565: How to Discover What People Want, with Tiziana Casciaro

Tiziana Casciaro: Power, for All

Tiziana Casciaro is a professor of organizational behavior at the Rotman School of Management of the University of Toronto. Her research on interpersonal and organizational networks and power dynamics has received distinguished scientific achievement awards from the Academy of Management and has been covered in the New York Times, Washington Post, Financial Times, and many other outlets.

Tiziana advises organizations and professionals across industries and has been recognized by Thinkers50 as a management thinker most likely to shape the future of how organizations are managed and led. She is the author with Julie Battilana of Power, for All: How It Really Works and Why It’s Everyone’s Business*.

In this conversation, Tiziana and I explore the reality that many leaders face: the desire to discover what people want — but the challenge of actually determining this. Even when intentions are good, employees may not have the self-awareness to articulate what they what. We detail what the research shows us about what most people care about — and the practical steps we can all take in our organizations to surface this through familiarity and similarity.

Key Points

• To be powerful in a relationship, it means having control over resources the other person values.
• Even if asked, people don’t always tell you what they need — either because they don’t trust you or because they aren’t self-aware.
• Much of the research literature concludes that almost all people have two basic needs: safety and self-esteem.
• To discover what people want, you need to earn trust. Competence and warmth two ways this happens. When forced to choose between the two, most people prefer warmth.
• To build warmth (and trust) use two key sources of interpersonal liking: familiarity and similarity.

The six resources that address our basic needs of safety and self-esteem:

• Material resources
• Morality
• Achievement
• Status
• Autonomy
• Affiliation

Resources Mentioned

• Power, for All: How It Really Works and Why It’s Everyone’s Business* by Julie Battilana and Tiziana Casciaro
• Power, for All website

Interview Notes

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