783 - A counterintuitive way to get people to say yes to you

Hello and welcome to the new mindset who this podcast, my name is Kase Kenney

Ath, Kase.Kennyi Instagram and this is my weekly podcast where I create short

no BS episodes dedicated to helping you become the person you're meant to be

leave your conflict zone and live a purposeful and fulfilling life.

Let's go.

All right, welcome to episode 783. Hello, my friend. Welcome to a fresh new episode

of new mindset who this as always, thank you so much for listening. Thank you for supporting me

and today I want to talk about a very counterintuitive way to get people to say yes to you

and also the deeper implication of this and the spoilers basically this.

If you want someone to say yes to you to your request of them to your whatever it is your big

ask of them, the research shows that you should give them explicit permission to say no to you.

So it's pretty counterintuitive you give them away out and so it basically goes like this.

You know, we obviously there's this plays out in offices and group chats at dinner tables

on first dates, everything where someone wants something, someone needs something,

but they hesitate and they play it on their head and they rehearse and then they finally

get the courage to ask directly for the thing, but they do so very carefully.

And you know, this is because we have been taught that asking weekly gets you nothing.

So you need to stand up and ask for what you want and be bold in the pursuit of it.

So we say things like hey, I need you to get this to me by Thursday.

Hey, this is urgent. Can you make sure you get it done or even like the shame of I'm counting on you for this?

And the logic on this seems really solid.

Like we need to signify that this thing matters.

That there's some urgency behind it that we cannot leave any room for misinterpretation.

We can't give someone an easy out otherwise they'll take it.

That's what we tend to do.

But the research says that that's backwards.

The logic of this is backwards.

The research that I found comes from 2000.

These two French psychologists Nicolas Nui-Guin and Alexander Pascual were basically on the streets of France.

They had scientists, these people who were in on the experiment,

approach strangers and just ask for money.

In one version, they would just directly ask for money.

But in another version, they would ask for money,

but then end it with a simple phrase of can I have money?

But you are free to accept or to refuse.

So that's it. That was the whole experiment.

There was no additional incentives or any compliments or anything.

It was just asking for money directly.

And then another version asking for money directly,

but explicitly acknowledging that the other person had a choice.

And the group that heard the choice gave significantly more money and more often

than the first group just asking for money.

And the effect of this held up in subsequent experiments that they ran,

emails, phone calls, face-to-face conversations, all these different things.

And the researchers kept trying to break it, but it kept working.

So eventually they had this huge meta-analysis that pulled together

52 separate different experiments, 19,000 different people.

And they found that this was not a fluke.

This wasn't just some like streets of France thing.

This was a magnitude of significance that scaled well beyond it.

And in studies that tested this even further by basically mentioning it twice,

a double mention, oh hey you're free too, you don't have to do it.

Basically mentioning someone's freedom, their autonomy twice in the same message.

And they found that compliance went up even more.

And those people heard yes even more.

So let all this land for a second here.

Very interesting stuff.

The more clearly you tell people that they don't have to do something,

the more likely they are to do it.

And to understand why this works from the research and building on it,

we need to understand the idea of psychological reactants reacting.

It's a very robust phenomenon in behavioral science.

And reactants is this idea.

This is what happens in your brain when you perceive that your freedom is being threatened.

This is your brain firing quickly.

If it's not very subtle, it's quickly, it's acute.

And it doesn't care whether the person has good intentions or not,

is trying to take away your freedom.

But the moment that you sense that someone is pushing you toward a choice,

something in your brain pushes back.

It's not because of the substance of the request necessarily,

but it's because your autonomy,

the sense that you are the one deciding your decisions,

feels like it's under threat.

So this is reactants.

And this is why we know this to be true.

Someone who's really trying to sell you, it usually backfires.

The more that someone says, you really should do this.

The more everything inside of you, you could probably relate.

Everything inside of you says,

and I don't know if I want to anymore.

The more that someone closes off the exits around you, freedom,

the more urgently you want to find your own exit, reactants.

But flip this, right?

When someone explicitly tells you that you don't have to do something,

you don't have to comply, well, that threat of your freedom kind of disappears.

Right? Your autonomy is no longer being threatened.

It's being, it's being honored, if anything.

And when people feel free to do something,

well, something really interesting happens here,

they start making decisions based upon what they want,

their values, social expectations, these things,

instead of that defensiveness which fires when someone is pushing you really hard.

So we ask ourselves, well, do I want to do this?

And if the request is reasonable, if it's coming from someone they trust

or it's aligned, you know, with who they are,

the answer oftentimes is yes.

Right? So it's freedom.

Is the real center of the universe here of why we're doing something or not?

Interesting stuff because most of us were taught to,

basically ask for things transactionally.

You build a case for it, you present the reasons that someone should do it,

and you make it as hard as you can for them to say no.

And maybe you throw in a favor, you know,

or something or a deadline or some kind of consequence.

This is typically how we negotiate.

It's designed to leave the other person with really just one choice,

saying yes to you.

But the research suggests maybe we don't have to do it like this.

Maybe we can negotiate in terms of inviting someone to do something.

An invitation, right?

Invitation is different than a request.

A request as it closes up that space and invitation opens up that space.

And as we've seen through the research, it's like a paradox.

People are more willing to help you when, you know,

it's like you open a door for them.

And this doesn't mean that you have to be passive when it comes to making a request.

Yeah, you know, you don't have to forget about it.

Right? There's an energetic element here.

But it just means, and it certainly doesn't mean you don't advocate for what you want or what you need.

It just means you ask from a place of genuine respect for the other person's ability to say no.

And you just voice that.

You say it out loud.

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And this distinction matters because most of us think that we know we inherently were respecting the other person's autonomy.

We think, well, of course they can say no, don't they know right?

I'm not holding a gun to their head.

Of course they could say no, I'm not going to force them.

But that's like invisible.

It's this internal thing that we assume that's invisible.

The other person can't know your good intentions.

They don't hear your good will.

But what they hear is the framing of your words.

And if the words are all pressure and no freedom, well, that reactance in your brain naturally fires.

So we should be saying, but you're absolutely free to say no.

You have a choice.

And this isn't some kind of like law of persuasion tactic thing.

I mean, I suppose it could be.

But really it's just like you're being honest.

You're acknowledging the reality that goes unvoiced.

You assume that it's spoken, but it's not.

So we're just naming it.

And I like this a lot because naming something like this doesn't weaken your request.

It just clarifies it, frankly, cleans it up a little bit.

So the rewrite here is really simple.

You say, can you get this to me by Thursday?

But hey, if the timing doesn't work, just let me know.

And we'll figure out something else.

Hey, I really like your feedback on this.

But only if you have, you know, bandwidth, so no pressure.

Or hey, we really want you to come to this event, but I also understand if you're not available.

I don't think that those really weaken the ask.

All of those asks are honest.

And each one of them is more likely to produce the outcome you want than the alternative, which is just pressure.

And it's not the case that you're softening your position.

It's simply psychologically you are removing the thing that makes people subconsciously defensive.

The fact that you're telling them there's only one choice and they have to make that choice.

So I think this is really interesting.

But there's also a secondary benefit here as well, which is, you know, the people who say yes

under these conditions when you're saying you don't have to, well, they actually mean it.

So they're not saying yes to you to escape the discomfort of your judgment.

They're saying yes because they want to.

You gave them the out, they didn't take it.

And I think this really changes the quality of that relationship.

It's probably the best sign, right?

It changes the relationship, it changes the energy, the effort that that person is bringing to the request you have of them.

They're giving you an actual freedom of choice.

Yes.

But I think we could apply this to ourselves.

We're not the only people making requests.

We're also the people receiving them, whether it's from a colleague or family or, I don't know, a stranger on the internet.

We are really bad at giving ourselves that freedom phrase that we've referenced here.

We corner ourselves instantly.

We say, oh my gosh, you have to finish this tonight case.

You cannot afford to say no to this invite.

You have to do this.

Hey, even worse, you should want to do this.

We put a lot of pressure on ourselves to say yes to things and to do certain things.

But there's a middle path here, which is genuine, willing engagement with what's being asked.

But also recognizing that it is a choice.

It is a choice.

This is what researchers call autonomous motivation.

AKA crazy thought here, doing things because you genuinely want to do them.

Or doing things because they align with your values, whatever.

But versus doing them because you feel coerced even by yourself.

That is self coercion.

And the research on this is clear.

Autonomously motivated actions are more sustainable, more effective.

You'll enjoy the task more, you go further.

So the practice then here, as we can apply it to ourselves, is more like I am choosing to do this.

It's not because I have to.

It's because I looked at what matters and this matters to me.

And I'm going to do it.

I have the right to renegotiate with myself at any time.

So I think the takeaway here is that when you give other people and yourself a genuine exit,

a genuine opportunity to say, no, you're not losing influence.

You're gaining trust and you're creating clarity and you're being honest.

And you're replacing this psychological reactance with more alignment.

You're allowing people to reflect and then say, yes, in a way that will actually be helpful to you.

So you're not asking people to comply and force them to do.

So you're inviting them to choose to help you.

And the research shows that that is what makes people actually help you.

So the next time you need something from someone, you want something from someone,

end the ask with you don't have to.

But say like you mean it.

Of course, stand up for yourself.

Say like you mean it because you should mean it.

And you should recognize that it will probably help your case.

Watch what happens to the conversation.

Watch how their energy shifts.

And the next time also flip side that you feel pinned in by your own expectations of yourself, all that pressure.

Try to offer yourself the same, it's a courtesy, offer yourself the same courtesy.

You are free to accept or refuse.

You are free to renegotiate with yourself from a place of genuine honesty.

So that's it, shorter episode.

I hope this was interesting.

I love this kind of research.

It shows me a lot.

Be sure if this relates to you to check out my book, the opposite of settling.

This is all about relationships asking for what you want, getting what you want.

I think it'll really resonate there, the opposite of settling.

But that's it.

As always, thank you so much for listening.

Thank you for supporting me.

And until next episode, I'm out.

Thank you.