By Stephen Martin and Joseph Marks
All of us, at some time or other, have experienced the frustration of not having our ideas or proposals listened to. It is a frustration that can quickly turn to annoyance when someone else—maybe from a different department or, worse still, an outside “agency”—says exactly the same thing we’ve been saying for weeks, and suddenly everyone thinks it’s the best idea since sliced bread. The fact that nothing about the idea has changed, or that the proposal now being enthusiastically embraced is the same one that was roundly rejected only a few days before, barely seems to register.
This commonplace scenario illustrates how, increasingly, the “Messenger is becoming the Message.” When deciding who to listen to and who to ignore, we think an audience considers all the facts being communicated and carefully weighs the arguments. In reality, they are just as likely to be swayed by something entirely irrelevant to the argument, such as the messenger delivering that argument.
When a messenger delivers a message, something intriguing happens. They become connected to the content of that message in the listener’s mind. This association can have a dramatic effect on how that messenger and their messages are evaluated. Consequently, we don’t always listen to people based on the content or accuracy of what they are saying. Rather, we listen to people perceived to possess certain traits that signal that their messages are worth listening to.
Our two-year program of research has identified two broad categories of messenger: soft and hard. Soft messengers are more likely to be listened to when their audience feels a connectedness to them. This connectedness comes as a result of an audience’s perception of their warmth, charisma, vulnerability or trustworthiness. Hard messengers, by contrast, get their messages accepted because they are perceived by an audience to possess superior status. This status comes via signs of their perceived socio-economic position, physical attractiveness, dominance and competence.
Perceived Competence
Messengers perceived as competent are more likely to be listened to because they are thought to possess the experience, skills and knowledge that can help others achieve their goals. But the cues we use to decide whether an individual or an organization possesses competence are numerous, and surprising. Clothes, physical height and even clocks positioned in company reception areas displaying the time in different countries provide observers with cues of competence. Competence even has a face. Computational modelling techniques show how the competent face is mature-looking and attractive. Typically, it is less round than the average face, has higher cheekbones, a more angular jaw and a shorter distance between the eyebrows and eyes; features you can see in both males and females. Simply looking competent can often be enough to convince people that a messenger is competent. So, too, can looking confident.
Intuitively, it makes sense that a messenger who possesses competence is also likely to appear more confident. This dynamic also appears to work in reverse. Those who simply appear confident are often presumed to be competent, even when scant evidence of their actual expertise exists. Those who exude confidence are projecting an assumed expertise: they believe what they are saying is correct. And in the absence of evidence to the contrary—for example, that they are misguided or, worse still, delusional—an audience may well take them at face value and assign greater importance to what they are saying than is deserved.
But even though confidence can act as a powerful proxy for competence, that doesn’t mean there won’t be situations where confidence can backfire. It’s true that humans naturally tend to defer to those they perceive as possessing a higher socio-economic position, or to follow the advice of a messenger who bears nothing more than a trapping of expertise, such as a white lab coat. But modesty and humility are also highly valued human qualities. Most people appear to implicitly understand that signs of competence should be displayed in an understated or covert way, rather than in an overtly boastful manner. The messenger who is overtly self-promotional can quickly destroy the impact of their message.
So how can a messenger communicate their expertise in a way that ensures their competence is rightly signaled to their audience, yet at the same time avoid the self-promotion dilemma?
Stanford Business School professor Jeffrey Pfeffer has shown a way to avoid the pitfalls of self-promotion. It involves removing the self from the promotion by arranging for an intermediary to make the introduction. Hearing indirectly about a messenger’s competence leads audiences to no longer regard this as an act of self-promotion. At first glance, this hardly appears surprising. After all, all of us will often be receptive to a recommendation or endorsement from a third party. What is extraordinary, though, is that audiences can be receptive even when they know that the third party is not a disinterested bystander, but a paid advocate. It would appear that people are not so good at spotting the element of vested interest that might lurk at the heart of what an advocate has to say. They will frequently take whatever message is being transmitted at face value. They might spot self-promotion, but they don’t necessarily notice delegated self-promotion.
Shortly after becoming aware of these studies, one of us was able to put what was so elegantly demonstrated in Pfeffer’s Stanford laboratory to the test in the world of property management and real estate.
As with many industries, those who work in real estate face a daunting challenge. Because their competitors are doing exactly what they’re doing, it’s very difficult to stand out from the crowd. Most estate agents deliver a similar service for around the same sort of fee, and the experience for the client is largely the same, regardless of the firm chosen. So, given that one estate agent’s message will largely be similar to that of others, regardless of who they are and whom they represent, what might happen if arrangements were made to introduce their competence via an intermediary?
The answer is: quite a lot.
In a study we conducted, when potential customers of an independent, London-based property sales and letting firm got in touch to ask about selling or renting their properties, their first contact would typically be with the firm’s receptionist, who would enquire about the nature of their call before transferring it to an appropriate colleague. This happened seamlessly, in no more than a matter of seconds, and at no point did the receptionist make any mention of their colleagues’ competence, expertise or experience. At our suggestion, a small tweak to this process was made by first drawing potential customers’ attention to their colleague’s competence, before transferring the call. “Selling your property?” the receptionist was instructed to say. “Let me put you through to Peter, our head of sales. He has twenty years of experience selling properties in this area. He’s certainly the best person to speak to and get advice from.”
The results were immediate and impressive. The company registered a near 20 percent increase in the number of enquiries that were converted to valuation appointments. The number of contracts the company was able to close also received a healthy boost: a 15 percent increase overall.
There are three notable features of this strategy. First, everything the receptionist told customers about their colleague’s experience was true. Peter was indeed that branch’s head of sales and did have a couple of decades’ worth of experience. But for Peter to have informed potential customers of this fact himself would have immediately undermined his position. He would instantly have been marked not as competent, but as conceited. It is the classic messenger conundrum. The potential upsides gained from highlighting one’s expertise will often be more than cancelled out by the downsides of being overly self-promoting. Arranging for competence to be introduced by a third party allows the messenger to neatly dodge this dilemma.
The second feature is that even though the receptionist at the estate agency could hardly be viewed as an impartial third party, at no point did it seem to matter to customers that the recommendation they were receiving came from someone who was clearly connected to the agent and who was likely to benefit from the strategy.
This kind of delegated self-promotion is not uncommon, particularly in politics. Why else, during presidential debates and conventions, would candidates almost invariably be introduced to voters by the individuals arguably most closely connected to, and most self-interested in, those candidates’ success? Their spouses. And yet it works. According to research by the politics and public affairs department at Princeton University, a spouse possesses a familiarity that enables them to “go personal” more than any other introducer. In her book, “On Behalf of the President,” Princeton’s Lauren Wright showed how Melania Trump’s appearances at her husband’s rallies led to more favorable support for her husband, especially among independent voters.
Finally, the third and arguably most appealing feature of this introduction strategy is that in most cases it can be implemented virtually for free.
The perception of competence is a powerful messenger, and it can exert a significant influence on a person’s willingness to listen. That’s especially true at work, where getting things done often depends on persuading other people. With so many self-confident ignoramuses hawking their questionable competence, we must pay more attention to the way we communicate our own legitimate expertise, experience and credentials.
Adapted from Messengers: Who We Listen To, Who We Don’t, and Why. Copyright © 2019 by Stephen Martin and Joseph Marks. Published by PublicAffairs, an imprint of Hachette Book Group.
A test to determine your own messenger trait can be found at www.messengersthebook.com
