Ethical Persuasion for Sheridan Business Students

Whether we are taking Marketing, Finance, Accounting or Human Resources at Sheridan, we will all come across persuasion at some point or another in the business world.

Marketers are in the business of trying to persuade consumers to buy products. People in finance will be persuaded to buy and sell stocks and other investments. Accountants will have deadlines they may need to move. Human Resource workers will deal with people on a daily basis, as they try to persuade managers and employees to work within and manage appropriate policies.

It is imperative that students learn the difference between ethical and unethical persuasion now, so that they can recognize it once they get into the business world. Being able to recognize it is important so that when you are on the receiving end, you are able to identify what is appropriate and what is inappropriate when requests are made of you. Otherwise you may be consistently performing tasks for others that perhaps are not obligated to perform. Or at the very least, performing a task to an extent that is not your responsibility.

Even more important is being able to recognize when you yourself are perhaps making an unethical persuasive argument. Nobody is perfect, and it is easy to sometimes opt for what works best, rather than what is right. You may catch yourself exaggerating a demand in the workplace or providing false information because you feel it will be the most effective way to get what you want.

Now that we have identified what is unethical, we can recognize it when it happens, and make an informed decision about where we are comfortable setting our own ethical standards.

When Does Persuasion Become Unethical?

Now we get into the nitty-gritty, trying to differentiate between ethical and unethical persuasion. To find these answers, I looked to the Harvard Business Review, where they have an online community setup for people to ask questions and seek answers.

To define unethical persuasion, one of the HBR Editors took these three answers from the book The Ethics of Power, Influence, and Persuasion:
- Exaggerating your demands
- Concealing true intentions
- Providing false information

Exaggerating your demands
This occurs when you are making demands of a business or an individual, and rather than specifying exactly what you need, you ask for more. If you are a manager who can accomplish your goals by having your employees finish their reports by Thursday, there is no need to persuade them to finish their reports by Tuesday. People will recognize that they are being asked for more than what is needed, and will be less willing to accommodate you.

Concealing true intentions
The simplest most direct solution is usually the best one. I'm reminded of the KISS principle (Keep It Simple Stupid), or Occam's Razor, where the simplest explanation is usually the right one. Providing employees, co-workers, or bosses with a convoluted explanation or description of your intentions will not inspire confidence or eagerness. Be direct when persuading others and you will often find better results in the long term.

  Providing false information
Providing false information when persuading others can lead to damaging long term results. Reputations can be tarnished and productivity will diminish as people start to see that they were persuaded by false information. Honesty and integrity are essential when creating a persuasive argument. Sometimes people may not like the truth, and will choose not to participate in whatever you were persuading them towards, but at least this way, you will have established a relationship of trust with the people you do persuade.

These three actions all work together to define manipulation. Persuasion by manipulation is unethical. By making sure you are not exaggerating your demands, concealing true intentions or providing false information, you will go a long way in making ethical persuasive arguments. 


Harvard Business Review

"A Principle isn't a Principle Until it Costs You Something"

Lindsay Camp writes a blog in which he discusses ethics and promotes his book Can I Change Your Mind, a book about persuasive writing. In the blog Lindsay quotes Bill Bernbach as saying, "a principle isn't a principle until it costs you something."

I believe Bill is saying two things when he talks about a principle costing you something. The first is that until you actually stick to a principle though a time of difficulty, you can't truly claim it as a principle of your own. Secondly, principles are not meant to help you gain or prosper. They are meant to help you make ethical decisions at the risk of prosperity.

Lindsay Camp does exactly that as he mentions in his blog. Rather than taking a job that would have paid a lot of money, Lindsay refused the business not only from the company but from any company in the industry. He feels it would be unethical to use his persuasive talents to promote a product he does not believe in. What can we learn from Lindsay? Lindsay teaches us one very important lesson:

Being ethical isn't cheap. It can cost a lot of money to refuse unethical business. But what you gain can be more valuable, perhaps invaluable. A clear conscience, and the ability to sleep easy each night, knowing that you didn't sacrifice your principles for a dollar.

How does this relate to the last post and my story about the hidden identity at the poker table? Lindsay would say that I need to decide how comfortable I am in my decision at the poker table, and I need to decide for myself what ethical standard I am going to set when using persuasive techniques.


Lindsay Camp "Can I Change Your Mind"

How Far Would You Go?

To further develop the idea of ethical persuasion, I want to talk about a personal experience where I believe I was unethical in my persuasive techniques.

When I am not at school, I am usually involved in the online poker community. I have a poker blog where I give advice about playing the game, and about having a healthy mental approach outside of poker. I also help to moderate a highly community driven forum. And of course, I play the occasional game. The biggest difference between online poker and playing a live game, is the anonymity of online poker. You can play anyone, from anywhere around the world, and truly not know who you are playing against.

This was the case a few years ago when I found myself sitting at a table with a player who was recently on a televised poker program. He was young (20 or so), and had had a bit of success. The other thing you need to know about online poker if you are completely unfamiliar, is that every player has the option to use a type of avatar (an image or picture), to represent themselves. When I started, mine had defaulted to a cartoon picture of a voluptuous Blond, and I had never bothered to change it.

So while we were playing at the same table, my opponent who was young, confident and enthusiastic, decided he would flirt with me under the assumption that I was indeed female (based on my picture that I had never changed). Now I could have corrected him right then and there, and been done with it. Instead I chose to not only let him to continue to believe his mistake, I encouraged him further. I completely misrepresented myself, which is entirely within the rules of the game, because I believed it would be easier to win money from him if he believed I was female rather than male.

I was right, and I did make money. I didn't break any rules, but was my decision to misrepresent myself the right one? I don't think anyone would say that it was ethical, but does that make it wrong? Does it depend on how much money I made? Does the end justify the means?

We will address some of these issues in the coming posts!

Ethics in Persuasion

The topic I'm going to discuss in this blog is Ethics in Persuasion. Of all the options available for discussion, Ethics in Persuasion jumped off the page at me. I think on their own, ethics and persuasive techniques are both incredibly interesting, and open-ended topics to discuss.

Ethics has been a central topic of discussion in  the business world for some time now. Even in my own volunteer experience, I'm required to go through a training program called Making Ethical Decisions before I'm allowed to start. Many aspects of ethics are universally accepted, however there still exists a gray area where the lines aren't so easy to define.

I believe persuasion is something we all participate in daily, but rarely ever discuss. Before we can talk about ethics in persuasion, I think it's important to define the word first:

Persuade

1.	to induce, urge, or prevail upon successfully: he finally persuaded them to buy it
2.	to cause to believe; convince: even with the evidence, the police were not persuaded http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/persuade

Asking someone to buy you a coffee in the morning, have a report finished for you a day early, postpone a deadline a day later, are all very obvious attempts to persuade others. But what are the less obvious means of persuasion and where do we draw the line of which methods are appropriate and which are inappropriate ?

These are the questions I will attempt to answer throughout this blog!