Con men might seem like an unlikely source of insight for leaders. Certainly, a leader shouldn’t be conning and manipulating his or her people. Leaders need to be genuine and transparent in their actions. A leader’s job is to help people reach their potential, not exploit their weaknesses.
So why take a lesson from a con man? The answer is simple. While their goals and results are quite different, conning and leading do have something in common. They both require trust. This is where a leader can learn something.
In their book Sleights of Mind: What the Neuroscience of Magic Reveals about Our Everyday Deceptions, authors Stephen L. Macknik, Susana Martinez-Conde and Sandra Blakeslee describe a classic con called “The Pigeon Drop”. The example in their book came from a fellow neuroscientist named Paul Zak who actually fell for the con in his youth.
The con goes like this. A guy comes out of a restroom at store or, in this case, a gas station and tells the cashier that he just found a pearl necklace. A few minutes later, the cashier receives a call from a man saying that he lost the necklace. The man says he is offering a $200 reward. The cashier lets the man know that another customer found the necklace. The caller says he’ll be there in 30 minutes to pick it up. Unfortunately, the man who found the necklace says that he is late for a job interview and can’t wait. He’s in a bind and asks the cashier for help. He offers to give the necklace to the cashier and split the reward. The cashier just has to give the guy $100 and then he can keep the $200 when the owner of the necklace arrives. Of course, the “owner” of the necklace never shows up and the cashier is now out $100.
As you read this story, you might be thinking, “What a chump, I’d never fall for that.” Yet, many people fall for this and similar tricks all the time. In the heat of the moment our reactions are different than when reading about this in the abstract. Con artists are experts at quickly building rapport and trust. That’s why they are so effective. Once they gain your trust, they have you. The rest is easy.
But it’s not so easy for leaders. In his September, 2006 HBR article, The Decision to Trust, Robert Hurley cites research showing that 50% of managers don’t trust their leaders. Sadly, that was the most optimistic statistic he provided regarding trust. So why is it that leaders have to work so hard to gain people’s trust while a good con artist can do it in a matter of minutes?
It might be that the leader is too focused on doing things to gain trust. Macknik and his co-authors have an interesting insight in their analysis of the con man’s success. The authors (and Paul Zak) hypothesize that con artists are drugging you (or more accurately, are causing you to drug yourself)! They get your brain to release a hormone, oxytocin, into your system. Oxytocin causes us to feel connected to others. It is released during childbirth and situations in which you are “bonding” with others. Perhaps it is also released when you are being conned.
“The key to a con, says Zak, is not that you trust the con man, but that he shows he trusts you. Con men ply their trade by appearing fragile or needing help, by seeming vulnerable. Because of oxytocin and its effect on other parts of the brain, you feel good when you help others. ‘I need your help’ is a potent stimulus for action. As for the pigeon con, the first hook was Zak’s desire to help the poor guy get this nice gift to his undoubtedly sweet wife. The second hook was the man who wanted to give the necklace back but who was late for his interview. If only Zak could help him get that job. Zak’s oxytocin system was in high gear, urging him to reciprocate the trust he had been shown and to help these people.”
The lesson is simple. Perhaps leaders should spend less time trying to convince people to trust them and more time letting their guard down, soliciting help, and demonstrating that they trust their people.
Hopefully your leadership success isn’t based on being a con man. That doesn’t mean that you can’t learn from them. Con men get people to do things that they never dreamt possible. When people get hurt, it’s a crime. Yet when those “impossible” actions bring out people’s potential and help them succeed, it’s leadership.
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Brad Kolar is the President of Kolar Associates, a leadership consulting and workforce productivity consulting firm. He can be reached at brad.kolar@kolarassociates.com.
