The Real Key to Influencing the Behavior of Other People

Why trust is not enough and why you need an emotional bank account.

May Pang
Better Humans
Published in
9 min readMay 22, 2023

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Image created by the author on Lexica

In my corporate job, my main role is to support complex and often distressed projects where millions of dollars are at stake. Emotions (particularly negative ones) are frequently running high, and the urgency is always elevated. I often get asked what my approach is to turning these projects around.

Here’s my answer:

I have found that though these projects may present with symptoms like technical issues, at-risk financials, or contractual complications — the root cause of why it develops into a problem is typically dysfunctional people dynamics. Therefore, the solution almost always begins with influencing someone or multiple people to change their behavior.

After years of acting in this role, I’ve been pretty pleased with my success rate. And yet, the one immovable person whose behavior I have almost zero influence over — is my father.

Years ago, I read a book that said that all you need to influence a person’s behavior is trust. Well, that works most of the time, but not with certain wonderfully complicated relationships — like family.

My father and I have always had a good relationship. We love each other and there is definitely a great deal of trust. But he also adopts the traditional Asian mindset where the parent is and always will be wiser than the child.

Even though I’ve traveled widely and am well educated, knowledge flows one way in this relationship. His role is to give me advice and mine is to follow it. My attempts at giving him advice about his health, personal finances, or communication have been well…disastrous — to put it mildly.

For the longest time, I accepted this as the status quo in our relationship. But one day, an adorable wild squirrel entered our lives, and I learned that I was wrong about everything I understood about influencing behavior.

A Wild Squirrel and an Impossible Life Lesson

My dad has always loved animals. Growing up, our house was a menagerie of birds, exotic fishes, rabbits, dogs, cats, chickens, turtles, hamsters, you…

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Combining Storytelling with Science. Communication & Connection Coach. Would love to hear from you!💗may@mojomint.com 💙 www.mojomint.com. Based in Boulder, CO.