How can you effectively use social influence in a mentor-mentee relationship?

1 The six principles of persuasion

Robert Cialdini, a renowned psychologist and author of Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, suggests six principles that can make you more persuasive and influential. These include reciprocity, scarcity, authority, consistency, liking, and consensus. To enhance your mentor-mentee relationship, you can use these principles by offering value and support to your mentee or mentor, highlighting the uniqueness and urgency of the opportunity, establishing your credibility and expertise, encouraging goal setting and progress tracking, building rapport and trust, and leveraging the power of social learning. Expressing gratitude for contributions will also help strengthen the relationship.

2 The four types of social influence

Social influence can be categorized into four types, depending on the source and the outcome of the influence. These are compliance, identification, internalization, and resistance. Compliance is when someone changes their behavior to gain a reward or avoid a punishment, but does not change their attitude or opinion. Identification is when someone changes their behavior to match or please someone they admire or respect, but does not change their attitude or opinion. Internalization is when someone changes their behavior, attitude, and opinion to align with a group or value that they accept or adopt. Resistance is when someone rejects or opposes the influence attempt and maintains their original behavior, attitude, and opinion. To assess and adapt your influence strategy, you can use compliance when you need a quick or temporary change and offer incentives or consequences that are fair and appropriate. You can use identification when you want to inspire or motivate your mentee or mentor by modeling the behavior or attitude that you want them to emulate. Internalization can be used when you want to foster a lasting change by providing evidence or reasoning that supports your position or suggestion. Finally, to maintain a positive relationship it is important to avoid resistance by respecting your mentee's or mentor's autonomy and preferences.

3 The three components of social influence

A third way to approach and apply social influence is to break it down into three components, according to the process and the mechanism of the influence. These are affect, cognition, and behavior. Affect involves creating or changing feelings, moods, or emotions. Cognition involves creating or changing beliefs, thoughts, or opinions. Behavior involves creating or changing actions, habits, or routines. To plan and execute your influence tactics, you can use affect to generate interest and appeal to values; use cognition to generate awareness and provide feedback; and use behavior to generate action and help with skills. By using social influence in a mentor-mentee relationship, you can enhance communication, collaboration, and learning outcomes; strengthen your bond; and create a more rewarding experience for both of you.