Liking is King

"I'm stuck in a bad situation," I hear from Jerry, a young military lead of a junior rank.

Jerry is ambitious, organized, focused, and determined.

He wants to grow his career.

Unfortunately, he's developed a cold relationship with his peer, which started to impact his results. His peer is more senior and has worked in his role for over 10 years. He is experienced but doesn't seem to pull very hard.

Recently, Jerry was assigned to lead a project where all members of his team report to this peer.

Since then, the project hasn't gotten much momentum because the team members do not have enough time to work on it.

It started to feel that his peer assigned the lowest priority on this project for all his direct reports.

It didn't sound good for Jerry's reputation and ambitious plans.

"Tell me more about your peer," I asked him.

"Well, he is a strange guy," Jerry started.

"He comes to work late, he doesn't push hard enough, he is not very responsible, he drops the ball, takes vacations very often, doesn't ask much from his people, and doesn't seem very clever!"

Jerry said it with visible disappointment and irritation.

"Do you respect him?" I asked.

"Sincerely, I don't."

"Does he know about it?"

"I guess he might know because we had conversations before where I encouraged him to try a bit harder."

Let's stop here and think: what's the biggest problem in this story?

That's right. It is about disrespect.

Disrespect is the most common reason for lost opportunities, defensiveness, and confrontation.

The root cause of it is in violation of one of the most fundamental principles of influence described in the book "Influence, The Psychology of Persuasion" by Dr. Robert Cialdini.

It's the principle of Liking.

People do business and collaborate with those who like them. And they avoid those who don't.

Here, we'll see how Liking connects to Respect and how to build a path from negative relationships into positive ones.

You probably know that the word Respect comes from the Latin "Respecere," which means "Regard."

Another valuable translation (I'll use my bi-lingual background) comes from Russian and means "Important."

If someone likes you, they will think you are important.

Will they disregard your feelings, interests, and values?

Of course not.

People who like you will also respect you.

Most importantly, they won't want to hurt you.

They will respect your safety, comfort, desires, principles, and interests.

It is safe to be around people who like you.

To illustrate it visually, imagine a horizontal line.

There's an extremely negative feeling on the left side of it - hate.

On the opposite side is an extremely positive feeling - love.

What's in the middle?

It's a neutral state - mutual Respect.

Liking resides on the right side of Respect, somewhere between Respect and Love.

Therefore, when people like you, they also respect you.

This produces a feeling of safety and trust in your relationships.

Versus if they disrespect you, they will be on the left side of Respect and somewhere between Hate and Respect.

It is a risky place where they don't care about you and potentially dislike you.

Therefore, build Liking as it will accomplish both goals – Respect and Trust.

According to the scientific research described in the book "Influence, The Psychology of Persuasion" by Dr. Robert Cialdini, there are more advantages to the state of mutual Liking.

One of them is the "Halo Effect," which says that people tend to assign all the positive traits to those they like: honesty, kindness, intelligence, wit, and even physical attractiveness.

The other scientifically proven effect of Liking is that we tend to forgive mistakes and explain them rationally when we like someone.

While we give full credit without a question for any good deed.

Unfortunately, it works the same if you appear to be on the negative side.

It's hard to get out of it.

Even the most generous and selfless acts will be questioned and given a rational explanation.

While any perceived mistakes will support the decision to keep you "on the dark side."

What can we do to get out of negative relationships?

We must restore Respect.

And for this purpose, we'll have to activate all 7 Cialdini's Ethical Principles of Influence.

When you're on the negative side, your reputation is damaged, and you lose credibility.

Enable the principle of Authority to rebuild your credibility.

Have a neutral 3rd party that the other side likes and trusts to re-introduce you and talk about your good traits and deeds.

Let them remind the other side about the sources of Unity, such as team membership, common affiliations, kinship, localism, or simple long years working together.

Enable the Reciprocity principle by sending a meaningful and customized gift of a small value. It could be symbolic.

Use a social setting to talk about similarities and shared values.

This will give you a good start for the Liking principle.

If many people can say something good about you, it will enable the powerful Social Proof principle.

Then, get back to the "negotiation table" and talk about mutual respect and mutual purpose.

Remind the other side about shared commitments and short-term goals in the end to reinforce the forward momentum and the necessity to restore relationships.

Restoring respect may take some time because you'll have to find all the sources of discontent and agree on solutions.

But all is possible with the powerful Cialdini's 7 Principles of Ethical Influence.

Join my Masterclass "7 Principles of Influence" on July 2nd to hear more examples and ask your questions:

https://bit.ly/mc-7poi

Want to learn how to influence others ethically and avoid difficult situations?

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