There are 1.7 million airline passengers on domestic flights in the United States every day. In order to board their flights, each passenger must proceed through a security screening process. This screening is done in the hopes of making traveling more safe and to verify that passengers are safe to proceed to their gate for departure.
For transformational leaders, they recognize that each of their stakeholders likewise has a screening process for listening to and following a leader’s lead. This process is less about sharp objects and the two-ounce requirement for toiletries, but rather, is the leader safe to follow to the destination he advocates? If a leader doesn’t pass the screening process he will not experience flashing lights or be asked to enter a small interrogation room, but will instead find himself at his departure gate perplexed as to why he is the only one on the flight to his desired future.
To persuade someone is defined by Merriam Webster as “causing someone to do something through reasoning or argument and to cause someone to believe something, especially after a sustained effort.” Persuasion is therefore about convincing and influencing someone to act or think a certain way. The operative word is to act. In the face of competing demands, fewer resources, and higher expectations, leaders will encounter people who will not want to align their priorities with theirs.
Persuasion in transformational leadership is not about eloquent and stirring speeches like Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address or Martin Luther King’s I Have A Dream speech. Persuasion in transformational leadership is about positive influence, not manipulation. In its purest form persuasion is the shaping with full integrity the thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and behaviors of another. But that begs the question: Why do people do what they do? To know why people do what they do, you’ll need to notice the order of the definition of persuasion, shaping the thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and behaviors of others. We’re going to look at each aspect of persuasion specifically.
The key point you’ll learn from the Persuasion Principle is that in order to have people behave in ways that are helpful to your purpose, promises, priorities, and projects, you must start by understanding and then shaping their thoughts, feelings, and beliefs about you and your initiatives so they will act in ways that are supportive of your requests. If you want to hear yes more often you have to know what happens in between people’s ears before yes comes out of their mouths. If you don’t understand what precedes yes you will continue to hear no.
Every action you and I take is preceded by a thought, and these thoughts are a powerful catalyst for how we live our lives and what we say yes to. In the TSA screening example, if your thoughts about TSA screening are that it is beneficial and helpful in making passengers safer, you will see airport screening in a positive light. If you think the process is a waste of time and neglects the bigger issue of screened baggage in the cargo bay, your thoughts regarding TSA screenings will lead you to see airport screening in a negative light.
The thought that airport screening is valuable and increases the safety for all passengers is followed by the feeling of safety and or comfort. These feelings happen at light-speed and often go unnoticed. In reality, thoughts and feelings are highly interconnected. When you think your time is valuable and you strive to be expedient, an interference in being expedient is thought to be a threat and waste of time. The thought of having your time wasted creates a feeling of anxiety or apprehension for not being effective.
The beliefs we each hold for work, our stakeholders, and what we are capable of accomplishing are powerful triggers for our actions and behaviors. If I think airport screening is a waste of time and feel anxious for being hindered from doing my best work, my belief is that whatever obstacle I encounter needs to be avoided or eliminated. Setting aside the TSA example for a second, there are employees who have spectacular talent who don’t believe in themselves and suffer from imposter syndrome. This belief holds that the person is not entitled to be in the position they are and that at some point the will be found to be an imposter. There are also leaders who believe they may not be the most talented leader, but they have the love and passion for what they do in such copious amounts that nothing will prevent them from achieving their goal. Whichever belief is held becomes true.
Here’s the key point about behaviors: Whenever you see someone do something or act in a particular way, they are doing so because they believe the action they’re taking is the best response to what they believe about a situation. If you see someone berating a TSA agent, they believe that by doing so they will secure the best outcome. You know this is foolhardy, but you are not feeling the same emotions nor are you having the same thoughts. Therein lies the great challenge for transformational leaders. The challenge is that if you want people to support your initiatives, say yes to your ideas, and support your purpose, priorities, projects, or promises, do not focus on the behaviors you’re seeing. Focus on the thoughts, feelings, and beliefs driving the behavior.
At work, if a colleague sees you and her first thought is that you are political, manipulative, and lazy, that you are not a team player and that you are solely out for your own self-interests, the first feelings associated with seeing you would be that of dread. If I dread seeing you I have a self-preserving belief that I should extricate myself from a conversation with you as quickly as possible. The behavior you see from the other person may be described as curt, rude, and possibly dismissive. Transformational leaders then do behavioral jiujitsu. They ask themselves what beliefs, feelings, or thoughts are triggering these behaviors. They ask because when these questions are asked and answered the likelihood of hearing yes goes up appreciably.
So how persuasive are you? Put aside the theory of thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and behavior and ask yourself, “How persuasive am I? How persuasive is my leadership?” The simple answer is: If you’re persuasive you’ll hear four kinds of yes.
1. Yes, that’s a good idea, and yes I’ll help. This is the first and most potent yes. This is the most desired response leaders want, but frequently don’t hear. For a leader to hear this yes they have given considerable thought to the priorities of the person they’re asking, linked their proposal to the other person’s self-interests, and found positive ways they can help the other person achieve a mutually rewarding end result.
2. Yes, if we can add this one idea we can have an even more positive impact. The second type of yes is one in which a second or complimentary idea is used to improve on your idea in a way that serves the greater purpose. When leaders hear this type of yes there is a creativity that is infused into the conversation. It is additive and builds on one idea and ultimately helps all involved to think bigger about the possible outcomes. This yes results in the idea no longer being the brain child of one person, but rather the collaborative idea of two or more people.
3. Yes, I don’t know how to do that, but I know I’ll figure it out. This yes can be a powerful and transformational yes. As leaders in every organization can attest, there are objectives worth doing that don’t have clear paths with well-lit signs and precise directions. And therein lies the positive side of leaders hearing this yes. Transformational leaders want to hear people say yes to their ideas, but maybe more importantly, they want to hear yes to ideas that challenge the status quo while cultivating a mindset of passion, innovation, and growth.
4. Yes, I’ll take care of it. This yes is short and to the point and shows a clear agreement of what’s requested. When a Chief Marketing Officer is asked to answer her board of directors questions—a board with little or no background in marketing—about how social media marketing is impacting the sales process, the best place to start is by understanding the thoughts the board has currently, what their feelings are about marketing and social media, as well as what, if any, beliefs are driving this request to be educated.
Hearing these four kinds of yes confirms that positive persuasion is underway and that you’re on track to achieve your purpose, promises, priorities, and projects. That’s the context of positive persuasion. In the next section you’ll learn specifically the Transformational Leadership Persuasion Process.
If you are in a leadership position, you have likely read about how to have teams and employees you lead do something they may not want to do. A day does not go by that you don’t directly or indirectly persuade someone. You have high hopes for having people follow your lead and act in ways that foster innovation, growth, and passion.
But in everyday life, leaders are dealing with the reality that, all too often, people don’t do what they’re asked and/or behave in ways that don’t support the best interests of the customer, team, or organization.
Let’s level set on one key issue. The employment journey, from on-boarding to exit interviews, is a persuasion process that sends a clear and compelling message to every employee about what’s important and what the expectations are for doing transformational work. When leaders look at each interaction with employees and customers as a building block in the three-part persuasion process, it is simple to understand and remarkable in its effectiveness. In the three sections that follow we’ll break down each part of the persuasion process and make it actionable and real world. The process of persuading another person is simple:
1. Build strong relationships based on trust and respect.
2. Understand the objectives and priorities of the other person.
3. Provide solutions that help them achieve their priorities.
If you do all three you’ll have the persuasion necessary to lead the transformation of your project in powerful and compelling ways.
In order for you to become more persuasive, high levels of trust and respect are the foundational building block. Think for a moment about a colleague, boss, or teammate you don’t trust or respect. How much positive persuasion does the person have with you? Likely very little. Trust is about doing what we say we will do and the corresponding credibility. Respect, on the other hand, is about having a high regard for the talents and skills of the other person.
Let’s say you appoint a senior vice president (SVP) to lead a major project. In 2016, a major project would have been the Samsung recall of their Galaxy 7s phone. For those of you who don’t remember, the phone caught fire and required every phone to be recalled. The recall eroded 26 billion ($26,000,000,000) yes, billion with a “B” worth of value. This was a high-stakes, if not life and death, situation for Samsung.
The SVP promised to complete a detailed analysis of the recall and present their findings to the board in 45 days. If the work presented is of a high standard and addresses all of the issues the board and executives raised, you will have a high regard for the SVP’s skills and talents. If the work is accomplished in the promised timeframe, you see the SVP as trustworthy. In this case, trust and respect are both essential in order to persuade the senior executives and the board to stay the course and execute the developed plan.
Imagine, however, that the SVP meets their deadline, but submits work that is lacking in quality. Because the quality of the work is not respected, the SVP’s ability to persuade the executives and board is compromised. The higher the stakes, the more important trust and respect become.
Knowing the objectives and priorities of the people you want to persuade is a crucial second step. This requires putting aside our own self-interests and prioritizing what is important to the other person. When we know what is important to the other person, for example, balancing the need for innovation and growth with the need to continually infuse excellence into products near the end of their life cycle, we can better present solutions that help achieve that objective.
In the Projects Principle we discussed jettisoning methodology in favor of results. The case I made was that falling out of love with what you do and falling in love with making your clients, customers, and employees lives better for having worked with you is a game-changing mindset shift. The same holds true in the Persuasion Principle. The act of falling in love with understanding the objectives and priorities of the people who can help or hurt your project, your career, and the resources you have, is an incredibly persuasive act. When the message you broadcast is one of “Your priorities are as important to me as they are to you,” the quality of your relationships increases dramatically and leaves others not only open to what you have to say, but hopeful they can hear from you. You are now a strategic partner to the other person as opposed to the vendor or supplier of widgets.
The key point in this section is that when leaders lead with solutions without fully understanding and addressing the objectives and priorities of the person they want to persuade, it’s the death knell for success even if you have the title of “CEO” after your name. The most successful leaders I’ve worked with tirelessly build the highest levels of trust and respect possible while immersing themselves in what’s important to the other person before they ever suggest a solution.
In the three sections that follow we will take a deeper dive into the process and skills required to build high levels of trust and respect, know the objectives and priorities of others, and how to best provide solutions that leave people saying yes to your ideas.
The formula for building high levels of trust and respect is surprisingly simple: Do what you say you’re going to do and do it to the agreed-upon standards. If you follow the formula you’ll build trust and respect as well as have happy employees and customers. Wait a minute. If it’s so simple why don’t people do it? They don’t do it for one primary reason: They think they’ve gotten clear about expectations when in reality they haven’t. They lack a framework for getting clear and for infusing accountability into situations.
How are you doing with trust and respect? Here’s a self-assessment to prompt your thinking as to how much positive persuasion you have. The following statements will ask you to rate yourself on the behaviors necessary to have high levels of trust and respect. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being a high level of agreement and 1 representing a low level of agreement, rate yourself on the following statements.
1. I actively and intentionally work to create an environment that fosters trust with my colleagues.
2. I do what I say I will do.
3. I act with integrity in all personal and professional interactions.
4. I speak well of people when they are not within earshot.
5. My colleagues say I genuinely care about each of them.
6. I tell the truth in ways that build trust.
1. I look for and focus on my colleagues’ talents and skills.
2. I frequently communicate my respect for the skills and talents my colleagues have.
3. I actively infuse as much value as possible into all of the interactions I have with colleagues.
4. I am focused and don’t get distracted when interacting with my colleagues.
5. I feel respected by my colleagues.
6. I recognize and communicate my interest in and appreciation for others’ perspectives.
Now, go back and answer the questions from the perspective of your boss, colleagues, or coworkers. How would they answer these questions about you? Do you see a gap between how you answered the questions and how you think your colleagues would answer the questions? Is there is a gap between your perception of your behavior and others’ perceptions of your behavior? If so, there is a risk of having a credibility gap, which jeopardizes your ability to persuade others.
Quite simply, trust and respect is built on having clear expectations and doing what you said you would do.
Having clear expectations can reduce the strife in your personal life and professional life by 50 percent as well as increase your performance. You do that by getting clear about the expectations you have with someone. For example, a CEO client of mine led a $200,000,000 financial institution and was at loggerheads with the board as to their strategic direction and priorities. Her expectations were that growth and greater profitability would come from being a market-driven organization. This would lead to more time, money, and resources devoted to marketing to their key customers. If done well, the financials would continue to grow from their current positive place. The board had an expectation that they would be a financial-driven institution and that decisions would be rooted in the financials and that marketing needed to follow what the financials allowed.
These conflicting expectations required a higher level of clarity as to the fundamental expectations each party could agree on as well as expectations to address differing expectations in ways that built trust and respect. When I learned of the situation the CEO felt disrespected and undervalued and the board felt hindered from doing their job. Neither of the previous trust and respect questions would have rated the other highly on each dimension.
Clear expectations are rooted in seven fundamental steps.
In almost every frustrating situation I’ve experienced in board rooms and executive suites the one fatal flaw is jumping to how a situation can be resolved before clarifying the “what” or “why” of a situation. The process for establishing expectations that foster innovation, growth, and passion starts with the purpose of the team or organization. When you start a conversation with, “Our purpose is to dramatically improve the quality of our leadership while also dramatically increasing the quality of our business results,” you have answered the overarching contextual question of what the purpose is. Yes, you may get wrapped around the proverbial axle when it comes to how to accomplish your purpose, but starting with what the purpose is points everyone in the right direction.
The definition of success for your purpose and why it’s beneficial infuses hope, optimism, and energy into the conversation. Someone may know what the intended purpose is, but until the definition of success is clarified for them individually the purpose will remain intellectual and theoretical. For example, if a leader in your organization hears that you want to dramatically increase the quality of the organization’s leadership and her business results, she will likely say yes to that, as it’s theoretically a sound idea. But the real power comes in articulating for each person the benefits of achieving the purpose. For example, if you accomplished your purpose you would achieve the following:
1. Leaders will have a clearer line of sight for career growth and no longer view their careers as unpredictable and unmanageable.
2. Leaders will have an accurate assessment of where they stand currently with specific successes to build on and targeted challenges to address.
3. Leaders will have professional development opportunities that, if taken advantage of, will propel them to higher levels of both success and satisfaction.
Next are the specifics of roles, responsibilities, and time frames. Each of these three areas need to be crisp, clear, and understood. For example, as Volunteer Coordinator, you are in charge of volunteer recruitment, development, retention, scheduling, and quality assurance (responsibilities) for the customer engagement project. My role will be to check in with you to ensure you have the most available resources and to see what I can do to help you be successful. Also, the kickoff of the project is six months from today and you’ll have 15 hours per week away from your current work to devote to this. You’re being asked to take on this role because of your expertise in managing volunteers and your success with the capital campaign last year. Addressing each area with specificity is required for someone to say yes to you.
Imbedded in this step is the recognition of decision-making authority. Is a person able to make decisions unilaterally or only after conferring with their boss? Trust and respect are big parts of this step. If I trust and respect you, and have clearly articulated your role and budget, I may instruct you to make a decision you deem best to accomplish your purpose and to make us successful, and then the next time we meet tell me what you decided. This is delegation at its zenith. If the person in a role is a new employee with less experience I may ask for weekly status reports. Regardless of experience, clarify by using the following 1 through 5 decision-making model: 1 is, as the senior leader, I can and will make all of the decisions. I don’t have to ask your opinion, but I do have to tell you; 2 is similar to a 1 except I will consult with you, ask for your opinion, and then make my decision; 3 is a mutual decision; 4 means you will make a decision after conferring with me; 5 means you can make a decision without conferring with me at all. If you do this one step alone any frustrations you have with expectation will go down by 50 percent.
This expectation is also directly rooted in trust and respect. If I have any uncertainty about your talents, skills, or ability to stay on task I may ask for more frequent status updates. You may also want more frequent status updates if the project is a mission critical project. In either case, knowing the frequency of the updates as well as what is expected in a status update is crucial. Saying, “Let’s check in once every two weeks” lacks specificity. In this step, both parties can clarify what a status update looks like to them. For one person, it may be a percentage completed on high-priority tasks, actual to-budget figures, risk and challenges, and lessons learned. What’s also required is what format the check-in will use. Will it be submitted in writing two days in advance so each person has time to digest the information and come prepared to ask questions? Be clear about what you want as well as what you can do given all of your other priorities.
Issues that go unresolved will erode trust and respect quickly. It is essential for expectations to be meaningful and transformational. Without writing a chapter on conflict management, the best way to address issues is to ask a question with curiosity and openness. For example, “George, my understanding was that we agreed to check in once every two weeks and that you would have your status update circulated two days in advance of our in-person meeting. I didn’t receive your update. Help me understand what happened.” You’ll likely hear a reasonable explanation and can discuss with George what to do moving forward. If you don’t ask, George will know that there are no consequences for not circulating his report and will likely do the same again. The key is to recognize that you will erode trust and respect by not addressing the issues.
The final step is to confirm with the other person all of the previous steps. For example, “Based on this conversation let’s check in that we’re both on the same page. What do you understand your role, expectations, and the like to be?” When you have a clear summary you’ll only have one next step. Go back to the Promises Principle section and review the priority setting section. Understanding how to go about creating clear expectations is one thing. The next is to set priorities around them so you can do what you promised the standard you agreed to. If you do, you’ll have people more willing to say yes to your requests and you’ll have fewer interruptions to higher performance.
It has been said that the eyes are the window into the soul. If true, the ears are the doorway to the heart. It is by our ears we listen to what’s important to someone. We not only hear the words they are using, but hear the tone of voice, inflection, and can distinguish between the emotions expressed and listen for what is hoped for moving forward. Our ears afford us the ability to do so, but all too frequently we don’t. We are busy listening through the filter of what’s important to us and in many cases don’t listen, but interpret what others are saying.
One of my clients, Dr. Timothy Chester, is CIO at the University of Georgia and wrote an interesting blog that described the art of using our two ears and why one mouth is more than enough. He recounted a conversation he had with the director of human resources at Texas A&M University and how frustrating it was for them to talk with the IT director managing the university’s payroll system. What human resources wanted was clear and authoritative data about employees. When human resources asked what some of the data meant, the response was, “What do you want the data to mean?”
There are two ways to view this conversation: The first is through the technical aspect of the conversation and how accurate and authoritative information is essential in making the best decision possible. The second is the people/persuasion prism and how imperative it is that technically trained and proficient professionals learn how to listen first in order to understand what’s important to someone before opening their mouths. Then, as in the persuading process, our mouths can be used to provide significant value to the person we’re speaking with, namely to help people be successful. When we use our ears first we have the potential of becoming a strategic business partner known for solving problems.
Throughout the last 15 years I’ve worked with hundreds of technically brilliant and well-intended professionals who are more accomplished at leaving their lesser technically inclined constituents frustrated rather than empowered. While they listen intently for the technical issues related to an issue, they turn a deaf ear to the people and relationship side of their work. In turn, they communicate their lack of a clear and compelling understanding of the priorities of the people they want to persuade.
You are persuading people every day and you must become exceptionally good at the people side of your work as well as the technical side of your work. If you don’t, you will not have a seat at the executive decision-making table and will be relegated to being seen as a cost to be minimized rather than a profit to be maximized. How can you secure a seat at the executive decision-making table? How can you persuade others more powerfully, enhance your leadership brand and reputation, and be seen as a strategic value creator? Here are seven persuasion strategies that require you to use your ears first before opening your mouth.
In order to root out the important and strategic objectives of the person you’re trying to persuade, this is the basic blocking and tackling required of all professionals. You must know how the person you’re working with prefers you communicate with them. Do they prefer you provide lots of data with a historical perspective? Or do they prefer you to get to the bottom line and give them an executive summary? Do they want you to ask them questions and involve them in a conversation? Or do they want you to tell them what to do and just get things done? If you use the wrong language with a key decision-maker you’ll frustrate them, lose credibility, and waste time and energy.
Every person you interact with has an unspoken list of self-interests that influence their behavior. Some people are influenced by accuracy and perfection and others are interested in consensus and including all of the right people. The more you listen to people and learn firsthand what’s important, the more you’ll be able to fulfill a person’s self-interests and work to convert their desires into solutions you can provide.
Stop using acronyms. Acronyms are really helpful in providing a shortcut for communicating within certain groups or teams. However, when you use a technical acronym a client, customer, or leader doesn’t know or understand you create a division between you and the other person. This is a division that erodes trust and respect and prevents you from understanding what’s at stake and important. If you want to build resonance and communicate credibly, stop using technical jargon and talk in terms the other person understands.
Presenting solutions that you hear yes to is rooted in being thought of as a trusted business partner. This means you will have insight, experience, and perspectives that are valuable to another person. To build the receptivity to hear your ideas and partner with you on an issue requires that you listen to understand rather than listen to respond. If you listen to understand you will leave others heard and understood in powerful ways. Once someone feels heard they are significantly more receptive to listening to your recommendations and trusting what you have to say. Strategic business partners are highly adept at asking the critical business questions in the “Why Focusing on Inputs Is a Career-Limiting Move” section of the Projects Principle.
Whatever your functional role or expertise, my recommendation is counterintuitive—forget your technical expertise and instead focus on the other person’s most pressing business objectives. This is hard for some technologically trained professionals because they view the world from a technological perspective. Learning how to talk in less binary or linear ways and focus more on strategic business issues and how you can help achieve business goals should be your number-one priority.
Most people who enter highly technical fields have fallen in love with their technology. They love using their education and training to solve highly complex technical problems and take a great deal of personal pride in doing so. And therein lies the problem. They place more value on being a firefighter than they do on helping others become fire retardant.
Tim Chester at the University of Georgia told me, “IT departments should outsource the transactional and keep the transformative.” This type of thinking leaves many technically trained people feeling uncomfortable, as it represents a sea change in how they view the value they provide. They only know how to be the hired technical pair of hands and not an advisor who creates accelerated business results. This is a death knell for most technically trained professionals.
Every interaction throughout your day involves, impacts, and influences those with whom you work. The question is whether or not your impact and influence is positive. Your intent may be as pure as driven snow, but if your impact is negative your influence deteriorates. Technically trained professionals need to remember that if there is nothing very distinctive about their work and the value they create then they will end up extinct.
If you remember, what the human resource director wanted was clear and authoritative data. What the seven steps allow you to have is a clear and authoritative executive presence. When you add data with executive presence you have an unmatched combination.
Listening can be an art form. As with paintbrushes and paint in the hands of a gifted artist, listening can create a masterpiece that brings delight and awe to the person being listened to. In the next section I will share eight strategies to use when you do open your mouth, as opposed to the previous seven strategies that detail what to do before you open your mouth. The ideal way to look at the previous section is with regards to receptive persuasion and the following eight as expressive persuasion.
In this section we’ll talk about how to present your ideas in such a way that people will want to say yes to them. There are eight strategies for having someone say yes to your requests. Some of the strategies are more mindset-related and others are more skill set related. But in each case the strategies are a positive step forward to hearing someone say yes to your ideas.
Although it may seem repetitive or unnecessary, the first mindset strategy reminds us to be of service. Why do you need reminding to be of service? Because there is continuing pressure at all levels of an organization to deliver business results, sometimes at any cost. The admonition is to do more, do it better, do it faster, and do it cheaper. This mantra can, depending on how it’s deployed, place results ahead of relationships, profits ahead of people, and doing ahead of being.
To be of service to another you must start by caring deeply about what is important to the person you want to persuade. This requires knowing that you have business objectives that must be accomplished, but that getting a “sale” may preclude you from getting a second, third, or fourth much more profitable sale. The only way to secure the fourth sale is to make sure the first and all subsequent sales are clearly linked to being of service to the other person and making his or her life easier or better. What specifically are their priorities and what, if any, promises have they made that you can help them achieve? Everything you accomplish will start here.
Persuading someone to say yes to your request rests with you being persuaded also. In the 1980s when Ronald Reagan was president and Tip O’Neal was speaker of the house, both men knew that having the president’s agenda make its way through the House of Representatives would only be accomplished with Tip O’Neal’s approval.
Although both men were consummate politicians and negotiators, they knew that an openness to being persuaded was essential to making political progress. They were open to being persuaded, and by doing so, provided the other person with something they could live with but probably not love. What’s important to remember with the Persuasion Principle is that persuading another person to your way of seeing a situation is never a black-and-white, right-or-wrong type of proposition, but more along the lines of good, better, and best.
The same holds true with securing a yes to your ideas of, say, $450,000 of added head count. If the only option is for someone to provide you with exactly $450,000 worth of additional headcount or else, you are likely going to be disappointed and seen as a “my way or the highway” type of leader. What is required in order to hear yes from a colleague or boss when requesting additional resources is a clear willingness to be receptive to new and possibly more resourceful ways of thinking about the allocation of resources. It is a resourcefulness that is capable of being persuaded to see your perspective differently. Rather than an “or else” mindset, cultivate a collaborative and mutually beneficial mindset.
Exuding confidence for many leaders is not a problem. The problem is that their confidence comes from their title or where their names appear on the organizational chart as opposed to the power of their ideas. When this happens their confidence is perceived as arrogance. Arrogance, an exaggerated belief in one’s abilities or importance, is not attractive and repels the adoption of ideas.
Confidence, on the other hand, is rooted in certainty and belief in a position, person, or outcome. Confidence about your ideas, when coupled with a collaboration and mutually beneficial mindset, are essential for transformational leaders. If you believe in something firmly, are willing to be persuaded, and are enthused for persuading others, you’ve built the foundation for the next step.
Far too often we are dissociated from the present moment. We predominantly think about our past experiences with persuading others and whether or not we were successful, or we are projecting into the future and thinking about our request for additional resources and what we’ll do if we’re rejected. When our thinking is in the past or future we aren’t listening to the person discuss his or her priorities and hopes for the future. We’re interpreting him or her based on our past or our future, both of which preclude us from hearing subtle clues in voice tone and word choices. It also creates anxiety and apprehension. Coaches always say to athletes, “Get your head in the game,” whenever an athlete makes a simple mistake. For transformational leaders the clarion call is to get your mindset in the moment.
When you are presenting an idea you will hear concerns, objections, or questions. This is exactly what you want. Concerns, objections, and questions show engagement whereas a flat refusal to support you shuts off any conversation. When you hear an objection such as, “My priorities are to reduce my budget by 7.5 percent while also decreasing the wait time for customers on hold regarding the new credit card promotion. I know I can do this because the one-time expenses for the closed office in Baltimore will be completed by fourth quarter, so I’ll be okay there, but I do need to reduce the wait time.”
The objective in using the if/then strategy is simply to continue the conversation to see if the collaboration and mutual benefit strategy can be utilized. For example, “Paula, I have an idea about how I can help you decrease the customers’ on-hold time issue you have. If it were possible that my team, who has successfully worked on this same issue for us, could share our best practices and help you accomplish the hold time targets you want, would you then be willing to help me with the headcount issue I’m working on?”
If you want someone to say yes to providing you with additional resources, an important step is to provide them with three attractive options for saying yes. If you have high levels of trust and respect and a track record of exemplary results, presenting only one option has, at most, a 25 percent chance of success. Presenting only one option leaves people curious about other possibilities and a “no” becomes the easiest way to halt the process.
When you provide two options it presents a binary choice, which usually falls into the thought process of “right and wrong” or “good and bad.” This also halts the process and reduces the odds of someone saying yes to your ideas to the same odds of flipping a coin—a 50/50 chance of success. Conversely, when you provide three options, all of which are capable of meeting the other person’s needs, wants, or objectives, your success rate on one of your options being accepted goes up to 90 percent.
Without language we can’t request that a barista make our favorite coffee; we can’t make known our feelings for a partner, spouse, or child; and we can’t tell the doctor where it hurts. Language is a powerful tool for good or ill, but in the world of email, Twitter, and social media it has devolved to an abridged 140-character world of the fewest possible words. Culturally, we now accept “No worries” as a response to a positive gesture as opposed to “You’re welcome.”
I observed two leaders in a team meeting discuss a difficult and complex issue. On three occasions, the first leader used language such as “That idea won’t work” and “That’s unnecessarily complex and cumbersome.” The second leader used language such as “We can build on that idea by . . .” and “Your ideas are really helpful for me to think more clearly about this issue and how we can move forward faster. Thank you.”
The first leader’s language was rooted in what’s not working and the second leader’s was rooted in what can work next. The first leader was communicating a judgment that what had been extended was unacceptable and unworkable. The second communicated the opposite.
Think of the words you use as seeds planted in the fertile soil of someone’s experience of you and that the response you receive to your ideas and requests are the harvest of what words you planted. The two leaders in the previous example used a different language and had a level of receptivity to their ideas that is directly proportionate to the language. As a transformational leader you should try to choose positive, uplifting, optimistic, and grateful words that are a catalyst for positive persuasion.
This strategy may invite memories of Tom Cruise yelling “Show me the money!” into the phone in the movie Jerry Maguire. Tom Cruise’s character is a down-and-out sports agent desperate to hold onto a client and is persuaded to talk like his football star client. Money is not the answer to every persuasion dilemma you have, but recognize that many leaders in organizations are hyper-focused on driving business results and do see most of the decisions as financial decisions. If your request does not enable someone to see a clear return on investment for saying yes to your idea your will likely fall on deaf ears.
For example, a CIO client of mine was astute enough to recognize that his $179,000 investment in an organization-wide new printer, copier, and faxing system had little to do with a new printer system. Printers were neither what was important nor purchased. What was being purchased was an “accelerator of organizational priorities” that had a 10-fold return on investment. Using several of the previous strategies listed, he clearly articulated the following:
1. The cost in hours related to employee effectiveness, ease of operation/trouble-shooting, and maintenance of the current system.
2. The costs in the future to operate the new system.
3. The amount of miscommunication and document rework based on the current system.
4. The time wasted in mission critical departments due to inefficiencies and how recovering 25 percent of the time wasted was a catalyst for the accomplishment of organizational priorities.
5. How the current system was impacting the senior executive’s individual departments and what increases they would individually receive.
After totaling the figures the CIO showed a value of $3,500,000, but then cut the number in half to show his concern for being conservative on the potential upside. The $1,500,000 upside after the investment of $179,000 had a net gain of $1,321,000 with a seven-fold return on each dollar spent. This presentation showed key decision-makers that this CIO was a strategic business partner to the rest of the organization—a business partner who was committed to delivering high-value results.
In this section you learned the three-part persuasion process along with detailed actions to make each step applicable to the real world. In the next section you’ll take these strategies and compliment them with what is the most underused and misunderstood principle in the book: the Praising Principle.