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Adding one simple word can make you more persuasive.

In a famous 1978 Harvard University study, a researcher would attempt to cut in line to copy some pages at the library.

In some cases they said: “Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine?”  

In others, they asked the same thing except for adding a simple word. 

And this simple word made it 50% more likely they would be allowed to cut the line.

Here’s what they said.

 “Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox ...

Convincing your boss to do something differently is one of the biggest frustrations people have. 

It’s not just your boss, of course. It could be any colleague whose support you need. 

So let’s walk through an example that I’ve shared with many of my clients.

How to convince your boss

Start with unifying language, tethering their objectives to yours.

“As you know, our task/objective is to get people to…”  

We’re using ‘our’ to tether their goals with ours. We want to signal we are a uni...