By | Adil Malia | www.adilmalia.com
Effective Leaders unleash the magic hidden in peer power to persuade and convince. People reflect a tendency generally to look around at other people, whenever they are at a cross road. They look out for signals by observing the people around them at that point of time. The idea is to allow such observations to influence decisions that provides a reference to help decide how they should contextually think, feel & act.
Surely, you have been approached at some point of time in the past by some person or group to contribute your towards any common event or to some kitty for celebration or benevolent funds. Recall the way how subtly, principles of social psychology are applied to persuade you.
The longer the list of Donors, higher is your contribution to such funds. Certainly, there must be something meaningfully deeper in the cause that has made so many donors – whose names appear on that long impressive list of contributors, open out their wallets ! The competitive man hiding inside you can’t be left behind in the race and there you go making a contribution to match the names on the list and not what you really would have contributed without seeing the list.
Social Proof is the inner desire to position yourself in the social pegging order appropriately, irrespective of the reality.
The more the recognized names or faces particularly of friends on the list of contributors, higher are the chances of the amounts of your Contributions being bigger. Some fund raisers do good by calling out names of your friends and the contributions they have made. This is the social punt they take and generally they succeed. And ofcourse they send out for actual collection people and friends who you would desire a higher social pegging order with.
The application of this psychological principle is very simple. Persuasion is very critical and the factor that best influences to persuade and convince others to think, feel and act is effectively using the power of Social Proof. Also called building peer preassure.
Peer Role Modeling works best. Peer preassure for performance provides faster and better results. Peer coaching, peer mentoring gives the best results.
Transformational leaders in charge of creating a new behavioural order succeed when they engage with the de facto opinion makers and influencers of the group first. They convince them to replicate and behave in the new desired way. Once people identify their heros behaving in a different or a new way, they tend to imitate, replicate and mirror such hero behaviours. Thus slowly the first few steps of Transformational change get triggered.
Now you know why Luxary brands & consumer oroducts use Celebrity Endorsements ?
They create Social Proof to influence & pressurize consumption by peer preassure.
Late Vinod Khanna was ever my hero. Everybody macho used Cinthol. I must have lost a fortune buying Cinthol soaps and telling people that I use costly Cinthol Soap too.
But …..
Republished with permission and originally published at www.adilmalia.com
