What I hear you saying is that there’s nothing wrong with desiring a certain outcome in your relating with people—whether it’s wanting them to pay you money, wanting them to be your lover or friend, and so on. I don’t see anything wrong with wanting an outcome. What I mean to say in this piece is that many of us tend to assume that simply getting the “right” result in relating with others—whether we want him or her to marry us, our boss to give us a raise, our children to obey, or something else—would make us happy.

I think there’s another element of satisfying relationships with people, which I think you recognize too in talking about manipulation vs. motivation. We want the choices other people make in relating with us to come from who they authentically are and their genuine desires and feelings, and we don’t want them to say yes when they really mean no. If someone is willing to sacrifice who they are to please us, or if we can somehow induce them to do that, we won’t be content, no matter how wonderful the outcome we achieved—the money or sex or whatever we got—looks on the outside.

On the issue of listening, I think we also agree that, if listening to others is used purely as a tactic to achieve a certain outcome—getting someone else to feel cared about, for instance, so they’re more likely to buy our product—it’s going to feel lousy for both parties. But if there is genuine compassion there, I don’t think we need to give up all our desires and become monks or Buddhas for the interaction to be fun and uplifting.

Best, Chris

I really enjoyed this post. I liked the way you used a relationship to make the leap to “getting what you want” via work or marketing something.

My favorite line was, “Another trait of human beings seems to be that we aren’t fulfilled in our work unless it challenges us in some way.” I totally agree. If work was everything I wanted it be and I was always successful, there’s no doubt in mind that it would rapidly become boring. On the other hand, I would mind tipping the scales a bit more towards success:~)

One possible definition of leadership is the ability to influence others towards a vision (held by the leader). In order to achieve this end, leaders could use manipulation to achieve the result. However, as you have correctly identified, people don’t like to be manipulated. Leaders who use this tactic may enjoy some short-term success, but usually fail in the long run. Also, a leader that chooses to manipulate his followers is showing a clear lack of respect for them.

In your relationship example, does a person really leave because their partner was too kind? Perhaps the real reason is because the partner was willing to tolerate such disrespectful behavior. Thus demonstrating that they did not respect themselves (definitely not an attractive quality).

The leader’s other option is to motivate her followers (rather than manipulate them). In order to motivate someone, you have to get to know what they want. This can be done with some of the other techniques you describe, such as listening and being real. When a leader is truly interested in the success of his followers, he can create a win-win scenario for both him and his followers. As Zig Ziglar says, “You will get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want.” I would argue that in this situation, the leader does find happiness by “making” her followers do what she wants.

I believe that what makes you cringe are products that advocate manipulation rather than motivation. After all, there are a number of books that promise to help leaders get what they want (and enjoy the resulting happiness), but which do not tolerate manipulative behaviors. For example, Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People contains 30 principles for achieving that very thing. With principles like “Be a good listener–encourage others to talk about themselves” and “Try honestly to see things from the other person’s point-of-view” I’m certain you’ll agree that Mr. Carnegie wanted us to achieve the willing cooperation of others without manipulating them. And his readers have been enjoying that challenge for almost 100 years.

Great post.