#8 Stealth Influence Pt. 1: Influence
[In 2019 I made a mini course called “Stealth Influence Content Mastery”. It simply applied that Trust Lenses and Adoption Decisions to making video that influences people positively. As a “micro step” I sent out the following document to gauge interest. The document below is still exactly as it was originally written, typos and all]
“Secret Files”
From the Desk of Nic Peterson
Stealth Influence
Influence is ongoing. It is not episodic, it has to be ON all the time and it is most effective on “under the radar”.
Nobody wants to deal with someone that is trying to convince or “influence" them to do shit all the time but...
Your brilliant ideas for humanity, or even a single person, are worthless if you cannot get them planted in other people’s minds.
Helping Someone > Being Right.
You can’t master the art of Stealth Influence if you are concerned about winning arguments or being right. You must focus on, instead, being Helpful.
I have always thought of it as an “invisible” influence but my buddy Chris Axelrad is diggin' the word “stealth” lately, so I am adopting it for this.
Chris and I just had sushi together in Park City, Utah and jammed on the entire “Stealth Influence” concept. Here are the takeaways:
Frame for Stealth Influence:
+ Manage Appearances
People always have their guard up. If the goal is to influence you must appear to not be interested in being influential at all.
People I’ve worked with always say some version of “Wow, this worked way better than therapy!” It’s not because I’m a therapist. I’m not. It’s because…
Therapy works best when you are not aware you are being therapized.
It must be clear to the other person that we are genuinely interested, curious and helpful. And yes, I’m pretty sure I just made up the word “Therapized”
+ Understand that people have different belief systems or frames
Everyone is bringing a different system of beliefs and a different frame to a conversation or interaction. Your advantage lies in being the only one that is aware of this. Nobody else is even going to consider they are operating from a certain belief system, let alone that you are operating from a different one.
You can control your frame and in doing so, start to persuade their frame to change subconsciously. Mirror neurons and whatnot. We are going to talk about this alot. There is an untold amount power in being able to understand and use this concept. I’ve spent a lot of time with legendary FBI negotiator Chris Voss - he is masterful at this.
+ Play upon their current frame. Meet them where they are at.
Axelrad has a great pendulum analogy, but the idea is to meet them where they are at, and get in sync with them. Since you are the only one that understands that you have different frames it is your job to line them up. Utilize the power of entrainment.
People jive with people they feel in sync with. It is not going to happen “naturally”. You can watch great influencers in a room change their tone, posture, volume person to person. They are simply synchronizing themselves with the other party.
Influential people have a process of meeting people where they are at and adopting the frame of their surroundings.
STEALTH INFLUENCE IN ACTION:
It is hard to resist what you cannot see.
+ Content, videos, posts, newsletters, etc... everything that is out there needs to be filled with indispensable advice. People are selfish, draw on it. No matter how much someone may want to resist, if your content is so valuable they feel at risk without it, they have to stay plugged in.
Remember, a loss hurts more than an equivalent gain feels good.
+ When a mind is captivated by a story it is relatively undefended and open to suggestion. People barely notice that by reading or listening that they are absorbing the ideas. When dealing with people you must entertain them, keep them interested and sneak your ideas in the back door.
Let me tell you a story about Dolphins.
Did you know that a Dolphin only sleeps with half its brain? It’s called unihemispheric sleep.
Interesting right?
I once explained this to my friend David while at dinner with about a dozen people.
Here’s the secret:
I was talking to David about Dolphins, but I wasn’t actually talk to David nor was I actually talking about Dolphins. The other ten people were listening intently - and since it appeared as if I was speaking directly at David their guard was down. They were hyper-receptive to new ideas.
The week after the dinner, five of them reached out wanting to enroll in our program.
Obviously, our program has nothing to do with sleep or dolphins.
+ Personal expression is never the goal. Influence is. The less people can consciously focus on the communicative form you have chosen, the less they realize how far your ideas have burrowed into their minds.
+ Communication has strange, paradoxical qualities. For example: offer people advice, and no matter how sound it implies that you know more than they do, possibly to the extent of striking at their insecurity.
Your words, no matter how useful or pragmatic may cause people to become further entrenched in the activity they want to change or resist whatever you suggest.
Once your language is out in the world, the listener/audience will do what they want with it, they will interpret it according to their own belief systems. Even the ones nodding and appearing to agree are probably just trying to be agreeable or get rid of you.
Don’t be fooled by niceties.
+ Only the things that burn deep inside of us and take root in our minds have the power to actually change our behavior. This is why I try not to give unsolicited advice, but in passing will plant seeds of doubt or seeds of empowerment.
Remember… People often don’t need to "given" greatness. It’s already inside of them. They need to shed all of the things that are not their greatness. Seeds of doubt can help them eliminate the negative forces in their life.
Socrates and The Socratic Method of Influence:
+ Socrates understood that had he tried to be conventional and direct he would have made his audience more resistant. It would strengthen their intellectual smugness.
You will never see me in an argument. Ever. Arguments are forceful; force always creates counterforce. Power does not.
+ Socrates would make a show of his own ignorance. Play down his intelligence so that people knew he was not there to try and be “right”.
Playing dumb is the ultimate tool of influence.
+ He would compliment and feed the vanity of listeners, even praising their goofy ideas.
People like to feel good. They like to feel smart.
+ He would never say anything negative about someone else's idea. Through questions would make the other person see the incompleteness or falsity of their ideas.
By doing so we dropped their walls and then raised a lot of doubts. But… These doubts weren’t planted directly by Socrates.
If you want to influence people positively, learn to ask better questions.
+ These questions and ideas would sit in people minds for days or weeks and they would start to question their ideas on their own. Laying in bed at night questioning your view of the world is powerful….
Done correctly, planting seeds of doubt that are latent in everyone can break through limiting beliefs.
+ Nobody ever really knew what he really believed or what he meant. Everything he said was rhetorical or ironic. Socrates was a mystery. The ambiguity allowed him to plant seeds without anyone knowing what they needed to defend against… if anything?
Learn how to make people come to the conclusions they desire rather than telling them the message in so many words. It’s a longer play, but a more permanent one.
People rarely question the conclusions they have come to themselves.
To effectively communicate an idea DO NOT PREACH. Give people the tools and let them connect the dots and come to conclusions on their own.
They will have to internalize the thought and it will emerge from their own minds. This is the power to penetrate deep behind defenses.
I will often say things in passing and pretend that I don’t know the group can overhear me. It hits them different and helps people come to particular conclusions.
In business, this is stressful to people. It's not “direct response” and the ROI cannot be directly measured. And that’s okay… influence is an ALWAYS thing, not a marketing tactic. Helping more people > making more money in the short term.
This is also the way of living that helps the most people and eliminates arguments from your life.
Not everyone will understand your seemingly ambiguous content.
That's fine. They aren’t supposed to.
The right people will feel as if they are participating by uncovering meaning on their own. The more people participate in the communication process, the more deeply they internalize its ideas.
Stealth Influence is, essentially:
Unlocking new ways to think so that others can realize their own greatness
without saying:
“HEY I AM TEACHING YOU HOW TO THINK SO THAT YOU CAN REALIZE YOUR OWN GREATNESS”
Remember:
Therapy works best when you are not aware you are being therapized
"You must be harsher on yourself than others. Failure to communicate is the fault of not the dull-witted audience but of the un- strategic communicator. “
Robert Greene.
Note: Don’t be an a-hole and try to use stealth influence to make people do stupid shit.
Use influence to give people great strength and build them up…. Not to tear them down.
♥ Nic.
PS. A lot of my digital content is moving over to the Guardian Marketing platform and newsletter. New content will be primary sent via direct mail to Letter Subscribers:
If you don’t have my book, just grab the damn book here. It’s like $4 and it will get to you in two days or less. It’s also a short read.
Learn more about The Letter here. There are no digital copies and there will never be digital copies. TBH, it’s more a social club disguised as education than anything else.
My marketing, sales and business development stuff is being moved over the Guardian Marketing Platform here.
The principles, frameworks and thinking tools the business development stuff was derived from is housed over at the Guardian Academy.
I have a grandmaster. He kicks my ass and teaches me about weapons, medicine and martial arts. It’s weird, I know. But sometimes I write about it over at The Gray Wolf.