Recruiting conversations are tricky. Your objective is to get someone to make a positive change, but if you’re overbearing you could easily be fortifying their resolve to stay with their current broker. Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist at the Wharton School, explains how easy it is to make this mistake. When we try to change a person’s mind, our first impulse is to preach about why we’re right and prosecute them for being wrong. Yet experiments show that preaching and prosecuting typically backfire — and what doesn’t sway people may strengthen their beliefs. Much as a vaccine inoculates the physical immune system against a virus, the act of resistance fortifies the psychological immune system. Refuting a point of view produces antibodies against future attempts at influence, making people more certain of their own opinions and more ready to rebut alternatives. The hard-charging, close-them-quickly recruiting methodologies often incite the psychological immune system in your recruiting prospects. You not only lose an opportunity today, but you also make your chances of winning tomorrow much more difficult.