There’s a famous experiment called the Xerox Study which was conducted back in the late 1970’s.
The idea was to understand how easy it would be to cut in front of someone who was waiting in line to use a photocopy machine.
Three requests were used (with different people at different times):
- “Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine, because I’m in a rush?”
- “Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine?”
- “Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine, because I have to make copies?”
The first request got a compliance rate of 94% .
In other words, nearly everyone who was asked that question agreed to let the person use the photocopy machine ahead of them (apparently because they sympathized with a person who was in a rush).
The second request got a 60%. This decrease in compliance was probably because the person didn’t give a reason.
The third request got a 93% – nearly as much as the first.
However, there is something unusual about that third one.
The reason given: “… because I have to make copies” is ridiculous. Of course they needed to make copies! Why else would they ask?
It turns out that the study proved that it wasn’t the reason that mattered in influencing people, but the use of the single word “because” that did.
In other words, using the word “because” increased the compliance rate by 33% regardless of what the justification was.
So the main lesson here is this…
Use the word because everywhere to increase influence with your virtual team…
…in your emails, in your instant messages, in your meetings, and in your voice messages.
What comes after the word because doesn’t matter, but try to make the reason credible.
Here are a couple of examples:
- “John, I need the status report by Thursday because I want to review it before Friday”
- “Sara, please schedule a meeting for next week because we have to discuss our strategy”
Cheers,
Hassan
P.S. – I explain a few more killer strategies that will help you manage your virtual team effectively in my latest Kindle book “Influencing Virtual Teams.” Check it out by clicking here.
