The Misguided Search for “Buy-In”

Semantic satiation is a psychological phenomenon in which repetition causes a word or phrase to temporarily lose meaning for the listener, if you hear it too often it just becomes noise. "Buy-in" comes up so often in military human performance conversations that we risk it becoming meaningless noise.

When we have these conversations it's easy to forget the literal origins of the phrase: committing actual money. When coaches work at private gyms, everyone they train is quite literally bought in. They are only there if they already decided that the service is worth their money. This is one of many reasons why it’s much easier to get results in environments where the participants decide to participate.

This will never be the case in military human performance settings. Regardless of the caliber of the coaching, no personal money is changing hands, so no one has to buy in. This creates a challenging scenario where human performance teams have to use “sales” tactics, but none of their “customers” will ever actually purchase anything. So what are we really looking for when we seek buy-in?

I would suggest that when people say “buy in” in these settings, they are speaking indirectly about the real issue: trust. Things get a lot simpler when you start approaching the issue from the perspective of building trust. 

Buy-in is elicited from someone else, but trust is built mutually. The Oxford English dictionary defines trust as a “firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something.” This generally starts with building genuine relationships. It also requires developing an understanding of what your participants actually need, since it may not be what you were expecting to provide. 

The phrase “no one cares how much you know until they know how much you care” is at a similar risk of semantic satiation from overuse, but there is certainly an element of truth to it. Demonstrate that you care, show that you have the ability, and focus on building relationships. You’re never going to get buy-in when your services don’t cost anything for the people who use them, but trust will take you farther than buy-in anyway.