The Hidden Shortcut to Influence: Find Something in Common

The Hidden Shortcut to Influence: Find Something in Common

[5-minute read]

The key to influencing and building relationships? Don’t underestimate the power of small things in common.  We look at what the evidence tells us.

Consider two people: One a staunch Trump acolyte, and self-proclaimed scourge of the ‘woke mind – virus’ (not our words.) The other a black British MP, born in Tottenham, and very much on the left-leaning side of the Labour party.

And yet, JD Vance and David Lammy are friends.

Lammy explains their friendship like this: Both men are born into deprivation, and relative hardship. Despite this, both men manage to make their way to Ivy League universities, where they both study law. Both are in mixed race marriages, and both have mixed race children. Vance converted to Catholicism. Lammy rediscovered his Anglo-Catholicism. And both have a fierce intellectual curiosity (when, as Lammy sees it, too many politicians do not.)

Despite sitting squarely in opposing political tribes, there is rapport between the two men – there is trust and an ability to communicate. They also apparently enjoy each other’s company, and their families spend time together.

Things in common

What we are seeing here is the extraordinary power of things in common.

There’s a classic experiment: “The Social Bond Between Birthday-Mates.

Pairs of strangers are randomly paired and told they’ll be working together on a joint task. Before diving in, each person is asked a few icebreaker questions, one of which is their birth date. Unbeknownst to the participants, the experimenters manipulate who discovered what. In the key condition, one participant is told: “Hey, you share the same birthday (month/day) with your partner!” In another condition, the shared birthday was a random birthday that matched – so it wasn’t real. Then there were control conditions with no birthday mention.

When it’s time to collaborate – say, dividing money or coordinating decisions – the pairs who believe they share a birthday are significantly more cooperative.

Even a seemingly unrelated similarity like a birthday makes people feel a bond and trust each other more. And of course, people don’t later say, “Oh, I helped them because of the birthday!” The effect works more subconsciously.  Humans are built to feel closer to people who seem like “us.”

Superficial similarities

Even something as superficial as an item of clothing can determine our willingness to help somebody who is in distress.  In a fascinating piece of research led by Mark Levine at Lancaster University, target participants are gathered on a university campus, ostensibly for a series of study activities. The researchers then manipulate a situation where one of the target participants is made late to attend a lecture. Now, the researchers also know whether the target participant happens to be a Liverpool or a Manchester United soccer fan. (Representing one of the most visceral rivalries in the English Premiership.) As the target participant hurries along to the lecture, a casual jogger (in reality an actor), runs close by. The jogger pulls up sharply in pain, having seemingly pulled a muscle. Will the target participant pause and help, and so make themselves even later? Or will they feign unawareness of the situation, and hurry on their way?

And here is the rub, our jogger is wearing either a Liverpool or Manchester United shirt. People are significantly more likely to be a good Samaritan when the jogger is wearing their own team’s colours. Of course, we also have to acknowledge the darker side of social bonding. We are more likely to ignore the distress of a fellow human being when they are wearing the ‘wrong’ colours.

The results were striking.

Approximate helping rates:

Influencing skills

When we train leaders in influencing skills, we start with a simple but revealing exercise. We ask participants to pair up with the person whom they feel they know least in the room. They are then given three minutes to discover as many things as they can that they have in common. Extra plaudits are given for the surprising or unusual nature of the commonality that they unearth. Despite its simplicity, the exercise is invariably quite powerful and moving. We discover that proposals of marriage took place after watching the same movie. People have dogs that share the same name. On one occasion, a CEO and the most junior member of staff had both found themselves sleeping in situations where they had been defecated upon by bats. They both seemed quite jolly about it. (The CEO did not use the term defecated, as he was a no-nonsense Texan – let’s just say he used a word that rhymes with bat.)

We are a social species. This means our antennae are constantly looking to sense whom we can trust and with whom we should collaborate. And we view the small things that we have in common as important indicators of this. This is one of the reasons why we make small talk. As we say a Threshold, small talk is never small.

Common connection

When we were exploring this topic at a recent workshop, a participant, who was also a trained mediator, talked about a useful way that she had learnt to start a session. When people arrive, she’ll engineer a small task, such as going to get a cup of coffee, or moving tables around. This gives her the opportunity to make small talk, from which she almost invariably finds at least one or two points of common connection. This is the starting point for rapport. It provides that foundation on which relationships can better be built.

If we choose to cooperate with people with whom we share commonalities, what is the implication for Inclusion and Diversity trainings? In short, it seems that those that emphasise intergroup differences, rather than similarities, tend to be counterproductive.

Breakdown barriers

In a 2016 Harvard Business Review article, Harvard Professor Frank Dobbin captures the core issue. If we educate the majority group about the multitude differences between them and the minority groups –  and the many ways in which they may cause offence –  it provokes avoidance and defensiveness. On the other hand, encouraging people from different groups to work together on voluntary programmes, has been shown to be a powerful way to breakdown barriers. When people have greater contact with one another, they discover that they have more in common. This is turn leads to greater collaboration and cooperation. It’s a virtuous circle.

Put it this way: This person may not look like me on the surface, but the moment I realise that we’re both worrying about what to cook the kids for supper. Or we both have nostalgic memories of the same childhood sweets, then those differences pale into insignificance.

Contact Theory

One of the most insightful thinkers in this field was Gordon Allport, whose contact theory argued that prejudice declines when people from different groups work together under shared goals and equal status. Through real interaction we discover that others are far less different than we imagined. In a world that often emphasises identity and division, Allport’s insight remains as relevant as ever – and worth revisiting whenever we forget how powerful simple human contact can be.

Find something in common

Small things can unite us, in a way that transcends conventional divisions, such as politics, social class or ethnicity. Nothing breaks down barriers between groups quite like realising that we have things in common.

Whatever your politics, in a polarised and febrile world, the fact that people like Lammy and Vance can communicate and work together makes things just that little bit safer.

Go and make small talk, find something in common. Something small is fine. Something obscure is even better. We’d love to hear about them.

To find out how we can help leaders in your organisation to be more impactful, influential and persuasive visit  www.threshold.co.uk