Seize the Advantage: The Game of Life

On the 28^th April 2021, the Moneynomist team held its first physical programme of the year, called “Seize the Advantage – The Game of Life”.  Moneynomist is a collaboration between Equinox GEMTZ & WealthDojo. 

It is not how much you earn, but how much you keep.  Passive income is a slogan if your investments do not earn enough.  Wealth accumulated is lost when it is not protected.  If you do not know where you are going, you will not be happy wherever you reach. 

How do you achieve financial freedom, when there is so much conflicting advice on investments?  How do you know you are on the right track, when people lose money all the time?  What separates those who have made it financially from those who try, and struggle, and fail?  Financial freedom is a science, not luck.  Proper investment strategies is research, not gambling. 

Due to the restrictions of Covid19, attendance of limited to meet safe distancing requirements.  The programme involved playing a game developed by WealthDojo. 

We look forward to creating further programmes that would go in depth into investments and insurance.

Power Dynamic of Language

The following article is expanded from points based on my slide notes for my 90-minute workshop, “The Power Dynamic of Language”, which is about using language to be more assertive in our interactions with others.  This is part of the wider Moneynomist “Seize the Advantage” programme, along with Eric Tan Shi Wei, Gerald Yong Kim Heong, Margrette Lo Foong Quan, Oh Cheng Kok, and Zhuo Shu Zhen.  The Moneynomist team is from AIA Toastmasters Club, and are all past presidents. 

It is important for us to understand what rhetoric is.  Rhetoric is the art of putting forward a coherent, cogent argument, for or against a position, to convince people to believe as you believe and do as you suggest, because it is viewed to be in their interest.  Rhetoric is the very basis of human civilisation.  The moment one man was able to convince a group of others to perform feats, as part of a grander vision, civilisation was born.  What we see of the pyramids, the Great Wall of China, and other feats of engineering, began with the art of persuasion. 

Our purpose, in Toastmasters, is not merely to give speeches, and evaluate them.  We are part of the inexorable march of humanity, in a river of time through the ages.  That is the art of rhetoric, of which Toastmasters covers only the very basics of it. 

Within this framework, we have ethos, pathos, logos, and kairos.  Ethos is the characteristic values of the audience.  The speaker undertakes the speaker persona, and channels the crowd, but subtly influences their positions by appealing to their perceived values, their ethics, their jingoism.  This is also the appeal to their prejudices, and fear of the stranger.  As such, it can go both ways. 

A classic trope, for example, would be Nigel Paul Farage, of the Brexit Party, claiming that Turks will join the European Union, flood the UK through the EU’s freedom of movement, and challenge “British” values.  This may also be found in Adolf Hitler’s attack on the Jews, and how they are subverting the German state. 

On the other hand, it has a positive side.  An example would be Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill’s famous “Never Surrender” speech, which galvanised the UK, and the Commonwealth, in opposing Nazi Germany.  It is found in Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, which appealed to common values, after the Union victory during the American Civil War, among the first steps to heal a divided nation. 

Ethos works with pathos, their appeal to emotion.  It is literally an appeal to their sense of injustice, their perceived injustices, and their rage.  This is the tool of demagoguery, and has a long history.  This is also the best means to move the masses, since the larger the crowd, the lower their intelligence quotient.  People, in large numbers, are easily moved by emotions.  This works in tandem with kairos, which is an appeal to timelessness, the weight of history, and the appeal to the divine.  Religion moves people to great works, and to great violence. 

An example of pathos would be found in Malcolm X’s “House Negro” speech, where he contrasts the “house negro”, who is complicit in the disenfranchisement and oppression of the African-Americans, as accomplices with their White masters; versus the “field negro”, who is barely held in check, ever ready to rise up against their subjugation, and ready to fight for their emancipation. 

A modern, negative example of pathos would be Donald John Trump’s first major campaign speech, where he said that Mexico was sending murders, and rapists, across the borders, and appealed to the fear of the disenfranchised White underclass, and blaming Hispanic immigrants for their plight.  It is illogical, and contrary to facts, but it got him the Presidency of the United States, and disunited the states. 

Logos is, essentially, an appeal to logic.  Whilst there is a need for an underlying, seemingly coherent, and cogent, argument, it is not often necessary.  These types of speeches are used to explain policy, from a position of strength, not to gain votes, or move the masses.  People are often impervious to logic. 

A classic example of logos, in a major speech, would be Marcus Porcius Cato’s speech to preserve the Roman Republic against the imperial designs of Julius Caesar.  Marcus Porcius Cato is better known as Cato the Younger.  His speech ultimately moved the Senate against Caesar, and succeeded.  Rome became an empire after his, and Caesar’s death. 

Before we talk about the power dynamic, we have to understand what power is.  Within the socio-political construct that we call society, power is the capacity of an individual to influence the actions, beliefs, or behaviour of others.  We use the term “authority” to refer to power that is considered legitimate within the social structure.  Power is ethically amorphous.  It is neither just nor unjust, except in its utilisation.  This is as much perspective as it is intent.  Within the context of what we are addressing, we are looking at words as a tool to wield power and impose authority.  Toastmasters is a leadership programme.  There is no point in learning to speak if we never learn to be assertive and exercise power. 

Here, a power dynamic is the way different people or different groups of people interact with each other and where one of these sides has more power than the other one.  This is the dynamic of class warfare. 

The language we think in greatly shapes the way we interact with others.  For example, Germans and Germanic speakers tend to think and interact formally.  This is because, while the modern English language only knows the word “you”, the German tongue differentiates between formal pronouns, such as the singular and plural, “Sie” from informal ones, such as the singular, “Du”, and plural, “Ihr”.  Similarly, German speakers commonly used honorifics such as “Herr”, for “master”, and “Frau” for “mistress”.  Spanish-speakers, on the other hand, tended to use prefer communication on a first-name basis, regardless of rank.  Similarly, Japanese tends to be formal, while colloquial Malay is the opposite. 

This is a tool to be used to assert authority, or psychologically subdue people.  When affecting a formal tone, it tends to get the message across more effectively in a command type situation, while using a colloquial form may influence people better in an informal context – pretending to be one of them.  For example, dressing formally for meetings, and speaking formally conveys gravitas, and people tend to automatically listen to you, unless they are, themselves centres of power and influence. 

Likewise, even within the same cultural context, using the same language, people at different socioeconomic classes tend to speak differently.  Recognising this, and having mental agility, allows us to blend in, or subtly assert authority by tweaking the language dynamic.

Moneynomist “Seize the Advantage” Series of Workshops: Establishing the Speaker Persona

The following article is expanded from points based on my slide notes for my 40-minute workshop, “Establishing the Speaker Persona”, conducted as part of club speechcraft programmes.  This is part of the wider Moneynomist “Seize the Advantage” programme, along with Eric Tan Shi Wei, Gerald Yong Kim Heong, Margrette Lo Foong Quan, Oh Cheng Kok, and Zhuo Shu Zhen.  The Moneynomist team is from AIA Toastmasters Club, and are all past presidents. 

How we define things sets the parameters of our understanding.  Imam Abu Hamid Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Ghazali at-Tusi (r.a.), the Persian philosopher and theologian once said that before we speak of a cup, it is important to know what a cup is.  Even when we speak to people who use the same language that we do, there is still that chance of misunderstanding.  We come into any conversation with the baggage of our experiences, and we view things through the prism of our level of understanding, shaped by history, by education, by our role in the relationship. 

In this case, public speaking is not merely talking to a crowd, but addressing them on a specific topic or subject matter, putting forward a cogent, coherent argument, for or against, a contention.  We will not be covering the elements of an effective speech here.  We will address, only, the fear of speaking in public, and how we address that psychological barrier. 

The fear of public speaking is so common that it has a name: glossophobia.  Glossophobia, otherwise known as speech anxiety, is derived from the Greek, “glossa” (γλῶσσα), meaning “tongue”, and “phobos” (φόβος), meaning “fear” or even “dread”.  Some people have this specific phobia, while others may also have broader social phobia or social anxiety disorder.  It is important for us to name our fears, define them, and then break them down, so that we can conquer them.  Otherwise, we are dealing with nameless terrors.  It is like watching any monster movie.  Once the monster is revealed, it is defined, and is, somehow, less terrifying. 

It is estimated that at least 75% of the average sample of people have this fear.  That is more than people with arachnophobia, fear of spiders; thanatophobia, the fear of death; and acrophobia, fear of heights.  If you are afraid of public speaking, you are not alone.  People around you have that fear, and it means you have a natural support network. 

We now consider the elements of glossophobia: the physiology, the psychology, the environment, and finally the lack of skills and experience.  We break it down, and address these elements individually. 

Fear has an effect on our body, and how it reacts.  This is part of the fight or flight stimulus we all have.  In times past, when our ancestors were afraid, the nervous system shut down the higher cognitive functions, and boosted our immune system.  When we could not think, there was no need to consider the consequences of certain acts, such as charging into a wall of spears, or facing a sabre-toothed cat on a hunt.  Our sense of pain was dampened, our vision narrowed its field to focus on the immediate threat, and our breathing hyperventilated to bring more oxygen to the lungs. 

At a genetic level, it has been hypothesised that fears are inherited.  This is the field of epigenetics.  Dr. Brian Dias of Emory University conducted an experiment with mice using the aroma of acetophenone, a chemical whose sweet smell reminds people of almonds.  He repeatedly let them sniff the chemical, then gave them mild electric shocks, until the mice learned that the smell was a sign that something bad was about to happen.  A generation later, the offspring of that first group of mice also reacted in fear at the smell of acetophenone, even though they had never experienced an electric shock themselves.  And their own offspring, now two generations removed from the shock experiment, also inherited a fear of the distinctive smell. 

We could hypothesis, for example, that if your ancestor had a near drowning experience, you could have aquaphobia.  If someone in your lineage was bitten by a snake, and there was extreme trauma, you may have irrational ophidiophobia even if you have never actually seen a live snake.  In that same vein, some of us have had ancestors who lived through some violent, traumatic periods of history.  This would make explain the increased sense of social anxiety in the current generation.  You have the enhanced instinct to fight or take flight, but social conditions are not conducive to that, so it builds up in you. 

In this age, unless you about to enter a physical confrontation, whether a fight or a game, this is not helpful.  We need to reset that physiology.  Paradoxically, or perhaps not, for some people, it helps to exercise regularly.  You need to get it out of that system.  A sedentary lifestyle makes sedentary activities more challenging.  Exercise is really good for you. 

There are, among us, those who generally experience higher anxiety across different situations, and this is exacerbated when it comes to public speaking as well.  For others, the anxiety is limited to public speaking only, but the physiological signs of fear because they anticipate, they prepare, and they perform in public are similar.  And then there are people who have anxiety sensitivity, the fear of fear.  For them, in addition to worrying about public speaking, they worry about their anxiety of public speaking.  We need to cut that cycle out. 

In addition to exercise, for many speakers, even experienced ones, it helps to get into a mental zone.  They meditate, they practice breathing techniques, they have a routine to prepare the mind for a cerebral challenge, rather than a physical one.  This means learning to control our breathing, lowering our heart rate, and reducing tension in our muscles.  We are going out there to move the audience, not beat them up, and run away. 

The first thing to do, is breathe deeply.  Whenever you feel that rising tide of panic, stop, breathe deeply a few times, exhale slowly.  This resets the brain, and allows your cognitive functions to flow.  You can now think.  If you are on stage, resist the urge to pace; you want to lower your heart rate, not raise it.  Carry yourself straight, and do not slump.  Do not look at the ground or away; it tells the voices in your head that there is something to fear, and the cycle of fear repeats.  If looking in people’s eyes is difficult, then look at the point on their forehead just above the eyes. 

For newer speakers, or speakers who are addressing a large audience in an unfamiliar environment for the first time, it is good practice to come early, familiar yourself with the stage, the floor, but most of all, the people.  Make friends in the audience.  When you speak, look for these friendly faces.  Failing this, plant friends in the audience.  And if you want people to support you, support them. 

The next point to address is the psychology of public speaking, people’s beliefs.  Too often, people overestimate the stakes involved when communicating their ideas, their thoughts, and their positions to others.  Unless you are delivering a policy speech with global stakes, or advocating at the murder trial of your father, nothing much is going to happen.  In most cases, there are no real stakes, unless you say something very offensive or very stupid, and that is, in itself, an achievement. 

Some psychological theories distinguish between performance orientation and communication orientation.  Performance orientation is to view public speaking as something that requires special skills, and you imagine the role of the audience is to judge how good you are.  In contrast, communication orientation is to think that the primary focus is on the expressing your ideas, the art of rhetoric.  The objective of communication focus is to communicate with the audience in the manner you would speak at any social function.  In the former, you are focus on the imaginary judgement, whereas in the latter, you understand that this is about telling your side of the story, and you focus on it. 

This is easily addressed when we recognise that we do this all the time, when we banter with our friends; when we joke with our colleagues; when we passionately explain why we support our favourite sports team, and why the referee is an idiot.  Every moment of airtime is, in fact, a form of public speaking.  We are merely expanding the audience when we go on that stage, real or metaphorical. 

The root of this is your lack of confidence, your own negative view of your ability, your hero’s journey, your sense of self.  There are people out there who will diminish us, dismiss us, disenfranchise us; we do not need to do that for them.  One of the things you do is learn to be more assertive.  We begin by fooling ourselves into it, until it begins a reality.  I want you to practice looking into the mirror.  Note the way you stand, the way you move, the way you sit.  Cultivate the habit of keeping your back straight.  Cultivate the habit of looking straight, and looking into people’s eyes. 

The third way is called cognitive reframing.  We do this by having a conversation with ourselves, and be aware of the voices within.  Find a quiet place, before you have to speak, and look inside.  Your thoughts will be floating around.  Some of them, or for many of you, most of them, would be negative – you are not good enough, you are boring, you are nothing.  Silence these voices.  Focus on the ideas you have, your hopes, your dreams, the affirmation of your abilities and achievements.  If you feel you do not have enough, build a world in your head where you do.  This is your hero’s journey, and you are going to save the day.  People do not spend enough time building themselves up. 

In essence, you are teaching yourself to recognise public speaking as a non-threatening event that you can learn to handle and excel in, you are telling yourself that your thoughts have value, you are believing in yourself before others. 

Thirdly, we must recognise that some people are anxious because of the environment, the social circumstances.  This is related to the previous point about worth.  In essence, you are convinced that you are not good enough to be there.  This must be disabused immediately. 

The first hurdle is the lack of experience.  Lack of experience should be views as potential, not a hindrance.  People are uncertain of themselves because they lack experience, imagining that experience itself would fix that anxiety.  It will not, if the underlying contentions have not been addressed.  That will be replaced with the weight of undue expectations. 

People tend to be anxious because they fear judgement.  Again, this requires a mindset change.  We must learn to take the good, and leave the bad.  Not every opinion matters, not every person is an authority.  Rather, we should welcome this as an opportunity to be better, to be affirmed. 

People tend to be anxious when they perceive a status difference.  This is particularly so in hierarchical settings, such as in the military, and in companies.  Firstly, we must recognise that people want to be aggrandised, elevated, recognised.  We acknowledge the status, and then we focus on the message.  As long as we are focusing on the message and the subject matter, we are not thinking about the difference in status. 

People are anxious when they have to share new ideas, especially when it is theirs, and they feel their credibility is tied to it.  There is no shame in having ideas.  There is only shame in having no ideas and not trying.  This is addressed by preparation and homework.  When we are prepared, we are less anxious.  When we are well prepared, we tend to be quietly confident.  This, we have power over. 

People are anxious when they have to present to an unfamiliar audience, or an unusually large one.  Again, we apply what we have mentioned above, from preparing the ground, to preparing ourselves.  The audience may change, but people are essentially the same, and eminently quantifiable and predictable. 

A different cognitive approach here would be engaging in a paradigm shift, from being evaluated to being a person of value, and a source of learning and knowledge.  Before others recognise our value, we need to recognise ours first so that it will show.  This paradigm shift relieves you of the pressure of how you will come across, and focuses you on how to best get your message across. 

The last real factor that contributes to our fear of public speaking is our competency, and how authoritative we come across on the subject matter, our credibility.  Regardless of how good we may consider ourselves as public speakers, we must focus on our skills, our delivery, our knowledge, our ability to connect. 

There are two sets of skills here.  The first, and that involves personal study, is mastery of the subject matter.  For new speakers, the easiest subject matter is themselves.  We are the authorities of ourselves, our hopes, our dreams, our fears, our triumphs, our hurts, our pains, our loves, our hates.  No one walks in our shoes.  No one can gainsay us.  No one is a better authority of us.  Speaking of ourselves gives us confidence. 

The second set of skills is the art of rhetoric, and that is my personal passion.  This is the judicious deployment of rhetorical devices to bring the audience to your side, and move them.  In other workshops, I have covered those in great detail, so I will not go into them at some depth here.  Real language is the art of using words and sounds as a bridge, otherwise, we are not communicating, merely making noise.  This skill can only be mastered through practice, apprenticeship, and then more practice. 

A public speaking appearance is the culmination of the process of putting forward our ideas, our positions, to seek understanding and support.  It is an opportunity to not just be heard, but understood.  It is a validation of who we are, and it is a life skill for all of us.  In time, with practice, it becomes normal. 

Coming back to glossophobia, fear is not necessarily bad.  Debilitating fear is unhelpful.  Fear itself is a great driver.  It is about using that fear.  Whether you work on your physiological and psychological responses to fear, your view of yourself as a speaker, or your intent of public speaking, the more experience you get, the more confidence you will acquire, the more self-belief you will gain.  It is imperative, then, for us all to find and create opportunities to speak, this airtime.  And in all that, to have no fear of failure.  Failure is an opportunity to be better. 

The most effective solution to overcoming this fear is the Toastmasters programme.  Toastmasters is an environment where we can fail, and fail spectacularly, so that we can learn to be better in the real world, which is less forgiving.  In Toastmasters, we generally speak for around five to seven minutes.  This is because that is the average attention span of people.  We have formal evaluations of speeches for around three minutes, because that is the average tolerance for criticism.  We have table topics to practice speaking in impromptu situations.  Most importantly however, is finding the correct mentor or mentors, and imbibing the skills of rhetoric. 

This programme is about tackling glossophobia in a structured, a systematic, a methodical manner, to remove the mystery of speaking in public, to eviscerate the fear of failure, and to elevate ourselves.  It is about building us to who we are. 

Finally, we must address something a bit more advanced than what is normally addressed in Toastmasters.  That is the concept of persona.  When we go on that stage, as an accomplished speaker, or in our journey to becoming one, we wear a mask, just as we wear masks all the time.  In this case, it is the speaker persona. 

The speaker persona is to channel the thoughts, feelings, ideas of the audience, and to move them to the position we want to, brining them on a narrative journey, and making them feel that they are walking in our shoes, feeling what we feel, thinking what we think, and believing, all that time, that this is also their journey.  When we can do this, we have achieved a moment of immortality, because we have made the audience aware that they are part of something greater than themselves.  That is the culmination of public speaking. 

In summary, this fear of public speaking is measureable, definable, understandable.  Once we have removed the mystery of it, we have gone some way towards addressing that fear.  From there, we can work on building that persona to communicate effectively, and speak with authority.  Like anything, it is a skill.  Unlike most skills, this is the basis of who we are as a species.

Moneynomist “Seize the Advantage” Series of Workshops: The Benjamin Franklin Effect

The following article is expanded from points based on my slide notes for my 30-minute workshop, “The Benjamin Franklin Effect”, which is about the psychology of why people are inclined, or disinclined towards each other.  This is part of the wider Moneynomist “Seize the Advantage” programme, along with Eric Tan Shi Wei, Gerald Yong Kim Heong, Margrette Lo Foong Quan, Oh Cheng Kok, and Zhuo Shu Zhen.  The Moneynomist team is from AIA Toastmasters Club, and are all past presidents. 

My job normally involves talking, negotiating, closing.  The intent of the application of this is to create the conditions to effect a sale, create a breakthrough in negotiation, or foster better working relationships.  When we understand this psychological phenomenon, and how to apply it, we are able to create the conditions for our success. 

I am introducing a concept that is complicated, and not easily understood.  However, once mastered, it is an invaluable tool in sales, and in building relationships.  As such, we will cover the definition, the application, and the scenarios so that we have a better grasp of the Benjamin Franklin Effect. 

It is always important for us to begin with definitions.  Definitions set the parameters of what we discuss, and establish a common understanding before building on that knowledge.  Imam Abu Hamid Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Ghazali (r.a.), the Persian theologian said, to the effect, that before we even speak of a cup, we should understand what a cup is.  What we are covering here is more than a mere cup. 

The Benjamin Franklin effect is a proposed psychological phenomenon, a form of cognitive dissonance.  In essence, when people do us a favour, they are more likely to have a good opinion of us.  We tend to think people do favours because they like us, and that may be true for some.  However, in business, people like us because of the favours we make them do for us. 

This effect is named after Benjamin Franklin, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States.  who is quoted in his autobiography, “He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged.”  This is explained with an example in Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography regarding the animosity of a rival legislator when they both served in the Pennsylvania legislature in the 18^th century.  He wrote, “Having heard that he had in his library a certain very scarce and curious book, I wrote a note to him, expressing my desire of perusing that book, and requesting he would do me the favour of lending it to me for a few days.  He sent it immediately, and I returned it in about a week with another note, expressing strongly my sense of the favour.  When we next met in the House, he spoke to me (which he had never done before), and with great civility; and he ever after manifested a readiness to serve me on all occasions, so that we became great friends, and our friendship continued to his death.” 

If anybody has ever read Benjamin Franklin’s biography, one could conclude that he was not a particularly likeable person.  He drank too much at times, he was a womaniser, a bit of a braggart, and he could not keep a secret to save his life.  The latter was so concerning that his own government of the time was known to keep things from him because of his loose lips.  And yet, it is remarkable that he was liked by more than a few, and this is one of the reasons why.  If he can do it, so can we. 

There are three areas where we can apply this piece of information: in networking, in prospecting for clients, and in closing that deal or completing that negotiation.  These three scenarios encompass almost every situation we could possibly find ourselves in. 

Networking is what we do all the time, whether we realise it or not.  It is part of the gregarious nature of people, that even the greatest loner needs to be validated by at least one other person.  Prospecting is where we market ourselves.  This is what we do in every social situation.  Closing the deal is where we get an accord on any issue. 

Networking, here, is confined to meeting new people in specific contexts, attending events, and connecting in non-physical environments.  We have to consider the places we meet people, and how we meet them. 

In every situation, we must understand that people want to be recognised, to be aggrandised, to be elevated.  However, that flattery must feel sincere.  Insincere flattery creates hostility since people become suspicious.  To apply the Benjamin Franklin Effect, we must cultivate the habit of asking people for small, innocuous favours first.  This can be seen in night clubs where people borrow cigarettes and lighters.  It is meant to create that bond.  But when you borrow it, you must give it back.  Otherwise, you do not create that bond.  You are taking.  People change their attitudes or behaviour to resolve dissonance between their thoughts, attitudes, and actions.  In this case, they rationalise that since they did you a favour, they must like you and adjust their attitude accordingly. 

The effect when you do a favour for someone who dislikes you is that they feel beholden to you for that kindness.  The ego is manifest, and it increases their dislike due to this “burden” places upon them.  In such a case, it creates distance, not nearness.  This is why we sometimes, instinctively dislike people we view as overly generous, and question their motives.  It seems unnatural to us that people merely give, without asking in return.  We are only able to put this aside in specific circumstance, such as religious people.  Then, the power dynamic is reversed, and they give to ask more in return.  It is still transactional, but in a way we fool our conscience. 

Prospecting may be in a corporate context, in a social network, or even in a public event.  We have to understand the psychology of favours.  When you do people a favour, it does not create closeness, but distance.  When you do your friend a major favour the first time, there is gratitude.  When you do constant favours, it creates resentment because the dynamics of the relationship becomes apparent, and it is a power play.  People do not like to feel beholden, to feel helpless, to feel constantly indebted. 

In any public context, where there is an audience, we must be careful to make the other person feel like they hold the advantage in the power dynamic.  We must understand that our goal is to achieve the objective, not to exercise any form of superiority.  This is why we ask for favours.  It is meant to create the illusion that the other person has a higher position in the power dynamic of the relationship, when the actual intent is to create a favourable impression, and get him to like you.  It is about illusion versus reality. 

On this point, what can you “borrow” from a prospect?  It need not be anything physical.  We borrow credibility by quoting them.  We borrow their achievements by remembering them.  People want to be acknowledged.  That means remembering their names, and remembering it correctly.  It means, for example, remembering who gave which speech.  People want that sort of fleeting immortality.  We give it, but we must ensure it sounds sincere, if we cannot be sincere. 

Finally, just as we plan for failure, we must also plan for success.  This means getting it over the line, addressing hesitation, and making it their idea.  The last part is very important.  We have to consider, how many of us have problems with people? 

The Benjamin Franklin Effect is a useful tool for resolving tension.  There is always some element of initial tension in the initial signing.  This is especially so when large numbers are involved, and we need to prepare for cold feet.  This is about getting that deal over the line, so to speak.  By creating that cognitive dissonance, we force the issue.  When someone decides that they like us, when they have been convinced that it is their idea, they are not going to gainsay themselves and back down. 

When we shape the conversation, we plant the seeds that this was their idea, that this is in their interest, that they are the main drivers of it.  This works when it is actually true, because people do not, for the most part, know what they want, or what is actually good for them.  This is how policy making is done on a national scale.  What we see after every election is the Benjamin Franklin Effect at work on a larger audience.  The people have voted in the candidate and the party.  The winners proclaim this a mandate, and then use it to do what they wanted to anyway, regardless of the will of the electorate.  Done correctly, the electorate believes that this is what they voted for anyway. 

In summary, what we have touched in, here, is a mere introduction to the Benjamin Franklin Effect, and some suggested applications in a selling context.  As we understand more about human psychology, we learn that people are eminently predictable, and entirely susceptible to manipulation.  Just as we understand how this phenomena works, we also learn how it has worked on us before, for better or for worse.