Why it matters who people in your company are imitating

12 Jun Why it matters who people in your company are imitating

Reading Time: 3 minutes

There’s a shaky, slightly blurry 2009 video showing a guy dancing alone on

a grassy hill at the Sasquatch Music Festival. After a few minutes, first one person, then two, join him. And soon a crowd is exuberantly jumping around to the music.

Author Robert Cialdini calls this ‘social proof’, and his weighty tome called Influence captures how it works. “We determine what is correct by finding out what other people think is correct. Importantly, the principle applies to the way we decide what constitutes correct behavior. We view an action as correct in a given situation to the degree that we see others performing it.”

Eric Hoffer puts it more succinctly, “When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate one another.”

Yet even when we see the proof in real time we don’t always notice the impact it exerts on what we choose and, yes, how we act.

Marketers have long understood that people gravitate to what others do. Simply adding ‘most popular’ to menus or products on shelves will reliably increase sales of those items. Social and search algorithms were originally popularity engines. And a shared sense of belonging sits at the heart of every successful team.

Of course, social proof can also keep a crowd standing back while someone needs help. Lend quiet acquiescence to a bully. Elevate conspiracy theories and create a pile-on in the comments section on X Twitter.

Social proof is super helpful when behaviours are desirable. However, the effect works no matter how people act. When interviewed after the event, rioters who stormed the US Capitol on January 6 said they were simply heeding a call by their leader to defend the election.

And here is where genuine values become essential. Well observed and understood, they are literal guardrails for people’s choices. The catch. The social proof only kicks in if people actually use them in how they work.

Researcher and author Brené Brown flags the canyon-sized chasm that exists between having values written down and using them. She says, “One hundred percent of the organisations that we’ve researched or partnered with have a list of values. Approximately 10 percent have operationalised their values into observable behaviours that are grounded in their mission and integrated across their systems.” ¹

The bolded text is my emphasis, because in my experience 10% is generous. And before you sputter, ‘But we do.’ Try and name three concrete examples of ‘observable behaviours’ tied to your values. That is, consistent choices you see people make every day.

I’m not slamming your efforts. This stuff is push a boulder up a hill hard. The odds of ongoing success make a Vegas casino seem like a sure thing. Workers come and go. Outside forces swirl out of your control. And people’s expectations are becoming more mercurial than the weather.

All excellent reasons to push what matters into how you work. Except the path from ‘I can recite our values’, to encouraging others in the desired behaviour isn’t a one-time, single step. More like climbing a pyramid over and over. And if that sounds like hard work, consider the chaotic alternative noted by Cialdini, “When people are unsure, they are more likely to use others’ actions to decide how they themselves should act.”

In my Values Pyramid ‘operationalising’ begins in level 3, showing up in how you work every day. ‘Social proof’ tiptoes into level 4, and is essential to level 5. Where championing others to use a value too, can quiet uncertainty and demonstrate it’s ok.

© Michel Hogan

Most people think they’d make the ‘right’ choice no matter what everyone around them was doing. However, the many cautionary tales littering the corporate landscape suggest otherwise.

Everyone has influence, positive and negative. And while some play an outsize role. Even if you work in a solitary bubble, your choices affect others. And compounded, those choices become the culture.

I don’t know your values or what you value. I do know if people can’t visibly see the behaviours, there is zero likelihood they will pay any attention to what you say they should be. In your organisation’s culture, social proof doesn’t only influence, it is the measure of what you stand for.