Influence is Your Superpower by Zoe Chance

I finished this book in May 2025. I recommend this book 8/10.

Why you should read this book:

Zoe Chance is a Yale Professor who shares her learnings on influence from her class. This is the book for someone who want to learn influence and negotiation from a human trying to make a better person, than negotiating with a sleazy sales tactics. There were also a couple of chapters my young daughters should read.

Get your copy here.

🚀 The book in three sentences

1. Everything and the situation is an influence or negotiation. It starts from when you are a baby onward.

2. Focus on the other person more than yourself. Listen, summarize+label to ensure they feel and you ensure they have been heard.

3. Ask more How+What questions and provide 2-3 solutions for people to choose from.

📝 My notes and thoughts

• P20. A.N. Whitehead wrote in 1911, "Operations of [conscious] thought are like cavalry charges in a battle—they are strictly limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made in decisive moments."

• P27. We're making consequential decisions like whom to vote for and whether or not to sue based on little more than gut reactions, even if we're telling ourselves a different story. So understanding, predicting, or influencing other people's behavior should start with their Gator's snap judgments. Always.

• P46. Every journey starts with a baby step. How can you make the first step as close as possible to effortless for everyone—including you? How do you do the same for the next step, and the next, and the next one after that?

• P61. If we take it as social rejection, "not" is painful to hear and difficult to say. We almost never want to say, "No to you, personally and forever," and we certainly never want to hear it. Many skilled influencers have learned to hear no as simply "No to this, for now," unless told otherwise. The most successful salespeople will check back six or seven times after hearing a no. You might read this and think, "I don't want to be that creepy!" but they wouldn't be so successful if they were creepy. And those creepy salespeople you have met? They're not that successful. No one would ever be willing to talk to them six or seven times.

• P65. Most people don't realize how often they're not asking until they start asking more often. When our MBA course ends and students share the biggest thing they've learned—after we've done so much together—the most common answer is "Just ask." The full realization comes from practice. What if you're not sure how to ask? Just ask the other person. Seriously. One of the simplest and most surprising influence hacks is that if you ask people how to influence them, they will often tell you.

• P74. Although no one will dislike you for diminishing yourself, they're not going to like you for it, either. Like boomerangs, diminishes keep bringing attention right back to you. Diminishes are hard to listen to, easy to interrupt, and astonishingly common. Even James Pennebaker, the expert on language and power, found he was diminishing himself when emailing his higher-ups. He noticed this when he had to ask several people in his department at the University of Texas to move their offices. When appealing to a colleague with higher social status, Pennebaker wrote, "I've been trying to avoid this, but I think I may need to ask you if you would be willing to give up your office." You can feel the diminishing effect of those three "I"s in one sentence. And you can appreciate how difficult it is to listen to people who write and talk this way. Their communications require additional decoding. The fact that Pennebaker is uncomfortable certainly comes across, but beyond that, what is he really saying? Is he asking for something, or is he saying he might have to at some future time? (Chris Voss talks about giving the conversation back to people, only making it about them.)

• P79. Table outlining diminishing:

  • Diminish: "I could be wrong, but...", "It kind of seems like...", "This is just an idea..."Solution is to engage with a question: "Is it possible that...?", "What if...?"

  • Diminish: "I wanted to let you know...", "I was just wondering...", "I thought maybe..." Shift focus to them: "I was wondering if you might be willing," "Might you be willing...?

  • Diminish: "Sorry for being late." " Sorry for interrupting." " I'm sorry to hear that." Instead: "Thank you for your patience." "Forgive me for interrupting." "How awful."

• P78. Since we enjoy talking about ourselves, we appreciate people who invite us to do so. Alison Wood Brooks and her colleagues have found that when people are getting to know each other, those who ask more questions are better liked, and speed daters who ask more question are more like to get second dates. Question askers were liked even more when some of those questions were follow-up questions, which were perceived as expressing deep interest. I find it noteworthy that eavesdroppers didn't like questions askers more—only questions answers did.

• P80. Public opinion converged on a red flag: Elizabeth Holmes's voice. The young, thin, blond woman was famous for sounding more like an old man with a pack-a-day habit. Surely, no woman with a growl like that should have ever been trusted. Witnesses came forward and claimed they knew her "real" voice, which was higher and more feminine. Despite being pretty busy with politics, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher worked with a coach to deepen her voice. Thatcher and Holmes weren't dumb: various studies have shown listeners judge people with lower-pitched voices as stronger, more competent, more attractive, more dominant, and more likely to be good leaders. (Chris Voss talks about using the "Late-night DJ voice.)

• P86. Full-body pauses—moments when you're not walking, fidgeting, or making any dramatic hand movements, but you are breathing easily, your hands comfortable by your side—are especially helpful. Not just during your presentation but also before and after. This key to charisma is so simple that almost no one teaches or practices it, yet it works for speakers and performers of all kinds. Here are some opportunities for a full-body pause in a formal talk or performance situation.

  • When someone else is speaking or performing, you pause with your whole body and focus your attention on them. Maybe an audience member is asking a question. Maybe a junior employee is speaking up at the meeting. Maybe your bandmate is playing a solo. Whoever should have the audience's attention should have your attention, too. You'll be tempted to look around at other people or look down or away. If you do, you're fracturing the group's attention, and fractured attention is harder to collect when it's your turn to talk. When it's someone else's turn to be charismatic, don't distract others or let yourself get distracted.

  • When it's your turn to speak or perform, thank the person introducing you, if there is one, then shift your focus to the audience. Take a full-body pause for one complete breath, smile, and you'll have the audience's full attention when you begin. When you're on a panel or in a informal meeting, the pause needn't be so obvious, but taking that moment to shift your attention will catch theirs. Now all eyes are on you.

  • When you finish your time in the spotlight, take a moment to thank the audience before you leave. If there is applause, pause to bask in it for at least one breath, letting the audience's attention rest fully on you. You have been focused on everyone else, charisma blazing, and they felt it. Now, humbly and gratefully, you receive. We tend to imagine that rushing offstage shows humility, but it conveys a tactic apology—I'm sorry I wasted your time. Instead, take a moment to appreciate your audience with a pause that says, Thank you for your time. I'm grateful for it, and I enjoyed being with you, too. You might nod, bow, put a hand to your chest, or even blow a kiss if you're that kind of person and it's that kind of event.

• P119. Danny Meyer's hospitality frame prompted me to ask myself, what would it look like to be hosting the class rather than teaching it. This new frame changed everything. I was able to genuinely shift my attention from myself to the students; at a party, it's the guests who are important. It shifted the course's power dynamics; a host isn't in charge of her guests, she's serving them. And a host isn't telling anyone what to do, she's just inviting people to take part in something wonderful. The frame also released me from my own exacting standards. A Jedi master is supposed to be perfect, but a host can burn the pie or have cat hair on the sofa. A student is supposed to please the teacher by attending every session and completing each assignment, but a guest can show up late, leave early, or spill wine on the carpet without the host taking it personally. Grading still had to happen, but we didn't need all those rigid rules.

• P131. Resistance wants to be witnessed. If you think you know what the other person will object to or you sense resistance around a particular issue, an Aikido move is to put it into words before they do: "You might be thinking we won't have enough time." Or "This may sound like a lot of money." Or "I may seem a little young for a director role." By reading the other person's mind and articulating the objection, you free their attention from the voice in their head so they can listen to you. You've also shown yourself to be a smart and reasonable person since you see their point of view.

• P147. You're not a therapist, and you don't have decades of practice at this, but you don't have to be right; you just have to try. After you have listened to someone with a specific goal in mind—understand their thoughts, or feelings, or what's been left unsaid, or their values, or all of these—and you reflect back your best guess without judgment, they'll appreciate that you're trying to understand them. This is not a test of your abilities; it's a conversation. If you've been listening for values, you might say, "It sounds like you feel strongly about..." ( fill in the blank with learn, or justice, or creativity, or freedom, or whatever value you witnessed). If you're off-base, they'll clarify so you can understand them better. Reflecting back what you heard can transform the way a conversations feels on both sides. In a friendly chat, it builds intimacy. In a disagreement, it helps tamp down adversarial feelings while amping up collegial ones. (Chris Voss, Summarize+label)

• P160. You can look for opportunities to create value by coming up with even better ideas before, during, or after a negotiation. The questions to ask yourself and to discuss with the other party when that makes sense are:

  • How could this be even better for me?

  • How could it be even better for them?

  • Who else could benefit?

• P162. Useful benchmarks in any job negotiation include what others are being paid in that role, organization, or industry. You can get this data, and also learn what other people have successfully negotiated for in the past from friends or allies in the industry; alumni from your school; the recruiter, if you're working with one; and even people you met with when you were interviewing, if you hit it off. And when you reach out to these people, ask their advice about negotiating. You may find them surpassingly candid and willing to help. Now you're ready to explore the second Value Creation Question, How could this be even better for them?

• P162. Like the first two, the third Value Creation Question, Who else could benefit? Begins with brainstorming on your own and then gathering more information during the conversation. Are there people you know or care about who could benefit? People the other party knows and cares about? Is there an opportunity here for you to serve as a role model? Could other people build on your agreement to do something even better?

• P171. If you're offering good/better/best or small/medium/large types of choices, it helps to know that people tend to favor middle options; relative to the extremes, they seem practical and easy to justify. And middle options seem like they should be right for typical situations or typical people. In an experiment at a science museum, visitors were asked to choose a rain poncho. Average-sized people chose ponchos labeled "medium" regardless of the actual size of the poncho, even though they could see the ponchos and some of those mediums were quite tiny. Knowing that people tend to favor middle options, economists Carl Shapiro and Hal Varian identified what they call the Goldilocks strategy. You propose something you think will be ideal for the other person, along with one alternative that's far less than you think they need and one that's far more than you think they need. The middle options feel not too big and not too small: just right. You're not manipulating them into something they don't need; you're encouraging them to take action rather than putting it off.

• P176. The strategy that prevents pride from getting in the way is Face-Saving Plan B. This approach demonstrates strength in a submissive posture. You refer to an alternative—or just let them know you have alternatives—while saying you hope it won't come to that. And mean it. With this approach, their Gator threat response doesn't get activated. If they do agree to your suggestion, they're being generous. You'll feel grateful, and they'll feel good about themselves. If they can't or won't, you'll still have your options open because you haven't painted yourself into a corner. You can use Face-Saving Plan B in almost any difficult situation. A diplomat might say, "Listen, here's what I can offer you under the current administration, but we have an election coming up, and after that, I just can't make any promises." If you've experienced some kind of service failure as a customer and it's not getting resolved, you might say (if it's true), "I'm somebody who posts a lot of reviews online, and I enjoy posting positive ones. I rarely post a negative one, but I'm so frustrated right now that I'm tempted to, can't we please find some fair resolution?" Say you want to use an outside job offer as leverage to increase your pay. A walkaway bluff could force you to leave, so instead, you might say, "I have this other offer with a great salary, but I really like it here. If you could match the salary offer, I would definitely stay." If they match the offer, great. If they can't or won't, you've still left yourself room to make up your mind.