Dear Crucial Skills,

Can people use the skills you teach to manipulate others? I’m a trainer and I frequently get one or two people in a classroom who see the concepts and methods taught as manipulative. I always struggle to answer this question in a way that satisfies skeptical learners. What would you say?

Signed,
Satisfying the Skeptics

Dear Satisfying the Skeptics,

Short answer: Yes. Any tool can be used with good or ill intent, from a salad fork to nuclear power.

Now for the long answer.

I wasn’t there when the founders of Crucial Learning drafted their books, but having worked for the organization for eight years now I feel I can say with confidence that their motive was not to teach methods of manipulation. And yet, as a skeptic myself, I understand why a person might think this.

The central promise of our work is that it changes behavior, which is similar to (but not synonymous with) saying that it modifies behavior.

Behavior modification is rooted in behaviorism, a theory of psychology that suggests behavior is a product of conditioning alone and that it can be changed through stimulus and reinforcement. Think Pavlov’s dogs. The carrot and stick. Rewards and punishments. Levers and buttons. Determinism. Stripped of other psychological approaches, it appears to treat people as nothing more than rats in a maze.

If your skeptics see your instruction as efforts in modifying behavior, it’s not hard to understand why they might think it manipulative. And given the culture in which we swim, it’s not hard to understand why they might see it that way. From app design and advertising to policymaking and propaganda, we all have a lifetime of exposure to tactics that would force or coerce compliance, purchase, or belief. We should anticipate skepticism.

Manipulation implies a hidden or underhanded motive. Any time this occurs, it disregards the autonomy of the person or people being influenced. Crucial Influence coauthor David Maxfield defined it this way: if disclosing what you are doing and why makes the action less influential, then it is manipulative.

The skills we teach say you can get better results with others without manipulation, and the theories that underpin our material developed in reaction to behaviorism.

One such theory is social learning theory, developed by Albert Bandura, who mentored and greatly influenced the founders of Crucial Learning.

Social learning theory suggests that people learn through observation, imitation, and reinforcement, and that our relationship with environmental stimuli is reciprocal and dynamic, meaning, yes, we are influenced by our environment, and we are agents of change, capable of influencing and changing our environments and ourselves.

This theory is evident in our training and teaching. It’s why practice and feedback are part of each course, and why we advocate for cultural measures to increase adoption.

You’ll also notice in our material a humanistic perspective. Developed by Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, Karen Horney, Rollo May and others, humanism asserts that a person is, above all, a person—a human. It emphasizes agency, responsibility, and the inherent worth of everyone, dignifying subjective experience and personal perspective.

This human-centeredness is implicit in all our work. The concepts we teach to improve dialogue emphasize good intent. The skills we teach to foster accountability emphasize responsibility and the importance of involving those you would influence in the process of change. The Six Sources of Influence invite us to acknowledge and take responsibility for social and environmental influences. And in the Strength Deployment Inventory, agency is central to the malleable application of strengths.

Now, I say this is implicit in all our work. Why is it not more explicit?

Because you can’t teach virtue.

When I began working for Crucial Learning, the founding authors were still involved in day-to-day work. At my first quarterly marketing meeting, they crashed the party to tell the story of how and why they started the business.

The climax of the story told that day came from Ron McMillan, the peace-loving hippie of the group, who said with tears in his eyes something to the effect of, “It’s about love. It’s always been about love. But you can’t teach love.”

When Ron said, “You can’t teach love,” I believe he meant it’s socially unacceptable and probably unprofitable to waltz into Fortune 500 companies and instruct them in the virtues of love.

I don’t think he meant what Aristotle meant, who suggested 2,300 years ago, literally, you can’t teach virtue.

According to Aristotle, virtues issue from character, and character must be developed over time through consistent practice and habituation. They aren’t acquired through instruction, nor are they readily understood through instruction. They must be lived.

It’s my view that there is both a science and art to the concepts and behaviors we teach. The science part is what you read in the books and learn in the courses. The art part is what you learn in life. The science part is the behavior, the art part is the virtue.

For example, nowhere do you see the word humility in the lessons Start with Heart or Master My Stories. But those lessons, in essence, teach us what humility looks like in the face of conflict and how to practice it.

There are a couple of things to note about the art and science of what we teach.

First, the efficacy of each skill increases in step with the presence of some related virtue. For example, one may follow the steps of Mutual Purpose and get immediate results, but if the supporting virtue isn’t there in some measure, he’s not likely to succeed for long. You can’t hide what’s in the heart, and outward actions can’t sustainably make up for what’s lacking inward.

Second, teaching behaviors promotes habituation. While there is a relationship between behavior change and personal change, there is a difference between the two. A person can change his behavior through practice and self-discipline, but when he has changed, which follows sustained practice, the behavior becomes part of who he is. This is why we sometimes say the skills change behavior, and sometimes that they change lives.

Now, I don’t suggest you try to explain all this during a class. I’m writing as much for the skeptics who may now be reading as for you who must field questions from them.

But if I were a trainer and asked whether the skills can be used to manipulate others, I might say something like, “Absolutely. And you are welcome to try. There is no greater teacher than failure.”

I also invite you to consider this: if learners in your classes frequently see the skills as manipulative, it could be that you are overemphasizing business outcomes and results while underemphasizing personal responsibility and the relational impact. If your instruction suggests other people can be treated instrumentally, you’re going to get resistance. The only instrument is you. Change how you act, and get better results with others.

All of this may sound a bit naive. I realize there are organizations and cultures in which duplicity thrives, where the actors are calculated and cunning. Naturally, if you’re teaching in such environments, you’ll get naysayers. And it’s these kinds of environments our work aims to heal.

Crucial Learning courses remind us that we are shaped by forces and people outside us; they challenge us to take responsibility for how those forces influence us, to whatever degree we can; and they encourage us to believe we all are moral agents, capable of growth and goodness.

That’s kinda how I see it, anyway, after much skeptical analysis. If you agree, highlight that a little more in your instruction. And let the skeptics be skeptical.

Ryan