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  • You Have More Influence Than You Think with Vanessa Bohns

    PEO Leadership's The Way Forward Webcast Series
    February 18th at 11:00 AM EST
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Why attend?

"This is one of the most enticing and entertaining books I’ve ever read on persuasion. Vanessa Bohns is not only an expert in social psychology―she’s also an excellent communicator. She makes a convincing case that we all matter more than we realize."
― Adam Grant, New York Times best-selling author of Think Again

A fascinating and convincing counterargument that we don’t need to win friends and influence people — we have plenty of influence already — we’re just not using it the right way. If you’ve ever felt ineffective, invisible, or inarticulate, chances are you weren’t actually any of those things. Those feelings may instead have been the result of a lack of awareness we all seem to have for how our words, actions, and even our mere presence affect other people.

In YOU HAVE MORE INFLUENCE THAN YOU THINK: How We Underestimate our Power of Persuasion, and Why It Matters, Vanessa Bohns social psychologist and professor of organizational behavior at Cornell University, argues that despite the popular opinion that we need to gain influence in order to get what we want, we actually already have it — we’re just not using it mindfully.

Drawing from her original research she illustrates why we fail to recognize the influence we have, and how that lack of awareness can lead us to miss opportunities or accidentally misuse our power.

Weaving together compelling stories with cutting edge science, Bohns offers science-based strategies for observing the effect we have on others, reconsidering our fear of rejection, and even, sometimes, pulling back to use our influence less.

YOU HAVE MORE INFLUENCE THAN YOU THINK is a fascinating and convincing counterargument on why we should stop searching to gain influence we don’t have and start recognizing the influence we don’t realize we already have.

Our Speakers

Vanessa Bohns
Michele Calpin
Vanessa Bohns

Vanessa Bohns

Vanessa Bohns is a social psychologist and professor of organizational behavior at Cornell University, and holds a PhD in psychology from Columbia University and an AB from Brown University. She is the author of You Have More Influence Than You Think: How We Underestimate Our Power of Persuasion and Why it Matters. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times and Harvard Business Review, and her research has been featured by the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and NPR’s Hidden Brain.
Michele Calpin

Michele Calpin

Michele brings over 25 years of experience as a Management Consultant, Portfolio Manager and Professor. She started her career at McKinsey & Company, where she worked out of the Toronto, Seattle, and San Francisco offices as a Strategy Consultant for multinational companies in various sectors including healthcare, financial services, energy, industrials, and consumer. Michele was promoted to Associate Principal and led client service teams, was responsible for people management, and directed office recruiting and training initiatives.


She then moved into the investing industry and was a Lead Portfolio Manager for over a decade at large Canadian financial institutions, including Mackenzie Financial and Bank of Montreal. Michele worked with teams of analysts to analyze investments, which involved meeting with CEOs and CFOs of public companies across North America to assess management strategies, developing independent views of corporate valuations, and evaluating the business and financial risks faced by potential investments. She also participated in macroeconomic outlook and asset allocation reviews and marketed her funds to investment advisors across Canada. One of her funds was awarded the Global Balanced Fund of the Year Award at the Canadian Mutual Funds Awards Gala.


Michele has an MBA with distinction from Harvard Business School and an undergraduate business degree from University of Western Ontario’s Ivey School of Business.

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