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The Amazing Authorities Podcast
The Psychology of Authority: Ethical Influence, Presentation & Trust with Patrick Van Der Burght
00:27:12
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- [00:02]
A
Welcome to the Amazing Authorities Podcast, where game changers, visionaries, and category leaders share how they built their brands, platforms, and global influence. Your host is Mitch Carson, international speaker, media strategist, and creator of the Instant Authority system. If you're ready to learn from those who've done it and want to become the go to expert in your space, you're in the right place.
- [00:31]
B
Today's guest is an authority. And I love that word because this is the Amazing Authorities podcast show. Today's guest is Patrick Van Der Burked, and I had to rehearse that, and we learned about him being an authority before the show began. And now we're going to share the proof. Patrick, welcome to the show.
- [00:56]
C
Thanks, mate. Very, yeah. Appreciative to be invited here. It's great, yeah.
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B
And you are a student and now you've been an author of Dr. Robert Cialdini. We chatted a little bit beforehand. I was mesmerized by his first book. I think he wrote it 20, 25 years ago. And it was a New York Times.
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C
Actually 40 years ago.
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B
Oh, my gosh. I read it about 25 years ago.
- [01:20]
C
1984.
- [01:22]
B
Okay, 1984. Now, I. I shared the stage with him at an event In Tampa in 2006, if I recall correctly. And I. He had the whole audience. It was a group of dentists at the conference. It was a dental conference where I sold a program. He sold a program. And I said, you know, you talked about your certification. I want to go through it. I want to learn more about this. I love the reciprocity, the liking, the unity, the social proof, the authority. And because of that one word, authority, that was a good reason why I named my show the Amazing Authorities Podcast. And that's why you're here today. You're certified. You've. You're an author. You run your own training programs in Australia and where you live. I know you live in Melbourne, and I pronounced it not Melbourne. I learned that from my travels in Australia. But you're originally from Holland, so you must be tall.
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C
I am tall. Yeah. My father used to kick me up the backside, you know, so I shut up.
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B
No, I. The only time I felt short, I'm 6ft tall, which is in centimeters. 182. The only time I felt short in my life was when I was in Amsterdam a few years back. I said, oh, my God, the women are taller than me. So how tall are you?
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C
187. So, yeah, 187. A little bit. Just taller than you. Yeah.
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B
So that. Well, what's interesting is. Let's talk about the authority word. Is there any presumed authority with someone who's taller versus shorter?
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C
Yes, there would be. And how we look has a big impact on how people perceive us. It's a bit unfair, really. Yes, it is studied. There was a stun daddy story done another Canadian election, if I, if I recall that correctly. And they noted that attractive politicians received more than two and a half times the amount of votes of unattractive politicians. And then when they actually went and interviewed voters, they had very little idea or they, they rejected the idea quite violently. That appearance of a person could have anything to do with their voting habits. But it was very clear that, you know, handsome or attractive politicians receive more votes. So, yeah, there's a bit, a bit of, a lot of unfairness in that. And then you can go into the whole debate about, well, you know, how should you dress, how should you look, knowing that people react to that, should you take advantage of that, what's ethical, what's not. It's an interesting debate.
- [04:22]
B
Well, it is, it is. There is an ad in the US and this is going into the authority topic, which I. Let's delve into it. Today there was an ad for hair replacement. Now I had hair transplants. I was bald and I had this done. And the ad sold me because it said before the te. Since the television age, here is the precursor. Since the television age, no US President has been bald. And there's greater authority or presumption of authority. Presumption of authority with someone who has a full head of hair. So I went back and thought, wow, Ronald Reagan had a full head of hair. So did jfk, John, John F. Kennedy, so did Nixon. So I went through and it was right. And I thought, wow, I don't have any aspirations to be the President United States, but I do want to be the best Mitch possible. And if it meant me going and paying, you know, $5,000 for hair transplants, which I did in Bangkok, would have cost 25 in the U.S. i did it. It sold me on the result of there and the presumption of authority because of a head of hair. Whether it's true or not and how it applies, who knows? I mean, there are plenty of people that don't. And it was a great ad to sell a man.
- [05:55]
C
Yeah. Tell me. I mean, we know that with glasses as well, right? I mean, when the glasses go on, you know, given a certain age, people see you as more of a, you know, an intellectual that you know your stuff better. I think gray Hair also adds to that, but it's also what you surround yourself with. And it's, you know, when it comes to, like. And it's not just what you wear, but it has a big impact on it. As in, when we are uncertain, we look for outward clues to give us an idea or help us to make a decision about that person. And so what we look like has a big impact when. Especially when we meet people for the first time. You know, the saying dress to impress, that certainly holds true, but especially when you meet people for the first time. And so, you know, we want to dress well, we want to look good, but it's not just about clothing. It's, you know, you know, how you, you know, how you do your hair for women, of course, makeup, jewelry you might be wearing. You know, you might be on a zoom call and you write something down and, you know, you pick up one of these very cheap $1 pens that says something very subtly, very quickly. Right. So, you know, when you're at a meeting, what pen are you pulling out of your pocket? What do you write with? What does your business cards look like if they see you pull up with a car? Right. That has an impact. I mean, you know, I don't know if you've ever been.
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B
Oh, it certainly does.
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C
There's a parking spot dedicated to the dentist. Right. Label there, that's for the dentist. And when there's an older economy car in that parking spot, you kind of go, I don't know if there's such a good dentist. Or we judge.
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B
Or are the prices going to be higher? Because I'm paying for that car.
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C
Yeah. Also. And there's a little bit of a difference also in culture in relation to that. I know in the Netherlands, which of course I don't live in, but grew up in. Yeah. If you have a bit of a too fancy car, then people might go, I'm paying for that.
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B
Exactly. And then also, I know in Australia you have that tall people poppy syndrome, which I've heard so much about, and it's. Yeah, they tear you down. So I. Where do you. Where do you balance that line?
- [08:16]
C
Then again, what's interesting is that our perception of how authority affects us goes under the radar. I've got a very cool example of that. They did an experiment where they had a car pull up at a traffic light that had it turned red, and so standing there waiting, and then other cars lining up behind it, and then when the light turned red, the car would fail to pull away. And I did this half of the Time with an older economy car. And the other half of the time, they did it with a luxury car. And so when the economy car was doing that, failing to pull away, nearly everybody honked the horn and even two people pushed the rear bumper. Right. But when the luxury car was explained, the exact behavior, exact same behavior, less than half of the people honked the horn and nobody pushed the rear bumper. Now, that goes a little deeper. That experiment, as in the setting of it, was then presented to students, and they asked, you know, if this was to happen to you, when would you honk the horn more readily or with who would you get upset more readily? And it was very interesting to see that most people completely misjudged that situation, as in, they already had the proof that half of the people honked the horn when the luxury car was in front of them. But when asked, they said, oh, no, especially the men. Right. If it was a luxury car, I would be on the horn much quicker than the economy car. So we often misunderstand how this affects us. And because, well, honestly, most people that don't know the science have very little idea what actually changes their behavior. So we might think that, oh, well, I'm paying for that car, but we might still be affected by it. As in, well, you know, respect him. Yeah, as in, yeah, this guy probably still knows what he's talking about better than that other person. So it's a little bit of a slippery slope on that one.
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B
Yeah, that is, that's a, that's a great example of, well, let's, let's look into this. Let's see what the reality is. On one hand, are you affected by lavishness or are you impressed by success? And respect it. So that's a, that, that's a good topic. I'll have to remember that at my next dinner conversation. That's, that'll be good. Dessert and dessert chats.
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C
And when it comes to dressing, Mitch, just to sort of round off.
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B
Sure.
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C
The topic for your listeners, what's the good advice here? Right. As in, are you, if you're in a particular income bracket, are you going to go and rent a very expensive suit? Or you can imp people at an initial meeting. Is that the right thing to do? Probably not. The idea is that you should try and aim to dress just one step better than your audience. You walk into a room and you know that people are going to be, you know, wearing business pants and shirts, that sort of stuff. Then you do the same, but you wear a jacket. Right. But if you walk into a meeting and you feel overdressed, Right. Then lose the jacket. Right. Dress down a little bit. Just put it aside so you come a little bit down towards that level. And when it comes to. Well, how far should you take this? I mean, should you go out of your way and buy really expensive clothing and jewelry just to take advantage of this effect that trappings have? Well, we would say no. We want to use this ethically. So what does that mean? Well, I think that whatever it is that you have in your wardrobe, right, where you're comfortable wearing, well, pick the clothing in there that portrays who you are, you're comfortable wearing it, and that's really you. Right. And so don't be shy about wearing something nice. In fact, I know from a study that looked at job applications, different topic. If people were wearing designer label shirts and jumpers, they were hired more quickly and they got higher starting wages just from portraying that sense of authority. So it's important. So don't, don't underdress. Don't be shy to show the fruits of your success.
- [13:01]
B
And the car, I love the example of the honking of the horn with the luxury car or perceived luxury car, versus do you honk at a, you know, maybe a missing bumper and missing hubcap on a car? You would be more likely or prone to honk at that person than someone driving a brand new S Class Mercedes.
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C
Yeah, I mean, I. I feel the same, but maybe in reality I don't. I'll have to see what other people are watching me.
- [13:33]
B
Yeah, it's unconscious in some cases, I would imagine. Well, let's talk about the rule of reciprocity, one of my favorites. And, you know, as I mentioned, I had gone through Dr. Cialdini's course some years ago. I just, I remember that one. I mean, these are all the principles you've got behind you. We can go through them. But the reciprocity one is a biggie. Tell us about that.
- [13:58]
C
Okay, so the rule of reciprocity has to do with our credentials. How do we get those across? The rule of reciprocity is also about our believability, which is a whole cool subject to go into. But essentially, we could define the rule of reciprocity as that people have a tendency to follow the leads of other people who have superior knowledge or wisdom. And that does make sense. Right. We can't know everything. And so when we find ourselves in a situation where there's somebody else there who knows more about this stuff than I do, it makes sense to follow their advice. Right. And so this has a Very strong, strong effect on us.
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B
And the authority, how do you establish the authority?
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C
Okay, as in, as in how do you share your authority with other people?
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B
Well, all right, let's go back to. You have a great example on your website or with a video that introduced me to you and I realized, okay, I definitely want to interview this man. It credentialized you because you spoke with such authority about the topic and use the examples. Tell us about the example of the waiting room receptionist. Yeah. And what are the receptionist in XYZ practice? What was the sentence that changed everything?
- [15:31]
C
Yeah, great example. All right, so to lead that in all of us, all your listeners, we are all experts in our own field, we are all authorities in what we do, right? When you approach a client and you want to talk about whatever services or product you provide with your business, you are an expert in your field. The problem is that when you meet someone, when you're face to face with someone, if you sing your own praises, that doesn't work so well, right? No, You're a bragger to someone and say, hi, my name is Patrick, right? Let me tell you the 35 reasons why you should listen to me and why I'm such an expert in this field. Your subconscious, or maybe your conscious goes, you're full of yourself, right? And research shows you're trying to do that because you're trying to let people know that you know your stuff. And so that when you talk, they take whatever it is you're sharing with them with the gravity that it deserves based on your expertise, right? So you try and bring up reasons or justify why they should respect what it is you say. But research shows that when you do that yourself, you're trying to raise authority, but you actually lose it and you lose on liking. It's lose, lose, right? You cannot introduce yourself. Or that's why when we go on stage, there's an MC that, you know, tells the audience who the next speaker is, right? We can't do it ourselves. If we do that backfires. So there's other ways how we can effectively do that. And I'll share two with you. The last one is what our example is about. So the one thing you could do is you could send a letter of introduction ahead of your meeting, right? That is socially acceptable. So let's say you've got an appointment on, I don't know, Wednesday, 11 o', clock, and let's say it's a zoom call, right? You could send an email an hour before the meeting, half an hour before the meeting, or if it was an in person meeting, you might send that, you know, the, you know, the day before or something, and you say something along the lines of, hey, really looking forward to our meeting on Wednesday, 11 o'. Clock. I have attached a PDF with some information about my background. Please have a look, peruse the information and it'll explain to you where I'm coming from with this.
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B
Right.
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C
And your audience is going to be curious and they're going to open that up and have a look. They might not read the whole thing, but they might find there, you know, the degrees that you got. You got a master's degree in this and you worked so long with this company, you won that award and that award and that award. Right. You can't do that in a conversation. No, but by doing it earlier like that, with a letter of introduction, that's socially acceptable and it won't be taken as you boasting about yourself. And now when you turn to that meeting, sorry, Mitch, I say, that's big, Patrick.
- [18:48]
B
You've already created yourself.
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C
Yeah. And so when you step into that meeting, now that they know what's behind you now, they will take those words that you say with the gravity that they deserve. If you fail to do that, right, if you fail to establish your credibility at the beginning, then you, you could say you start sort of at a neutral level and now throughout your meeting, or let's say you're doing a presentation, throughout your presentation now, you hope to build that level of authority and maybe, maybe by the end of it, you'll have established yourself as like, wow, you know, that, that lady, that guy, he knows what he talks about right? Now, that's great that you might achieve that by the end of your presentation. But, but that means that in all the time leading up to that point, they did not process what you said with the gravity that it deserved. And so you stand to lose that by not getting your credentials up in a socially acceptable way. So a letter of introduction is a great way to do that, but the idea or the thing you're alluding to before is another great example, another way to do that. So let me paint a picture. One of my colleagues, Steve Martin, he worked with a real estate office in London. They wanted to know if they could increase the amount of meetings from incoming phone calls to the office. And so they observed what would happen. And so a phone call would come in and the receptionist, who was knowledgeable about everybody who was in the office, the receptionist would answer the phone. Something like this. Okay, yes, great, you're Looking for a house in Chelsea. No problem. I will put you on to John. Right. And then she would transfer the call to the real estate agent John, who was very knowledgeable or experienced in that area. Okay, so what I've just explained in terms of raising your credentials, by the time the phone call ends with John, he has lost the opportunity to raise his credentials. So all that they were recommended to do was that the receptionist and I would imagine they would have had a little list with everybody in the office and genuine information about their credibility, about their credentials. Right. So now the phone call got answered. Oh, you're interested in buying a house in Chelsea. I will put you on to John. John has been with us for 17 years. He's won multiple awards and he's helped hundreds of families find the right home for them in the Chelsea area. I'll put you on now.
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B
So it's already an introduction before they John takes the call. Just, that's right, twist twist, right. Justified him, credentialized him through a receptionist.
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C
And it's just a sentence, right? Doesn't cost anything to implement. Pretty simple. But the results of this were that meetings booked as a result of those incoming phone calls, they increased by 20% and signed contracts went up by 15.55% with a sentence.
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B
Just that one variable change.
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C
Just that change. And I, I, I dare you. If you have a receptionist, right, get somebody else to ring your office, ask, make an inquiry and and list don't bring this up with any of the staff. Right. As it ring them, do a couple of test calls, say oh, I'm interested in this product or this sale, right. How is that call transferred? I would bet in most scenarios people don't think about this or they do it sometimes and they forget about it other times. This is too big a thing to skip over. This is just one principle, one little element. Right. But failing to use that, you would be losing every single day.
- [23:07]
B
That's so important, so profound. I'm sure you've got many, many more. Where can they learn more about these techniques? I mean because all these little tweaks, these little hinges will swing big doors of sales.
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C
Exactly. There's, I mean there's seven principles which we can go in now, but I'm happy to come back a later time if you like. Seven principles. There's dozens of applications per principle and, and you know, find nuances. So whilst reading a book and Everybody should have Dr. Chinny's book influence the psychology of Persuasion, right. You know, one of the best business books of all time. But you don't tend to. You can get knowledge from a book, although because of our busy lives, that's getting hard. Our research now shows that we lose 90% of new information within a week if there's no follow up. So by the time you get to the end of the book, you've forgotten most of all. And knowledge doesn't really give us power, it's application skill that gives us power. And so if people want to know more, they can of course Visit my website, ethicalpersuasion.com and there's also some free tools for you to get started with if you like. If you head to the free section on the menu bar, there is a downloadable ebook. There's not even an email required, just right click and download. It's yours, knock yourself out. And there's also, of course we do need email for a 7 day email challenge or you get a little nugget of gold every single day. But to really master this, and I mean you've done training and that took more days, right? You need some formal training and that's available in flagship training that Dr. Cialdini has put together and that we facilitate and runs over eight weeks and it's only a 20 hour investment over that period. That's a great way to do. We can help businesses with that, but also individuals can come. We have public courses that a single individual could join or even just an online workshop for half a day, you know, very inexpensive, great way to learn. But you need to follow up, you need to keep with it, otherwise you're going to lose a lot.
- [25:25]
B
Sure. Now where's, where, where do we go for this again?
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C
One more time, sorry, yeah, the website ethicalpersuasion.comau for Australia and of course you can find me on, on LinkedIn as well. And yeah, I'm sure we'll, we'll put some things in the, in the show notes for you.
- [25:43]
B
Patrick. Thank you, you've been a great guest. I mean a couple of those tips are, will make profound differences and frankly I just, as you said, I've forgotten and I have to go and implement these once again to make these changes. Just the one piece. I need the refresher. I need the refresher badly. I realize this. Oh my gosh, I'm leaving so much money on the table by not following some of these principles and it does require practice and repetition.
- [26:13]
C
And it's ethical. There's no need to lie or cheat. Research actually shows this works and exceedingly well short term and long term when used ethically, where unethically. It might work short term, but is long term disaster. So yeah, you can be the good guy and be very effective, but you.
- [26:33]
B
Well, let's. Yeah, let's stay ethical. Patrick, you've been a great guest. Thank you for your time today and we'll certainly have you back in the future.
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C
Thank you.
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A
Thanks for tuning in to the Amazing Authorities podcast. If today's episode inspired you, take a moment to subscribe, rate and leave a review. It helps more experts like you rise to the top for behind the scenes access and free resources to boost your authority. Head to MitchCarson.com until next time, stay amazing.