Gary Cole’s Bill Lumbergh in the film, Office Space
When there are differences of opinion, the richest forms of communication still allow those with contrasting views to walk away, without penalties.
The word “persuasion” is the preferred term to identify moments when one individual or group attempts to alter the beliefs or behaviors of another. But the word is frequently misused, especially if one “persuader” has used extra-verbal inducements to get what he or she wants.It’s interesting that when Aristotle wrote his own study of persuasion 2500 years ago, he noted that the use of knives and torture counted as “inartistic” forms of influence. He didn’t miss much. He would no doubt marvel at the additional bludgeons we moderns use to threaten physical or psychological harm. The modern equivalent of torture might be the denial of fair compensation, extortion, the possibility of a bad job review. The ways we can cow each other are nearly endless.
Properly used, “Persuasion” occurs when an individual freely assents to what another asks. No coercion. No risk of retribution. No organizational advantage has figured in the outcome. Everything else that may look like persuasion is really what could be called “compliance-gaining,” as when a boss “asks” an employee to work late.
This is not just an academic distinction with little real-world application. The difference actually matters. To fully understand persuasion we need to know who or what is actually doing the heavy lifting. The use of threats, power or position are all coercive, a fact that takes away a receiver’s opportunity to truly exercise their own judgment.
As a student of this subject, I’m not especially interested in the idea of compliance. In communication terms there’s not that much going on. There’s no grace in using force or a power advantage. In such cases the unequal distribution of power does most of the work. It’s like shooting animals within a fenced game reserve. It’s easily done, but not very sporting.
What is interesting is how we manage to perpetuate the delusion of free choice. My impression is that managers often see themselves as having a knack for engaging with employees, as with the smarmy Bill Lumbergh in the iconic film, Office Space (1999). The soul-destroying demands made by Gary Cole’s character are covered in a sticky syrup of forced collegiality. Lumbergh may believe he has the pulse of the office, but the film knows better. As this clip from U-tube shows, he doesn’t have a clue.
By contrast, there’s real pleasure in participating in communication where every side retains the right to walk away with no penalties. That fulfills our faith in a democratic values, especially another person’s right to their opinion. That’s why democracies are called “open societies.”
The problem is the indiscriminate mixing of persuasion and compliance-gaining as more or less the same thing . For example, journalist Steven Greenhouse misses the point when he notes in a recent Atlantic article that Wal-Mart “persuades” its employees to be anti-union. What his otherwise useful reporting actually describes is pure coercion. Try and unionize and you are simply out of a job, or your unit is shut down. Similarly, courses and texts in “leadership” often trade heavily in the language of equal-to-equal communication, ignoring explicit organizational hierarchies. All of this is represented in phrases like “team-building” and “group problem-solving:” the kinds of things we are likely to hear from faux-egalitarians like Lumbergh.
No one wants to be the apparent autocrat issuing orders. Most of us would like to be seen as good listeners open to the ideas of others. But openness needs to be earned by accepting the right of an audience member to say no, without penalties.
Of course experts are paid to know their stuff. We want them to have answers. But sometimes they need to allow complexity to have its way.
There are many ways to take the measure of another person’s character. One simple way is to look for how a person treats a server in a restaurant. It’s a useful test of an individual’s temperament to notice their behavior with a total stranger who happens to be in a subordinate position. And it’s always a pleasant experience to discover that a new lunch companion is considerate of a staffer’s efforts. When a patron has no interest in the other, it suggests that they may be so locked into their own world that they can’t bother with even basic forms of human acknowledgement.
But there’s an even better marker of character, one that is especially useful for judging a person’s professional credibility. The test involves noticing how a person handles questions that draw them to the outer borders of their knowledge. What happens when someone is invited to give an opinion on a topic that is beyond their understanding? My theory is that the more secure a person is, the more comfortable they are not answering every question. These are folks who can say “I don’t know” with no loss of self-respect. And there’s an irony here: It’s sometimes the case that the person who admits to not having a ready answer actually may still have more to tell us than the one who is a bit too eager to comment.
Here’s what I mean. Watch talk shows, or a typical panel of experts brought in after a “breaking news” story to speculate on possible causes. This was the case after the March 2014 disappearance of a Malaysia Airlines airliner after departing from Kuala Lumpur’s airport. It disappeared somewhere in the Southern Ocean, even at this date without a clear reason. It’s rare to see a news show guest with the confidence to make the observation that they–and probably everyone else–cannot know why it disappeared. It’s the same for a psychologist being queried about the motives of a mass murderer, or a professor like myself teaching a course (“Theories of Persuasion”) that attempts to predict human behavior. We too rarely use the option to acknowledge the limits of our understanding.
A person’s willingness to exercise this choice affirms their basic credibility. Like good diagnosticians, the most reliable experts don’t need to feign perfect knowledge to feel comfortable about their professional standing. An unjustifiable compulsion to respond to all queries can become a fraudulent kind of performed competence. Faking a response is not the same as having something worthwhile to say.
The presence of false certainty should make us suspect. In my area one local radio program on gardening tips features a host who is never at a loss for an answer to a listener’s query. The subjects range broadly from trees to grass, flowers to invasive fauna, soil chemistry to hydrology. To be sure, he’s knowledgeable. But why is he never stumped? For this person, apparently, all of the natural world is an open book.
This willingness to acknowledge the unknown is especially important for teachers and mentors. It’s a useful lesson to show people new to a field that there is not an answer for every condition. Our love of science and its promise of ironclad certainty makes us look for apparent causality. Indeed, the rhetoric of causality has embedded itself within the rhetoric of answering. But sometimes asking good questions is the best we can do. The trick is to learn to value the individual who is comfortable enough in their own expertise to accept the limits of human understanding.
