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Welcome to this week’s episode of the HRDQ-U In Review podcast, where we bring you the latest insights and practical tools for enhancing soft skills training within your organization. This podcast is brought to you by HRDQU.com, and I’m your host, Sarah, Learning Events Manager at HRDQ-U. And today I have Chris Wong joining me, and he has been here with us on the podcast before. He is a guru on all things communication, and today we’re going to discuss the webinar

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How to Build Your Powerbase and Influence Across the Organization. So, welcome back, Chris. Thanks for joining me today. Thanks for having me. I love talking to you. I love talking about this. And for any of our folks that are new here that maybe don’t know too much about yourself, can you share a little bit about who you are, what you do, some of your background for us? Yeah, sure. So I currently am an executive coach and licensed therapist. I have my own business. um

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And I previously worked in leadership and organizational development. And currently I work with nonprofit leaders, really focusing on helping them create high performing cultures, high performing teams, expanding their influence, turning their strategic plans into strategic action, really making sure that people can have the impact they want to have. And I know I’ve asked you this question before, but there’s so much that changes all the time and at such a lightning speed these days.

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Now, what current changes are you seeing happening in the L &D space right now? Yeah, I was preparing for this and I was thinking there was so much about AI that even when we last spoke, I think, I don’t know, whatever, six months ago, a year ago, it wasn’t even as much conversation about it. And I think because it’s just been so widespread now, so many different types of tools, there’s, they’re not

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expensive like VR is a great tool, but it’s not affordable for lots of people. But AI is there’s lots of free resources out there. You can even have AI create videos of people talking. So you don’t even have to record yourself doing it anymore. So I think it’s interesting, uh having all this AI technology. And there’s so much so many webinars, even through HRTQ, I’ve seen multiple webinars about AI, and conferences are talking about AI. So

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It’ll be interesting to see what we do with that and how because it’s so unregulated too. And so I wonder how it’s going to shape out. And I know that we just have to get used to it or else we’re going to be left behind. But yeah, it’ll be interesting. And have you found it helpful in your day to day business in any way? Have you found it? You know, has it affected affected you, you at all in, know, what you do in your day to day? Yeah, I, actually use chat GPT quite a bit. ah I know people are concerned about

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writing using it for writing. And I think it’s just a good way to get out of that writer’s block. It just gives me an idea of like, Oh, let me get an outline of this. Great. Now I can use this outline to then build my own stories or write what I want to write. So it’s a good way to just do a spot check on what I’m doing and do a little bit more. um What’s it called a little more of a proofreading that I could do by myself. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of Gemini by Google. Yeah.

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But that’s a new one. that one actually can help you create AI images. So I’ve been exploring that just so that because I know it’s one of those things where I can’t always use um licensed images. So if I could find a way to do free images, even better. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And so what’s in your pipeline? What current things are you up to next? Well, I have my own podcast.

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the art and science of difficult conversations. ah And that’s available everywhere. So you can watch that. ah I have a difficult conversations course that I’ve spoken about here on HRDQ. And I’m going to relaunch that on March 11th. And everybody here can actually get a 10 % discount by using the code HRDQU. And I’ll talk about that later. And also I’m working on a white paper on how nonprofits can

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overcome barriers to implementing strategic plans. And so that’ll be published mid-March. So I’ll have that out and then I think I’ll do a similar webinar on that topic in June. think it is. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, make sure that you check the description below where we have all the information on the discount that Chris just mentioned. And so we recently did this webinar together on how to build your power base and influence across organizations.

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Can you share what the key takeaways were for our registrants at that event for those folks that haven’t had the opportunity to tune into either the live event or the recording yet? Yeah. Yeah. I think the biggest takeaways were the importance of growing your network internally. And I think there’s often a misconception or a myth about how networking is either playing politics, which is being seen as fake or hypocritical or brown nosing.

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Or it’s for extroverts only. But the problem is, if you only focus on doing good at your job, you’re leaving yourself at risk. You know, that’s why I, that’s one of the big reasons I got laid off was not just because of, you know, I was performing at a high level, but I didn’t do a good enough job building strong relationships to make myself invaluable in both areas. You know, or some people make themselves too of a networker and they focus only on that.

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and they don’t have the skill sets to bring value and then they’re also putting themselves at risk. So it’s really about intentionally building relationships. And then also we talked about how do you strategically build relationships across your organization? It’s not just finding whoever is a VP and whoever is a CEO, COO. It’s about finding who are also the stars and like the really well-connected people all across the different departments.

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so that you’re aligned and you’re able to create good connections and they trust you, they think of you first, they’re willing to sponsor you, but you’re also willing to help them and you’re able to get that in place. And then we also talked about how individually, how to approach each person, finding out their interests, their needs. But essentially you’re finding ways to build a genuine relationship. And it doesn’t mean you have to be best friends with them, you don’t have go hang out with them, but it should be a relationship where you both are interested in helping each other succeed.

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Yeah, and I recommend if you haven’t had the opportunity to watch the webinar that you do so because it was, had a really highly engaged audience. It was a great time over there. how can um new supervisors learn the importance of influence and also build their influence within their organization? Yeah, I think that’s a commonly missed opportunity is frontline supervisors, especially they’re focused on

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They’re really good at doing that job, their frontline work, and they want to just do that. And, you know, I think any good training or coaching from their own manager should be around the importance of they need to start thinking big picture and start thinking more strategically, even though they’re still doing that frontline work to a degree. They need to start thinking about what are the relationships that will help help my team perform better? What other departments do I need to touch base with? What other people do I need to connect with?

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At my previous employer, I was always trying to help other people connect to other departments. So whether it’s in payroll or in HR, who are your contacts that you really need to know and be friends with so that you can get things done for your team? You know, if you need to fix payroll, if you need to fix something about somebody’s benefits, knowing who to go to can really cut down on a lot of the red tape as opposed to just filing a support ticket that gets lost.

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But if you know who to silos. Yeah, breaking down those silos. So instead of that, you know, the common way of thinking about it is like the horseshoe model communication, right? Like you go through your supervisor who goes through their supervisor, then goes to the other department’s VP down to them, which is really inefficient. But if you know who you need to talk to, you can just go straight to them directly and figure it out. Yeah. And so so, you know, what would what would one do if senior management has a negative opinion about

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someone because you know, the other people have talked it down about about them in the workplace. Yeah, I remember somebody asked this at the at the webinar. And I think the hard part is you’re going to have to rebuild those relationships one at a time. Although I’ll say this, even everything I talk about with in terms of engagement and building your power base is one person at a time. There’s no one thing you can do that’ll make everybody love you. You have to

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actually build a relationship with each individual person. So you’re gonna have to go to each senior manager and start building those relationships little by little, start bringing value, start finding ways to help them get a win. So whether bringing resources or helping them with something they’re stuck on, helping their team with something, but you have to change that opinion slowly. And you have to start meeting with them on ongoing basis, the more you can talk with them.

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the more you can slowly show them that that initial uh perception may be wrong. But you’re only going to do that by actually talking to them and bringing them wins. And so you’re going to have to be really selfless for a little bit. And this next question I have for you, I love, because I think that it can be really tough for introverts. What do you do if you’re an introvert? Yeah, I’ve thought about this for a long time and I’ve talked to a lot of people. And I think it’s important to uh

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to parse out, there’s a difference between being introverted and being shy, because you could be a shy extrovert or an outgoing introvert. Introvert just means that you need to have time by yourself to recharge your batteries. And extroverts just love being around other people. That’s where they get their energy from. So it’s not about whether you’re shy or outgoing. It’s really about where do you get recharged. So I think there’s two questions that people are asking is, what do I do if I’m shy?

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And so I think even if you’re an extrovert, even if you’re outgoing, it’s reframing this whole conversation and not thinking about big events. It’s not thinking about parties or groups that you go to. It’s not talking about how do you be the life of a party at a meeting and talk in front of the meetings and make lots of jokes and make everybody laugh. It’s about really building one-on-one relationships.

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And so even if you’re shy, even if you’re an introvert, I think it’s reasonable to just find ways to have conversations with people one on one. Connect with them. Say, Hey, I’d love to just have some coffee with you and just learn about what you’re doing. Start little start even start smaller than that. Just find them in the hallway or quick zooms and say, how’s your day going? How’s the weather? Learn about them. Share a little bit about yourself. Do you have a family? Do you have hobbies? Do they have hobbies? Learn about them. Start

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with little short conversations. And then from there, you can grow and slowly start finding ways to have more conversation. But don’t stress about, for introverts or shy people, don’t stress about like those big events. Really focus on how can you find ways to have individual conversations and just learn about somebody else, just to ask questions and just find things in common. Taking those small steps to build that.

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that kind of and connections there. so what about, can you give a real world example about building influence and power base across departments? Yeah, I don’t know if I gave this example during the webinar. I’ve given this story so many random times that I can’t be sure. when I was first developing this leadership development fellowship at my organization, uh

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the there were a couple of other VPs and the CEO that had a very strong opinion about how the program should be run and Because I was developing it I knew that the way they were thinking about it would never work or not It wouldn’t never work is this would require so intense logist manpower and resources that would be very difficult more so than they wanted to invest in it and So when they first brought it up, I pushed back and I said

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listen, this is not really going to work this way because of this reason and that reason. They were not going to hear it. They didn’t want to hear it. They didn’t want to talk about it. They said, no, no, we’ll make it work. I think the VPs were over operations. And so they were, they said, we make the impossible work every day. So don’t tell us we can’t do this. So I was like, all right, that’s clearly not going to work. So what I did was I started meeting with them, what I call a heartbeat meeting. So I just met with them every other week.

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for 15 minutes, 20 minutes at a time just to show them, hey, this is what I’m working on. This is the resources I need in order to continue developing this. What do you think? Getting their input. So making them a part of the process, but not burdening them with having to build stuff. So over time, they saw that I was working on this, starting to build stuff. And then over time, after a few months, I was able to start sharing, OK, so this is the issue. If we want to do it this way, we need this many resources, or we can push it back or do this or whatever.

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essentially change it to the way I originally suggested. And so because they had seen me working on this, because I had built that rapport and the trust that they knew I was working in their best interests, they agreed with what I what I said, they were willing to make the modifications I had originally suggested months ago. ah And they also I mean, probably also because time had gone by and they forgot what it was originally they wanted. But the reality is, I built enough relationship that I could suggest it.

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and they were okay with pushing, they were okay with doing things the way I wanted to do it. And so- The time to build the trust with them so that they, you know, took your word for what you were saying and- Exactly, exactly. Yeah, and it’s, I think that’s one of those key things that is hard for people to wrap their heads around is the time scale. It just takes time to build this. There’s no-

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There’s no one single conversation where you can suddenly get people to agree with everything you ever think. You know, especially if you don’t have any uh formal authority over them. I can’t force this VP or the CEO to do anything. So it’s really about how do I get them to trust me and trust that I’m working in their best interests? Yeah. And absolutely. And so before we sign off today, Chris, where can listeners go to connect with you and learn more?

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A few different places. my website is my leadership potential.com. You can go there and you can get information about me my services as well as the a couple of the courses I have like the difficult, difficult conversations course. um You can go follow me on LinkedIn. That’s where I’m most active. That’s where I post or respond to people or message people. I’ve tried getting into Instagram. I just like I’ve, I understand how it works, but I just don’t know what I can do on it.

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So but I don’t worry about that. I have a podcast the art and science of difficult conversations. You can follow you can find that anywhere Please listen to it. Let me know what you think If you have if anybody here has any suggestions they want us topics they want us to cover I’m happy we’re happy to cover it And then yeah, if you want to learn more about the difficult conversations course, you can go to Www.tinyurl.com leadership potential

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Get on a waiting list and just get more information because it’s going to be launching soon. And again, with the code HRDQU, all of these listeners, you can get 10 % off the course. Yes. Make sure that you check that out. We will have all of this information linked in the description below there. And with that, thank you, Chris, for your time today. Yeah. Thank you. Always a pleasure talking.

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And again, if you have not watched the webinar, make sure that you click the link in the description and check that out. Make sure you check out the Difficult Conversations course as well. And thank you all for tuning in to this week’s episode. We hope you enjoy listening to the HRDQ-U In Review podcast available on all major streaming platforms.

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If you did enjoy today’s episode, make sure to give us a follow and leave us a five-star review that allows us to continue to produce this content for you weekly. Thank you all for tuning into this week’s episode of the HRDQ-U In Review podcast brought to you by HRDQ-U.