Zoe: I love to share this really simple question because it is so powerful. And like the other strategies that I teach, it feels good on both sides. As long as you have a little bit of rapport and because you know, this is a question that other people will feel good or at least fine to have you ask, you're more likely to do it. We can come back to the gator judge thing and how this works in a moment.
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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