Edition #35: Influence, Not Control

The neuroscience of moving people — and why it's about to be the most valuable skill you have

By Mykel Salomon · 2026-08-30

<h3>🔓 Opening Reflection</h3>Managing people is about tasks. Influencing people is about what they believe.Everyone is racing to adopt AI right now. Almost no one is asking the harder question underneath it: how do you actually get a human being to change? Because you can buy the best technology on earth and still be stuck six months from now, not because the tech failed, but because the people who had to adopt it never moved.My guest this week spends his life on exactly that problem. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" class="text-[#4FD1C5] underline hover:opacity-80 ember-view" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonrobert-tartaglione-ph-d-21b26770/">JonRobert Tartaglione, Ph.D.</a> — "Tat" — is a Cambridge-trained behavioral scientist and the founder of Influence 51. His entire craft is the one thing AI cannot do for you: moving people. Shifting attitudes. Changing minds. Getting a human being to genuinely pull themselves in a new direction.Authority, charm, and pressure can generate compliance. But compliance is a short-term loan. The moment the pressure lifts, the deadline passes, the boss looks away, the threat recedes, the compliance leaves with it. And sometimes people don't just snap back; they swing further the other way. Psychologists call it the rebound effect. You pushed, so they pushed back harder.Real leaders don't generate compliance. They generate change. And here's the paradox: they do it not by pushing people toward a conclusion, but by creating a space where people arrive there on their own, and walk away feeling they own it.That's not a soft skill. As you're about to see, it's rooted in some of the most fascinating neuroscience of the last twenty years. And in the age of the machine, it may be the most valuable thing a human can know.<hr><h3>🔦 Signal of the Week</h3>Here's a number that runs against every headline about robots taking our jobs.The World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025 asked over a thousand employers which skills are rising in value. Yes, AI and big data top the list of fastest-growing technical skills. But look at what's climbing right alongside them: "leadership and social influence" saw a 22-percentage-point jump in the share of employers naming it a core skill, the single largest increase of any skill on the entire list. Empathy and active listening are rising too.Sit with the paradox. As machines get better at nearly everything, the distinctly human ability to move another person isn't becoming less valuable. It's becoming more.Tat frames it as thesis, antithesis, synthesis. The thesis of this moment is "AI can do everything." The antithesis, now arriving in the research, is a growing map of what it can't, and near the top of that map is navigating the subtle, high-stakes social dynamics of real human teams. It misses the cues. It can't read the room. The synthesis is where the opportunity lives: the more the machines commoditize raw competence, the more the premium concentrates on the things only people can do.Influence isn't a soft skill you get to the moment you have time. It's becoming the hard currency of the AI era.So let's look at how it actually works, through Tat's five principles of influence, each one grounded in the science of how humans are really built.<hr><h3>🌍 In the Wild</h3><h3>Principle 1: The brain is not a computer</h3>Most of us operate on a hidden assumption: that people are rational. That if I just hand you enough good information, you'll be forced to update your view. It's why leaders across every industry gather great data, lay it in front of people, and then get baffled and frustrated when nothing changes.The problem is the model. As Tat puts it, humans aren't rational creatures so much as rationalizing ones. Your brain doesn't work like a scientist, impartially weighing evidence toward the truth. It works like a trial lawyer, it starts with a verdict it wants to defend, then goes looking for the evidence that justifies it. The brain evolved for survival, not accuracy, balancing being right against being fast, and it takes shortcuts constantly.Once you understand that, everything changes. You stop trying to win the argument and start trying to work with human nature instead of against it. Facts alone rarely move people. Everything that follows is about what actually does.<h3>Principle 2: Belonging is a survival instinct — and social pain is real pain</h3>Here's the study that reframes leadership entirely.In 2003, researchers put people in an fMRI scanner and had them play Cyberball, a trivial online game of catch with two other "players" (secretly a computer). After a few throws, the other two simply stopped passing the ball, leaving the person excluded, watching. And in that moment of mild social rejection, a region of the brain called the anterior cingulate cortex lit up — the same region that registers physical pain — in proportion to how hurt the person reported feeling.Being left out of a pointless computer game hurt, in the literal, neurological sense. Because for the 50,000 years that shaped us, exclusion from the group wasn't an inconvenience. It was a death sentence. We evolved to feel social disconnection as bodily pain because, ancestrally, it was a threat to survival.This is why Tat insists that belonging is not a "nice to have." A lack of it, he says, is "a tax on your talent", it degrades performance, health, critical thinking, and motivation. And it's the foundation of innovation: Google's famous Project Aristotle studied 180 teams and found that psychological safety — the felt sense that it's safe to take a risk and speak up, was the single strongest predictor of team effectiveness, ahead of talent, seniority, or IQ. People don't propose bold ideas when they're worried about getting their heads chopped off.The application to AI is direct. If your people sense that this technology threatens their belonging — their job, their place, their worth on the team — no roadmap will move them. Make them feel safe first, or nothing else you do will matter.<h3>Principle 3: We decide by looking at each other — so fix the misperceived norm</h3>We are socially embedded creatures. When we're unsure what's right, or just what's safe, we look to the group. And here's the lever most leaders miss: we are often flat wrong about what the group actually thinks.The classic case is college drinking. Ask students what share of their peers binge drink and they'll guess 70% or more. The real number, on many campuses, is under half, researchers named this gap the "reign of error," behavior driven by imaginary peers. And the fix is almost absurdly simple: just show people the real number. A Cochrane review of 22 controlled trials and more than 7,000 students found that correcting the misperception measurably reduces drinking.Organizations are riddled with these imaginary norms. The reason nobody voices a doubt, or an enthusiasm, about the AI rollout may simply be that everyone has misread the room. Tat's tip is sharp: on your next engagement survey, don't just ask what people believe. Ask what percentage of their peers they think agree. When you find a gap, you've found a misperceived norm, and making the real one visible can shift behavior at scale.<h3>Principle 4: Your approach matters more than your argument</h3>If people were rational, delivery wouldn't matter, a fact is a fact. But they aren't, so it does. In fact, Tat calls it the "paradoxical physics of persuasion": the harder you push someone toward your position, the harder they tend to push back. (Psychologists call it reactance.)So persuasion should feel less like wrestling and more like jujitsu, using someone's own momentum rather than fighting it. His best image: treat another person's mind like private property. Barge on uninvited, forcing your facts and arguments on someone who isn't ready to hear them, and they'll do exactly what you'd do if a stranger stormed onto your lawn, get defensive, get hostile, throw you out. The goal is to be invited onto the property: to create a space where someone feels safe enough to do the vulnerable thing and actually interrogate their own views. Only then does what you say have a chance of landing.You cannot argue anyone into embracing AI, or any change. You can only build the space where they choose it. (Last week's guest, MJ, arrived at the same truth from the org side: empower, don't mandate. Same principle, different door.)<h3>Principle 5: How you frame it is what they hear</h3>The same fact, dressed two ways, lands as two different realities. Yogurt that's "80% fat-free" feels healthier than yogurt with "20% fat", even though they're identical.The landmark demonstration: a 2011 study gave people identical reports about a city's rising crime, changing only one word. For half, crime was "a beast preying on the city." For the other half, "a virus infecting" it. Those who read beast wanted enforcement, more police, harsher sentences. Those who read virus wanted reform, address the root causes. The swing was about 20%, a bigger effect than the gap between political parties — and only about 3% of people realized the metaphor had done anything to them.Now apply that to AI. Frame it as a tool to replace people, and you'll watch them quietly refuse to train their own replacement. Frame it as a way to give them superpowers, to strip out the busywork so they can spend their time on what they do best, and they lean in. Same technology. Same rollout. Opposite behavior. The organizations getting adoption right aren't doing different things; they're framing them differently.(One more piece of wiring worth knowing: we are loss-averse. Losses feel roughly twice as powerful as equivalent gains, which is why 80–90% of people refuse a 50/50 coin flip for equal stakes, and why the fear of what AI might take drowns out the promise of what it might give. The reframe that works: stop selling what they gain by adopting, and name what they stand to lose by not.)<hr><h3>💬 The Big Question</h3>Are you trying to control people — or move them?Because one produces compliance that evaporates the moment you look away. The other produces change that lasts because they own it.And a line worth keeping bright, since these tools cut both ways: the difference between influence and manipulation comes down to two red lines Tat won't cross, coercion (pressure, fear, threats) and deception (lies, spin, misinformation). His test is beautifully simple: if you have to pressure or lie to win someone over, then maybe your case wasn't strong enough to begin with. True influence respects the other person's autonomy. It just helps them see the same facts from a new angle.<hr><h3>🧠 A Small Exercise</h3>Five questions for anyone who leads, at work or at home.<ol><li>Where am I pushing when I should be creating space? Name the person you've been wrestling instead of inviting in.</li><li>Whose mind have I barged onto uninvited — forcing facts on someone who wasn't ready to hear them?</li><li>What's a "misperceived norm" on my team? What might everyone privately think, while assuming no one else does?</li><li>What "loss" can I reframe? Where am I selling the upside of a change when I should be naming the cost of standing still?</li><li>Who needs to feel they belong before they can hear a word I say?</li></ol>And the one skill Tat would never let a machine replace: listening. Not as a tactic, as the door. When you truly try to understand someone, they feel it, and they reciprocate. The argument you're dying to make? That's step four. This is step one.<hr><h3>🎙️ This Week on The Human Protocol Podcast</h3>Influence, Not Control: The Neuroscience of Moving PeopleGuest: Dr. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" class="text-[#4FD1C5] underline hover:opacity-80 ember-view" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonrobert-tartaglione-ph-d-21b26770/">JonRobert Tartaglione, Ph.D.</a> ("Tat") — Cambridge-trained psychologist and behavioral scientist, founder of Influence 51, and co-author of a book on the neuroscience of human connection. Tat has taught the psychology of influence to everyone from corporate leaders to trial lawyers to nonprofit directors. He's also refreshingly allergic to the LinkedIn "three hacks to persuade anyone" genre, because, as he says, anyone who sells you certainty about human nature doesn't understand people well enough.In this episode, you'll learn:<ul><li>Why compliance is a short-term loan - and how great leaders generate lasting change instead</li><li>Why the human brain is a trial lawyer, not a computer — and what that means for winning people over</li><li>The neuroscience of belonging, and why social pain registers like physical pain</li><li>How misperceived norms quietly drive behavior — and how to correct them</li><li>The "paradoxical physics of persuasion": why pushing harder makes people push back</li><li>Where the line sits between influence and manipulation</li><li>The single most human skill he'd never outsource to a machine</li></ul>🎧 Available now on <a target="_self" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" class="text-[#4FD1C5] underline hover:opacity-80 BJEbSaIJBPeWfhLqLplZbvbHLceVASpzKHENE " href="https://open.spotify.com/episode/2vHzNbZ0xPdYqE169lGCJb?si=2cRB9-lmRcCsDoL-tEhE-A">Spotify</a>, <a target="_self" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" class="text-[#4FD1C5] underline hover:opacity-80 BJEbSaIJBPeWfhLqLplZbvbHLceVASpzKHENE " href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/s2e34-great-leaders-dont-control-they-influence-with/id1843402023?i=1000786058343">Apple Podcasts</a>, and <a target="_self" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" class="text-[#4FD1C5] underline hover:opacity-80 BJEbSaIJBPeWfhLqLplZbvbHLceVASpzKHENE " href="https://youtu.be/p_sKB4QjjrQ?si=OdbtVfWvFNBvIKwG">YouTube</a>.<img class="max-w-full h-auto rounded-md my-4" src="https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/v2/D4E12AQGiyN68Nc5cCg/article-inline_image-shrink_1500_2232/B4EaBNYNbJJ0AQ-/0/1788004587495?e=1789603200&v=beta&t=yicd4Eqzz65n-FfR2RZCcLwfMDmqeRO1kicFsf1jM3M" alt="Article content"><hr><h3>🧭 Thought to End the Week</h3>I'll leave you with the thing Tat and I most agreed on.There are no three-step hacks for moving a human being. Anyone promising you a formula that works "100% of the time" doesn't understand people, because people are gloriously complicated. As Tat put it, the same boiling water that softens the potato hardens the egg. The same approach that opens one person shuts down the next. So a real leader doesn't master one style and apply it to everyone. They build a repertoire, and the humility to ask, in each moment, not "what kind of leader am I?" but "what does this person need me to be right now?"That's the part no machine can do for you. As AI commoditizes competence, as everyone gains access to the same intelligence, the same outputs, the same tools, the rarest thing left in the room will be the person who can genuinely move another person. Not command them. Not manipulate them. Move them, in a way they choose and keep.You can't download that skill. You can't hack it. You can only learn it, slowly, with humility, one human being at a time.Influence, not control.The code may change. And it will.But our humanity is the constant.See you next week.— Mykel<hr><h3>📚 Sources</h3><ol><li>Eisenberger, N. I., Lieberman, M. D., & Williams, K. D. (2003), "Does Rejection Hurt? An fMRI Study of Social Exclusion," Science 302:290–292 — social exclusion in the Cyberball game activated the anterior cingulate cortex (a physical-pain region) in proportion to self-reported distress. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" class="text-[#4FD1C5] underline hover:opacity-80" href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1089134">https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1089134</a></li><li>Google, Project Aristotle (re:Work) & Amy Edmondson — a two-year study of 180 teams found psychological safety the #1 predictor of team effectiveness, above talent, seniority, or team size. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" class="text-[#4FD1C5] underline hover:opacity-80" href="https://www.leaderfactor.com/learn/project-aristotle-psychological-safety/">https://www.leaderfactor.com/learn/project-aristotle-psychological-safety/</a></li><li>Thibodeau, P. H., & Boroditsky, L. (2011), "Metaphors We Think With," PLoS ONE 6(2):e16782 — framing crime as a "beast" vs. a "virus" shifted policy preferences ~20%, a larger effect than political party; only ~3% of participants noticed the metaphor. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" class="text-[#4FD1C5] underline hover:opacity-80" href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0016782">https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0016782</a></li><li>Perkins & Berkowitz / Cochrane review (22 trials, 7,275 students) — students dramatically overestimate peers' drinking (the "reign of error"); correcting the misperceived norm reduces alcohol misuse. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" class="text-[#4FD1C5] underline hover:opacity-80" href="https://safesupportivelearning.ed.gov/sites/default/files/hec/product/socnorms.pdf">https://safesupportivelearning.ed.gov/sites/default/files/hec/product/socnorms.pdf</a></li><li>World Economic Forum, Future of Jobs Report 2025 — "leadership and social influence" rose 22 percentage points as a core skill since 2023 (the largest increase of any skill); human skills remain critical as AI skills grow fastest. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" class="text-[#4FD1C5] underline hover:opacity-80" href="https://www.weforum.org/publications/the-future-of-jobs-report-2025/in-full/3-skills-outlook/">https://www.weforum.org/publications/the-future-of-jobs-report-2025/in-full/3-skills-outlook/</a></li><li>Kahneman & Tversky, prospect theory — loss aversion: losses are psychologically ~2x as powerful as equivalent gains. (Referenced in Tat's coin-flip example.) <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" class="text-[#4FD1C5] underline hover:opacity-80" href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.7455683">https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.7455683</a></li><li>Brehm, J. W. — psychological reactance: pressure to adopt a position often produces the opposite (the basis of Tat's "paradoxical physics of persuasion").</li></ol>