There's this really great study by a sociologist named Jessica Calarco who was doing research in a middle school. She found that the kids from middle class families were seven times more likely to ask for help or any of those other things it's huge and so then she looked at who were the teachers saying yes to and the teachers are trying to say yes to everybody but they're not looking at who wasn't asking. So even in a family definitely in a company in any role where you have something that people are coming and asking you for we need to step back and think about who didn't step forward to ask maybe they didn't feel comfortable because people with more privilege are more comfortable asking
Being influential sounds great, even desirable. But doing influence? That’s when alarm bells go off in our brains—because we tend to imagine the act of influencing as manipulative, coercive, and 100% transactional. And sure, we’ve all had icky experiences with influence. But when we flatten its inherent complexity, we risk missing out on influence’s ability to instigate positive impact.
Yale School of Management professor and author Zoe Chance believes influence is an untapped superpower; that’s why she recently published the book, Influence Is Your Superpower: The Science of Winning Hearts, Sparking Change, and Making Good Things Happen. And it’s why we asked her onto the show to help us break down some common misconceptions about influence, better harness its power to catalyze systemic change, and learn how to ask what she calls the “Magic Question.”
Our book is available now at bravenewwork.com
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