Bohns holds a PhD in psychology from Columbia and is Department Chair and Braunstein Family Professor of Organizational Behavior at Cornell’s ILR School. Her research programme is compliance and social influence from the requester’s side: why we systematically underestimate our own influence, why asking feels so costly, and why saying no is harder than we assume. Her book You Have More Influence Than You Think (Norton, 2021) collects it for a general reader.
Two of her findings do real work on this page. With Roghanizad she showed that the same request made face to face succeeded far more often than by email. That is the study cited for the instruction to get people on the phone rather than sending your questions in writing. And the broader line of work on underestimated compliance is what licenses the page’s flat assertion that excellent people say yes more than you expect. Her authority is experimental social psychology applied to a workplace question, which is precisely the register of the claims Management Craft rests on her.