Navigating a Whackadoodle World: Episode 15, or What Causes People to be Resistant to Change?
A Whackadoodle discussion in which my student and I cycle back to our first rule, Cause and Effect, only to find that all the rules work together at once.
If you have entered this story in the middle, click here for the table of contents.
“So we’ve cycled back to Rule One: Cause and Effect?” she said sounding a bit dejected.
“Yes, after rule fourteen, we cycle back to rule one,” I confirmed. Looking at her face, I couldn’t help but add, “So what’s the problem?”
“Well,” she admitted. “I had some thoughts on persuasion, but that’s week away.”
“Ridiculous,” I assured her. “The rules don’t say, ‘pay strict attention to one rule each week, and ignore all the rest.’ If ordinary chance has given you some new thoughts about persuasion, then bring those thoughts on.”
“But this is the week we’re supposed to be focusing on Cause and Effect, and this has nothing to do with Cause and Effect,” she insisted.
“That’s what you think,” I scoffed. “In my sixty plus years of experience, I’ve found that everything is affected by Cause and Effect.” I rapped my knuckles on the table between us, and added, “So tell me your thoughts about persuasion.”
“Well,” she began slowly. “I’ve be wondering about other ways to persuade. Ways that don’t include building relationships and rapport.”
“Such as?” I prompted.
“Well,” she said again. “Aren’t threats a kind of persuasion?” She looked at me uncertainly. “You don’t need relationship or rapport when you’re threatening people, do you? And if you threaten people enough, you can get your way. Isn’t that persuasion too?”
“You do know that threatening others is against the law, don’t you?” I reminded her.
“Yeah, I know,” she said dismissively. “But that doesn’t mean people don’t do it. That doesn’t mean that people don’t get away with it.”
“Okay, you’re right. People do a lot of things in order to get their way. They bribe. They beg. They threaten. They bully. They manipulate. They intimidate. They blackmail, and con others. They criticize, complain, and condemn. They argue, advise, and defend. Question is, how do you end up feeling about those people?”
“The word hate comes to mind,” she leaned her chin into her fists. “It does make me wonder why they do it.”
“You mean what causes them to behave that way?” I asked mischievously.
She groaned a bit, and shook her head. “And so you’ve managed to bring it back to cause and effect already.”
“I told you, nearly everything comes back to cause and effect. Or at least it does if you want to solve problems.”
“And a problem is only a problem if you can do something about it. Everything else is a fact of life, so you’d best get over it,” she quoted from rule one softly. Looking up, she added with a cock of her head, “So what do you think causes people to behave so hatefully?”
“I suppose the causes are unique to every situation and individual. However, I suspect is has a lot to do with how people are raised. Who their role models are. What behaviors they have learned. What their beliefs are. Truth be told, a lot of people behave hatefully, as you call it, because they know no other way to behave. They’re simply acting out of habit. Behaving as they feel they must in order to succeed in the world they live.”
“But all those hateful things you listed: bullying, bribing, threatening, and all. Those things do work?” she insisted. “They can get people to do as you want.”
“Sure they can get you what you want, but you end up living in a world surrounded by them. Besides, those techniques don’t so much change minds, as muck up relationships. I’ve always consider persuasion as two or more minds coming together in agreement. Persuasion is not making someone do as you want; persuasion is more about helping others see how much they might need your services, your ideas, your perspective. People who ignore that truth, miss out.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well,” I searched for an example. “I somehow got my name added to about a dozen or so political parties, along with their candidates. Some I support, and some I don’t. The point is that after I received and opened the first few, I began ignoring them all.”
“Even the ones from people you support?”
“Even them,” I nodded. “And they sure did send me a lot of emails. But you see, the problems was that they were all basically the same. Some would start out pretending to be a survey, but the last question was always, ‘How much would you be willing to donate to make this happen?’ Followed by a donate now button. Or sometimes it would be, ‘We’re devastated, you won’t believe what just happened.’ Then when you opened the email, it simply said, ‘We need to keep this from happening, donate now.’ I even remember one with a subject heading, ‘Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to RESIGN!’ I actually opened that one because it sounded like it might be news, but the only thing inside was another, ‘We can make this happen if you donate now.’ Oh, and I wish I had a dollar for every time I get an email claiming, ‘last chance to renew you membership,’ for the umpteenth time. I just got sick of it.”
“I can see why you’d get sick of it, but I wouldn’t compare it to threatening someone.”
“Not a threat exactly; just a not very subtle attempt to manipulate me into opening an email that I have no use for. I’m telling you; they started to feel like false advertising, and they didn’t make me feel any love towards the organizations flooding my inbox.”
“But you still get the emails?” she offered.
“Oh yeah, I still get dozens a day.”
“I wonder how many people donate, and how many people feel like you.”
“Hum, I sometimes wonder too,” I paused, considering. “You know, this conversation brings to mind a lecture I used to give in my sales classes. It was about building customers versus making sales. We looked at the difference between low risk, low cost products where people are not necessarily going to become repeat buyers; versus higher cost, higher risk items, where people often become repeat buyers. In the first version, it might be okay to burn a prospect or two because you have a lot of prospects and leads. However in the second version, prospects and leads tend to be rare. You can’t afford to burn them.”
“And they burned you?”
“As far as emails go, they did,” I agreed. “But I guess it doesn’t matter to them. It costs very little to send one email to a mailing list of thousands. Odds are that they make enough in donations to make it worth their while.”
“But they could make more if they tried a different tact, right?”
“It’s possible. I do know that you can get a single sale with a threat, or a dire warning, or a one time offer before it’s too late, but a single sale does not a loyal customer make. Or a loyal friend for that matter. If you plan on working with someone, or calling upon them again, you had better recognize the importance of building lasting relationships.”
“Seems a shame that people don’t get that,” she said. “It is kind of like they’re missing out.”
“Someday, they may make changes,” I mused. “But I doubt we will ever know.”
“You mean that they show no sign of changing.”
“Not an ounce.”
“So why don’t you just block the emails?”
“Hum, I suppose I like getting them, so I know what people are doing. I just don’t open them,” I laughed.
“So why, or what causes people to be so resistant to change?”
“I think it’s because change is uncomfortable. It takes time. It takes practice. But mostly, it take people believing that they need to change.”
“And most people don’t?”
“I think most people never ask the question.”
She seemed a bit downcast, so I banged my hand on the table to grab her attention, and added in a lighthearted tone, “Of course, we can’t end this session while leaving out the most obvious reason for not threatening, or manipulating, or intimidating people.”
“What’s that?”
“Good old rule nine,” I reminded her. “As you sow, so shall you reap. Which, translated into Whackadoodle, means that people tend to treat others in the same manner that they’ve been treated. Like I said before, the hateful stuff can work on people, but you’ll end up living in a world surrounded by it. Personally, that doesn’t sound appealing at all.”
“Yeah,” she agreed, reaching for her backpack. “I suppose it would be a pretty noxious world to live in.”
“And the world you live in?” I asked uncertain.
She thought about it for a good long time before answering. “Confusing,” she admitted at last, “Confusing, but basically good.”