In this episode, I unpack the lessons from “The Human Brand” by Chris Malone and Susan T. Fiske.
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Full Transcript:
What are the intentions of other people toward me? How capable are they of carrying out those intentions? Today we judge others almost instantly along those same two categories of social perception, which are known as warmth and competence. I’m Mickey Mellen, this is Stacking Knowledge, and that was just a little bit from Chris Malone and Susan Fiske’s book, The Human Brand. They talk a lot about warmth and competence, so let’s kind dig into those things and see where it takes us. So an early thing in the introduction before chapter one.
They say, quote, a person who demonstrates both warmth and competence inspires feelings of trust and admiration within us, motivating us to seek a continuing relationship with that person. know, again, warmth and competence are huge in this book and huge in other books too. ⁓ In Vanessa Van Edwards book, cues, which I covered not too long ago, there’s a quote from there where she said, you might notice that highly competent people will often partner with highly warm folks to balance them out. Many famous duos include a highly warm character and a highly competent character. This is a good way to think about how those traits play off each other.
And then Olivia Cabane in the Charisma Myth, which I’ve yet to cover, but I’ll probably get to soon. It’s a great book. She says, equation that produces charisma is actually fairly simple. All you have to do is give the impression that you possess both high power and high warmth, since charismatic behaviors project a combination of these two qualities. So again, warmth and competence, or as the Charisma Myth said, she said warmth and high power, but same kind of thing. Those are huge in how people, you know, how people interpret you. Now the challenge of course, you have one and not the other. And that’s where
know, Vanessa Edwards in Cues talked about, you know, sometimes you’ll partner with one another. That’s kind of where I am at Green Mellen. I’m more the competent side. Ali’s more the warm side, although she’s plenty competent as well. ⁓ She’s certainly warmer though, but having that balance, I think, has worked well for us. And so you’ll see a lot of pairs like that. Because if you’re lacking one of those, it can be very problematic. In the book here, in the Human Brand, they say, quote, one who displays competence in the absence of warmth, however, tends to leave us feeling envious and suspicious.
While someone we perceive as warm but not competent stimulates feelings of pity and sympathy. A person who exhibits low levels of both warm and competence often produce feelings of contempt and disgust. And so yeah, you gotta have both somehow. Work on your own skills for sure, maybe partner with others. It can be interesting. then confidence can get, confidence and competence can get interesting. We’re talking about competence here, but Adam Grant in his book Hidden Potential, he talks about that a little bit too where he says, quote, we mistake confidence for competence, certainly for credibility.
and quantity for quality. We get stuck following people who dominate the discussion instead of those who elevate it. So, we want people that are competent and smart and know what doing. Sometimes confidence can sort of mask that over, at least for a while. You’ll see someone very confident and say, wow, they’re super confident, they know what they’re talking about. And we’ve all followed bosses and leaders that look this way. They’re super confident, you follow them until you realize like, ⁓ they’re not really that bright, I guess, okay. But the confidence can overwhelm that. So, just be careful as you’re following those. You’re looking for competence and of course looking for warmth.
competence and not confidence. Let’s see, digging into they talk about. ⁓
The next piece he talks about, calls the middle ages of marketing, know, marketing that was done poorly. An example here, he pulls from the 1994 book, The Naked Consumer, Eric Larson talks about how a 1991 letter from a publishing house declined his request to be removed from his mailing list. The quote from there says, we regret that this request cannot be accommodated as we rent all of our mailing lists and therefore exercise no control over the content. I would like to be more helpful, but my hands are tied. Yeah, that’s the middle ages of marketing. We still see some of that today where…
It’s difficult to unsubscribe from email newsletters or shockingly to me they’re like, yes, you’d be removed within the next 10 business days. What year is this? Let’s not be in the Middle Ages. Let’s do things the right way. Again, display warmth and competence and treat people the way they should be treated. Digging more into warmth and competence, the book says, quote, research shows that people will judge a single act of generosity as evidence of a generous personality simply as an effortless routine byproduct of categorizing the act itself as being generous. So just.
Acting generously will make people think you are generous, which kind of goes together, but not always that easy. And sometimes it really is, though. Talking about warmth, say, warmth is judged by assessing whether one is kind, friendly, and good-natured, whether one appears sincere, honest, moral, and trustworthy, and whether one possesses an accommodating orientation is perceived as helpful, tolerant, fair, generous, and understanding. And then to look at how competent is, so that was how warmth is judged, how they’re gonna judge you as being warm or not.
You mean honest and moral and trustworthy and things. Competence is judged by assessing whether one possesses special resources, skills, creativity or intelligence that grants them an advantage. Do they appear efficient, capable, skillful, clever and knowledgeable? Do they seem to possess the confidence and ability to carry out their plans? So again, people are gonna look at these kind of aspects to see if they think you’re warm and competent. You may be both, but if you’re not showing that you are, that’s problematic. People won’t pick it up that way. And they really, number of times in the book here, they talk about warmth coming first. She says in the book here,
Studies show that of the two dimensions warmth comes earliest and carries more weight in our perceptions like you want to get to know someone and trust them first and then see the Competence come out if the competence comes first again They could seem cocky or overconfident even if the warmth is there later so warmth coming first often works well They get a lot about loyalty here about how great companies don’t need loyalty plans and stuff Which is kind of funny because a lot of the ones they talked about actually do need loyalty plans now ⁓ No, I’m gonna cancel that whole section there
So five, whatever.
So next they talk about the loyalty test, expecting companies and brands to commit to us. They say, quote, companies that exercise genuine warmth exhibit a willingness to respond sincerely to their customers’ needs, even at their own short-term expense. The most admired ones tend to be those that establish a trusting, long-term relationship with their customers by making it a point to put customers first and themselves second. And we say that a lot in business. You put your customers first and yourself second, it’s going to work out and you’re going to turn out pretty good in the end. It can be interesting if you’re super competent but not warm.
They talk about here, they say, a company treats us competently but coldly, we don’t feel particularly grateful, even if the service or product provides us with excellent value for the dollar. So yeah, if you’re treated competently but not warmly, you don’t feel grateful, even if the service or product provides with excellent value for the dollar. Instead, as the research shows, we see a cold and competent company acting in a traditional exchange for its own benefit first, with little thought given to our needs or desires. We feel used. So even if they do a great job, if you don’t feel warm, you feel used, which may not be accurate, but it is what happens.
I’ll talk about how, damn I got a lot of stuff.
They share a story of a dentist that never hired a hygienist just to keep the connection with his clients. He’s talking about doing the teeth cleaning himself. From the book they say, quote, that’s unheard of in dentistry nowadays. Dentists don’t want to clean teeth. You don’t make enough money cleaning teeth to justify doing it. You want to be doing an advanced procedure and not a $100 cleaning. But that’s the time to bond with patients. How are you doing? What’s going on? The simplicity of teeth cleaning gives him time to connect with the patient and gently educate each patient about dental hygiene. It’s time he wouldn’t have had if he delegated cleaning to a hygienist.
It limited his contact with patients only to the time spent on higher value procedures. We’ll talk about that in a little bit too, using automations and hiring to separate yourself from your customers, which is always very strange. Next, they talk about the principle of worthy intentions using trust as our default. They talk about Ed Wallace who introduced him to the idea of worthy intent, which is the basis for all successful one-on-one customer relationships. Ed describes worthy intent as the, quote, inherent promise you make to keep the other person’s best interest at the
core of your business relationship. So we’re the intent, always trying to keep the other person’s best interest of what’s going on. And we’ll start getting into loyalty programs a little bit. I’ll talk about how…
Then we’ll get into loyalty programs a little bit. They talk about how Subway used loyalty cards to really grow their business. And then they give you examples of companies that don’t do loyalty cards and as the writing of the book, didn’t do loyalty cards at all and the reasons they don’t, but both of them have since added it. First they talk about Publix on a quote from Publix that says, Publix does not have a loyalty card program because we don’t think you should need a card to save money at Publix. We value all of our customers and want them to all have a pleasant shopping experience, which is genuinely true of Publix.
But that’s what their spokesman said at the time this book was written a few years ago. They sent out of the club Publix loyalty card to it and talk about Zappos the same way. It says as a result Zappos generates 75 % of its sales every day from repeat customers with no need for discounts, mass advertising or rewards based loyalty programs. We know when they are really appreciated. And again, they’ve since added these Zappos VIP program. So it’s a tricky thing. I sort of see both sides of this. Companies like Zappos and Publix are fantastic companies to work with and
I don’t feel they needed that loyalty thing, but again, to compete with the other companies against them, some people need that. like the old story of JCPenney when Ron Johnson took over JCPenney. Ron Johnson used to work at Apple, came and took over JCPenney and said, instead of all these fake sales that aren’t really sales, we’re gonna give people everyday low prices and JCPenney’s business tanked. People want the fake sales and feel like they’re getting more. And so think that’s kind of what’s happening with Publix and Zappos here, even if you’re getting great deals anyhow.
make people feel even better about it. Come home and talk about how much money you saved, whether you really did or not. It looks good on the receipt to see you save money because of your loyalty piece.
And then I really like this piece about missed opportunities. They say in the book, quote, rather than trying to minimize interactions between humans through automation, companies and brands should be seeking to maximize those interactions using technology so that their warmth and competence can be displayed in customer relationships established with us. And this one’s huge. I’m seeing this a whole lot more now that AI is really starting to take off too. I’ve shared recently on my blog, I’ll tell you the stories here briefly, two experiences just in the last couple of weeks. One is a car dealership I’ve worked with that
I’ve bought my last couple of cars from them because they’re so human. They have great people, they answer emails, they’re fantastic. And now they start throwing all these AI barriers. It’s so strange to me. Like when I called to get service, all I could talk to is the AI bot who sounded kind of human-like, but it was a Hyundai dealership and it could not pronounce Hyundai for the world. kept saying like Hyundai or like however it was trying to pronounce it just way off because the AI didn’t know how to say it, which was hilarious for that own thing. But even then I tried to say, ⁓ I talked to it for a while, tried to work through it, had a question it couldn’t answer, and then I could never get a human to respond.
It was very frustrating. And then another one, a gentleman I’ve refinanced my house with before. I used him because he’s a local guy. He’s in the business community. see him around town. He’s a human. He’s great. And then Robo called me with a horrible AI bot trying to get me to refinance again. And I called him out on it directly. I’m like, dude, what are you doing here? Like you’re a human. There are thousands of others just like you that are just going to spam people to death. Be the man, be the human, be the company. And I think they’re starting to change their ways little bit, but it was just very disappointing that people see.
AI and automation is like, man, we can automate all our interactions with customers. Like, no, you should do the opposite. You should be using AI and automations and things to take care of the dirty work. And then you can build those relationships better yourself. Seth Godin shared a little bit about this in his book, This is Marketing. In that book, he said, the truth is that most brands that matter and most organizations that thrive are primed by advertising, but built by good marketing. They grow because users evangelize to their friends. They grow because they’re living entities offering even more value to the community they serve.
They grow because they find tribes that coalesce around the cultural change they’re trying to produce. Again, good brands are human brands. And again, the book is the human brand, which just tracks so perfectly for what they talk about.
Okay, and then later they talk about taking customer first into company first, and there’s a couple interesting examples of this. They talk about Audi engineers years ago looking for a solution to a problem they had. They added a shift lock mechanism to hundreds of thousands of recalled cars, preventing the transmission from being engaged unless the brake pedal is depressed. And you know this now, you can’t shift into drive unless you push the brake first. That’s not a technical issue, it’s to make sure things don’t happen, it doesn’t go into drive without that happening, if kids are playing in the car or whatever.
They had lots of problems with that and complaints dried up. Audi sales and the brand image recovered because they were in the news quite a bit for bad things happening because people were putting the car in drive, know, kids playing around or people accidentally doing it. ⁓ and actually in 2006 then the auto industry great to make that, that shift lock feature. They call it Betsy standard in all vehicles. And the, that’s a great thing. And Audi is kind of the one that pioneered that sort of because they were forced to, but they did it. related to that, they say a famous study of audio tape conversations between patients and primary care physicians.
showed that physicians who talk longer and laugh more with patients indicating warmth and friendliness were much less likely to be sued for malpractice than doctors who had a shorter, more business-like visit. So again, this is not about the competence at all. These are across thousands of doctors looking at malpractice cases, but the ones that were warmer and connected with their clients better were sued for malpractice less than others. It’s crazy how that works out, but it kind of does. Related to that though, we also tend to humanize companies. If we humanize them, when they mess up, we…
are more willing to forgive. think it’s kind of like the doctors, where if they make a mistake, we know it’s a human, it’s a friendly guy, we’re less likely to sue them. This happens with other companies too. In the book they say, quote, we humanize companies that mess up as long as they show us their good intentions. When nearly nine out of 10 adults say they feel more loyalty toward a company that handles a product recall responsibly, those results make it clear that the public is much more forgiving than most corporate leaders would assume. The perfect example of this is Tylenol back in the 80s, back in 1982.
Back in 1982, there were seven people that died from taking cyanide-laced Tylenol pills. Now, this was not Tylenol’s fault. Someone had gotten to the stores and tampered with the boxes on the shelves, adding cyanide. People bought it, took it, and died from it. So this was 0 % Tylenol’s fault, but they immediately halted all sales and took huge action to try to prevent future deaths there, but also to add new anti-tampering features that have, again, since become industry standard. And Tylenol’s reputation rebounded fantastically from them because they handled it so very well. People recognized it wasn’t their fault. It was a…
crazy person that did it, but then Tylenol’s reaction to cost themselves millions and millions of dollars with their recalls and pulling product back off the shelf and disposing of it, adding new anti-tampery features and doing what they could to show that they’re a legit, solid customer first company made a big difference for them. And yeah, you can go read the story of Tylenol in 1982 and how well they handled that. To kind of wrap up the book, they talk about the relationship renaissance and kind of what you do next. There’s three pieces to that. There’s becoming more self-aware and knowing what’s going on.
embracing significant change and fundamentally shifting priorities. And I’m going to kind of read out with this pretty long quote from the book about shifting priorities and how that can work. So it says here, the conclusion is unavoidable. In this age when reputations can be made and broken around the world in a single day, our capacity to express warmth and competence is among our most precious assets. It follows that the most natural, sustainable way to achieve any kind of meaningful success, personal, professional or commercial,
is to earn the lasting loyalty of others by keeping their best interests at the center of everything we do. Doing so doesn’t require that we recklessly disregard our own interests. Rather, it recognizes that our success as humans has always depended on the cooperation and loyalty of others. In that regard, keeping the best interests of others in balance with our own is simply a form of enlightened self-interest. It’s a mindset that embraces the warmth and competence perceptions that drive our choices and shape the human brand in each of us.
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