Manipulate or influence? Why the words leaders choose matter
Our previous business mentor once stood in front of a room full of advisers and told us we needed to get better at manipulating our clients.
Everyone froze. You could see people running it back in their heads, checking whether they'd heard him right.
"I think you mean influence," I said, with a smile. "We aren't doing anything malicious here. We're trying to help our clients be the best they can be and give them good guidance."
The whole room exhaled. He'd meant well the entire time. Everything he said before that word and after it was about looking after clients properly. For a few seconds, though, a room of people who knew and liked him were wondering what sort of practice they'd signed up to, because he'd reached for the nearest word instead of the right one.
What's the difference between manipulation and influence?
Manipulation and influence both change what another person thinks or does. The difference is who the change serves, and whether the other person keeps their choice. Influence gives someone a reason and leaves the decision with them. Manipulation steers them toward your outcome, and it tends to work best when they can't see what you're doing.
There's a test any leader can run on the spot. Would you be comfortable if the other person could see exactly what you were doing and why? If yes, you're influencing. If the plan only works while they can't see it, you've crossed the line.
My mentor was describing the first thing and naming the second. That's why nobody moved.
Where the words manipulate and influence come from
The history of the two words goes some way to explaining why one of them made a room of advisers flinch.
Manipulate starts with the hand. It comes from the Latin manipulus, a handful, built on manus, the hand. French pharmacists used manipule for a measure of an ingredient, roughly a handful. Early English uses were all about handling things: by 1730 manipulation was a method of digging ore, and by the 1820s it meant skilful handling of objects. Within a couple of years it had moved on to people, meaning the handling or managing of persons, especially to your own advantage. That's the sense that stuck.
Influence comes from the sky. In the late 1300s it was an astrological idea, an invisible stream of power flowing from the stars and acting on people's character and fortunes. The Latin root, influere, means to flow into. By the 1580s it described the unseen effect one person has on another. The same root gave us influenza in the 1740s, when illness was also thought to flow down from the stars.
So one word puts your hands on the other person. The other describes something that reaches them and works from the inside, where they're still the one doing the changing.
A word's history doesn't decide what it means today, and linguists are right to warn against that trap. Nobody in that room was thinking about Latin. But the old picture has a way of hanging around. Handling people still sounds like handling people.
Why one word can change how people hear you
We tend to treat word choice as the last step. You've worked out the thought, and you're just picking something to carry it out the door. In that room it ran the other way around. The word landed first, and everyone built his intention backwards out of it.
A 2019 study in Science mapped how 2,474 languages group emotion words together. Where one language uses a single word for two feelings, linguists call it colexification, and the patterns vary a lot. In Austronesian languages surprise sits close to fear. In Tai-Kadai languages it sits closer to hope and want. The researchers also found shared structure underneath, organised around how pleasant a feeling is and how much it stirs you up.
The study looked at whole languages, not at individual people. Still, it makes me think the distinctions we're able to hold onto are mostly the ones our language gave us a word for.
You see it in businesses all the time. Someone tells me their team is unhappy, and it takes half an hour of asking to work out whether they mean resentful, bored or frightened about their jobs. Those need completely different things from a leader. The word they had was doing the thinking for them.
How to choose your words carefully as a leader
None of this means scripting every sentence. It means noticing the handful of moments where a word is about to do more work than you meant it to.
Slow down on words that describe people. Rough language about a process costs little. Rough language about a person gets heard personally, and it gets repeated.
Trade the nearest word for the precise one. If you're about to say "unhappy", "difficult" or "not performing", ask what you've seen that made you think so. Name that instead.
Watch the words that carry a motive. Manipulate, handle, push, manage out. Each one tells the listener what you want from them before you've said it.
Say the intention before the word. "We want clients to make better decisions, so we need to get better at influencing them" is hard to mishear.
Look up a word's history when it feels off. Two minutes with an etymology dictionary will often show you why a word makes people uneasy.
What to do when someone else reaches for the wrong word
Correct it quickly, warmly and in the moment. Hand them the better word, and say the good intention out loud so everyone can hear it. The aim is to repair the moment, not to win it.
If you're the one who reached for the wrong word, the fix is the same. Say what you meant, plainly and soon.
My mentor came and found me at the end of the day and thanked me, with a sheepish smile that told me he'd been chewing on it since. Best kind of mentor, that one.
Frequently asked questions
Is influence the same as manipulation?
No. Both change what someone thinks or does, but influence leaves the decision with the other person and works in the open. Manipulation steers someone toward your outcome and usually depends on them not seeing how.
What does the word manipulate originally mean?
Manipulate comes from the Latin manipulus, meaning a handful, from manus, the hand. It first described handling objects and materials, and by the late 1820s it was also used for managing people to your own advantage.
Where does the word influence come from?
Influence comes from the Latin influere, to flow into. In the 1300s it described an invisible power flowing from the stars onto people. By the 1580s it meant the unseen effect one person has on another.
Why does word choice matter in leadership?
People rebuild your intention from the words you use, often before they've heard the rest. One loaded word can make a room doubt a leader they already trust.
How can a leader influence without manipulating?
Say what you want and why, give people the information they need to decide, and leave the decision with them. If your approach only works while the other person can't see it, change the approach.
If you're working out how to say something that matters to your team or your clients, I'm always happy to think out loud with anyone going through the same thing.
