In the mid-1990’s I worked for NatWest Markets in London on the bond trading floor. The ‘Head of Bond Sales’ position was a revolving door: in three years I had four different bosses. One of them, like me, was called Neil. He was transferred internally from the equity floor to run the bond team. This was clearly a political decision driven by an internal power struggle within the investment bank because an equity banker should never be running a bond team – they are totally different markets. It’s like asking a professional tennis player to compete in swimming.
However, of all the bosses I had during that period, Neil was not only the most effective, but the most liked. I vividly remember his first team meeting where he announced: “You’re probably all wondering what I’m doing here, well so am I!” He then proceeded to inform us that he knew absolutely nothing about bonds, but he did understand the bank and could help make the internal connections we needed to close deals, and fight for our business with the other leaders if we worked with him.
It was a very effective pitch. One of the reasons this approach worked was because Neil aligned himself with us as a team. He didn’t try to stamp his authority on us as previous bosses has done, but instead he positioned himself as a resource that we could use to develop our business. During his first month he took each team member for lunch individually and got to know us as people, asking questions about our interests, family and career and sharing some of his own stories. He was a great guy to be around.
However, there is another reason that his approach was effective and for this I will once again revert to the research of world leading persuasion psychologist Dr. Robert Cialdini. The research of Cialdini is focused on why people say ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ to any given request and one of his ‘six principles of persuasion’ is authority. To be a credible authority, you need to be trustworthy and Cialdini’s recommendation for increasing trustworthiness is to argue a little against your case.
What this means in a commercial context, is to identify a component of your argument, proposal, product, service etc that is not as strong as the others, and to raise it to the surface. By showing this humility and honesty, your counterpart is more likely to trust the other things that you say, thus increasing the authority of your communication. A simple example of this in everyday life which we have all experienced is when asking a waiter for a menu recommendation. If the waiter suggests the most expensive item on the menu, we are not likely to either follow their suggestion or trust anything else they say. However, when they point out that something isn’t so good and then direct us to a mid-priced option that is “great value and very popular”, we will follow their advice.
When Neil openly stated he was not a bond expert and would need our guidance on how the market worked, he immediately demonstrated that he could be trusted. The process of earning trust takes longer, however showing that you are trustable is something you can do in a single sentence – and that sets the framework for building trust. We should avoid the need to always have the answer and always be right. Of course, we should be experts in our field however, a little humility goes a long way and sometimes saying you don’t know or arguing against your case will do more to build trust in the mind of the listener than always having the answer.
As for Neil, he only stayed with the bond team for six months before returning to the role he knew however many of us kept in touch with him long beyond his brief flirtation with the bond markets!
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