On protecting yourself from undue influence

In the last post, we saw how to build a relationship network to enhance influence. In this post, we will look at ways to protect yourself from undue influence.

Why do you need to protect yourself?

• Power can be abused (as we have seen, especially when the moral identity is weak), and it becomes important to protect yourself and your team from unwanted influence. 
• Example: Milgram and Zimbardo experiments
• Thin line between influence and manipulation for personal ends. 
• Manipulation is typically for personal ends, while influence connotes being used for the greater good. 

How do you protect yourself and your team?

• Minimize biases
• Social Proof
• Encourage a private vote, where each person writes their opinion independently. This alleviates the peer pressure. 
• For brainstorming: it's useful to get all the ideas first before discussion
• Build a coalition before entering meetings; do not be a single minority. 
• In Solomon Asch's experiments, 95% gave the correct answer when there were at least two people to support them. 
• Availability
• Keep a continuous record of events, info, that you can refer to
• Hold meetings sometime after events occur, so people have a better perspective
• Ask questions that invite counterfactuals (what-if questions), alternative explanations, counter-examples. 
• Liking
• Minimize face-to-face conversation to reduce dialogue, so you don't develop a liking bias
• Flip the influence tactic on the user 
• Social Proof
• Offer counter-examples
• Show how similar others are not doing what you are being asked to do
• Show how others have taken this approach, and failed
• Show how others have taken a different approach, and succeeded
• Liking
• Affirm the similarities, and then refocus the conversation on differences. This will help reduce the liking bias you might develop. 
• Anchoring
• Ignore the anchor, and focus on the business at hand. It might be hard to realize you are being anchored though!
• Flip the anchor from high to low, or vice-versa.
• Framing
• Ignore the framing. Might be hard to realize!
• Flip the framing from gain to loss (to encourage risk-taking), or vice-versa.
• Scarcity
• Offer counter-examples
• Show the item is not unique
• Show the item is not in limited quantity
• Show time is not limited, from prior experience
• Reframe the power relationship
• Reduce the control the other person has on you, or your dependence on them
• Identify that there are multiple bases of power: personal, cognitive, legitimate
• Use a different base of power to gain the upper hand
• For example, if your manager uses a legitimate base of power, you can try using personal base of power (for example, you are an expert in that context)