Power_ Why Some People Have Itand Others Don't - Jeffrey Pfeffer [35]
Gupta’s book is interesting not so much for its content as for who it includes as chapter authors and endorsers. The foreword is by Sabeer Bhatia, the founder of Hotmail, the free e-mail service purchased by Microsoft in 1998 for a price rumored to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. On the back cover is a picture of Gupta and his coauthor on either side of Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, who also wrote an endorsement that appears on the front cover—Kalam was the president of India at the time of the book’s publication. Inside are 18 very, very short chapters by leading Indian entrepreneurs, all of whom now know Ishan Gupta and are at least committed enough to him to have written something for his book. He told me that of all the people he approached to write a piece for the book, only four or five turned him down, even though he knew none of them personally when he first approached them.
Gupta’s strategy for getting these people’s help was simple: determine who he wanted to be involved in the project and then ask them in a way that enhanced their feelings of self-esteem. Of course, once some prominent people agreed, those who were approached later were flattered to be asked to join such a distinguished group. Gupta focused his pitch on how important the subject of entrepreneurship was to India’s economic development, how successful the people he approached had been in building businesses, how much wisdom and advice they could share, and how much help they could provide to others. He told them that he was a fellow entrepreneur and a graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology like many of them, that he appreciated how they had risked striking out on their own, and how unusual and courageous it was to start a business at that time in Indian society. Gupta then paid them the ultimate compliment, noting that no one would take a book by someone like him seriously and he might miss important insights, but with their help, it would be a better and more widely read book. Gupta also lowered the cost of agreeing to his request by asking the prominent and busy people he approached to write just a page or two, a few hundred words, with some key advice. People love to give advice as it signals how wise they are, and Gupta packaged the request brilliantly.
Gupta had cleverly noted that he was a fellow entrepreneur and an IIT engineer—albeit one with much less success than the people he was approaching. This strategy works because research shows that people are more likely to accede to requests from others with whom they share even the most casual of connections. Participants in an experiment who believed that they shared a birthday with another person were almost twice as likely to agree to a request to read an eight-page English essay by that person and provide a one-page critique the following day. In a second study, people who believed they shared the same first name as the requester donated twice as much money when asked to give to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.7
If you are approaching someone to ask for something—help finding a job, a chapter for a book like Gupta’s, advice on some matter of consequence—presumably you have selected the person you are asking because of their qualifications and experience. Show that you understand their importance and how wise they are in how you frame the request. Research summarized by social psychologist Robert Cialdini in his best-selling book, Influence, illustrates how effective flattery can be in getting others on our side. Asking for help is inherently flattering, and can be made even more so if we do it correctly, emphasizing the importance and accomplishments of those we ask and also reminding them of what we share in common.
DON’T BE AFRAID TO STAND OUT AND BREAK THE RULES
There is lots of competition inside organizations—for jobs, for promotions, for power. Your success depends not only on your own work but also on your ability to get