A minute later, after the cashiers rang up the order, they asked again, but slightly differently. The cashiers said something along the lines of “Would you like to round up your purchase to the nearest dollar and donate the extra change to the Boys and Girls Club?” Many people who had said “no” now said “yes.”

What created the power of persuasion? Why were so many customers saying “no” to a $1 donation and then donating when asked again a couple minutes later? It wasn’t the ease of tossing their change into a bucket, because most people were paying with credit cards.   And the store was in a very wealthy suburb, so although the difference between $1 and 20 cents was a large percentage, it probably wasn’t meaningful to the donors.

Robert Cialdini, a professor of marketing and psychology, has a section in his fantastic book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, that explains why the H&M customers’ behavior my wife witnessed isn’t a fluke. It’s actually predictable.

In one research experiment, Cialdini’s team approached college students and claimed to be from the County Youth Counseling Program. The team members asked the students to chaperone troubled kids on a trip to the zoo; 83% refused. In the next phase of the experiment, Cialdini was able to dramatically shift results with one change. Prior to asking students to volunteer as chaperones, his team asked them to mentor a troubled kid for two hours a week for at least two years. After the students declined, the researchers asked if they would chaperone the single trip. Three times as many students agreed to chaperone when asked as a follow-up than did similar students who were asked only about chaperoning.

More backup is a study conducted by social psychologists at UCLA and related to negotiation. (This study, also mentioned in Cialdini’s book, was performed by Benton, Kelley and Liebling.) They found that the negotiators who got the most from another party started with an offer that was a bit extreme and then conceded to something more reasonable. They were able to close more deals than negotiators who started with the exact same reasonable deal but wouldn’t concede anything. When the offer was exactly the same, a significantly higher percentage of people accepted when it was a concession rather than the first offer.

According to the researchers, here’s what’s happening:

1. Psychologists say that the rule of reciprocity makes most of us want to do something for people who do something for us first. When people make a second request that’s smaller than the first, we consider their concession (asking for less) as doing something for us. That’s why, like H&M customers, student volunteers, and negotiators, we would say “yes” to the second request when we wouldn’t agree to it if it had been the only request.
2. If the first ask is a big commitment, the second request made right afterwards seems small in comparison.

Many people, after asking for something and getting a “no,” simply try to redirect. They ask why not, try to overcome hurdles, and then if that fails, vow to find a new approach. If your pitch doesn’t work, you should definitely try those tactics. But if they fail, ask for something smaller and different. Have a backup pitch. If you’re asking someone to donate $100 to your charity and he says no, follow up by asking if he’d buy a $10 raffle ticket. If you’re trying to get someone to join your Board of Directors and she says no, ask if you can call her for advice once in a while.

Before reading Cialdini’s book, I understood that it’s easier to close a deal when you make a concession. I hadn’t realized that making a concession would get people to say “yes” to things they would normally refuse.

If you’re interested in learning more about the power of persuasion, check out Robert Cialdini’s book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.

Many companies have a standard practice of having exit interviews with departing employees. Too many companies don’t have a standard practice of having stay interviews with the employees they want to retain.

A stay interview isn’t a 1:1 meeting or a check-in meeting. Its purpose isn’t to talk about current projects. These are meetings focused on retention. There are several parts to a successful stay interview:

1. The best way to find out what your employees want and how to retain them is to ask them.Ask questions to gauge how you’re meeting your employees’ expectations. Not just “How’s it going?”, but specific questions to get specific answers. Some questions to ask: How are things going? What makes you stay? What would make you stay longer? How can I help you with your professional goals? Are there new things you’d like to try? Are there things I can do better, as your manager? Are there things you aren’t getting out of this job that you’d like to get out of the job? What do you love doing? What would you like to be doing more of?By the way, the only way this works is if you’re committed not only to asking the questions but also to listening to the answers and responding to them with more than words. If you can’t do that, it’s probably better to skip the stay interviews. (Click here for advice about how to ask better questions.)
2. Provide feedback on their goals. Let employees know what’s realistic, and think about the next steps together. Appropriate expectation setting is critical to retention. Develop a plan, which should be more than a discussion. You don’t need to create the plan, but you should participate in shaping it.
3. Understand their personal goals and what’s going on outside work. If an employee is getting married, having a baby, or sending a kid to college, you should know about it. I’m not advocating becoming friends with the people you manage. But you should be interested in their lives and know what’s going on. I loved managers who were interested in me. Also, what better way to appreciate your top performers than by knowing about their lives and finding opportunities (if  you’re lucky) to contribute to them?
4. This is an ongoing conversation. I think it’s worth having a stay interview quarterly or twice a year if you can. Why not see if you can substitute stay interviews today for an exit interview down the line?

I used to call these check-in meetings. Kevin Kruse gave me the idea to call them stay interviews. His newest book, Employee Engagement 2.0: How to Motivate Your Team for High Performance (A Real-World Guide for Busy Managers), talks about stay interviews as well as other ways to engage your employees to help with employee retention. This book is a quick read and worth checking out.

I think stay interviews are one of the many things we should be doing to retain talent. What do you think? What are other ways to retain great talent?

After people give notice, they’re frequently labeled “checked out” and aren’t expected or asked to create value. This is a mistake. We found that departing employees often provided great feedback; they were open and direct about suggesting opportunities to improve.

I’ll admit that I was skeptical when I first heard this, but I quickly saw that we received very thoughtful and helpful feedback. One departing employee actually taught me more about running our creative department than I had learned in the previous year from everyone in the department combined. As management saw how much value the exit interview process provided, each of us incorporated our own additions.

Here’s the process I used:

If someone who was leaving reported to me, I’d take her to lunch. I’d thank her for her contributions and tell her how happy I was that she had found a great opportunity. I’d also tell her that some of our best advice has come from departing employees who point out things that don’t work so well. I’d ask if she saw any opportunities for us to improve. I’d ask why she decided to leave, figuring that the reasons she gave might help us retain other employees. I usually learned a lot. I also made it clear that I wanted to keep the door open – after all, if we were lucky, she’d come back to work for us sometime or become a client.

Since people will often share more with someone who isn’t their boss, we also had a trusted HR person conduct interviews with everyone who left. We allowed employees to choose whether or not their feedback would remain anonymous. If people chose to be anonymous, we’d wait for a few employees to leave before sharing exit interviews, so it wouldn’t be clear who had made which suggestions. Surprisingly, most people didn’t care about anonymity. They were happy we asked their opinions.

If you take exit interviews seriously rather than as just a formality (or start conducting exit interviews if you aren’t already), your departing team members could become a great resource for improving your business

Here are the issues:

• You’ll naturally become closer friends with some people, and others will think you play favorites. When you promote people you’re friends with how will the rest of the company view that promotion and how will that impact your team’s culture and the person who was promoted? Even if the promotion is well deserved, other employees are unlikely to view it that way. You’ll be perceived as a manager who plays favorites. And, realistically, it’s probably hard not to at least subconsciously favor your friends.
• Your friends treat you differently than your employees. You don’t want your employees to necessarily treat you or company rules as casually as a friend would.
• Your employees might find it easier not to be friends with you. Let’s say you have an employee who works hard and doesn’t have enough time for their family or friends. Do they want you as a friend? Probably not. But, will they want to be among the employees who aren’t friends with the boss?
• It’s not scalable and people will feel left out. It was easy for me to be friends with everyone when we had 25 employees. Much more difficult when we had over 150. Plus, what about the great employees who just aren’t the types of people you’d have as your friends? They’ll feel like everyone else is favored.
• Friends are equals. You’ll make decisions that determine who gets specific assignments, compensation and other things that are critically important to your employees’ future. That doesn’t make you equals, and it creates a lot of complications for a friendship.
• If it comes down to it, do you layoff your friend or someone who is more qualified but not your friend? How do you tell a friend they’re doing a bad job? And, what do these situations do to your friendship and your ability to make smart business decisions?
• Friends talk about work with each other. The last thing you want to do is be involved in office gossip. If you’re friends with an employee and that employee complains about work, what do you do with that information? If you do nothing, you’re basically agreeing with what they say (even if it’s badmouthing another employee). But, they probably don’t want someone who will push back or force them to address the problem.

You do lose something:

• Some of my closest friends are former employees. I missed out on that for years, but I think that was the right decision.
• This is hard. It’s natural to build friendships when you work closely with people for so long. I did in a few cases. I’m glad I did, but in hindsight, I can see that it wasn’t the best approach for the business.

It’s about what your employees want:

• They want a leader who is fair, gives them opportunities, helps them with their career and appreciates their hard work. They want to know their success and opportunities are based on merit and not relationships they may not have with you outside of work.
• They want someone who is interested and cares about their life outside of work. Someone who wants them to succeed. But, I don’t think they want another best friend, and if they do, I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be that friend.

By the way, this doesn’t mean you don’t have great relationships with your employees. I just think you can do that best without being friends.

What do you think?

Me: What are you going to do when you get older?
Jack: Drink beer, drink coffee and touch the ceiling.

What can I say? He’s an ambitious kid with high aspirations and great role models. But that’s not the point of this post…

As demonstrated by our 2 year old, the questions you ask and how you ask them play a big role in the information you learn. I’m going to provide some suggestions for asking questions in a way that will allow you to be more successful at work.

1)    Only ask questions if you’re prepared to listen and respond. Too many people ask questions to elicit a specific, predetermined answer or so the questioner can feel like he’s checking off the box of “soliciting input.”

This is fine when it’s my wife asking me to pick between two carpet colors (or asking me about pretty much anything) and then deciding to do the opposite. However, it’s not ok at work or in most personal situations.

If you’ve made a decision and you’re not willing to change your mind, don’t ask for input just to get validation. Don’t ask a question because you think it makes you a good manager to solicit input.

2)    Respond. It’s ok to ask an opinion and not follow it, but you must be willing to consider what you hear. And, you must respond to what you hear. Make sure you explain why you will or won’t be taking particular suggestions. Otherwise you’ll hurt morale.

3)    How you ask the question determines the responses you receive. If you want to improve a presentation, ask, “What can we do to improve this presentation?” Most people are hesitant to give constructive suggestions (especially to their boss). By specifically asking for them, you’re giving yourself the best chance of receiving them. Someone who doesn’t really want feedback asks, “This is a great presentation, right?” They’ve setup the question to get a “yes.” If you just want feedback, leave the question as broad as possible: “What did you think of the presentation?”

4)    Don’t include assumptions or try to show your intelligence when asking a question. It narrows the question and the answer. For example, “Why aren’t we trying that?” is better than “Why aren’t we trying that — because of budget?” Narrowing the question often leads to less informative answers. (Of course, ignore this if you only want a quick answer.)

5)    Accept “I don’t know” as an answer. If people think they have to answer immediately, they’ll be less creative. They’ll be scrambling. Make it ok for people to say they’ll think about something and get back to you.

6)    Know when not to ask a question. If you want someone who reports to you or a family member to do something, and they don’t really have a choice, phrase your request as a statement. “Please write a status report” is better than “Would you mind writing a status report?”

7)    Question your assumptions. Go against conventional wisdom. Commerce Bank became a huge success, because they asked, “Why do banks operate the way they do?” Instead of following the model of every other bank, Commerce introduced weekend hours, late night hours and other policies that made them closer to Target or Starbucks than banks. It seems obvious now, but until Commerce, I can’t think of a big bank that offered this type of service.

8)    Ask questions to push a project forward. Not to put someone on the defensive. If you ask a lot of narrow questions in a row, your colleagues may think of you as a lawyer or a police officer rather than a teammate. “How’s the project going?” works better than the series: “Is the project on budget?”, “Is everyone doing their share of work?”, “Will you be finished on time?”, and so on. Start broad and then ask the specific questions if you don’t get the information you need.

9)    Don’t make your questions a drive by. We’re so used to saying, “How are you doing?” as “Hello,” that we ask it without even waiting for an answer. This happens with way too many other questions as well. The most important thing is to listen to the answer and, if appropriate, respond.

What should be number 10 on this list?

With the exception of some companies, (like the ones that tell potential hires they’ll need to work a lot of billable hours), hours worked is usually one of the wrong performance measures for employees.

For starters, it makes employees waste a lot of energy demonstrating how much they work rather than focusing on what’s important; what they get done to drive the business forward. (We’ve all seen the crazy things people do to prove how hard they’re working.)

Beware that even if you believe hours is a bad performance measure you can inadvertently indicate that it’s how you judge success. Perhaps by rewarding some employees solely for working a lot of hours or holding them up as company role models because of how much they worked. Landing a big client, finding a way to cut costs, helping a team that was struggling and similar actions are worthy of recognition – simply working a lot of hours isn’t. You want someone who gets the job done. And, if they’re more efficient, that’s better. This isn’t to say you don’t appreciate people who work hard; I’m suggesting you appreciate them as long as that hard work achieves business results. And, then you celebrate the business results.

You get the results you measure and reward, so make sure you’re measuring the right things.

How do you think about measuring success and performance measures? What have you seen that has or hasn’t worked?

If you liked this article about managing employees, you’ll also like this one: Love the Employees Who Leave You.

We shouldn’t blame them for leaving. We should embrace them, wish them well and avoid talking behind their backs. We should participate in the celebration surrounding their next move. Universities know how to embrace their alumni and get great returns from that. We should learn from them.

Former employees could rejoin our team, refer potential hires, become a client, or help us in any number of ways. They’re also going to be our brand ambassadors. Once you’ve been in business a while, you may even have more alumni than current employees.

Individual managers use email, social media sites and even phone calls to keep past employees engaged. I’ve seen companies use Linked-In Groups, Facebook, email or events. Larger companies like Microsoft and KPMG have invested in stand alone web sites, branded social media sites and full time employees who serve as a hub for tens of thousands of alumni.

Demonstrate to your employees, former employees and retirees that they’re part of a family, and that you still care once they leave. Then they’ll care too.

What has your experience been like? What do you think?

We were reviewing our employee retention so I started going through the list of people who had left over the past few months.

“We’re happy that person left,” I said about one of our employees.

“Well I’m not,” my boss responded.

I stopped. I thought it was good that the person who quit was someone we didn’t want at the company.

My boss had another perspective. “How many other underperformers do we have on the team whom we’re simply hoping will quit?” he asked.

I think he had a great point. Now I think of it every time I’m in a meeting about employee turnover / retention and someone mentions that it was good that a particular person chose to leave the team.

What do you think?