Psychology of Cold Calling

About a year and a half ago I moved from the world of psychology and mental health into the world of recruitment, sales and corporations. They are two very different places. When I started recruitment, I genuinely thought I could get the edge on other consultants and competitors simply through my knowledge of psychology and human behaviour. In all honesty, this just hasn’t been the case. All apart from one area – the mind set in cold calling.

 

 

Cold calling is probably one of the most anxiety provoking things a human being can do. No one likes cold callers. I hate them, people that knock on my door, people that call me off a private number, I really hate them. You know nothing about me, why in god’s name did you chose me out of all the people in the world to sell your hair drier to.

This is what goes through my head each time I pick up the phone, smile, and dial. I am the enemy, the time waster, the awkward person phrasing a question in a way that is difficult to shut down, keeping you on the awkward call way longer than you anticipated. I know the person down the other end of the line doesn’t me to call them. They are high level executives making really important decisions on an hourly basis and they definitely don’t want to hear from me.

When I or any recruiter starts thinking like this, they have already lost….

One of the things my mentor said to me the other day made all the sense in the world. “You can talk yourself out of making a phone call”. I quickly realised within my first couple of months that any successful recruiter is going to have to constantly challenge their negative automatic thoughts. When these anxiety provoking thoughts start to creep in I challenge them with the following questions:

1.       Will I die by making this phone call

2.       Genuinely, what is the worst that can happen if this call doesn’t go well

3.       I am not doing business with this company currently, so it genuinely doesn’t matter if this call goes poorly

4.       They have no idea how I can help them, this isn’t a cold call, this is a chance for me to explain how we can help their business going forward

5.       They get calls like this all the time, it comes with their territory

The worst thing a cold caller can do is not pick up the phone. If you talk yourself out of one call due to fear, and then follow it up with the behaviour of not picking up the phone to make a difficult call, you are on a slippery slope. You won’t pick up the second difficult call and it escalates to you starting to avoid mediocrely difficult calls.

All of this experience revolves around the core ideas of CBT. How you think (cognition) and how you behave (behaviour).

To implement these psychological ideas and improve your calls and confidence, you must see yourself as a scientist conducting an experiment. Here’s how your experiment should go: when you go to make a difficult call, note down all the difficult automatic negative thoughts that come to mind, note down all the imagery and horrible things you think could happen, note your level of anxiety and fear out of 10 (10 being the worst anxiety and fear you ever experienced to 0, no fear at all). Then, after all this is noted, make the call.

After the call, go back over all the difficult things negative things that went through your mind and see if they actually materialised. Also, now note your level of fear and anxiety. It’s probably less than the number before the call, mostly because it didn’t end up being an anxiety provoking experience at all, or at least less anxiety provoking. Essentially if a funny way, making the call cures your anxiety.

 

 If you look around your sales office/recruitment office, you will notice that the people that are not afraid to pick up the phone are the same people that have been there years and years. They have experienced thousands of phone calls and carried out these experiments over and over again, although probably not consciously, but have unconsciously realised that in making a call, their fears and anxiety provoking thoughts never ever materialised.

 

My advice is simple, check the thoughts that go through your head. Check if they are accurate? Do the thing you are afraid of. Make the tough calls, that’s where the biggest business is, if some client tells you to “fuck off”; it’s not your fault, you have no idea what was going through their head that day. The most successful recruiter if your office would have gotten the same response. People have bad days.

 

Recruitment is a game for confident, hardworking, funny and positive thinking individuals. Successful recruiters, genuinely share all four traits. They don’t care about being rejected, they take humour from it. Being told to “fuck off” (rarely happens, in fact, it has happened to me once in one and a half years) makes them laugh, they put down the phone and announce “good chat”. This is a mind-set they developed over time, the game has moulded them. They unconsciously understand CBT. They have carried out enough experiments.

The Psychology of Power and Corruption

One of the central questions concerning power is, who gets it? Researchers have confronted this question for years, and their results offer an argument against the Machiavellian view of power (the idea that people who are willing to manipulate, deceive, backstab, intimidate, and undermine others to get power, usually get it). Instead, research reveals that a person’s ability to get power, even in small group situations, depends on their ability to understand and advance the goals of other group members. When it comes to power, social intelligence i.e. reconciling conflicts, negotiating, smoothing over group tensions always prevails. It is the more outgoing, energetic and socially engaging individuals who quickly garner the respect of their peers and quickly rise through the ranks of social and business hierarchies.

But what are the psychological reasons behind this idea? Researchers believe it comes down to this: “we accomplish most tasks related to survival and reproduction socially (together), from caring for our children to producing food and shelter. We give power to those who can best serve the interests of the group”.

“Social intelligence” is essential not only in rising to power, but in keeping it. Dr Cameron Anderson studied the structure of social hierarchies within college dormitories over the course of a year, examining who is at the top and remains there and who falls in status. He consistently found that it is the socially intelligent individuals who keep their power over time. In more recent work, Cameron has found that modesty may be critical to maintaining power. Individuals who are modest about their own power actually rise in hierarchies and maintain the status and respect of their peers.

So what is the fate of Machiavellian group members who are willing to deceive, backstab and intimidate others in their pursuit of power? Researchers find that these individuals don’t actually rise to positions of power. Instead, their peers quickly recognize that they will harm others in the pursuit of their own self-interest, and tag them with a reputation of being harmful to the group and not worthy of leadership.

Power Corrupts.

Interestingly, studies also show that once people assume positions of power, they’re likely to act more selfishly, impulsively, and aggressively, and have a harder time seeing the world from other people’s points of view. Simply put, the skills most important to obtaining power and leading effectively are the very skills that deteriorate once we have power.

For instance, studies have found that people given power in experiments are more likely to rely on stereotypes when judging others. Predisposed to stereotype, they also judge others’ attitudes, interests, and needs less accurately.

Research has also found that power encourages individuals to act on their own whims, desires, and impulses. When researchers give people power in scientific experiments, those people are more likely to physically touch others in inappropriate ways, to make riskier choices and gambles, to make first offers in negotiations and to eat cookies like the Cookie Monster, with crumbs all over their chins and chests.

Perhaps most unsettling is the wealth of evidence that suggests having power increases the likelihood of our leaders fulfilling the symptoms for a diagnosis of a sociopath. High power individuals are more likely to interrupt others, to speak out of turn, and fail to look at others who are speaking. Surveys of business organisations find that most rude behaviours, like shouting, swearing and blunt critiques, emanate from the offices and cubicles of individuals in positions of power.

Possibly going a little too far, one researcher suggested that people with power tend to behave like patients who have damaged their brain’s orbitofrontal lobes; a condition that seems to cause overly impulsive and insensitive behaviour. So through gaining power, you also lose that part of your brain which is critical to empathy and socially appropriate behaviour!

Ironically

This leaves us with a power paradox. Power is given to those individuals who advance the interests of the greater good in a socially intelligent fashion.

Yet unfortunately, having power renders many individuals as impulsive and poorly attuned to others needs, making them prone to act abusively and lose the respect of their peers. What people want from leaders is social intelligence, but ironically, this is exactly what is damaged by gaining power.

Lord Acton once said "Absolute power corrupts absolutely"….

If you want to gain and maintain power, please take note.

Psychology of Confidence

Confidence scientifically separates successful people from those who are not.

 

We are all fascinated by body language. I have often found myself searching pop psychology articles for hidden body language expressions that give insight into a person’s unconscious thinking. And in fairness, from people’s body language we do make sweeping inferences… Check this guy out for example -------->

 

 

 

 

 

Then this guy-------------------------------------------->

 

Who would you rather approach to ask for some change?

In the above examples you have made conscious decisions based on body language and expression. But, the problem is that in normal everyday life, we don’t react to body language at a conscious and aware level, instead we normally react to body language at an unconscious and unaware level.

It is one of the unconscious ways people will judge you. Studies show that it also has an impact on our chances for success (e.g. when being judged in social situations like an interview or meeting your partners parents).

Dr. Cuddy a lecturer from Harvard suggests that your body language shapes who you are. Simply, people make sweeping unconscious inferences based on your body language.

Coming back to confidence then.

How powerful and confident do these guys seem?--->

Not so much, this is because they are closed off, they have wrapped themselves up in insecurities because they (at some level) feel vulnerable. But the problem is that they are also communicating these feelings of insecurity to people around them, and they are unattractive traits which other people judge you by in social situations.

 

What about these guys now---------------------->

They are open and subjectively I feel they look confident.










This "V"sign ------------------------->
is also a sign of confidence and powerful celebration. Interestingly both blind and non-blind people do this in celebration. More than anything it demonstrates that body language is a form of communication we have evolutionarily inherited

 

Dr Cuddy, has demonstrated in scientific research studies that with confident body language, what she calls “power posing” (as we see in the pictures above) other people unconsciously view us in a positive manor. In a study conducted by Dr Cuddy, two groups of candidates approached an interview with contrasting body language.. The confident candidate always got hired (as you were expecting). However, what blows my mind, is that the confident candidate always got hired regardless of the person’s qualifications or experience. Simply, the power posing body language gave off the impression of passion and enthusiasm and interviewers found them captivating, comfortable, authentic and confident.

So is that it then? Just fake it? Fake your insecurities by blanketing them with positive and confident body language in social situations forever? Fake it till you make it? I personally feel that presenting myself in this way continuously would make me feel like a fraud. However, this is where Cuddy’s study excels. Dr Cuddy established that your body language shapes who you are. She demonstrated that “power posing” -- standing in a posture of confidence, even when we don’t feel confident affects our testosterone and cortisol levels in the brain (the brain chemistry that is associated with confidence and success) and actually makes us feel confident. What we are getting at here, is that by deliberately positioning our bodies in certain ways, our bodies can actually change our brain chemistry like an ordinary pill/tablet would. It changes our brain chemistry to make us feel more confident.

 This new way of positioning yourself is like training. It takes practice. Truth be told I tried it out for an assistant psychologist interview I had. This is going to sound really weird, but I was so nervous and felt that I had no chance of getting the job and that I didn’t even have the skills or knowledge to do it. So what I did was, just before I was due to go into be interviewed I went to the toilet, locked myself in the room and power posed in front of a mirror. Crazily, I started to feel more at ease, and comfortable in the fact that I could have a go at this interview…. I got the job and beat over 150 candidates for the position (most of whom I was told had more experience than me!).

This power posing is something I use each time I am nervous of a particular social interaction (e.g. meeting a girlfriends parents, or before giving a presentation). It’s made me feel a lot more comfortable in these situations. So I always feel better in myself. However, it’s other people saying that I look so confident all the time that really baffles me, because I still feel a little anxious. However this is diminishing the more I do it. And soon, with more practice and repetition, I know I will feel fully confident.

See Dr Cuddies TED talk here  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ks-_Mh1QhMc 

Women Are Beutiful Wearing Red

Girls look hot wearing red! Psychological research from the University of Rochester has demonstrated that men find women more attractive in red. Interestingly, men are unaware of the subliminal role the colour plays in their attraction.

 

From the red-light districts to the red hearts on Valentine's Day, the rosy hue has been tied to passion and romantic love across cultures and time. But the Rochester study was one of the first to scientifically document the effects of colour on behaviour in the context of beauty and relationships.

The Study

In the research study, men were shown pictures of women wearing or framed by different colours. Men rated women in red significantly more attractive and sexually desirable than the exact same women shown with other colours. One question asked: "Imagine that you are going on a date with this person and have $100 in your wallet. How much money would you be willing to spend on your date?" . When wearing red, the woman was also more likely to score an invitation to the prom and to be treated to a more expensive outing.

Just beautiful on the outside!

The red effect extends to perceptions of attractiveness. Red did not change how men rated the women in the photographs in terms of likability, intelligence or kindness. Also, red did not increase attractiveness ratings for females rating other females.

More recently Schwarza and Singerb (2013) went further by conducting  a study using a sample of young males average age of 25 and older males average age 53 and how they perceived young females average age of 24 years and older females average age of 53 years on a white or red background.

The results showed that only the young female was perceived as more sexually attractive against the red compared to the white background. Background colour had no effect on the sexual attractiveness of the older target. The young and old men didn’t differ in sexual attractiveness ratings. Again they found men were unaware of this psychological “red effect”. The researchers concluded that red enhances men's attraction to young, but not menopausal women.

But why Red?

Although this aphrodisiacal effect of red may be a product of classical conditioning alone (pairing red with valentine’s day and sexy stuff); researchers argue that men's response to red more likely stems from deeper biological roots. Evidence shows that nonhuman male primates are particularly attracted to females displaying red. Female baboons and chimpanzees, for example, redden conspicuously when nearing ovulation, sending a clear sexual signal designed to attract males.

It is argued that there are parallels in the way human and nonhuman male primates respond to red. As such, we can confirm what many women have long suspected and claimed –men act like animals in the sexual world. Men might like to think that they respond to women in a thoughtful, sophisticated manner. However, it appears that to some degree, their preferences and predilections are, bluntly put, primitive.

The current findings have clear implications for the dating game, the fashion industry, product design and marketing.

Which hair colour is the most attractive?

 

 Intuition suggests beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And so surely hair colour comes down to personal preference? However, according to psychological research there is a general consensus among the public regards which hair colour is preferred and considered most attractive.

 

Nicolas Guéguen from the Université de Bretagne-Sud, in France, has recently published a research paper in the academic journal ‘Psychological Studies’ entitled 'Hair Colour and Courtship: Blond Women Received More Courtship Solicitations and Redhead Men Received More Refusals'.

In Guéguen's study, a female subject sat in a night club for one hour, and the number of men who approached asking for a dance was measured. The experiment was carried out on 16 different nights in a four-week period. Each subject tested four different wigs four times (in order to make sure men were not approaching women for other attractive qualities/variables). In that decisive hour, overall, 127 men approached the women wearing a blond wig, 84 men approached the brown wigged lady, 82 went up to the black haired woman but only 29 approached the red haired lady.
 

Considering that women are supposed to be less impressed by mere physical appearance, when evaluating how attracted they are to men, how would different hair colour fare on men when it came to women's desire in a similar night club scenario? Four 20 year old male confederates were instructed to ask a woman for a dance. 27.5% of the women said yes to men wearing a blond wig, 30% for the men with a brown wig, 35% acceptances for the invitation to dance were received for men wearing black hair, but only 13.8 % for men who donned a red wig.

Although psychologists argue that women are less interested in men's physical characteristics when it comes to what determines attractiveness, (compared to men's preferences in women), it seems that red hair is associated with dramatically less responsiveness to men's courtship requests from women.

While redheads are considered significantly less attractive in both studies. Greater variation exists in the female wig wearing condition. Guéguen cites previous research into blond female door-to-door fundraisers receiving more donations, than their brunette counterparts. Another prior study found waitresses with blond hair got more tips. Probably more comprehensively, research, which included more than 12,000 American men using a popular dating website, found that men showed a preference for blondes over other hair colours. In yet another previous study, female confederates in their early twenties, were asked to hitchhike while wearing a blond, brown or black wig. Blond, compared to brown or black hair was associated with more male drivers stopping to offer rides, whereas no effect from hair colour was found on female drivers who stopped.

Previously Viren Swami and Seishin Barrett, psychologists at the University of Westminster, London, had earlier conducted a similar experiment to Gueguen’s. In their study the female subject, a natural brunette, dyed her hair blond and red. She sat in various nightclubs over many weeks, and the experimenters observed and counted how many men approached her during a one hour period. When she was blond, 60 men came up to her, while brunette the figure dropped to 42 and then when red, male interest languished at 18 approaches.

Very interestingly, Swami and Barrett also surveyed men in these same nightclubs probing them on attitude to female hair colour, using pictures of the same female confederate with different hair colours. In the study (entitled 'British men's hair colour preferences: An assessment of courtship solicitation and stimulus ratings'), when she was brunette the woman was actually rated as most attractive from her image. So how come men approached her more, when she was blond?

One theory Swami and Barrett propose is based on the fact that their female confederate in the experiment was also rated as more 'needy' by men when she was a blond in the photographs, than when she was a brunette or redhead. The study has recently been published in the 'Scandinavian Journal of Psychology' and argues blonds being perceived as needier may have encouraged men to make approaches, possibly because it induced greater feelings of dominance or confidence in them, which in turn reduced their inhibition.

Perceptions of the blond confederate as being needy may have reduced men's fear of rejection or fear of a hostile response. This of course increased their behaviour in approaching her as a blond.

Interestingly men rated the brunette in the pictures as most intelligent compared to all the hair colours, but also the most arrogant. The red head picture was rated as the least shy, the most temperamental and the most sexually promiscuous of all hair colours. And they might be right about the promiscuous part. A University of Hamburg study found that redheads have more active sex lives than brunettes and blondes!

Guéguen reports previous research which found over 80% express a dislike for people with red hair, and also that the skin colour of most redheads was the most disliked of the eight skin colours proposed in a prior experiment.

Takeda and colleagues pose an interesting question in their paper published in 2006 in the academic periodical, 'Journal of Human Behaviour in the Social Environment' - should hair colour be included in the anti-discrimination legislation? They point out if selection of CEOs is partly based on hair colour, as their research indicates, does it constitute discriminatory prejudice?

The authors note that in the US, for example, colour as currently defined in the statutory basis for non-discrimination in employment, refers to the shade of a person's skin, and not race alone. This is because within a race, a variety of skin colours can exist. There is well-documented bias in favour of lighter skin so US discrimination laws refer to skin colour, but, in the light of recent research, should they now also include hair colour?