Influencing Influencers – Rule 6 – Commitment & Consistency

Imagine that tomorrow there is a global referendum and you are the subject.

Tomorrow morning everyone in the world will cast a vote on whether you are a ‘reliable person’ or an ‘unreliable person’.

Which result would you prefer? ‘Reliable’, obviously. You want everyone you interact with – your family, your patients, your bank, your regulators – to consider you reliable. Whether it is true or not.

So deep is our need to be seen as of some value to our tribe, you and I are hard-wired to behave reliably, with consistency and loyalty, to any commitment we make.

Unsurprisingly, this ‘need’ has been and can still be leveraged for persuasive means.

Our need that we are exploring here is our Commitment and Consistency Principle.

I particularly like this area of persuasion as some of the evidence which shows its effectiveness includes data from healthcare settings.

Unreliable people are of no value; they cannot be trusted and may let you down. The tribe expels such people or at least denies them high value and high stakes opportunity.

People tend to follow up on commitments so they can be perceived as consistent and hence as someone of reliable value.

This drive is so strong that we often act against our best interests just to maintain consistency. Someone whose beliefs, words, and deeds don’t match is seen as two-faced; on the other hand, a high degree of consistency is associated with personal and intellectual strength.

Let’s illustrate this with a simple act. A charity ‘mugger’ asks you how you are and you say, “I’m fine, thanks.” They want you to respond this way as it makes it much harder to then say, “Oh no, I can’t donate; my life is so hard, you can’t expect a contribution from me at the moment.”

So, these people are often trained to get some kind of initial positive response from you. They may compliment you, boost you, then get you to confirm how awesome you are and how awesome your life is… It then becomes impossible to deny a donation on the grounds of your scarce resources or diminished and limited life.

Clever…sneaky, but clever. The ethics on that are dubious at best. If you see one of these ‘charity muggers’ smiling like a troll under the bridge and you don’t want to be pounced upon…look small, look poor, tell them you are broke, and you have disarmed them at least (…albeit probably hard to do whilst bedecked in Gucci, strutting in Louboutin, whilst putting your Porsche keys into a Birkin bag…lol).

Eliciting this small commitment to stating how you are doing is key to drawing out a much more weighty commitment a few minutes later.

That’s how this works. Get a small, voluntary, active and public commitment, and you can persuade the hapless person to commit to more later.

These three facets are important – Voluntary – Active – Public.

Voluntary, as in they offer it up. The question “How are you?” is posed, and the accosted person responds, “I’m great, thanks.”

Active, as in they speak. Even better, write it down, or place a sticker in a window, or wear a badge, or tick a box.

Public, as in it is widely known to you, them and others that this commitment has been made, so their persuasion is now leveraging the public shame you may face of being seen as unreliable.

To my mind, the example above is very dodgy ethically. The ‘accoster’ feels entitled to be perceived as virtuous because they are seeking to recruit support for a charity, but I still feel affronted when this happens to me. Politicians and sales people do this all the time and they may have the ethical profile of putrid sun-baked clinical waste.

A better example may be one whereby people are encouraged by their own voluntary public action to keep appointments at the dentist.

DNAs are a problem. They are dead time, lost income, missed opportunity and perhaps a source of acrimony if the patient demands another appointment the next day despite standing you up.

Typically practices have tried late cancellation or DNA fees as deterrents. This is the stick in a carrot and stick approach.

A carrot is nicer than a stick and when it leverages the patient’s sense of commitment it works best.

Patients asked to fill in their next appointment on their appointment card, using their own handwriting, reduces DNAs by around a fifth.

The line:

If I cannot attend my next appointment I ___________ will call ahead and let the team at Middle Earth Dental Care know.

The patient is asked to write their name in the blank area. This small written commitment publicly states they will turn up or cancel well in advance, and it is highly effective too.

I could ask people by name to read just one of these blogs and answer a one-question survey: Did you enjoy this blog? or Would you like to know more?

By clicking ‘yes’, you are far more likely to read the next one. If I could get you to share the link to the blog on your social media then that public display of commitment is very powerful and you’ll definitely read the next one.

The psychological process here is one based on our self-identity. In the same way we want others to perceive us as reliable, valued members of the tribe, we also like to think of ourselves as not just reliable but kind, forgiving, strong, clever, generous and wise.

We tell ourselves stories and one of them is how reliable we are. When we become actively involved in the story, by writing or saying something, we want the rest of the story to confirm what we already believed to be true.

We actually really despise inconsistency. When breaking a diet, for example, you have probably made an excuse like “The dieting was so stressful, I deserve this treat” or “It would be rude not to eat this as I’m a guest.” We offer up the reasoning to ourselves so our inner storyline doesn’t make us feel bad about ourselves.

This principle also loops back to part 1, Reciprocity. You do someone a favour; they do the same back. This happens with most people you interact with, until one day you meet someone and the favour you do is not reciprocated. Their behaviour is inconsistent with all the others, and, as such, they are inconsistent, unreliable, and not a person you’ll happily deal with again.

In our practices we can use this commitment and consistency principle to help patients be healthier and happier.

We can ask them if they mind us removing stains or visible calculus. They may say yes, most will.

We can then ask them if they perceive themselves as someone who doesn’t have stained teeth or calculus build ups, someone whose gums are healthy so don’t bleed. Again, in all likelihood they say, “Yes, that’s who I am.” Your patient’s path to improved oral hygiene, and the odds of them scheduling a rendezvous with the hygienist themselves, has just become much more likely as they follow through on their internal narrative and uphold their image of reliability.

Lastly, big price rises can appear inconsistent. That’s why governments do things subtly and slowly when increasing your taxes. It actually makes sense, so go easy on the practice jumps!

In the last of this series, next time we explore the idea of mindset creation prior to even meeting a patient. The patient isn’t per-suaded to happiness and health, but pre-suaded.