CHAPTER 9
The Final Factor
WHERE IS YOUR target on the hierarchy of needs, and what do you do with the answer?
Given that you now have a background in skills and methods that interrogators use to influence behavior, we'll pull them together in a program summary for closing the deal with your target—for getting what you want. Part of that program is something we've covered only tangentially throughout the book: self-reflection. Where are you on the hierarchy of needs, and what are your options for fulfillment?
Action Plan
The outline of your actions is straightforward: look at where the person is in his life in terms of needs, and tie his success in achieving those needs to your outcome. In terms of mechanics, you look at the person holistically and figure out ways to raise or lower them in the hierarchy. In some cases, they will not even know where they sit and what they need. You will help by showing them what the possibilities are, and then paring and shaping the options to realize those possibilities.
Center your process on the intersection of Maslow's hierarchy and the matrix of fulfillment. Most people sit on or between the tiers of belonging and differentiating, or the need for love and connection and the need for status and reputation. Your 3-D model of the person gives you a holistic view of where he fits in his various groups. Your interaction with him through use of your tools tells you where he thinks he fits and what that means to him. Knowing his drives, needs, and current situation you can see—most likely much better than your target—what options fall within the diamond that constitutes the intersection of the hierarchy and the matrix. Your power lies in not only identifying those options, but having a plan to use them to move your target up or down: to strengthen his belonging or weaken it, to raise his status or lower it, to assist him toward self-actualization or damage his chances of achieving it.
And that, in a nutshell, is how you get him to do what you want. When you know what he needs, you align his arrows to your arrows. When you know what he desires, which may not match what he needs, you change his wants because the need overrides the want. If a person aims for self-actualization through a promotion at work, and you push him into a position of need, such as needing to regain status because you effectively homogenized him, then you can force him to adjust his focus. You can then attack the need instead of the want.
This is precisely what Greg did during the interrogation in which he wanted the source to divulge more than the name of his commander. That name alone was a violation of trust. The prisoner wanted to maintain his loyalty through silence, which is an attempt to maintain self-esteem, so Greg threatened to spotlight him as an example to other prisoners of someone who cooperated with the enemy—unless he gave Greg the information he sought. As his need to belong to his group seized his focus, he abandoned his desire to take the high road. Greg forced him to choose between self-esteem and belonging, and the lower the need on the pyramid, the higher the likelihood it is going to win out.
Once you know how to align your target's need to your want, you have a good chance that you will get what you want. You just need to establish and reinforce that you are the light, the way, and the gate, and that's why you need the interrogator methods of discovery, techniques of manipulation, and strategies and tactics of bonding and fracturing. Pull out these tools from your toolbox to do one of four things to close the deal:
- You show what you can do for him, do it, and expect something in return.
- You show what you can do for him, do it, and threaten to take it away unless you get what you want.
- You show what you can do to get in his way, but offer not to if he does what you want.
- You show what you can do to get in his way, do it, and only offer to rescue him if he does what you want.
This process could take minutes, hours, weeks, or decades, depending on the scope of what you want, the time you have to get to know the person, and your proficiency with the skill sets we've described.
Interrogators work quickly because they have to. If all you want is a piece of information, then you might work quickly by assessing where the person is on the hierarchy, giving him feedback that presents your ability to meet a need, and then asking for the information. The scenario: You see someone working a bar with no customers. She's bored and lonely, signaling an immediate need to belong. You sit down and talk, asking questions about regular customers to find out if your spouse might be one of them.
What if you have a grander desire, say, president of your company. What you want is the backing of the board of directors. Big scope. Same process. That could take a while.
Making Maslow Personal
In Maslow's hierarchy of needs, a basic premise is that you can only climb up to the next tier once you have met the needs of the tier you're on. Analogously, every decision you make about how to fulfill those needs affects your options for further fulfillment.
We've repeatedly said that you, as the person outside looking in at your target, may see that person's needs far better than he does. You are also in a position to access objectively whether he is now, or can readily become, supertypical, typical, or subtypical in his group—regardless of where he thinks he is. Try to use your modeling and analysis skills on yourself, too, to give yourself perspective on personality, sources of pride and shame, strengths, and weaknesses. You might be very surprised, and realize why what you want someone to do is completely off base—that what you want does not match what you really need.
How you use that information is key.
Maryann's college friend Bill, a soft-spoken intellectual guy, shared an apartment in Washington, DC, with a couple of guys who also worked for the FBI. Bill was a young analyst—a total nerd—and his roommates where the muscle-plus-brains guys who were the movie version of FBI employees. At one point, they got to see what his keen analysis did for them. Suddenly, they gave him deference, and the men realized that it was the Bills in their lives who provided vital clues to catch criminals and put pieces together to save them from savage criticism, lawsuits, and even great danger. Bill's experience illuminates something important about exploiting knowledge of Maslow's hierarchy. Although he was differentiated among his group of analysts, Bill lacked confidence with his macho roommates, whom he considered friends—but “superior” friends in a male sense. However, he was the one who had the knowledge to help them be “superior.”
When you discover something like this about yourself, it keeps you tuned into the fact that many of the people you profile will have similar gaps in self-awareness as it pertains to belonging and differentiating. Feeling differentiated in an environment outside of work gives some people a false sense of fitting higher in the pecking order at work than they actually do. Conversely, they might think that differentiation doesn't do anything for their status in the group, but as we've shown you, it very well might.
Distilling the Process
As we cover each of the following types, let's focus on how the person actually fits into the group, and not a perspective warped by gaps in self-awareness. We'll distill that down even more: it's how the person fits in terms of something you can change. Some things are beyond your ability to change, so although you know she fits as a subtypical in her family, you cannot fix that to get what you want. However, you can help her to belong in the work environment, and eventually become supertypical there. So although you know about lots of other places where your target operates, the one we are talking about here is the one over which you have control.
An Outsider Desperate to Belong
No man is an island. If you find someone who is an outsider looking in, searching for a way to open the door, you have but one option: a positive one. You can help him demonstrate value to the group as the basis for a bond or use the snowball effect of having one person and then another accept him until the group welcomes him. Any method to help him will make him feel indebted. Use the tools you learned to find his strengths and value, and then illustrate, isolate, and associate until the group cannot miss the reasons for bringing this person in. And because you know the route to bring him in, you can always throw the process in reverse to fracture him back out if necessary.
Belongs Comfortably
Right after someone feels accepted, he gets comfortable and has not yet found that simply being a member is unfulfilling. At this point, belonging can become a differentiator from those who do not belong. You have two options with someone at this stage: show him you can fracture him from the group, thus creating anxiety, or show him there is so much more than what he has experienced. This happens many times when a young initiate full of talent is seen by the group as a find, but has no idea of his own talent. He is in awe and thinks he has found a group that will complete him, or at least who are his equals. Once he gets comfortably inside, he starts to feel as though the members of the group are just like everyone else. When you spot someone at this stage, help him to understand the group is really not fit to be his peers, and that he could easily move past them. Sound familiar? That's how Anakin got to be Darth Vader. It is an archetypal story of impatience tempted by destructive forces that plays out every day. You have the tools to lure the young apprentice to your side, or to prevent it.
Fully Belongs, Middle of the Road, and Working to Differentiate
Getting comfortable in the organization can take a while or be immediate. Personality type can be a big factor here in that a person might walk into an environment and see the trappings of similar types. As soon as he is certain of belonging, the need to show his unique stuff begins. Regardless of whether they are minor moves to differentiate or grand posturing, he begins to show he is more than a simple recruit. At this point, the options become a little more complex: Do you homogenize his attempts to differentiate using isolation, illustration, and association? Or do you turn the tools to his favor and help him to stand out? Either way, you decide whether he is allowed to continue to differentiate or whether you put the brakes on his progress.
We could go on and on with types at various stages of belonging and differentiating, but these templates for action should give you enough framework so that you can create action plans for all of them.
Cashing In
In getting exactly what you want, you don't want to sound like a thug on a street: “Gimme your cash, or I'll shoot your dog.” You will set up the program so that your target's need is tied to your want. If you are manipulating someone within your group at work, then his need should not be a place in the church choir, and your want should not be his girlfriend.
An example of how you can achieve clarity is in this story of a person we can categorize as earthy, who happens to be an outsider in her group.
- Who she is: Martha wears skirts that are unfashionably long, low shoes, and wears her hair down with no style. When it's someone's birthday, she brings in cookies flecked with flax seeds. In the context of your downtown Washington, DC, lobbying firm, you wonder how she ever got hired, even if it was as part of the backroom research staff. You've discovered that she has a passion for ballet and, in fact, danced professionally for four years. She likes to be at home with her cats.
- What you want: You want to take the lead on shepherding a piece of potentially high-profile legislation through the Powers That Be on Capitol Hill, but you won't get the assignment unless you can prove you know more than one of the senior lobbyists. The only way to do that in the next two days—your window of opportunity—is if you get someone in research to work night and day without anyone else suspecting. So, no overtime.
- Basic question: What is her need?
- Answer: You discover she likes her job, just not her work environment. She barely belongs and has a hard time sitting in a cubicle every day next to people she considers materialistic, self-absorbed, and pretentious. She would like nothing more than to telecommute most of the time, but that will never happen unless someone over her boss decides that's appropriate. Ironically, if she could work at home, she would belong comfortably, which is her immediate need.
Options:
- Arrange to get her a flexible work schedule on a trial basis and expect payback.
- Show her you have the power to get her a flexible work schedule, but make getting what you want a condition of your action on her behalf.
- Arrange for someone to tell her that the best way to get a flexible work schedule is by making you happy.
- Show her she will never get the privilege of telecommuting unless she does what you want.
The ideal, positive approach is to get what you want by raising her sense of belonging to a comfortable level. In this case, either of the positive options would serve that function, with the first one ceding some control to her, and the second keeping the control in your arena. Your modeling of her will give you the insights you need to know which approach she would respond to.
Belonging and differentiating—that's what it comes down to. Similar to an interrogator, you now have the body of knowledge to make them happen. Maslow would have enjoyed you.