gave a massive evolutionary advantage. To know if someone means harm, is candid, is attracted to you, is drunk, etc. Patients don’t know they are doing it, but they are reading you, your body language and your tone to get 93% of YOU. That’s why authority as a persuasion tool is so important to being authentic. When you are happy and confident in what you are trying to convey to patients, it shows. Serotonin is released when you are happy, and serotonin causes involuntary flexural extension. You literally hold your entire body differently when you feel this way. Your tone of voice changes too, again involuntarily. You speak with more certainty, less doubt and can answer questions more spontaneously as your mind is on home ground.

 

• Practised conversations are the best way to achieve this. Truly, just talk out loud a response to a situation you wish to master.

Now a final word on consent and authority. The days of the professional blithely telling the patient what is going to be done to them are, thankfully, long behind us. That said, patient autonomy and shared decision-making, as good as they are, will become increasingly challenging as technology and both the diversity and complexity of options increases. I see neurosurgeons arguing that you would need 15 years of postgraduate neurosurgical study to have actual capacity to consent to the intra-operative decisions they make every day. Hmmm.

Ok, but the law assumes capacity, so that’s where we hang our hats. Assumption is the mother of all f*&k ups, an age-old axiomatic truth is ignored as it suits prosecution lawyers to do so.

We want to display competence and warmth, and that translates into authority; but we do not want to be authoritarian. So for now, patients have capacity and thus autonomy. You don’t abuse authority; you use it to help them make their treatment decisions. You lay the options on the menu and they choose the dish. Your job is to provide a recommendation based on your expertise and after listening with the intent to understand them. Lay out the risks and benefits and always act in their best interest.

The Aspire maxim is to always base your career and decision-making on creating a happy and healthy patient. Those two, happiness and health, in concord, without tension. Becoming an ever better communicator is a fundamental of this and it’s why we bring that teaching to every single day we teach.

Now…I’m in charge, so do as I say and share this blog with EVERYONE…lol.