6 Ways To In­spire Com­mit­ment In Your Tribe Members

To­day we’re look­ing at 5 + 1 pow­er­ful emo­tional trig­gers that will make your tribe mem­bers com­mit­ted to you and your tribe – or any tribe.

8 years ago Blair War­ren pub­lished a very short, free e-book on per­sua­sion. It’s called

“The One-Sen­­tence Per­sua­sion Course. 27 Words to Make the World Do Your Bidding.”

It’s the most con­cise, prac­ti­cal, and use­ful course on per­sua­sion I’ve ever read. I own the ‘old’ free down­load, but I re­cently bought the up­dated 2012 ver­sion for my Kindle.

The One-Sen­­tence Per­sua­sion Course has been hugely pop­u­lar, and is still quoted to­day by in­ter­net mar­ket­ing gu­rus, like Rich Schefren.

Blair War­ren has con­densed 5 pow­er­ful per­sua­sion in­sights into one sen­tence. He writes:

“They are sim­ple, they are im­me­di­ately use­ful, and they can be al­most fright­en­ingly powerful.

Hitler used them and nearly took over the world. Cult lead­ers like Jim Jones, David Ko­resh, and Mar­shall Ap­ple­white used them and com­manded such loy­alty that many of their fol­low­ers will­ingly – even ea­gerly – died for them.

And yet, these five in­sights are not only tools for mad­men, but for mar­keters, sales­men, se­duc­ers, evan­ge­lists, en­ter­tain­ers, etc.

In short, they are the tools for any­one who must con­nect with oth­ers and, more im­por­tantly, make these con­nec­tions pay off.”

Here it is:

It’s pro­found!

There are 2 parts in that sentence.

“Peo­ple will do any­thing for those who …”

This is what you want in your tribe. Com­mit­ted mem­bers who are eager …

• to fol­low your lead.
• to act on your “call to action.”
• to buy your stuff.
• to com­ment on your posts.
• to rec­om­mend your tribe to their friends and busi­ness partners.
• to share your con­tent on so­cial networks.

The sec­ond part of the 1-sen­­tence-per­­sua­­sion are 5 emo­tional trig­gers.

¹⁄₅ En­cour­age Dreams

The DREAM is not only the first of the one-sen­­tence-per­­sua­­sion prin­ci­ples, it’s also what Seth Godin de­fines as the core of each tribe.

Yes­ter­day I quoted Seth Godin say­ing a tribe

“tells a story about who we are and the fu­ture we’re try­ing to build.”

If you haven’t read it, check out yes­ter­day’s in­depth post:

The pri­mary emo­tion trig­gered by the dream is hope.

The cen­tral thought you need to es­tab­lish is the be­lief it can be done.

²⁄₅ Jus­tify Failures

Jus­ti­fy­ing your member’s past fail­ures helps you to over­come one of the biggest ob­sta­cle we all face: Our ex­pe­ri­ence that in the past we have failed again and again.

Does ‘New Year’s Res­o­lu­tion’ ring a bell?

It re­sults in learned help­less­ness. Our fear that we’ll con­tinue to fail stops us from com­mit­ting again. Stops your tribe mem­ber from fully com­mit­ting to your lead.

By shift­ing the blame on some­one else, or on some ex­ter­nal cir­cum­stances, you re­lief peo­ple from that burden.

If done bla­tantly by blam­ing oth­ers, the draw back is that the per­son doesn’t take re­spon­si­bil­ity for her results.

But of­ten that’s ex­actly the goal of this tactic.

By blam­ing the ‘pre­vi­ous guru’ YOU be­come the sav­ior, you’re the good one.

³⁄₅ Al­lay Fears

This con­tin­ues points 1 and 2. The dream needs to be seen as doable.

There are 2 main ar­eas of fear to cover:

a)      The person’s fear of not be­ing good enough to par­tic­i­pate in the tribe’s dream. I talked about learned help­less­ness above. An­other way to look at it is self-ef­­fi­­cacy, the mea­sure of the be­lief in one’s own abil­ity to com­plete tasks and reach goals.

b)      All top­ics spe­cific to your tribe that might ap­pear daunt­ing to a new­bie. For ex­am­ple, when you cre­ate a tribe of soon-to-be-blog­gers you have to deal with the fear they might not mas­ter the tech­ni­cal as­pects of run­ning a blog. Or the fear of not hav­ing enough ideas. Or the fear of be­ing a bad writer.

⁴⁄₅ Con­firm Suspicions

Con­firm­ing sus­pi­cions helps your tribe mem­ber build­ing a big ego.

“I knew it!”

If you’re look­ing to build a tribe of in­vestors who rely on your fi­nan­cial ad­vice, you’ll do well con­firm­ing their sus­pi­cions how EVERYBODY is af­ter their money. No, they won’t get the irony.

You’re sell­ing in­vest­ments in gold? Con­firm their sus­pi­cion how the dol­lar is doomed. How the econ­omy will col­lapse, and gold is the only save haven.

You’re not plant­ing new sus­pi­cions, but you tap into the strong con­vic­tions peo­ple al­ready have.

5 / 5 Es­tab­lish Enemies

The sec­ond ef­fect of con­firm­ing sus­pi­cions is that it starts to di­vide the world into sep­a­rate groups, and one needs to de­cide to which group to belong.

The oth­ers ob­vi­ously are the bad guys. Or the stu­pid guys.

Jus­ti­fy­ing fail­ures and al­le­vi­at­ing fears po­si­tions you as the good guy and in­creases your tribe member’s be­lief in oneself.

Es­tab­lish­ing en­e­mies helps to tie your group to­gether by point­ing fin­gers at ‘the oth­ers.’ The out­siders can­not be part of your tribe. The bad guys can­not be part of your tribe. The stu­pid guys can­not be part.

De­pend­ing on the topic, your tribe might even be­come a life­sav­ing ne­ces­sity pro­tect­ing its mem­bers from the enemy.

So far a quick overview over 5 emo­tional tac­tics you can use in your tribe communication.

„When­ever and whereever peo­ple form pow­er­ful bonds, these in­sights are more of­ten than not lurk­ing in the shad­ows.” ~ Blair Warren

I have only scratched the sur­face. It seems silly when stripped down to a few sen­tences, but once you start pay­ing at­ten­tion, you’ll see those prin­ci­ples pop­ping up everywhere.

• Read sales letters.
• Lis­ten to record­ings from so-called gurus.
• Watch pre­sen­ta­tions from thought leaders.

They all po­si­tion them­selves as the good guys – but they do it us­ing the pow­er­ful psy­cho­log­i­cal mech­a­nisms de­scribed here.

Now for some­thing very important!

De­pend­ing on how you mix these trig­gers to­gether, you’ll get tribes that ‘feel’ different.

This is what the sec­ond part of this post is about:

There’s a con­tin­uum of emo­tional and men­tal ma­tu­rity in tribes you can build. Here are tribes at 3 dif­fer­ent lev­els of maturity.

1. Emo­tion­ally Im­ma­ture Tribes

Jus­ti­fy­ing fear, con­firm­ing sus­pi­cions, and es­tab­lish­ing en­e­mies res­onates with low-level emo­tions. It gets most ap­proval from men­tally chal­lenged peo­ple; peo­ple who fail to cre­ate an ac­cu­rate men­tal model of the world.

Many providers of the ‘make money on­line’ and ‘busi­ness op­por­tu­nity’ niches cater to peo­ple with lit­tle self-con­trol and lots of blam­ing oth­ers for their circumstances.

Source

If, as a leader, you con­nect to their frus­trated emo­tions, it’s easy to build a tribe. It’s easy to sell the dream again and again to the same peo­ple. Not based on them ac­tu­ally chang­ing their life, but based on tap­ping into their emo­tional frustrations.

This tribe also res­onates well with con­spir­acy theories.

Of course, you get what you ask for:

• Those are the cus­tomers with the high­est re­fund rates.
• They are the ones, who flood your sup­port desk with com­plaints and who won’t fol­low your instructions.

There’s no peace to be found in cater­ing to a tribe based on low level emo­tions, fault-find­­ing, and complaining.

It can be a vi­able busi­ness model, though. There’s lots of money in these tribes be­cause they are so emo­tional. If you want to go for it, I rec­om­mend not to at­tach your­self to the tribe, but to out­source con­tent cre­ation and cus­tomer service.

2. In­tel­lec­tual Tribes

Once you leave emo­tional im­ma­tu­rity be­hind, you’ll en­counter tribes who shift the blam­ing and fault find­ing to an in­tel­lec­tual level.

Here you’ll find the thought lead­ers. The Seth Godins.

They’ll thrive on dis­tin­guish­ing the ‘old’ and the ‘new.’ The blam­ing, of course, is tar­geted on ‘the old.’

But it’s done on an in­tel­lec­tual level.

• You can leave the torches at home in this tribe.
• All you need is a pen, a book, or a key­board and a blog.

For Seth Godin’s tribe the en­emy is the old cor­po­rate world, the fac­to­ries, the age of in­dus­tri­al­iza­tion. It’s the sys­tem that raises you to be a func­tion­ing part in the machinery.

The thought leader thrives on cal­l­ing-out the old and an­nounc­ing the new age of progress and in­di­vid­ual dreams.

The dream is needed. Af­ter all, HOPE is what fu­els tribes.

3. En­thu­si­as­tic Tribes

It’s pos­si­ble to build a tribe with­out neg­a­tive emo­tions and with­out in­tel­lec­tual fault finding.

You don’t need to point fin­gers at en­e­mies, and you don’t need to en­gage in blaming.

I be­lieve these ma­ture tribes are on the rise. Or is it wish­ful thinking?

Ob­vi­ously you ex­pect that kind of tribe from spir­i­tual lead­ers, like the Dalai Lama or Eck­hart Tolle.

But you can also find them in business.

Think of Stephen R. Covey. He’s call­ing out our faults – but there’s zero blam­ing at­tached. Nei­ther emo­tional nor in in­tel­lec­tual disguise.

Or, take a look at the tribe of Mari Smith.

You can scroll through Mari Smith’s fan page years back.

• You won’t find her say­ing a bad word about any­one or anything.
• In­stead Mari’s al­ways en­thu­si­as­tic, al­ways pos­i­tive, al­ways uplifting.

The same is true for her en­tire tribe. It’s a joy to par­tic­i­pate in her closed Face­book groups be­cause every­one is en­thu­si­as­tic, help­ful, and engaged.

For more ex­am­ples of lead­ers build­ing their com­mu­ni­ties with en­thu­si­asm look at Guy Kawasaki or Re­bekah Radice.

It doesn’t mean that all fol­low­ers share the same level of ma­tu­rity, but it means they are drawn to the role model the tribe leader represents.

The 5 tac­tics from the 1-sen­­tence-per­­sua­­sion will get a bet­ter re­sponse in the first 2 types of tribes above.

For what I call the “En­thu­si­as­tic tribe” I like to add one more element.

„Peo­ple will do any­thing for those who …

… make them feel alive.”

This is fairly abstract.

I could have written:

• Who up­lift them.
• Who ig­nite their enthusiasm.
• Who in­ter­rupt their boredom.
• Who dis­tract them from their depression.
• Who give them the en­ergy to fol­low their dream.

Like the de­sire for a changed world , the de­sire for feel­ing alive is a very ba­sic need.

That’s why it works so well.

The en­thu­si­as­tic tribe fits well with the dream. Once we’ve re­moved their fear, jus­ti­fied their past fail­ures, the best thing to do is cre­at­ing the en­ergy to work on the dream.

The cir­cle closes.

We start with a dream. Then we move our mem­ber through the emo­tional and in­tel­lec­tual steps needed for com­mit­ment. Then com­mit­ment makes cre­at­ing the dream possible.

How does this in­for­ma­tion help you build your tribe?

In this post

• You’ve seen 5 + 1 pow­er­ful emo­tional trig­gers you can use when talk­ing to your tribe.
• These trig­gers can be at­tached to any topic, can be used for what­ever tribe you wish to build.
• The more trig­gers you use, the more ‘fa­natic’ your tribe will be.
• You’ve en­coun­tered the new con­cept of think­ing about your tribe in terms of emo­tional and men­tal maturity.

Based on these in­sights you can start de­sign­ing your own tribe communication.

• If you’re a multi niche mar­keter, you can de­sign your tribes on all lev­els. At­tach the dif­fer­ent styles of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, the dif­fer­ent mes­sages, to your con­tent for the dif­fer­ent niches.
• If you’re a per­sonal brand, you’ll most likely build a tribe that matches your own level of ma­tu­rity. It would be out­right stu­pid and frus­trat­ing to build a tribe be­low yourself.
• If you want to stretch your­self, you might de­cide to tar­get be­yond your own cur­rent de­vel­op­ment. Be­cause you will con­sciously work to in­spire your tribe be­yond your cur­rent level, it will speed up your per­sonal development.

Fi­nal thoughts: This may all sound very tech­ni­cal to you, and it can be used that way. Copy writ­ers, book au­thors, and speech writ­ers have check lists, and they make sure to pull as many trig­gers as possible.

The more you’re fo­cused on sell­ing, the more busy you are with the tech­ni­cal as­pects of in­te­grat­ing the psy­chol­ogy into what you do.

The more you are de­voted to a pas­sion, or a higher goal, the more nat­ural all the pieces will come to­gether. Not as a re­sult of check lists, but as a re­sult of be­ing fully en­gaged. Aware­ness of the psy­cho­log­i­cal prin­ci­ples is still use­ful, but it won’t be your top priority.