Why do we sometimes find ourselves feeling unable to influence other people? If you've ever found yourself thinking you're ineffective, invisible or inarticulate, then you're not alone. We've all experienced it. But what if it turned out that those feelings were actually wrong? On this episode, I'm speaking to the author of a new book that explores precisely this. Vanessa Bohns is a social psychologist and professor of organizational behavior at Cornell University. She’s the author of a new book called You Have More Influence Than You Think: How We Underestimate Our Power of Persuasion, and Why It Matters.The idea behind the book, which is obvious from the title, is that we often have far more ability to influence others than we might think.This failure to recognise a hidden superpower has two human risk implications:The first is that we miss opportunities. If we don’t think we have any influence, we don’t see to make use of it.The second relates to how we interact with other people and is the fact that we don’t recognise how we are influencing other people and therefore accidentally misuse our hidden power. Both can lead to undesirable outcomes.In our discussion, we explore how Vanessa came to be interested in this topic and dive into some of the dynamics that drive our inability to understand our own influence.To find out more about the book: https://www.vanessabohns.com/To learn more about Vanessa and her research: https://www.ilr.cornell.edu/people/vanessa-bohnsYou can find her on Twitter: https://twitter.com/profbohns?s=20Listeners unfamiliar with singer Barry Manilow — whose t-shirts form part of an experiment we refer to on the show — can find out more here: https://barrymanilow.com/

What can Compliance learn from Sales? On the face of it, they're very different things: sales is about persuading customers to buy a service or product, whereas Compliance is about telling employees what to do or not do. Yet, perhaps surprisingly, there are lots of lessons for Compliance from the sales process.If we want to mitigate human risk, then we’ll be more effective if we can borrow ideas from other disciplines that also involve influencing human decision-making.My guest on this episode, Taylor Edwards, works in sales for The Broadcat, a Compliance design company. When he joined the company earlier this year, Taylor needed to learn about Compliance because that's who the company's customers are. And in doing so, he discovered that while Sales and Compliance might seem like different disciplines, there is much that they have in common.You can find out more about Taylor on LinkedIn where he regularly shares insights:https://www.linkedin.com/in/tayloredwards90/For more on Broadcat, visit www.thebroadcat.comYou’ll find them on social media:https://www.linkedin.com/company/broadcat/https://twitter.com/TheBroadcatDo listen to the previous episodes of the show featuring Ricardo Pellafone, the founder of Broadcat here:https://www.humanriskpodcast.com/ricardo-pellafone-on-why-compliance/https://www.humanriskpodcast.com/ricardo-pellafone-on-the-challenges/

How can building a community help business? That's what my guest Jean-Marc Le Tissier helps me to understand on this episode. We're all familiar with the idea of a community, in terms of where we live, but how might it be relevant for businesses and other organisations. The answer is that what works for us in our domestic lives, can also have benefits in a work context. If we want to achieve our goals, then we need to work collaboratively together.Businesses can thrive if they build communities — whether that's of customers or employees — and Jean-Marc talks me through how that can happen. In our discussion, we explore how trust can be built and how having a common purpose can drive better outcomes.To find out more about Jean-Marc see: https://www.halton-bridge.com/jean-marc-le-tissier/On the episode, I also mention the re-recorded interview I did with Tom Hardin. You can find that here:https://www.humanriskpodcast.com/tom-hardin-on-his-experience/I also mention my discussion with Lisa Richardson on the psychology of Peloton, a company that has successfully built a community: https://www.humanriskpodcast.com/lisa-richardson-on-the-psychology/

How can we communicate more effectively in a virtual environment?My guest Mark Bowden is a body language expert who is well known for advising senior business leaders, celebrities and politicians on how to present themselves. He’s also the author of a number of best-selling books on communication and body language. During our discussion, we explore how Mark became a body language expert and he shares some fascinating insights into how to be more effective in a virtual environment. 
In our discussion, we refer to:Jacques Cousteau - https://www.cousteau.org/Lumiere Brothers - https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/history-magazine/article/creation-of-the-motion-picture-lumiere-brothersEtro Suits - https://www.etro.com/Mark’s videos - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCY392nFI08uc-qxUs5hDusQTruth & Lies - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCY392nFI08uc-qxUs5hDusQKen Dodd - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_DoddTo contact Mark: https://truthplane.com/

What determines how we individually react to refugees? That’s the question that my guest on this episode, Dr Nihan Albayrak-Aydemir, has explored in her PhD. Nihan is originally from Turkey and came to the UK to study at LSE - the London School of Economics & Political Sciences. Nihan was intrigued by the fact that the level of engagement she saw in Turkey towards Syrian refugees was very different to that which she observed in the UK. And she noted changes in her own behaviour.Her curiosity about what drove this led her to explore the reasons why people might be more or less willing to help refugees. She discovered that there are a number of factors at play — some predictable, some surprising. If you’re interested in learning more about the concept of bystanding, I recommend listening to an earlier episode of the show on the Bystander Effect with Professor Catherine Sanderson 🎧 👉 https://www.humanriskpodcast.com/professor-catherine-sanderson-on-the/To find out more about Nihan and her work visit her LSE website: https://www.lse.ac.uk/PBS/People/Nihan-Albayrak-AydemirYou’ll find Nihan’s research here: https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/bjop.12474During our discussion, I refer to a Save The Children fundraising video which you can watch here: https://youtu.be/RBQ-IoHfimQFor more on the Bystander Intervention Model visit https://www.simplypsychology.org/bystander-effect.html

What is Creative Accountancy? That's what I'm exploring on this episode. It's a term I've invented — a deliberate play on the term 'Creative Accounting' — to describe the approach which my guest Alastair Thomson adapts to his role as an accountant. He's actually much more than an accountant, but that's his background.Nowadays, Alastair advises companies in a growth phase, which requires him to adopt an approach that might not fit what you'd expect from an accountant. I'm fascinated by this because I think one of the root causes of human risk is people sticking rigidly to the remit of their role without thinking beyond that. To be clear, there are some roles where that is precisely what we want and need people to do — we don't want brain surgeons, air traffic controllers or those engaged in food safety to do other things than the task at hand. But very often, we do. So I think Alastairs' approach is of interest, not just to accountants, but other disciplines like Compliance, HR and Audit, to name just three. If we want to succeed in the 21st century, we will need more people to be creative and dynamic. To find out more about Alastair and his books: https://thebetterbusinesscompany.com/

How can we use crowdsourcing to obtain human risk insights? We’re all familiar with companies that have faced big issues in terms of misconduct. When there’s a big scandal — whether that’s banks engaging in bad behaviour or the diesel emissions cheating scandal in the motor industry - it’s very easy to look back with hindsight and point to things that could have been spotted at the time. But wouldn’t it be better for regulators, shareholders, customers and the companies themselves, if we could identify warning signs early on? That’s the challenge that my guest on this episode Dr Ruidi Shang, set to address. She’s an Associate Professor at Tilburg University in the Netherlands and a visiting scholar at Harvard Business School. Ruidi is the co-author of some new research entitled Tone At The Bottom: Measuring corporate misconduct from the text of employee reviews. 
What she and co-author Professor Dennis Campbell set out to identify was whether it would be possible to take information that is already available about companies, and determine from that which are more or less likely to have misconduct issues. To get hold of that information they turned to an unexpected source, Glassdoor.com — a website that allows employees and former employees to leave anonymous reviews about what it is like to work for a particular company. It’s designed to help jobseekers understand the realities of working in a particular place before they decide to apply or join a company. On the face of if this might sound odd. What can a website designed to help job seekers, tells us about the risk of misconduct? As it happens quite a lot. Because in talking about their employee experience, people end up describing the corporate culture. Since culture is a driver of misconduct, this is potentially highly relevant. Look at enough of those reviews, and you can start to build a pattern of what goes on in the organisation, and so form a picture of potential issues. What’s clever about this dataset is that it recognises that asking people about directly misconduct is a heavily loaded question. Respondents might choose not to answer truthfully, or they might not actually recognise the fact that a high-pressure environment — which they might actually enjoy working in — could be a driver of potential misconduct. So the best way to get a good picture is not to ask people about it at all. Rather its to crowdsource insights from lots of anecdotal accounts of what it is like to work within the organisation. It turns out that analysing the dataset on Glassdoor does have predictive capabilities. By backtesting the analysis with companies that had public scandals and exploring what was being said, before the scandals emerged, the researchers discovered that these reviews can provide advanced warning of potential misconduct issues. As we explore on the show.To find out more about Ruidi and her work: https://www.tilburguniversity.edu/staff/r-shangTo find out more about her co-author Professor Dennis Campbell: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/profile.aspx?facId=10677To read Tone At The Bottom: Measuring corporate misconduct from the text of employee reviews: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3850554

What causes human risk in companies, particularly at senior levels? That's what my guest on this episode, Professor Elizabeth Sheedy, has been exploring in her research. And she's just published a new book called Risk Governance: Biases, Blindspots & Bonuses. Elizabeth has been on the show two times before (links below) talking about Bad Behaviour in Banking and Accountability regimes. This time, she's back to help us understand how the three 'b's in the title of her book, are key drivers of human risk in organisations.We also discuss a book she has co-authored called Auditing Risk Culture - A Practical Guide.As ever, Elizabeth, who is a risk governance expert based in the Department of Applied Finance of Macquarie Business School in Sydney, provides fascinating insights and some wonderful stories to support her analysis. To find out more about Elizabeth's area of research 👉https://researchers.mq.edu.au/en/persons/elizabeth-sheedyTo hear her first appearance on the show when we talked about Bad Behaviour in Banking 🎧 👉 https://www.humanriskpodcast.com/professor-elizabeth-sheedy-on-behaviour-in-banking/ Youll find her second appearance on Accountability 🎧 👉 https://www.humanriskpodcast.com/professor-elizabeth-sheedy-on-how-accountability-can-reduce-human-risk/To read more about Elizabeth's book on Biases, Blind Spots & Bonuses 👉https://www.routledge.com/Risk-Governance-Biases-Blind-Spots-and-Bonuses/Sheedy/p/book/9780367642655To download Auditing Risk Culture - a practical guide 👉 https://www.iia.org.au/technical-resources/publications/auditing-risk-culture---a-practical-guideDuring our discussion, Elizabeth refers to:The Good Judgement Project 👉https://www.gjopen.com/Research on Bonus Deferrals 👉 https://privpapers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3814623

How do human factors influence an inherently risky activity like scuba diving?That’s what my guest on this episode, Gareth Lock explores in his work as the founder of The Human Diver — a company that specialises in teaching the diving community about human factors.Whether you’ve ever been diving or not, it's fairly obvious that it’s an activity, that comes with a degree of inherent risk. After all, It involves getting into an environment that requires us to use specialist equipment because being underwater impacts our ability to breathe naturally and diminishes the use of some of our senses. It also exposes us to some potentially dangerous conditions - temperature, currents and air pressure for starters. Not to mention the sea creatures we might come across, who aren’t necessarily always going to welcome our intrusion into their world.As Gareth explains in our discussion, those dynamics can be made far worse by humans. Most accidents and incidents in diving arent down to technical failures, rather they are down to complacency, breakdowns in communication, poor decision-making, a lack of situational awareness or ineffective teamwork and/or leadership.To find out more about:Gareth - https://www.thehumandiver.com/theteamThe Human Diver - https://www.thehumandiver.com/Under Pressure, Gareth’s book - https://www.thehumandiver.com/underpressure

The Human Factors in Diving Conference - https://www.hf-in-diving-conference.com/In our discussion, we also refer to Tim Harford. You can hear the episode of this podcast featuring Tim here: https://www.podpage.com/the-human-risk-podcast/tim-harford-on-using-data-to-make-smarter-decisions/Listeners interested in hearing more about Human Factors will enjoy this episode of the show featuring Neil Clark: https://www.humanriskpodcast.com/neil-clark-on-human-factors/

Why might judges in the same Court give vastly different sentences for the same crime? The answer is noise. When experts who assess the same situation come to very different conclusions for no good reason, we risk bad outcomes.On this episode, I’m speaking with Professor Olivier Sibony, who is the co-author — along with Professors Daniel Kahneman and Cass Sunstein — of Noise: a flaw in human judgement.In our discussion, he explains what noise is, why it matters and what we can do to mitigate it.He also shares how this stellar line-up of authors came together.Olivier also helps me understand why a commonly adopted approach of using forced distribution for employee performance evaluations, which I have always found to be a bad idea, is…a really bad idea!Olivier has been on the show before. You’ll find that episode here: https://www.podpage.com/the-human-risk-podcast/professor-olivier-sibony-on-mistakes/ To find out more about Olivier, his research and his previous book ‘You’re About To Make A Terrible Mistake’ visit his website: https://oliviersibony.com/about/For more on Noise, the book see: https://oliviersibony.com/books/noise/To read a 2016 article on Noise by Daniel Kahneman: https://hbr.org/2016/10/noise