Once my teenage daughter said she wanted to get a tattoo while on a trip we took to Playa del Carmen, Mexico. All her friends were getting them. Our dialogue on subsequent days, as we negotiated, went something like this:
Day 1:
Me: If you get a tattoo, I’d like you to have a blood test about six to eight weeks after you get back.
Her: Why is that?
Me: Just to find out if you’ve picked up HIV or Hepatitis.
Day 2:
Her: Dad, I checked out the tattoo place and they’re Dutch.
Me: And they don’t have HIV or Hepatitis in the Netherlands?
Day 3:
Her: Dad, I checked again. They only use factory fresh needles, and they don’t recirculate their ink
Me: We’ll that’s good. But if you get a tattoo, get it someplace where the scar won’t show if you want to have it taken off someday.
Her: What do you mean scar?
Me: Remember Uncle Ray and that burn mark he has all over his arm. That used to be a tattoo. And you know the belt sander I have, well that’s what they use.
Day4: She gets her tattoo, a small butterfly on her ankle that now looks like a smudged birthmark.
This experience taught me that teenagers think with their lizard brains. They may seem intelligent, and seem to have rationale conversations, but their judgment is somehow flawed. This is substantiated by brain research, and tends not to diminish until the age of 20 or 21 in girls, and 21 to 22 years in boys. But it never goes away completely. (By the way, I believe the intelligence of boys tends to go down with the square of the number of boys in a group, while the intelligence of girls remains the same regardless of numbers.)
Peer pressure is an incredibly powerful force. As humans, why are we so ready to agree with others, even when we know it’s wrong, or not what we think? We follow dictators, or our eye witness testimony is tainted, or we succumb to the advertising that makes us want to buy ripped jeans. So maybe just maybe the enthusiasm your team has for getting the company logo tattoed on their necks is not what it seems to be. Peer pressure and group think is especially dangerous in business, and it’s something that marketing or sales managers, and CEOs have to guard against.
Do great things!
Lee Stocking
Prairie Sky Group
Making Sales Cry with Qualified Leads
lee.stocking@gmail.com
651-357-0110 (Cell 24×7)
Lee,
Your creativity in describing human nature gave me a laugh this morning. I also love the title you selected for this post. It caught my attention, made me read the whole article and tied it back to the big idea. Well written!