Chapter 3
Goods and Services: The Currencies of Exchange
Mugger: Your money or your life.
Comedian Jack Benny [notorious cheapskate]: (Silence)
Mugger: Well?
Jack Benny: I'm thinking!
Coin of the Realm: The Concept of Currencies
The Cohen-Bradford Influence model is based on exchange and reciprocity—trading what the other person desires for what you want. Influence is possible when you have what others want. That can be just about anything. A recent report on US prisons revealed that ramen is now replacing tobacco as the most desirable currency because budgetary cutbacks restricted the availability and quality of food.1 The metaphor of currencies—something that is valued—can help you determine what you might offer a potential ally for cooperation. Because currencies represent resources that can be exchanged, they are the basis for acquiring influence. Without currencies in your treasury that the other person values, you have nothing to exchange and, therefore, are likely to have little influence. This chapter looks more closely at how currencies work, which ones are common to organizational life, and how to understand their use.
Frequently Valued Currencies
To make trades, you need to understand the many things people care about and all the valuables you have to offer. At least five types of currencies at work in a variety of settings are shown with our starter list of examples in Table 3.1.
Table 3.1 Currencies Frequently Valued in Organizations
| Inspiration-Related Currencies | |
| Vision | Working on a task with larger significance for unit, organization, customers, or society |
| Excellence | Having a chance to do important things really well |
| Mentoring, teaching | Help others grow and learn; passing along wisdom |
| Moral/ethical correctness | Doing what is “right” by a higher standard than efficiency |
| Task-Related Currencies | |
| New resources | Obtaining money, budget increases, personnel, space, and so forth |
| Challenge/learning | Doing tasks that increase skills and abilities |
| Assistance | Receiving help with existing projects or unwanted tasks |
| Organizational support | Receiving overt or subtle backing or direct assistance with implementation |
| Rapid response | Getting something more quickly |
| Information | Obtaining access to organizational or technical knowledge |
| Position-Related Currencies | |
| Recognition | Acknowledgment of effort, accomplishments, or abilities |
| Visibility | The chance to be known by higher-ups or significant people in the organization |
| Reputation | Being seen as competent, committed |
| Insiderness/importance | A sense of centrality, of belonging |
| Contacts | Opportunities for linking with others |
| Relationship-Related Currencies | |
| Understanding | Having concerns and issues listened to |
| Inclusion/personal connection | Feeling closeness and friendship |
| Personal support | Receiving personal and emotional backing |
| Personal-Related Currencies | |
| Gratitude | Appreciation or expression of indebtedness |
| Ownership/involvement | Ownership of and influence over important tasks |
| Self-concept | Affirmation of values, self-esteem, and identity |
| Comfort | Avoidance of hassles |
Although the list is by no means comprehensive and is somewhat arbitrarily grouped for convenience, it does provide a broader view of possible currencies than many organizational members conventionally think about. This framework can alert you to currencies available to you that others might value.
Inspiration-Related Currencies
Inspiration-related currencies reflect inspirational goals, ones providing meaning to a person's work. They are increasingly valued by people at all levels of organizational life.
Vision
Vision is perhaps the grandest currency. It can be highly motivating to portray an exciting vision of the company's or department's future and show how the ally's cooperation will help reach it. You can help overcome personal objections and inconvenience by inspiring the potential ally to see the larger significance of your request.
Excellence
The opportunity to do something really well and to have pride in accomplishing important, genuinely excellent work can be highly motivating. In this sense, craftsmanship is not dead; it is only in hiding, waiting to be tapped. Many people want to do high-quality, polished work, and knowing how to offer them that chance can be a valuable currency.
Mentoring/Teaching
For some, it is deeply satisfying to coach others, to help them learn to be more effective, to use the wisdom acquired through experience. They see it as a chance to give back, to take satisfaction from the growth of others.
Moral/Ethical Correctness
Probably most members of organizations would like to do what they consider the ethical, moral, altruistic, or correct thing. But they often feel that isn't possible in their job. Because they value a higher standard than efficiency or personal convenience, these people respond to requests that let them do what they consider “right.” Their self-image leads them to prefer personal inconvenience to doing anything inappropriate. This lets them feel good about themselves, so virtue becomes its own reward.
Task-Related Currencies
Task-related currencies are directly connected to doing the job. They relate to a person's ability to perform his or her assigned tasks or to the satisfactions that arise from accomplishment.
New Resources
For some managers, especially in organizations where resources are scarce or difficult to obtain, one very important currency is the chance to obtain new resources to accomplish their goals. These resources may or may not be directly budgetary; they could include the loan of people, space, or equipment.
Challenge/Learning
One widely valued currency in modern organizations is the chance to work at challenging tasks that provide a chance to stretch and to learn. Employees consistently list challenge among the top items when surveyed about what's important in their jobs. At the extreme, some professionals will do almost anything for a chance to work on tough tasks. In many technical organizations, the running joke is that the reward for killing yourself working 80 hours a week on a tough project is succeeding and getting to do it again on a tougher, more important project. For those people, the challenge and chance to learn is its own reward.
It is usually not difficult to figure out ways of offering challenge. Asking your potential allies to join the problem-solving group or passing them a tough piece of your project are ways to pay in the currency of challenge. (If the person is competent, you probably get back more than expected.)
If your boss values challenge, share information about tough issues you are facing, go to him or her to talk over tough decisions, or suggest major issues to tackle with colleagues or higher-ups. (The boss who hates challenge, however, will value being protected from complex issues.) At times almost everyone is overwhelmed with new information and may temporarily want to rely on what they know and can already do, but the urge to learn is usually an important currency.
Assistance
Although many people desire increased responsibilities and challenge, most need help on tasks or would be glad to shed some. Perhaps they personally dislike those tasks, are swamped by current difficulties, are in unreasonably demanding jobs, or for some reason have decided to disinvest in the organization. Whatever the reason, they will respond particularly favorably to anyone providing relief.
Another important type of assistance involves products or services that one department provides to another. These can be customized to fit the recipients' needs rather than designed for the convenience of the provider. Staff groups can create the currency of assistance if they first make sincere attempts to understand and adjust to departmental needs before demanding compliance with a new program.
Organizational Support
Organizational support is the currency most valued by someone working on a project who needs public backing or behind-the-scenes help in selling the project to others. It can also be valuable to someone who is struggling with an ongoing set of activities and who will benefit from a good word with higher-ups or other colleagues. Since most significant work is likely to generate some opposition, the person seeking approval for a project or plan can be greatly aided by a “friend in court.” A positive word to the right person at the right time can be very helpful in furthering someone's career or objectives. This kind of support is most valuable when the recipient is under fire and a colleague publicly supports the person or the project.
Rapid Response
A quick response to urgent requests can be worth a great deal to a colleague or boss. Helping someone avoid the waiting line builds valuable credit for later use, especially with managers in charge of resources that are always needed “yesterday.” Sometimes people get carried away and try to make it seem that they're always doing the other person a big favor, even when they have spare capacity. This tactic works only when those with urgent requests don't know the true backlog: a secret that is likely not to be secret for long. Be careful; overstating your burdens not only depreciates a valuable currency but builds mistrust.
Information
Recognizing that knowledge is power, some people value any information that may help them shape their unit's performance. Answers to specific questions can be valuable currency, but broader information can be equally rewarding. Knowledge of industry trends, customer concerns, top management's strategic views, or other departments' agendas is valued for its contribution to planning and managing key tasks. And insider information may be even more valued. Who is getting ahead and who is in trouble? What are top management's latest concerns? What are the hottest industry trends or the newest customer developments? Information junkies will go out of their way to help anyone who can give them insider information, even if it does not help them with immediate tasks.
This hunger for information can create opportunities for anyone who has access to valuable knowledge and is willing to share it. If your boss values such information, you have an extra incentive to develop wide-ranging relationships throughout the organization. In addition, keeping your ear to the ground will provide a wealth of extra-valuable currency to offer to the information-hungry boss. Paradoxically, the higher a person's position, the less likely he or she is to know what is really going on in the organization and the greater the gratitude for being informed.
Position-Related Currencies
These currencies enhance a person's position in the organization, thereby indirectly helping the person to accomplish tasks or advance a career.
Recognition
Many people gladly will extend themselves for a project when they believe their contributions will be recognized. Yet, it is remarkable how many fail to spread recognition around or withhold it for only very special occasions. It is probably not a coincidence that virtually all the managers a major research study identified as successfully accomplishing innovation from the middle of their organizations were very careful to share the credit and spread the glory.2 They all recognized the importance of giving people this valuable currency.
Visibility to Higher-Ups
Ambitious employees realize that, in a large organization, opportunities to perform for or to be recognized by powerful people can be a deciding factor in achieving future opportunities, information, or promotions. That is why, for example, task force members may fight over who will present the group's recommendations to top decision makers.
Reputation
Yet another variation on recognition is the more generalized currency of reputation. A good reputation can create lots of opportunities while a bad one can quickly shut the person out and make it difficult to perform.
A person with good press gets invited to important meetings, is consulted about new projects, and is considered an important ally when trying to sell ideas. A talented person with bad press, even in a nominally important position, may be ignored or not asked for opinions until it is too late to make a real difference. Note that actual ability is only partially related to reputation, at least in larger organizations, because few have direct knowledge of anyone's actual capacities. Accurate or not, however, reputation carries potent consequences. Having no reputation—being essentially invisible—means even those who could be very helpful are not asked to participate.
Often, people at lower levels, who think they have very little clout, don't realize how much they can influence the reputation of a manager who has more formal power. Speaking well or ill of the manager can make an enormous difference in reputation and, therefore, effectiveness. Smart sales people go out of their way to be nice to secretaries or support staff. They realize that a secretary's nasty comment about them to the boss can create a bad impression that is difficult to overcome.
Insiderness
For some, being in the inner circle can be a most valued currency. Inside information is one sign of this currency, and another is being connected to important people. The chance to work on important events, tasks, or plans can be valuable in itself. Some people gain a sense of significance from being close to the action and extend themselves to obtain such access.
Importance
A variation on inside knowledge and contacts as currency is the chance to feel important. Inclusion and information are symbols of that, but just being acknowledged as an important player counts a lot for many people who feel underrecognized.
Contacts
The opportunity for making contacts is related to many previous currencies, for it creates a network of people to approach for mutually helpful transactions. Some people are confident they can build satisfactory relationships once they have access. The organization member skilled at bringing people together benefits from facilitating introductions.
Relationship-Related Currencies
Relationship-related currencies are more connected to strengthening the relationship with someone than directly accomplishing the organization's tasks. That in no way diminishes the importance of the tasks.
Inclusion/Personal Connection
Some people most value the feeling of closeness to others, whether an individual or a group/department. They are receptive to those who offer warmth and liking as currencies, or enjoy building relationships in their own right. They may value closeness more than task-related currencies, or at the very least they won't sustain satisfactory transactions with anyone who does not include warmth and acceptance in serious task discussions.
Understanding/Listening/Sympathy
Colleagues who feel beleaguered by organizational demands or isolated and unsupported by their bosses especially value a sympathetic ear. Almost everyone is glad at times for a chance to talk about what bugs him or her, especially when the listeners seem to have no axe to grind or are not too caught up in their own problems to pay attention. Indeed, sympathetic listening without advice is a form of action that many managers do not recognize because the nature of their jobs and personalities orient them to “doing something.” They don't recognize that listening, in and of itself, can be a valuable currency.
Personal Support
For some people, at particular times, having the support of others is the currency they value most. A colleague feeling stressed, upset, vulnerable, or needy will doubly appreciate—and remember—a thoughtful gesture such as asking how he is doing, offering a kind word, or placing a hand on the shoulder. Some people are intuitively brilliant at finding just the right touch for a colleague in personal stress, sensing who would appreciate flowers, who would like to go out for a drink, and who would respond best to a meaningful article or book. The item itself is far less important than the gesture, no matter how awkwardly expressed.
Unfortunately, such personal gestures could miss the mark or be misconstrued as signs of more intimate interest or personal friendship than you might intend. An invitation to dinner at your home, for example, could come across as an intrusion to a very private person. Although caution is in order, genuinely kind gestures usually transcend misinterpretation.
Personal Currencies
These currencies could form an infinite list of idiosyncratic needs. Individuals value them because they enhance their sense of self. They may be derived from task or interpersonal activity. We mention only a few common ones.
Gratitude
Gratitude may be another form of recognition or support. Though not necessarily job-related, gratitude can be valued highly by people who make a point of helping others. For their efforts, some people want the receiver to appreciate them in terms of thanks or deference. This is a tricky currency; when it's overused, even those who desire it may devalue it. That is, an expression of gratitude for the first favor may be more valued than a similar expression of gratitude for the tenth.
Ownership/Involvement
Another currency often valued by organizational members is the chance to feel that they at least partly control something important or can make a major contribution. While this is akin to other currencies, for some people the chance to get their hands into something interesting is its own reward. They do not need other forms of payment.
Self-Concept
We referred earlier to moral and ethical correctness as a currency. Another way of thinking about self-referencing currencies is to include those that are consistent with a person's image of himself or herself. “Payments” do not always have to come from someone else. They can be self-generated if you take action consistent with your idea of who you are; you reward comes from your personal beliefs about being virtuous, benevolent, or committed to the organization's welfare. You might respond to another's request because it reinforces your cherished values, sense of identity, or feelings of self-worth. Payment is still interpersonally stimulated; for example this kind of self-payment is generated when you ask for cooperation to accomplish organizational goals. But the person who responds because “it is the right thing to do” and feels good about being the “kind of person who does not act out of narrow self-interest” is printing currency (virtue) that is self-satisfying.
Rosabeth Kanter, a leading researcher on change, discovered that many innovative middle managers had worked long and hard to make significant changes that they knew would not be rewarded.3 Several had been punished by the organization for fighting to make valuable changes that upset cherished beliefs or key executives. Furthermore, they knew that their efforts would get them in trouble but proceeded anyway because they saw themselves as people who would do what in their view was needed whether or not anyone else agreed.
Comfort
Finally, some individuals highly value personal comfort. Lovers of routine and haters of risk, they will do almost anything to avoid being hassled or embarrassed. The thought of making a public fuss and being the target of notoriety or the recipient of anger is enough to drive them to the ends of the earth. They care far less about advancement than the chance to do their job with minimal disturbance; you do them a valuable favor by protecting them from being bothered or approached by outsiders.
Negative Currencies
Currencies are what people value. But there are also negative currencies, things that people do not value and wish to avoid (see Table 3.2). Using these is less desirable, because they can have repercussions you don't want, but they are sometimes potent or necessary. Negative currencies come in two forms:
- Withholding payment of a known valuable currency
- Using directly undesirable currencies
Table 3.2 Common Negative Currencies
| Withholding Payments |
| Not giving recognition Not offering support Not providing challenge Threatening to quit the situation |
| Directly Undesirable |
| Raising voice, yelling Refusing to cooperate when asked Escalating issue to common boss Going public with issue, making lack of cooperation visible Attacking person's reputation, integrity Rather than “attacking,” “negative impact” on person's reputation Making the relationship much worse |
Whenever an ally values a currency, its absence or threatened removal can also be motivating. Because too many people think only of the possible negative effects when seeking influence, we have stressed the positive use of currency, but you limit yourself needlessly by overlooking the power of withholding a valuable currency. Refusal to give resources, recognition, challenge, or support can make an ally cooperate. In the right situation, the threat of quitting—removing the benefits of staying in the situation—can be potent.
Some Cautions
The directly undesirable currencies are fraught with danger because the recipient can find them quite unpleasant forms of payment. Although different people value different currencies, few want to be yelled at, to have their behavior on display to the boss or others, to be exposed for their behavior and attitudes, or to have colleagues attack their reputation. These negative currencies, or the threat of their use, can be exactly what you need to move the other person into action.
The danger is that the action will provoke retaliation—at once or in the future. You don't want to enrage someone with more ammunition than you have or who will gladly go down in flames while dragging you along. Using negative currencies risks setting off a war; winning influence in the short term may create an enemy who looks to retaliate when you least expect it.
Therefore, the better part of valor, even when you must use a negative currency exchange, is to look for a positive way to frame the currency. “I know you wouldn't want to be left out” probably will get a more positive response than “If you don't cooperate, I'll see that you're left out.” In both cases, however, you indicate you will withhold the currency without an exchange. If you must directly use a negative currency, try to tie it to a desirable future state that you both want in which the negatives won't be necessary.
Using Currencies: Complexities and Restrictions
Even if you do not underestimate your number of available currencies, there are still complex issues around implementation. The following section provides an overview, but we go into more detail in Chapter 7, “Strategies for Making Mutually Profitable Trades.” There we discuss how to think through the ramifications of your relative power and how to take that into account when positioning for and making complex exchanges.
Establishing Currency Exchange Rates: How to Equate Apples and Oranges
If it is true that everyone expects to be paid back in one form or another, then it is important to address the question of “one form or another.” What will it require to make an offer in a currency that the other person considers equivalent?
In the economic marketplace, everything is translated into monetary equivalents, which makes it easier to say what a fair payment is. Does a ton of steel equal a set of golf clubs? By translating both commodities into dollars (or euros, yen, or rubles), strangers can make a fair deal. In the organizational marketplace, however, calculating the payback is more complicated. How do I repay your willingness to help me finish my report? Is a simple “thank you” enough? Will it be sufficient for me to say something nice about you to your boss? And what if we have very different ideas about fair repayment? We may value the same thing very differently. Absent an established standard value, exchanging for influence can be complicated.
A useful way of understanding what potential allies consider important is to examine the goods and services they trade. What do they seem to care about? What does their language signal? What do they talk about first when explaining why they won't cooperate? Does your analysis of their world and how they are measured and rewarded help? Can you ask directly—in a collaborative way, aimed at finding ways to help them so they can help you? Be careful not to measure their currencies with your own weights. It isn't how you value the goods and services, it is how they do.
Occasionally, people know exactly what they want in return for favors or help at work, but more often they will settle for very rough equivalents—provided there is reasonable goodwill. It may, therefore, be more important to identify the currency the potential ally likes to trade in and offer to pay with goods that you have translated into that currency than it is to determine the exact right amount. In other words, think about the nature (quality) of the currency in each transaction before you worry about the quantity.
Different Strokes: Few Universal Currencies
A few currencies are very widely valued, such as the desire to have some influence on others, to be appreciated, to be treated fairly, and to have a good reputation and positive work relationships. Nevertheless, even these nearly universal currencies vary in importance from person to person and thus are valued differently. A currency's value is solely in the eye of the beholder. Does just about everyone value having influence? Probably. But do some people just want to be left alone to do their job? Yes. Similarly, while many rank positive work relationships highly, others do not want to have personal connections with coworkers and think it is a bad idea. While one manager might consider a thank-you note a sign of appreciation, another might see it as an attempt to flatter, and a third might dismiss it as a cheap way to try to repay extensive favors and service. (And we can say from experience—don't try even friendly East Coast irony with the straightforward, nice folks from Minnesota!)
Furthermore, if you use the same currency successfully several times with the same person or group, they can eventually come to devalue it, so that it no longer works. After many repetitions, for example, your praise can sound hollow when given for constant favors that take a lot of time.4
One Act: Multiple Currencies, Multiple Forms of Payment
Currencies of the kind discussed here are not exact and fixed; they are also a function of perception and language:
- A particular “good,” for example an offer to create a special analytical report, may be translatable into several different currencies. To the receiver, it may be a performance currency (“With this report, I'll be able to determine which products to push.”); a political currency (“This report will help me look good to my division president.”); or a personal currency (“Although getting the report certainly won't hurt my decision making, it's more significant that it shows you recognize my importance.”). The same good may be valued for different reasons by different people— or by the same person.
- One currency can be paid in many different forms. For example, you can pay in appreciation by verbal thanks, praise, public statements of support, informal comments to peers, or a note to the person's boss.
- Because the value of currency is changeable, it becomes even more necessary to understand what is important to each potential ally—not only what he or she values but also the language that reflects that valued currency. Sometimes a different way of talking about your offer—based on the ally's style and priorities—will make it more attractive. Don't needlessly exaggerate; if you don't have the right goods, hype will only offend. Nevertheless, think carefully about how to talk about goods that are available.
Currencies Can Be Organizational, Not Just Personal
For convenience, we have discussed currencies completely in terms of what is important to the individual you want to influence. But another, less direct, kind of currency is departmental or organizational benefit. When employees identify strongly with the welfare of their group, department, or organization, it can be very important to focus on exchanges benefitting the unit rather the individual.
At the same time, the person gets the psychological satisfaction of “being good,” or of “doing what is right,” which are by no means trivial currencies. For many people, seeing themselves as good citizens and benevolent, loyal people is indeed a powerful currency. This gives them a potent payoff, even if at first it seems that what they must give is not in their self-interest.
In fact, in some organizations, a reputation for being willing to do something not of immediate personal benefit is precisely what develops an influential, positive reputation. In these kinds of organizations, altruism reigns supreme. We have watched a large number of upper-middle managers at BlueCross BlueShield of Massachusetts, for example, focus on what the organization can do for members and the uninsured, resisting talk of narrowly construed self- or departmental interests. Managers who can think creatively about helping customers are listened to and valued. FedEx celebrates the story of the employee who hired a helicopter to deliver a package over an avalanche in order to “ensure overnight delivery.”
In such situations, encouraging the potential ally to cooperate for personal gain is a serious breach of etiquette. Enhancing the person's reputation is considered a by-product, not something to be overtly touted.
Reframing: Fit the Language to the Culture
How explicitly you position self-interest is different from organization to organization. For example, many high-tech companies expect members to be direct about what they want from others. Employees talk freely about wheeling and dealing for resources. But the tradition at IBM is to use language is that is far less direct, with requests couched in terms of organizational benefits, not personal gains. No one at IBM is likely to say, “If you help me on this project, your career will be advanced.” Instead, they will say something like, “Your area's help will increase the value of the product, and that will aid your group's getting the recognition it deserves for its outstanding efforts.” The result might be the same, but the language used to get results is different.
Although a few situations may expect blunt, “I'll do this if you will do that” trades (for example, a tough New Jersey construction firm we know), in most organizations it is more about describing what you want in a way that appeals to your audience. Paying attention to the culture's ways is important in addition to looking at the individual. If, however, you are dealing with a maverick, a countercultural approach may be just the thing.
Sometimes a good idea can be stymied when it's described with loaded language—words whose connotations turn off the people whose support is most needed. Inappropriate language can convert something valuable to a potential ally into undesirable currency. One of the authors remembers vividly getting completely tuned out when talking to human resources people at the old, polite Hewlett-Packard about “ways to get clout.” They did want to shape managerial practice, but “clout” sounded far too crude. (And they were too nice to tell him until after easing him out of the program, and then only indirectly.)
Expanding Your “Currency Pool”
As we have stressed (and expand on below), most people have more currencies to use than they currently think. In addition to utilizing what you have available, seeing how you can increase that pool is also useful.
You can easily forget about the future when focused on your current job and all the ways you need more influence. But try to think longer term, anticipating future currencies of relevant colleagues (or possible future colleagues). For example, perhaps your job interfaces with operations, and cost pressures are making your organization consider outsourcing some activities to India or China. You might want to learn about the difficulties of outsourcing without being asked. If you build knowledge in advance, you might have something valuable to the operations person who suddenly gets dumped with the problem, and you can create credit that will serve you later. (For an inspiring example, see Nettie Seabrooks at www.influencewithoutauthority.com.)
The example below shows how Shirley Marom, a project marketing manager at Google, saw a need and took steps to develop herself.
Self-Traps in Using Currencies
While the notion of exchange seems simple, there are many ways for people to go wrong and miss by a mile (see the Checklist for Avoiding Currency Traps).
Underestimating What You Have to Offer
Start with what you know. Has your training and experience given you access to something others might value?
- Rare technical knowledge.
- Organizational information. Where expertise does reside, what departments are interested in your department's activities, who might be working on something interesting or has useful information, or who holds resources that aren't being used?
- Customer knowledge. Who is a key customer playing golf with, what problems are they having using your company's products, how have they improvised new uses for your products that might interest other customers? Are potential clients not being attended to now?
- Political information. Who is unhappy, planning to leave, on the rise, or close to key higher-ups?
What do you control that you can “spend” without formal permission? As suggested earlier, sometimes people who feel impotent think too narrowly about their resources. They think only budget dollars or promotions are relevant resources and, lacking these, assume they have nothing of value to trade. You can give gratitude, recognition, appreciation, respect, and help—many things that others value. No supervisor or higher-up has to empower anyone to write a thank-you note, publicly praise another, or rush responses to a request. Often you have valuable goods or services to use if you cast your net wide enough.
Remember that being someone who others enjoy talking with, know is interested in them, and trust can be valuable—or just pleasurable even without any payoff.
Pay in the Currency Others Value, Not Just What You Would Value
This trap is completely understandable, because it is both easier to know what you like and to assume that everyone else must want what you value. As we have mentioned, there are certainly some universals that almost everyone wants—self-worth, recognition for good work, connection—but even those are tricky and can use expansion. Many people like positive attention and gratitude, but some do not like the spotlight or being thanked for favors that they consider a routine part of their job. Others just want to be left alone. But even worse, people often are so preoccupied with their wants that they don't pay close attention to or totally ignore the signals from others about what matters to them. They hear these signals as excuses or barriers and just tune them out.
We have seen many people, even at high levels, who are so certain that influencing their manager is impossible that they completely miss something obvious, such as the manager's preference for written proposals with the conclusions first. For example, the subordinate wants early feedback but is sure that the boss won't like her idea, so she doesn't even write a concise memo and send it before the meeting. Creating a memo is within the subordinate's control, but she never sees how crucial that is to her reflective and busy boss, so she fails to take a simple but effective step to gain influence. (For more on how to tune in to signals sent, see Chapter 4.)
Worst of all, when frustrated influencers hear that the other wants something they don't like themselves, they don't want to give it to the other. The colleague who craves status, for example, can set their teeth on edge, so they do everything possible to make that person seem small. Or they resent ambition and try to thwart it rather than work with it and help the ambitious colleague. Remember, reciprocity is about paying with something the other person values.
Resenting Having to Go Out of the Way
Some people limit their influence when they refuse to do something necessary to move others in desirable ways because it isn't their job. They stand on principle: “That shouldn't have to be my job, and my colleagues should just be persuaded by my arguments and what (I see) is right!” Certainly principles should not be violated, but “It's not my job” probably isn't one of them. Think of it as building a line of credit that you might draw on someday, or think of it just as being effective. If the organization's interest requires you to figure out what others need to cooperate, then eventually it will also be in your interest.
A Word of Warning: Beware False Advertising
As discussed, the language that you use to describe your offers can increase the chances that those goods or services will meet the other party's needs, that is, address their desired currency. Careful, thoughtful communication adds needed precision to the imprecise process of equating your offer with another's needs.
Nevertheless, the process has dangers. A way with words is useful in any selling activity, but avoid gilding the lily or exaggerating claims. Within your own organization, you can lose your credibility with an impossible promise, a false claim, or even too much wishful thinking, damaging future transactions. As we have tried to make abundantly clear, your reputation is a precious commodity in organizational terms. Protect that valuable asset even as you press the boundaries to complete important exchanges.
Last Word: Some Currencies Really Are Not Convertible
Another warning is in order: not everything can be converted into equivalent currencies. If two people value fundamentally different things, they may not be able to find common ground. Open, honest exploration guarantees only that if there is any possibility of mutuality, it will be discovered and the relationship probably won't be damaged by the failure to find a deal. But sometimes, currencies do not convert. Know when to fold 'em—and do it graciously.
Currencies are important but not always obvious. Chapter 4 shows you how to determine what a person's currencies might be when you do not automatically know them or do not have direct access to the person or group you want to influence.