Management Leverage Blog

“Someone’s been sleeping in my bed and she’s still there!” exclaimed Baby bear.

Just then, Goldilocks woke up and saw the three bears. “Sorry for the intrusion,” she said, “but I needed a little rest after eating all that porridge.”

Unable to resist the power of the magic word ‘because’, the bears apologized for waking her and quietly closed the door.

Or how about this one…

“We will wait for until Wednesday for BP to again attempt to stop the oil that is flowing into the gulf, because they are ultimately responsible for this disaster”.

Maybe the story about Goldilocks doesn’t end like this because it is much less believable than the ending we tell our children (but talking bears are somehow believable?) And maybe if the world’s greatest scientists met to plug the leak, they would have already solved the difficult problem at the bottom of the gulf.

But witness the power of the word ‘because’.

It’s the difference between “I deserve a 5% increase in my salary” and “I deserve a 5% increase in my salary, because that would bring my compensation in line with what people with my qualifications earn with my responsibilities.”

When it comes to asking for a raise, we are all salespeople. And the power of ‘because’ works like a charm when people

1. Are looking for an excuse to help you. In a now famous research study, Ellen Langer and her colleagues asked the Harvard librarian to turn off all but one of the Xerox machines. They then instructed a student to try and cut to the front of the line that formed in front of the one Xerox machine that remained operational. When the student asked, “Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine?” Their fellow students granted their request 60% of the time.But they were able to cut in line 93% of the time when they said “Excuse me, I have 5 pages, may I use the Xerox machine because I have to make copies”. Here ‘because’ is powerful enough to work even when the justification is utterly stupid. Of course they have to make copies. That’s why they wanted to use the photocopier. Consistent with Cialdini’s principle of liking, when it comes to favors, these students were just looking for a reason to help each other. Even when the justification was stupid.
2. Aren’t knowledgeable about your subject. According to MSNBC, the stock market is in a correction phase, because of uncertainties surrounding the Greek debt crisis. Most of us, including me, don’t fully understand the complexities of the world financial markets. But there are so many variables at play that a single factor, that we have known about for months now, is unlikely to be the single cause of this correction phase. Yet unless we take time to educate ourselves, we nod dutifully at this explanation when given reason to believe. At least I do.

But if I justify my requests at work, won’t they just use it as ammunition against me?

In other words, if I offer data to support my request for a raise, won’t they just cite examples to show how my case is different?

Maybe. Which is why the more sound your justification, the more likely you are to get what you want.

But don’t overestimate the knowledge and hostility of your audience. Rarely do we encounter man-eating bears with a thorough grasp of the English language.

Photo by Horia Varlan