Push vs pull persuasion

When I worked at White Pages, a new leadership team from the US was temporarily installed to reignite the Australian business.

Every few months we gathered for an all company meeting, 500+ of us sitting in a theatre to hear our Chief Strategy Officer share plans and progress.

Let me tell you, this leader was big on applause. So big that she constantly paused to prompt round after round of noisy affirmation.

As a result, these meetings got longer and longer. 

And longer.

In fact, they took so long that she instituted a new policy.

A one clap policy 👏.

That’s right. We were to clap once and once only.

If something was particularly “exciting” we were to clap once while exclaiming “woo!”

Now, maybe it’s a cultural difference, but getting Australians to applaud in the first place is difficult.

Controlling how they applaud and what to exclaim, well, let’s say that didn’t endear her to her audience 🤨.

I often think of this one clap policy, because rather than modify her own behaviour, her intuition was to force 500+ people to change theirs.

Clapping taking too much time? Simple. Tell them to change the way they clap.

🫸 This is what I call “push” persuasion, where we push the task of change onto the people we are trying to influence.

Change is seen as something that happens “to them”, as if you’re a neutral party with no responsibility or agency. Frankly, it’s a lazy approach, which isn’t particularly effective.

🫴  The better approach is “pull” persuasion, where you pull people towards the desired behaviour by changing what you do.

In the clapping example, that would mean pausing for applause less often or resuming speaking more quickly to cue clapping to stop.

Because here’s the secret sauce when it comes to influencing action. It’s more about your behaviour than theirs.

Woo!

Here's how to influence behaviour more effectively.