Category Archives: Leadership

How to influence anyone to do anything (so long as it is in there interests too)

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I walked to the front of the meeting room past my muttering colleagues.

My hands clammy, my shirt beginning to soak with perspiration in the air conditioned room. Blinded momentarily by the projector, I faced my audience. Their faces raptly attentive as they waited for the first words to come.

I noticed my boss as he glanced at his watch. A phone buzzed in silent mode on the table and all eyes were drawn toward it. Someone muttered an apology as he picked up the errant phone and read the message.

I had spent weeks preparing for this meeting. We were about to introduce a new computer system across the entire business and everyone in the room would be effected. Nobody wanted the new system. I stumbled through my slides, gave them all the facts and outlined the plan. Still nobody wanted the new system.

I had failed to influence my colleagues to support the project.

So why had my long-prepared presentation failed to achieve the intended result?

triangle of influence

The answer lies in the Triangle of Influence

When we are influenced to do something, we connect three things inside the brain:

  1. The goal we will achieve
  2. The resources achieving the goal costs, and
  3. The personal benefits that we get out of achieving the goal.

When we believe that we have more value in the benefit than the cost, we will be motivated to act on achieving the goal. But if we believe that the cost outweighs the benefit, we will not be motivated to act.

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What kind of reflections do you see in the faces of the people you meet?

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Long ago in a small, far away village, there was place known as the House of 1000 Mirrors. A small, happy little dog learned of this place and decided to visit. When he arrived, he bounced happily up the stairs to the doorway of the house. He looked through the doorway with his ears lifted high and his tail wagging as fast as it could. To his great surprise, he found himself staring at 1000 other happy little dogs with their tails wagging just as fast as his. He smiled a great smile, and was answered with 1000 great smiles just as warm and friendly. As he left the House, he thought to himself, “This is a wonderful place. I will come back and visit it often.”

“This is a wonderful place. I will come back and visit it often”

In this same village, another little dog, who was not quite as happy as the first one, decided to visit the house. He slowly climbed the stairs and hung his head low as he looked into the door. When he saw the 1000 unfriendly looking dogs staring back at him, he growled at them and was horrified to see 1000 little dogs growling back at him. As he left, he thought to himself, “That is a horrible place, and I will never go back there again.”

All the faces in the world are mirrors. What kind of reflections do you see in the faces of the people you meet?

 

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5 areas of stress and anxiety in your life

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Stress and anxiety. It can smack you in the head when you least expect it.

It can creep up on you and before you realize what has happened, your skin tingles, your heart is racing, your breathing shallow and you are ready to lash out at your nearest and dearest for minor offenses.

In previous oists, I have explained what happens in your brain and the different types of stress. Now lets look at the 5 areas in your life that are affected by stress. The more we know about our own peculiar stress response, the more readily we can deal with it effectively.

16 JourneyThe first area of life we’ll look at is the Journey.

Your journey is your path through life – it’s your story, your memories, your history, your beliefs,values, purpose and calling. Stress in this area is often caused by the lack of something or an imbalance in our journey in life and the choices we have made. For many, it is a lack of defined purpose – quaintly referred to as a “mid-life crisis” (should be) where we suddenly start asking ourselves “what’s the point of all of this?” (alone). Stress here can also be tied to our memories and history of fear and worry in the past and triggered in the present.

42 DoingThe second area of our life, we call “Doing”. This is the sphere of action and reaction – the practical aspects of our life. Stress and anxiety in this area can be caused through a feeling of overwhelm or overload because we believe we cannot do what is necessary (persistence) – or perhaps we have simply taken on too much. Perhaps we feel that the risk of action is too great and the alarm bells ring that perhaps our goal is too stretching (almost)?

68 Just BeThe third area we call “Just Be”. This is our emotional being and the way we flow through life. Stress in this area may be caused because we hold on to grievances and bitterness (forgiveness) about others and about ourselves. Perhaps you are being asked to compromise your values or authenticity in order to succeed in this fallen world. Our chosen attitude (gratitude) towards life has a major impact on how we respond to stressful situations.

DifficultyThe fourth area is “Difficulties”. This is the challenging aspects of our lives. As we journey through life we all face difficulties and challenges (failure) – how we approach these can determine the stress and anxiety we feel as we choose how we avoid or overcome our challenges. We may feel guilty about our failure or perhaps we just hold our own “pity party” (self-pity) as we make excuses for being stuck.

120 OpportunitiesThe fifth area we examine is “Opportunities”. How we go about enriching our daily lives, how open and ready we are to things that happen around us can have a significant impact on our levels of stress and anxiety. Perhaps a different point of view will enable us to align ourselves and innovate a way to succeed.

Our stress can be rooted in one or all areas. The way these life areas interplay in our thinking and emotions enable us to choose to cope with or overcome the stressors that life does, and will continue to, present. As we dig a little deeper into our personal response to life happening, we learn what triggers our own stress and anxiety. And once we know the enemy, we can prepare for every battle in our war on stress and anxiety.

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6 Top Reasons Leaders Seek Coaching

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Why do leaders seek coaching? Over the past twenty years of coaching, I have found that leaders seek to a coach for six main reasons, and more urgently when two or more of these reasons combine:

So just what can a coach do for you?

A coach can help you:
  • Gain insight – particularly about how current behaviour is PERCEIVED by others through providing feedback and assessment.
  • Get Clarity of Purpose – Extroverted people who are outer directed (and rewarded behaviours in this world) tend to get their self-esteem from satisfying others’ expectations of them. This may cause them to lose touch with what is truly important for themselves. Without clarity of purpose, you may tend to rush through days not knowing what you want to achieve. Often asking what others want rather than seeming to have opinions of their own. Reflection and review through coaching can help here.
  • Help you improve relationships – changing behaviours in relationships changes their perception of the other party and you’ll get more open and honest feedback. Coaching that helps you conduct planned conversations with colleagues is especially useful here.
  • Broaden your perspectives – we all play a role and have a preference of the way we process…. increasing the diversity of opinions we consider in decisions broadens our perspective leading to improved and more acceptable decisions.
  • Develop your leadership skills – developing the skills each individual needs for their new position or a future role.
  • Help you Identify and overcome barriers to change – change occurs over time, unlearning is often resisted, especially deeply rooted habits, and stress causes us to revert to preference. Self-righteousness is often the biggest barrier. Coaching can identify and discuss the roadblocks developing strategies and new ways of thinking to overcome them.
  • Improve your ability to learn – dependence on your coach for feedback is a disservice. Internalizing the ability to learn and continuously grow, sustaining behaviour and results. Coaching uses a cyclical process, making this process explicit, the coachee becomes more skilled at using the same process on their own.

When is Coaching needed?

There are times in life and work when we would benefit from the experience, wisdom and knowledge of people who have been in similar situations. If you are looking for one such person, then you are looking for a coach. Most coaches are professionals, people with considerable experience in one or more sectors, more often than not trained in coaching skills. They choose to become coaches as they are willing to help others by sharing their experience and by helping their coachees to find solutions to their issues, following them through a plan of action.

According to a report published by CIPD (Chartered Institute of Personnel Development), one in five chief executives claim that having had a coach was critical for their success.

Young graduates report to have found their feet in the organisation thanks to the help of their most experienced colleagues. Even people coming up to retirement have been eased through this difficult stage of their life through people who have “been there before”. Within a work environment there are many situations where the help of a coach would be appropriate.
Typical Situations when having a coach will really help you
  • Starting in a new job/position when you are expected to hit the ground running.
  • Taking on a new role or responsibility, or starting in a new industry where you have little experience, but need to gain the skills and experience quickly.
  • When needing a personal assessment to determine your strengths and weaknesses, and consider what you should be doing in order to maximize your potential.
  • When striving for promotion or a new position.
  • When needing to talk through your thought processes, strategies, and plans in order to move forward.
  • When struggling with certain skills and performance areas and you wish to improve.
  • When feeling you have reached a plateau in your career and want to explore options.

 

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What is Influence? | Book Yourself Solid

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Leadership is Influence, nothing more, nothing less – Dr John C. Maxwell

In the 20 plus years that I have been training, coaching and mentoring leaders across the globe, this is still true. But there are different ways to influence others, which is right for you? Michael Port reviews Bob Burg’s latest book:

I know a guy who gets (almost) everything he wants. Let’s call him Fred. He wins every negotiation. He successfully argues down every bill/invoice. He gets people to finish things when he wants them to. However, and this is big however, nobody wants to play or work with him ever again. He berates, bullies and threatens others into submission. It’s just easier to give him his way then deal with him.

To me, he seems miserable and he makes everyone else miserable as a result. But, he gets what he wants.

Is that influence? I suppose so. Is that the kind of influencer you want to be? I imagine not.

But what do you do if you’re not so tough? What do you do if your natural way of being is empathetic, kind and easy going? What if you don’t like to make waves?

According to Bob, in Adversaries Into Allies, there’s a much better way. It’s more fun, and a lot more effective. For both immediate and long-term, sustainable results, helping people make decisions that are not only in your best interest, but in alignment with their best interests as well, is the way to go.

Doing this effectively, consistently, and predictably, however, takes influence. In the book, Bob shows you how to:

  1. Control your own emotions: Responding calmly rather than allowing your emotions to get the better of you will ensure not putting others on the defensive but rather help them remain open to your ideas.
  2. Understand the clash of belief systems: Every individual operates based on an unconscious set of beliefs, experiences, and ideas, which are most likely very different from yours. Understand this and you can avoid confusion and numerous misunderstandings that stand in the way of most people’s ability to influence.
  3. Acknowledge their ego: People want to feel good about themselves; if you make someone genuinely feel good, you’re one step closer to making an ally.
  4. Set the proper frame: People react and respond to other people. Approach potential conflicts from a position of benevolence, resolution, and helpfulness and they will follow suit. Vital: being able to reset another’s already existing negative frame.
  5. Communicate with tact and empathy: While the first four principles are vital, this is what brings it all home. Saying the right thing at the right time makes all the difference in terms of moving people to your side of the issue and taking the appropriate action that benefits all concerned.
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