I was just reading a book called Influence - The Psychology of Persuasion from Dr. Robert B. Cialdini and I just realized why I was once very effective working with new colleagues when I started a new job in my former company.
As I was working in a virtual environment with people from 8 countries and almost only through the phone and using netmeeting, I thought it was very important to present myself to create a personal bond with my new colleagues. This was a perfect chance to get to know each other much better and create a good work atmosephere under the premise that human relations are very important to the working conditions. People feel much better working if there is a socialization process in between.
The first part of the presentation was about myself and my family. I showed them a couple of pictures, introduced my family and told them some of my personal history. Where I was born, where I studied, my hobbies, etc... The second part of my presentation was about my specific work experience which helped me provide my professional background. With this, the new team would know better where I can help them add value and probably gain some recognition much faster. The last part of the presentation was about my beliefs and expectations. What I think is important, how I work, how I like to build relationship and what I believe is important in my professional relationships. I brought issues like the importance of trust, honest feedback, open communication or the delivery of assigned tasks in a timely manner.
I must say that I didn´t think I would interact so much during the presentation, but to my surprise almost everyone told me about their own lifes, showed me pictures of their families, etc... But more surprisingly was the feedback I received from the "Believes and Expectations" part. Everyone agreed with my statements. This should not be a surprise as all of them reflect very good intentions, but I didn't thought they would agree to it openly and pubicly and we would even get into some details discussing them or providing examples. Everyone was very active and somehow made a public commitment towards these statements.
And this is exactly the reason I was very effective in my future interactions with them. Developing open communication, honest feedback, trust or even the discipline of being on time to meetings is not very easy to achieve, but as they all made a public commitment towards these attitudes, they somehow contributed to it. Dr. Cialdini calls this the "Commitment" enabler. After an extended research, Dr. Cialdini found some basic enablers that allow to influence people. They are mostly used by professional salesmen. One of them is "Commitment" and it basically says that people tend to stick to the commitments they have made, and the harder and more public it is, the more they stick. The reason for this is that in our society people who change their minds very often or are inconsistent in their acting or with what they say are not liked or even seen as insane. Sticking to a commitment means showing personal consistency which is valued in our society as it helps to eliminate uncertainty. Otherwise the social interactions would be very complex,
What basically happened is that my colleagues publicly committed themselves (as I did, too) to these "believes and expectations" which at the end helped me and the team create a much better work environment.
