Framed around an identity both sides hold, the same plant, the same founding team, the same profession, a proposal makes agreeing feel like acting as one of us.
An example
Retiring its oldest coal unit, an electric power company planned to retrain the crew to run a new battery storage site on the same grounds, and the plant's operators expected to be told they were being phased out. The plant manager, who had started there as an auxiliary operator twenty-six years earlier, gave the briefing in the control room instead of the training center. He left the emissions targets for later. He talked about what the plant had done for the region: the winter it ran for nine days straight during a blackout, the crews who had kept it going, and his view that the storage site would need people who knew how to keep a plant available when the grid needed it. Then he walked through the retraining plan, the timeline, and who would be offered what. Two-thirds of the crew signed up for the first training cohort.
Why it works
Casting agreement as an expression of who the audience already is makes the proposal look better to them. People are more readily influenced by those they see as part of their own group, and a proposal presented as what people like us do borrows that loyalty. The appeal works best when the shared identity is real, when the speaker plainly belongs to it, and when the proposal genuinely fits what the group values. Without those it reads as a sales pitch in borrowed language.
The thinking behind it
Robert B. Cialdini Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade (2016) adds a seventh principle to Cialdini's earlier six: unity, the finding that people are more influenced by those they see as sharing an identity with them, being together or acting together. A plant manager who started as an operator, speaking in the control room about what the crew did together, makes the retraining plan a proposal from one of us. The principle also explains why a borrowed identity fails.
When it fits
Groups with a strong shared identity are its audience: a plant, a profession, a founding team, a long-serving unit, an acquired company that remembers being independent. Belong to that identity yourself or have a credible messenger who does, and bring a proposal that genuinely serves what the group cares about.
How to use it well
Begin from what the group values about itself, in its own words. Listen to how its members describe their history, their standards, and what they are proud of.
- Show honestly how the proposal fits that identity. If it changes part of what the group does, say which part, and what continues.
- Deliver the message through someone who belongs, in a setting that belongs to the group.
- Follow the appeal with the specifics: what changes, when, and what happens to each person.
- Claim only an identity you share. Groups know who is one of them.
The identity gets you a hearing, and the details decide whether the agreement lasts.
What it costs and where it backfires
Identity appeals raise expectations, and if the change later cuts against what the group values, the betrayal feels personal. An appeal to one group's identity can define others as outsiders, who may resent it. Invoking an identity you do not share sounds hollow. A real shared identity and a proposal that fits it keep the appeal honest; once it is used to discourage questions about the details, or to brand doubters as disloyal, it has turned against the group it invokes.
When it is used on you
Wrapped in an appeal to who you are, as a plant, a profession, or a founding team, a proposal still has terms. Set the identity aside for a moment and look at them: what changes for you, and what continues. You can be loyal to the group and still question whether this plan serves it.