A Bigger You: Selling Your Ideas & Increasing Your Influence

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Hi, Everyone, and welcome to today’s webinar, A Bigger You: Are: Selling Your Ideas and Increasing Your Influence, Hosted by HRDQ-U and presented by Bill Treasurer.
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My name is Sarah, and I will moderate today’s webinar. The webinar will last around one hour. If you have any questions, please type them into the question area on your GoToWebinar control panel, and we’ll answer as many as we can during today’s session.
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Today’s webinar is sponsored by Giant leap Consulting.
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Giant leap Consulting is on a mission to build workplace courage. They partner with valued clients to set bold strategies, build strong teams, and develop courageous leaders.
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Their aim is to drive out fears that everyone can work with, honesty, accountability, passion, and enjoy.
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Repeat clients include NASA, e-bay, Lenovo Southern Company, the National Science Foundation and the Social Security Administration, learn more at WWW dot giant leap consulting dot com.
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I’m excited to introduce today’s presenter of Bell Treasure.
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Is founder and Chief Encouragement Officer at Giant Leap Consulting, a courage building company that exists to help people and organizations live more courageously.
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He is considered the originator of the new organizational development practice of courage building and is the author of the internationally best-selling book. Courage Goes To Work.
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Upon release, the book became the sixth best-selling management book in China.
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For over two decades, Bill has designed and delivered leadership and succession planning programs for experienced and emerging leaders for clients such as NASA Center, e-bay, CNN, Saks Fifth Avenue, Hugo Boss, and many more.
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Thank you for joining us today, Bill.
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All right, terrific. Thanks so much for that warm introduction, Sarah. And I do want to start off by thanking Sarah. She’s always so helpful in getting me and other authors and webinar hosts and providers situated. She does a great job behind the scenes marshaling a lot of work together to get us to this point. So thank you, Sarah. Thank you HRDQ and HRDQ-U. And thank all of you for showing up today, for your interest in learning more about courage and influence, how to have more influence, how to sell your ideas, and how to be a bigger you, and in other words, how to stop playing small.
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How do you have a career that is thriving?
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That you are well networked?
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That you are tapped into the right power bases and that you can be more influential in your career, in what you offer to the organizations that you serve.
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And you’re going to see here in just a moment that it really connects to the idea of leadership personal leadership.
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To get things started, I want to tell you just a very little bit about my company giant leap consulting, as Sarah mentioned. We are a courage building company, would do three different service lines. The first is courageous future where we help organizations set their strategic plan and bold goals. If you want to put courage in a system, it has to start with a bold future that you’re trying to create. So we have courageous leadership.
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The second thing is, we design, develop, and deliver comprehensive leadership development programs.
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Some of them are two years in nature, where we get together with groups and cohorts of new leaders, and sometimes experienced leaders going through and experiencing 12 to 15 leadership summits topics that are essential to leadership.
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And today you’re gonna get a taste of one of those topics. And then finally, we do courageous teaming.
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Leaders have to get things done by mobilizing functional and aligned teams that get along and work productively, marshaled toward some goals. And we know that sometimes teams can have dysfunctions. So we do team building, and team interventions.
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Sometimes working with senior executive teams to make sure that they are being good leaders for the rest of the organization.
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When I talked about the leadership summits that we provide, today, you’re gonna get an hour’s worth on influence, which really connects to leadership, but these are an example of some of the other courses that we have, which can be delivered in person as workshops or virtually now, because, in the covert Covitz situation, we all had to make the pivot, just like everybody else. But you see some of the topics here. Courageous leadership is our signature program, leading and managing change, optimizing conflict. In other words, getting the most out of it. Coaching, excellence, customer connected, motivating self and others.
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Decision making and risk taking, et cetera. But today, you’re here for influence, so let’s talk about what our agenda is.
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First, we’re going to define, what do we mean by influence, and why do you want to pay attention to it.
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We’re going to talk a little bit about things that will kill your influence and harm your career.
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Third, we’re going to talk about the basics.
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Let’s let’s get a ground level understanding.
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What do we mean by influence?
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We’re going to talk about how you can communicate in a way that gets through to people that amplifies your influence.
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We’re going to also talk about, if you want me to make things happen, and you’re not in a formal position of leadership authority, how did he get the ear of people who are, how do you influence the influencers? How do you influence leaders?
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And, along the way, and towards the end, I’ll share with you some tips about influence, one of them being the most important ingredients of all when it comes to influence.
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And with that, I do want to share with you that we’re happy to send a PDF of all of the slides with the resources. And, these are some of the resources that we would suggest a person wanting to know about, influence tap into.
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We can send you the slide deck, which includes this list of resources, and we have a handout that is a participant workbook that we use in our workshop on influence. You can have for free, as well.
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Some of what I’m going to be introducing you today comes from two major sources.
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one is a book called We Can’t Do It Alone, Building Influence with Simple Strategies by a gentleman named Fred Jewel, who was one of my bosses at Accenture and the book.
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So a very practical book on Influence, Probably the most widely read book in the world.
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Uninfluenced is a book called, Influence The Psychology of Persuasion by doctor Robert …, and it’s loaded with material, and some of what we’re gonna cover today is informed by both of those works, but also informed by my interactions. Coaching thousands of executives over the last 30 years, seeing what works and what doesn’t work. And later, I’ll tell you about my own job that I had while I was at Accenture, that relied on influence to get things done.
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Here’s what I’d like you to do very quickly, To get things going, I’d like you to draw what you see on the screen here, Draw two circles with the word me in it, and me as you, then put four arrows going into one of the circles and four arrows going out to one of the circles.
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And we’re gonna do this quickly.
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In fact, this whole webinar is going to move at a groundbreaking speed, because we have a lot of content to cover.
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The first activity I want you to do is, who’s success!
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Depends on you doing a great job, in other words, who can’t even do a great job unless you deliver a great job to them.
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First, who are some names that you would put of people who are counting on you to do a great job?
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I’ll give you light NaN to jot down some names around that circle.
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Next, I want you to think about, who do you depend on doing a great job?
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Because you can’t even do a great job unless they do it first.
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Then they tag their work off to you, and it informs what you do.
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So who do you depend on doing a great job, so that you can be successful and put down some names there.
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This is a quick activity that we often set our individual workshop on influence up with, because you’re likely to have some similar names on those two lists.
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And even if you aren’t, it shows you that you can’t do it alone.
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None of us can.
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We can’t do our work alone. We can’t be successful alone, not in the workplace.
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So there are people who are depending on you, to do a great job and others that you depend on, and that becomes a circle of influence.
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You’ve got to make sure you are tapped into both of those groups and that’s how you become influential.
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Defining the word influence, so what do we even mean by influencing? This comes from the Cambridge dictionary online.
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Influence is the act or power of producing an effect without apparent exertion of force, or direct exercise of command.
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Meaning, you can be influential, and not have direct reports.
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It’s not about coercive power or asserting your positional authority over someone to get things done. Because anybody could do that.
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But influence is to be able to do it, when you don’t have to rely on those things.
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Now, we’re going to do a quick poll here that Sarah is going to launch for us, based on that definition you just heard, Uh, I want you to answer some of the poll question.
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We got four poll questions to be coming up for you right now.
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Yes.
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So the poll is now live, and I’ll give you about 20 more seconds or so to submit your answer.
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Great!
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You see the first one there, influences design, defined as the ability, et cetera.
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Have an effect on the actions or behaviors of somebody else. How influential are you?
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For example, OK, great, and then we will get those results up on the board there for everyone to see.
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See those responses there? Because I see for the first one, And that is that 45% of you consider yourself to be somewhat influential, 35% of you say, Yep, I’m influential, and 11% of you say I’m very influential.
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Terrific.
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Let’s go to poll question number two.
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What I do think is that, you know, most of us could stand to be more influential, so if you feel like you’re somewhat, and that was the highest percentage, there’s certainly room for you to be more influential.
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Which of these, for question number two, is not true?
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First response being influence is related to getting people to, uh, do favors, I believe.
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You can read it there.
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So, which of these is not true?
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Influence is a hallmark of leadership. The more likable you are, the more influential you are.
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Doing favors for people that doesn’t relate to influence, the more knowledge you have on a subject, the more influence you will have.
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So, which isn’t true.
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We see the answers coming in.
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Give you five more seconds here to submit your answer.
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OK, great, Teressa results there.
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Great, so 38% of you said, doing favors for people, doesn’t relate to influence, and that’s true. It’s a reverse negative question. Is asking you, which is not true.
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And that is not true, because in fact, doing for favors for people is one of the way of you have a lot of power and agency after you’ve done a favorite for somebody, because you scratch their back, and the expectation on their end is that they will scratch yours. So, this, you actually have that, that 38% of you got that one, right? Influence is related to I can’t read the full one, just the way my screen is. Oh, I can. Maybe I can stretch it out here. I see it.
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The first response there, Oh, getting people to comply. Actually, influence has a lot to do with compliance.
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When you get people to do something that is your wishes and get them to say Yes or do the thing that you want. That actually is practically the definition of compliance. And the studies that Robert …
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have done has done is in the area of compliance and it equates to influence the more likable you are, the more influence you will have, believe it or not.
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I know that likeability is an interesting topic but it actually does connect people that are likable are able to get through to people without defensiveness and are often able to have more influence. Great. Let’s move on to question number three.
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And the polling is in progress here which would have the most influence over you.
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Bossuet tells you to do something, a close friend who’s actually done a lot for you.
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Your favorite online store when they’re having a big flash sale, keeping my commitment after I’ve sworn to do something.
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The penalties are not for not doing something are really high.
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So which would cause you, Which would have the most influence over you? Give you a little time here.
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We have this result streaming, and we’ll give everybody just five more seconds here. If you haven’t submitted your answer, you can do so now.
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OK, great, and we will share those results in …, so 9% of you said a boss who tells you to do something would be that would have a lot of influence. Over.
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18% said, you know, if I had a friend who has done a lot for me, they’re gonna have influence, 53% of you said keeping your commitment after you’ve sworn to do something, what’s interesting is a verbal promise, when somebody commits to something.
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The chances of them are actually doing it if they have articulated in front of others that they will do.
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It goes up very high. So, it’s actually something that often has influence over people is do they make it verbal, commitment outloud?
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Which is why after at the end of all of your team meetings, you should say, Well, based on what we all talked about, my commitment is X, Y, and Z Let’s go around the horn.
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What let’s hear everybody’s commitments, because if everybody commits to doing something, the likelihood of them doing it are going to go update verbalize it.
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Then some people are motivated by penalties or are not getting things done, So all of these actually connect to influence in one way or the other, but 53% of you honed in on one. That’s extremely powerful. Great. We’re gonna hold off on the fourth question for, now.
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We’ll come back to it later, but I wanted to do some of that, as ground laying. And I’ve said it a couple of times already.
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This idea of leadership connects to influence, So here’s the definition of leadership, a form of behavior by which one person influences others to direct their efforts toward the achievement of goal.
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If, I guarantee you, if you look up a definition of influence, there, there’s a high likelihood.
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If you lookup multiple definitions, the one word that will come out more often than any other word, is influence in the form of leadership.
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Which means you can be a leader, and not have direct reports, as long as you have influence, to cause agency, to cause things to get done, and cause people to change to, to modify behavior through your actions.
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You are being a leader. You are having influence.
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In fact, John Maxwell, who wrote the 21 irrefutable laws of leadership among other people, just put it flat out. This is a quote from him.
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Leadership is influence, so you came to a session today, uninfluenced. but guess what? It also affects this idea of leadership.
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Now, what kills your influence? Let’s let’s just pay attention to that for a moment because the rest of this stuff is gonna be focused on building your influence. Let’s talk about what will harm your influence. First of all, putting results before people.
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If all you’re focused on is the deadline and the deliverable and you don’t care who you railroad and run over to get things done, you will kill your influence.
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It’s the treatment of people that causes the outcome of great results and deliverables.
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And that’s the means towards the end, but too many leaders focus on the end only, and not the means the treatment of people that get you the results that you want. So, putting results before people will kill your influence, being defensive about feedback.
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If you want to grow, you have to be open to constructive criticism about the work that you do, so that you learn to do it better, but if you shut that off, and if you have excuses and get defensive all the time, forget it. It’s going to hurt your influence.
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If you’re a hothead, if you’re explosive.
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If people can see through your moods how you are today and you lack composure, you’re going to have negative influence.
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If you don’t have influential mentors, I guarantee any leader you admire on the world stage, or even in the workplace, if there’s somebody you admire for being a leader, you asked them, who is somebody that was a good mentor to them? They’re going to have one.
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And I know that some people at patching in today may not have one, and you’d have my strong, encouraged one to go and find one, because it is how you learn to become more influential.
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If you try to do everything yourself, Maybe you’re excuses. You’ve got nobody to delegate to, or, that they’re just not good enough to get it done yet.
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If you take on a burden of a workload too, much, yourself, it’s going to limit your influence if you cloister and don’t build a network.
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Either have mentors or peers, and aren’t getting known in your organization. It’s going to limit your influence.
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And being all work and having no recreation time, and having and you don’t have a life, it’s going to limit your influence as well.
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The big thing is hubris.
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Igo will get in the way of influence. If you’re an egotistical set self centered person, then I know you are not, because you came to today’s session.
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But hubris Igo will get in the way I wrote a book about it, you can find it at Leadership Killer, which I wrote with a Navy seal Captain, retired, who was in charge of all the seal teams, including six basics of Influence. Here we go.
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I’m going to ask you to chat in your answers. What are some characteristics of highly influential people?
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And you do this by using the question tool, So use the question tool where it says questions and drop in, Uh, You know, what are some characteristics of highly influential people, see what we get?
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And we see some answers coming in here, servants’. So the idea of being serving others.
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Let’s see, being respected.
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Being motivating epithetic, having some degree of charisma it doesn’t hurt.
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Being generous. Absolutely. If you do things for others, they’ll want to do it for you. Honesty and integrity. You know where, it’s very hard to be influential if you’re a person that people don’t trust.
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Don’t think, have integrity, give and take care of says, of course, the great book, Give and Take by Adam Grant.
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And find, you know, you find out that, the more of a Giver you are, the more successful. you’ll tend to be, and it allows you to do some taking, as well.
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Folks who give their time, they’re a good listener. Yeah. Listening has something to do with it, for sure.
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Lots of ideas, and we see showing, Grace Stefani. That’s an interesting one, I really liked that.
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Grace is something that you give people, even when they don’t deserve it.
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Sincerity, Brent Brenda’s says somebody who is strategic, right? Who has a solid sense of direction.
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My buddy, Michael Wallace says so good stuff here.
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Let’s see.
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Alright, so we’re gonna pause that for right there and I’m going to share with you some other things that will Cause a person to be influentials. So I think influential person. People are first of all accountable.
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They do what they say they’re going to do.
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And they give a rip.
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In other words, they care passionately about the business, about the people in the business.
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They give a rip about the quality of the work that they do. The craftsmanship that they bring.
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They care.
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Second, they take pride in the work of the company, the work of the team and department, and in their own work.
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They have tact.
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They don’t. Bad mouth clients or teammates. They don’t bad mouth, Anybody. You don’t talk about people behind their back.
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They’re driven, they’ll do whatever it takes to get the job safely and ethically within ethical boundaries to get it done.
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They genuinely want to contribute.
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They want to make a positive contribution to help, to learn, to sincerely support others.
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And then, finally, the last one is, they are ethical.
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They compete fairly ethically and passionately, and they’re fully trustworthy, and we’re going to come back to that notion.
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A little bit later, I want to share with you an important concept in organizational development.
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Some of you have seen it before, but it’s worth talking about, because it connects to the idea of influence, and that’s the idea of the locus of control, this general idea of, do I have a mindset that I control my own destiny?
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Or that randomness or other people control my destiny.
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Am I internally locus of control, or, externally lock is strong?
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Do I happened to life, or does life happened to me to run through this very quickly?
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An internal locus of control says, I make things happen.
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An external locus of control, it says, Things happened to me.
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Internal locus of control says, I’m going to act to influence the searcher work situation.
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I don’t the situation not going away that I want it, or I want it to go differently. I can actually do something about it.
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If I have an external locus of control, I think I can’t really affected, so I’m just going to sit back.
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If I’ve got an internal locus of control, my mindset is, I wonder how I contributed to this, if I have an external locus of control, I’m like, it’s time.
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I thought I didn’t have anything to do with this, if I have an internal locus of control, I believe that success is a function of ability and effort.
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And I will get out of a situation, what I put into it, if I have an external locus of control, I think success isn’t really up to me. It’s up to luck.
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Then.
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So, the reason I show you this is an essential lesson about influence.
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And that is, the belief in your own power and the belief in your own agency, that you are not a, a random, no sort of molecule floating out in the world.
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And anything can hit you at any given time and that you have no control over your own destiny and no influence over the world.
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The big lesson that our great gurus and teachers have been trying to teach us for years and years now, and you can think of, for example, Stephen Covey’s work with the seven Habits, or you think of Servant Leadership with Ken Blanchard, or think of Jim Cruises and Barry Posner, and the leadership practices and such.
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You’re not a victim, And you have power and agency.
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It may not be gigantic. It may be a little power.
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But do you apply that power to be a source of good in the world?
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All of us can drop into our victimhood.
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Each one of us can can play our heartstrings on the inside about how we’ve been dealt with unjustly.
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But it becomes up to us to move our world forward and try to make a positive contribution.
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I want to move in a little bit to the language of influence because how we communicate influences how we get through to somebody or not.
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And the first thing I want to suggest is simplify. Simplify your language.
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When you talk to others, don’t complex ify things, simplify things.
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This, you’ll find a lot of this in Fred Joel’s book.
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We will utilize the process, IBM I’m going to fly on a plate today up to Chicago.
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And I guarantee you that. They’re gonna go on the intercom and they’re gonna say, please utilize the overhead been utilized.
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It sounds like such a big word.
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Do you realize that the word use is the word utilize Why do we have to use these institutionalized words, if we want to get through to people? We’ve got to stop talking in a way that makes us sound.
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So, clinical: Thank you for your co-operation in this matter, which means that I am a robot that actually doesn’t have any gratitude at all. Thank you for your co-operation in this matter.
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Versus, thanks for your help.
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Uh, don’t forget to register for the event. Don’t forget, don’t do the bad thing.
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Don’t do the thing I don’t want you to do.
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How about remember to register for the event?
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So let’s do this this. this apparently Phrygian says was in the Crown Club.
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I think the Atlanta crown room for delta, and it said, Please refrain from removing the newspapers from the clap.
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Thank you for your collaboration It sounds so unfriendly. Right? There, we’re having a problem because in the crown room, people would take the newspaper and bring it on the airplane. And they run out really early, so they wanted to retain the newspapers.
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I get it, but couldn’t we say it in a less formal way? So let’s do this, let’s go ahead and use that question feature again, and how could you say it in a friendlier, simpler way?
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With, uh, how would you say it?
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So if your chat and your answer is using the question tool, try to say the same thing.
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It gets the same outcome, people not taking the newspaper with them and let’s see what you come up with to simplify it.
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Thank you for returning the newspaper after use, Kliff says, Right, Way more friendlier.
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Good, what else we got. Feel free to use the newspapers, but return them when you’re done.
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Thank you, Debbie Pegi says, great. So you get the idea, right?
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That that it’s sometimes in though our way to communicate.
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We confuse professionalism with institutional ISM and we don’t sound like a human being anymore.
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You don’t want to be super, like informal call people, dude, but you do want to let people pick up friendliness from you and likability.
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Your tone, your intonation has a lot to do. It can change the whole shift of account permit conversation.
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It can change the whole shift of a simple sentence where you put the intonation.
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So, there’s always the what of what you’re communicating, which is the content, but the how the how you intend eight on any given word can change things.
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I know we’re not able to take you all off of mute, so you’ll have to follow along with me.
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I do invite you to do this out loud wherever you are, but I’m going to take this sentence here.
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I didn’t say you had an attitude problem, and I’m just going to place the emphasis in a different place through multiple rounds.
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You’ll see what I mean here as it put a red letter on the things that I’m intonated.
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I didn’t say you had an attitude problem.
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I didn’t say you had an attitude problem.
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I didn’t say you had an attitude problem.
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I didn’t say you had an attitude brom I didn’t say you had an attitude problem.
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I didn’t say you had an attitude problem.
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I didn’t say you had an attitude problem.
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I didn’t say you had an attitude problem.
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So you see, just by where we place the emphasis on the word, we change everything.
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So your language has a lot to do with people being influenced by you and receptive to you.
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Here’s a couple of helpful phrases, again, we’re happy to send this as a PDF.
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Let me understand if I let me see if I understand you correctly.
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So somebody says something that, you’re not so sure that you’re on board with what they said, but rather than saying, I disagree with you, you say, let me understand if I understand you correctly, ABC, and then you replay it back to them.
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Or maybe you’re kinda tired of being the one who’s generating all the ideas, all the time.
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So, you put something out there And then you say, you know, I’d love to hear your ideas, What do you all think we should do?
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And let them respond.
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Or maybe they’ve told you a little bit, and you want more.
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You need a little bit more than what they’ve told you, You know, what you’ve told me has been really helpful so far.
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What else should I know?
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Unpack that a little bit more for me.
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Sometimes you might be dealing with a person who’s upset in front of you, Here’s one thing that will never get through to a person.
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Why are you being so upset?
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You shouldn’t be so upset that that’s not gonna help them at all, but merely noticing what’s going on for them at their emotions, and, and calling it out.
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You seem very, you seem to feel very strongly about this. I’m noticing you seem a little angry on this.
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I’m noticing that it doesn’t seem to be sitting right with you if I got that right, and then ask if I got that right?
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And then I like to reinforce behavior that you see, and you’d like to get more of, by simply saying no. I really appreciate it, that you just did that, and my encouragement to you is do more of that. That shows up really well. That’s my encouragement to you. I like using those words, my encouragement to you.
31:54
When it comes to influential communication, are you taking the high road?
31:58
Or do you want to punish the person?
32:00
You wanna get a fight with them, and then when the fight, or are you trying to get through to somebody?
32:04
So, take the high road, consider the outcome you want. Do you want them to change their behavior? You want them to do something differently. Do you want them to have a more open mind about something? What did we try to get to with your communication with them?
32:18
Consider the impact that your words will have on them.
32:21
Will it make it better?
32:23
Are the words you’re going to say, the same things that you would say to somebody that you love?
32:28
And would you want those words used to you if somebody were going to say the same thing to you.
32:35
So, consider the impact of your words.
32:38
And then lastly, just remember the How is as important as the what.
32:44
Here’s a key word that comes from that book influenced by doctor Robert Albania’s the word because, because is a powerful word.
32:55
I know some of you are familiar with the book by Simon Sinek, which is Start With Why, course, you know, we’ve all been learning this for years and years, but it packaged it up in his book, good for him.
33:08
But you’ve got to explain the why of something, for people to understand how it fits into what they’re doing.
33:14
The word, because, allows you to do that, and doctor Kao … says that they’ve done studies with people online.
33:21
So, imagine you’re at the copying machine, and you’re fifth in line, and they’ve done studies on this. That the person who’s fifth in line, in the study will say, Would you mind if I move ahead, because I only have five pages?
33:36
And just by saying, because I only have five pages, which is not a very good excuse, because there are going to be somebody in front of you that’s two pages.
33:44
Something to the effect of nine, 64% of the time, people will let that person go to the front of the line, just because they said, because I have these five pages.
33:54
And then if you offer a good excuse, it goes up to 94% of the time.
33:59
So using the word, because will increase the probability of people doing the thing that you’re requesting.
34:06
So it’s not enough to set, make your request, but make your request and say, because, and then give them the why, the rationale for the request and the likelihood of them do. Doing so will go up dramatically.
34:18
The word is magic, when it comes to influencing people.
34:23
All right, now let’s talk about Influencer, your leaders, because you gotta be able to influence the people who are influential if you want to be influential.
34:32
This is a guy that I used to work for, his name is Heinze Brannon, he was my boss at Accenture.
34:39
Now, Accenture is a $36 billion company in the management and technology consulting space and I was very fortunate to work for this gentleman because I was a middle manager and all of the people who reported to him, he was a managing partner, and he had all partners and associate partners reporting to him.
35:00
Except me, I was the lowest ranking person reporting to him, But I was in the role of chief of staff, and he made it very clear to me that when I needed to go and get stuff for him. Because I often did kind of, as a fetch, honestly.
35:17
That I would not be very powerful. And I would not gain benefit from the role if I constantly defer to him.
35:24
So if you’re in a similar role, or even if you’re not, and you’re because, is because some bigger person on the food chain wants things done, make these Your Last Resort words.
35:37
Well, we have to do that because the boss says this or it because the CEO wants this done.
35:44
Because this is on the Executive list, that should be your last resort. You can always go there.
35:51
Yo, this is really important in the senior executives, but the more you do that, the less powerful you are.
35:58
So Hine’s made it clear to me he didn’t want me to go in there and Lord around people with referential power. That was really it has power. He wanted me to develop relationships with people on my own.
36:10
So, when I made a request, they would honor the request, not because it was coming from mines, but becoming from me as an extension pines.
36:19
So, when we’re influencing senior executives, a lot of times, what we get, or what they get, versus what they need, is different.
36:30
A lot of times they get soft pedaling from us, because we don’t want to tell them things are as bad.
36:35
We don’t want to be the carrier of bad message, what would they need is the truth.
36:40
A lot of times what they get from us is late emergencies.
36:44
When they can’t even help the problem now, because we tried to hide it so long, we thought we could handle it on our own. Maybe we’d get taken care of, we didn’t want to burden them.
36:52
And now it’s snowballed into something so big. We dump it in their lap when they can’t be helpful.
36:58
So you’ve heard the term no surprises, they want early warnings.
37:03
If we want to be influential with a boss, we can’t just go in a problem dump.
37:07
Only go in them and say, look at these three problems I found for your boss.
37:11
Good luck with that.
37:13
And it’s not that you have to have the solutions to the problems, but you do have to go into their offices Having done some thinking with your best recommendation for resolving the problem.
37:26
And so give them your best thinking. Again, you don’t have to have you hear people say, You know, I’d rather have you come up with solutions with promises. Sometimes you don’t have the solution.
37:35
But you could say, My best thinking is I was thinking we might do X, Y, or Z Don’t just dump it in their lap.
37:44
A lot of times we’ve come in with too much detail because we want to show them how much work we did, the analysis that we did. Here’s my ship spreadsheet boss, look at line item number 26 category GG.
37:56
That’s not what they want.
37:56
They want to know that you’ve done the homework, and they want you to have the details available if needed, but they don’t want you to burden them with detail. A lot of times when you’re dealing with senior executives, you can only work with them in like 15 minute increments. So you’d better get to the point.
38:12
They don’t want to bumbling you, they don’t want you to be starstruck, you’re talking to somebody two rungs up higher on the food chain.
38:20
They don’t want you to be afraid of them, They want your confidence, and the more that you’re able to engage with them with in a confident way, the more you’ll break, they’ll bring you into situations where you might be able to have some influence.
38:34
When you are working with your senior executives and leaders who are influential, and you’re wanting to be more influential, make sure that you pinpoint their point of pain.
38:46
And so ask them questions that get at that such as, When you describe this gap, how would you describe the gap between the condition you want right now, and how it exists today? So that, here’s what you want, but here’s what you’ve got. Why don’t you describe the gap a little bit further?
39:07
Or if we were to monetize the impact of this issue that you’re wanting me to get involved with?
39:13
What do you think it would be?
39:15
Could also ask them, What will happen if we don’t get this thing done? You’re having me look into it. You’re telling me it’s very important. What are the consequences?
39:23
If this remains unaddressed And you could ask them, how is this particular issue impacting you boss? What are you not able to attend to? because you’re dealing with this point of pain?
39:36
So, you really want to get very close to it. They’re paying a little bit about the situation that they’re wanting to involve.
39:43
Whenever you craft solutions or come up with recommendations to their points of pain, you want to do it around a CBC, and I’m not talking about cannabis, I’m talking about critical business concerns, critical business concerns in any organization when you’re working on an issue. You’re working to resolve a problem.
40:05
You’re trying to come up with good solutions.
40:08
They should connect with at least one of these 12 different things, advancing the mission of the organization, upholding the company values, something that promotes safety, something that lowers risk.
40:22
In other words, any solution you come up with needs to stitch back to one of these 12.
40:27
Maybe it improves operation, Maybe it helps reduce waste and redundancy.
40:32
Maybe it builds morale and affects culture.
40:36
Maybe it makes things more transparent or makes the process easier to use.
40:42
Maybe it increases people’s job effectiveness.
40:45
Maybe it’s about modernizing technology to keep it relevant and user friendly.
40:50
Maybe it helps us get more customers or keep the ones that we have, and keep them loyle, Or does it just simply reduce cost or increase profitability?
41:00
But these are common critical business concerns.
41:03
And when you’re working with senior executives, it’s your job to make sure you stitch your … dilute solution to the stuff that’s on their mind, and these are the things that are on their minds.
41:14
This is what will push their button in the right way of influence.
41:20
I also want to just quickly introduce you to how to build a business case.
41:26
Sometimes, you’re needing to make a request, maybe you’re making a request for more resources with senior executives.
41:34
Maybe you’re having to request an investment from them on some part.
41:39
Maybe you’re trying to get them to buy into an idea that you have build the business case. First, start with a definition or a statement of the problem.
41:48
Explain the problem you’re trying to solve based on the reconnaissance you’ve done already.
41:53
Second, assess the cost that this problem is having in terms of time and attention, reputational damage, or loss of competitiveness, goal hinderance, or money money is the one that they connect to, But there’s other ways that it might be costing the business, monetize the cost of that to the extent that you can.
42:18
Thirdly, identify if this problem doesn’t get addressed.
42:23
If this extends into the future, here’s how it will be worse for us.
42:28
So let them paint a picture of the increased severity of the consequences, if you don’t change the situation, then drop in with your solution. Present your solution. How it addresses the problem, and makes things better.
42:44
Allow time for pushback, allow time for questioning, don’t be threatened by questions.
42:51
As you were coming up with the solution, you are going through the same questioning process. It’s important.
42:57
The way you get their buy in is to have them start with no, and put their fingers in the direction of, I don’t like this, that’s fine. Have a backbone.
43:06
A good idea can withstand it.
43:08
So, get their reactions and questions, because you’ve already done the thinking that you want them to do, too.
43:14
Once they’ve done that, ask for your ask.
43:17
Is your ask for more resources?
43:19
Is it for additional people to help you get this thing done? Is it, is it per time? Is it an extension of deadline? Are you asking for an investment? Are you asking for their sponsorship? Are you asking for them to bring it up higher up the food chain? Know what it is that you’re asking for.
43:34
Then, finally, hopefully they’ll give you the ask or permission to move forward.
43:41
Paint a picture of how the world looks better in the workplace.
43:45
Once this implementation happens, once you resolve the problem and gotten the ask and put it in place, how you expect things will look better.
43:54
So this is a good way to build a business case. All right.
43:59
Do want to talk about influence and trust.
44:04
Let me just put it plainly.
44:06
And now we’re like one of the last pieces that I want you to get.
44:11
Influence equals trust.
44:13
That’s how you should think about influence.
44:16
The more people trust you, the more trustworthy you are, the more influence you’re going to have. You won’t influence anybody.
44:23
If they don’t trust you.
44:25
The more trusted you are, the more they’ll bring you into bigger challenges and responsibilities, the more they will and trust you.
44:34
Trust is the foundation of great relationships, including teams, including those with your customers and those with your boss, or if you’re in a leadership role, those with your direct reports. People are leaving companies right now in the big big resignation.
44:51
A lot of it has to do with flexibility, they do want to work for well more than they used to, But a lot of it still has to do with relationships. They don’t feel connected to the people around them.
45:02
Build trust before selling ideas.
45:06
Work on investing in the relationship and building trust.
45:11
You know how to do this, what I’d like you to do right now using the question tool, if your last name begins with A through L, I want you to chat in what you think earns, trust, what earns trust.
45:30
Go ahead if your last name begins with A through L, what earns trust, and we’ll see if we get some answers in here.
45:44
Let’s see.
45:53
Know, Laura? Sorry, Sarah.
45:55
I think I’m going to have you read some of these cases mine. Get out of water, so I’m not actually able to see them that well.
46:02
Yeah, we have keeping your word.
46:05
Michelle said, being honest.
46:08
Michael says honesty.
46:10
When he says follow through communication, knowing your staff, Nathan says consistency.
46:19
Patricia says being an effective leader.
46:22
Dependability, and follow through on duties, not claiming someone else’s ideas. Proving yourself in the past and vulnerability are some of the responses to what great responses. I mean, really you nailed it. So you’re going to hear those echoed here in in a moment.
46:39
But great responses.
46:40
Now, now let’s flip the question for the people that your last names begin with M through Z And my question is, What berns it?
46:49
What, what hurts that trust?
46:50
What, uh, what, what, I’ll tear it down? What berns trust?
46:55
And if you use the chat tool, we’ll give you a moment here to chat in some answers. What?
47:00
What will diminish trust? What will really harm it?
47:04
We have Laura saying gossiping.
47:06
Somebody says, breaking commitments. Cherie says, disrespect.
47:11
Not following through on a commitment, dishonesty No.
47:17
Sheryl says Overpricing and under delivering.
47:20
Not being transparent, Not delivering as promised, being unreliable. Dishonesty and being harsh with decisions are a few of the responses.
47:32
Yeah, interesting. And again, terrific answers, there. Yeah, harshness with decisions. Interesting, right? Like a lot of times. If we unilaterally make it, we’re gonna make it because we’re the smartest person in the room We know best.
47:45
It’s really off putting to people, people love their own involvement.
47:49
And sometimes if we’ve got more of a ruler than a leader, they they tend not to involve us. Here are some other factors that promote trust.
47:57
I think they’ll resonate with you, and they will echo some of what you said. Competence, know your stuff. Right? You gotta know your stuff about what you do.
48:06
And you want to help others know their stuff. So people do trust people who seem to know what they’re doing.
48:12
We trust people, you gotta, you have to give a rip like we said earlier. We trust people who care passionately.
48:20
They’re willing to suffer with us. By the way, that’s the Latin.
48:23
If you take the words calm, passion, pascoe, compassion means to suffer with people, that you’re willing to be in the thick of it and that you care deeply and as deeply as I do, which gets us to commitment, that you’ve gotta keep a laser focused on achieving other people’s goals, and your goals and solving problems. And, if anything, under promise and over deliver. But you’ve gotta keep your commitment, so many of you said that as a trust builder, and it came up a lot in the trust inhibitors is when you don’t keep your word, and you don’t live your commitments.
48:59
And then, same thing here, followed through, you have to consistently deliver and over deliver on your promises.
49:07
All of those things, those four hallmarks. Those four C’s have a lot to do with trust.
49:14
And you also want to be in it with them, shared accountability between all of you, and proactively communicating, giving people the heads-up, not at the last minute, but while they can still do something about it, these things will help promote trust.
49:30
So, let’s go to the last poll question, if we well, Sarah.
49:34
And to open up the last poll question, which has to do with trust.
49:40
Right, we have that poll question open, and we’ll give you about NaN here to submit your answer.
49:58
The votes are coming, and I’ll give you another NaN here.
50:08
OK, great, got those results up on the screen now.
50:12
Terrific. Alright, great. So, you know, we just talked about the importance of trust.
50:18
I told you it equates to influence.
50:20
And the more people trust you, the more they will entrust you with greater responsibility. So, it has a lot to do with influence. I am a very trusting person.
50:29
38% of you said that.
50:33
Only 2% said it takes a long time for you to trust people.
50:37
31% of you said, I’ll trust you.
50:39
As soon as you prove that you are trustworthy, which is a common answer.
50:44
5% of you said I’m distrustful by nature.
50:48
Most of you most will burn you eventually is your mentality, you probably have gotten burned in the past, you probably have evidence to back that up.
50:56
24% of you said that your trust level basically matches the trust level of the people that you encounter.
51:02
My encouragement to you.
51:05
There is a handout that I can provide CERA, which will allow you to answer some questions related to trust as it relates to courage.
51:15
There’s, I believe it’s 10 questions, and you can get an actual gage using this survey question. And I can, again, send it to Sarah, and we will furnish it to all of you.
51:25
But my encouragement to you would be to do that. And then there’s some really good books on trust.
51:31
And, you know, and I know it takes courage, particularly if you have been burned before and to be the one who trusts first.
51:42
Instead of waiting for people to prove, because you can get caught and trust stalemates, well, I’m going to, I’m going to wait until they prove they can trust.
51:52
Then they’re like, yeah, yeah, well, how about Buddy, You prove it to me first.
51:56
Well, I asked you first, you prove it to me.
51:58
Well, yeah, I’m asked, can you prove it? I’m not going to trust you until you, trust me.
52:02
If I’m not refer to it, get these trust down.
52:06
So it takes a certain degree of courage saying you know what? I’m gonna get disarmed.
52:10
I’m going to open myself up, to possible betrayal, possibly getting hurt.
52:16
I’m going to have the courage to trust.
52:18
And because I think that what you’ll find is that you will get burned less often than you think and it will help you get to greater levels of trust with the teams and the people in relationships around you.
52:31
Some final thoughts on influence, I’m going to ask you for your last question.
52:38
What is your best tip for being influential, and I’m going to have Sarah read some of these out as you put them in. I’m gonna give you some tips here in just a second, but I’d love to hear your tips.
52:50
What are some tips that you find work for you to be influential?
52:53
Or you’ve seen other use to good effect, to be influential.
52:59
So what’s your best tip so that we can learn from each other and then I will share some of my own tips as well.
53:05
So, Patricia says genuineness, cars that’s friendliness and showing interest in the other person.
53:15
SSIS lead by example, Sherry says volunteer for the most, distasteful part of the job, Shaun’s says Listening carefully.
53:25
Michelle says, Be sure to listen in bold. Jeff says, being honest.
53:31
Clift says connect with people emotionally, We have lead by example. Be approachable. Speak from experience being open. Having open communication and consistency are some of the responses that we received today.
53:48
Y’all, y’all have taught me this class.
53:51
Terrific. See, The good news is you know how to do this.
53:55
I mean, you showed up today, and I hope you picked up something useful, and clearly you believe it’s an important topic. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here, and you know a lot about it. Already. My encouragement to you would be carry what you know to other people that is being influential.
54:09
Teach them what you know, and then they can do it as well.
54:12
I particularly like the idea of listening.
54:15
Somebody put it in capital letters, even.
54:17
It’s hard to influence if you’re just getting ready to respond.
54:21
And you haven’t fully ingested what they have said and digested and gotten ready to take action on what they said.
54:29
I particularly liked the idea of authenticity that came up, the idea of being sincere because people trust people who are real with them.
54:39
They think of the best relationships you have.
54:42
There probably was somebody who is a great listener and who’s not a fake, who’s not a phony, I’m going to share with you just a couple more.
54:51
And the first one being no, get known.
54:55
Don’t be a wallflower, get involved with things, get involved with the extracurricular activities at your organization. Join the bowling league and the softball team.
55:06
Be ubiquitous. Get involved in a lot of things. Get on committees. Be involved in your company’s charitable events. Be so involved that you can’t be invisible.
55:16
Don’t be involved to the point you can’t. Now do work, or make any time for your family.
55:22
But be involved enough that you can’t be invisible, but people know who you are.
55:27
Be credible. By developing your own informed point of view.
55:33
Be a subject matter expert, Gane competency, polish your radar, sharpen your saw.
55:40
Gain more credibility.
55:42
Through your competency, deliver the goods. Deliver on your promise. See promises. And I say, strike that over. Deliver on your promises.
55:50
If you’re asked to do X two X plus one for senior executives and trying to influence them, connect your issues to advancing their goals.
56:01
Doing so makes furthering your request in their best interests.
56:05
Be a truth teller with diplomacy, Not brutally.
56:10
But so many of you said honesty, truth tellers, telle hard truths that other people avoid.
56:16
But with respect to kander and transparency, then polish the radar.
56:22
Don’t just be influential with your boss when you need something done, or with somebody else when you need something done.
56:29
Constantly be strengthening that relationship, dropping deposits into that relationship.
56:35
Drop in occasional article or irrelevant information on their desk, Don’t just pay attention to them when you need something done, nurture, and build the relationship.
56:46
All right, I’m going to come back to questions. I do want to, hey, if you’re interested in Giant leap consulting, remember, we do all our terrific workshops. We got great material. We’d love to make engaging presentations in person or otherwise.
57:01
You can find us at giant leap consulting dot com.
57:04
But let me open it up to you in the waning moments that we’ve got. I know I threw a lot at a lot of stuff there, but I can entertain a question or two before you put a bow on it.
57:16
Yes, if you have any questions, type them into the questions box.
57:20
We do have a couple of minutes remaining here, and we’d be able to, to answer that for you today.
57:26
And we did have a question come in earlier.
57:31
Let’s see, Omi find it here, It was re type two, so that’s great, Thanks, right, OK, so the question we had it come in earlier with Sherry and she asks when you’re a person who values commitments, but the person who makes the commitment doesn’t value their commitments commitments highly, what do you do?
57:53
Oh, look at the time, when, Unfortunately, we don’t have enough time to crash and share it. It’s a hard question.
58:01
I, the what comes up for me is that somebody once told me that relationships are not 50, 50, that relationships are actually 100, 100, and the best you can do.
58:18
It’s an old saying. Maybe you’ve heard it before. It’s clean up your side of the street.
58:24
You know, do the sweeping on your side of the street, Show up as your level best self, keep your commitments.
58:32
If the person doesn’t keep theirs, if a person doesn’t take commitments seriously, certainly don’t allow it to be an excuse for you to do less good.
58:44
Maybe with that person, you might want to not be around them as much and at some point and this would be it would take courage and it would take a Moment that would be hard for any human being.
58:57
You might want to confront it respectfully.
59:00
But by saying something, to the extent that, you know, I noticed the last two times when we’ve mutual made mutual commitments, that that, your commitment, in my impression, wasn’t followed through on the way that I would have expected, and it surprises me, I wonder what’s going on there.
59:20
Let them respond to it.
59:21
Then you can simply say, you know, I feel that it’s sort of feel like a boundary is violated. I feel like I make a promise, and I do my best to keep it.
59:31
And when you don’t keep yours, it makes me value our relationship less.
59:36
Or it makes me think you don’t value our relationship enough, and just be truthful. You know, we talked about kander, honesty, authenticity.
59:45
Certainly don’t do it in front of other people to punish them or humiliate them, but if you’re rollie honest in front of them, they will, they are, if they’re a human being with assault, I would hope that they would meet it without excuses and defensiveness and, and own up to it, but changing other people is hard.
1:00:04
Focusing on yourself sometimes is the best way to change other people, cleaning up your side of the street.
1:00:11
And we will conclude the Q and A with this final question Bill, and the question comes from Vanessa. Vanessa would like to know, What is the difference between manipulation versus influence. A really great question, Vanessa, and I’m glad you asked that and I should have addressed in the beginning. Because one could read … book for example and think I’m gonna learn strategies here magically to manipulate people.
1:00:36
That’s not the point of influence.
1:00:40
Manipulation would be, I think, duplicitous in its motive.
1:00:44
Where you’re trying to get somebody to do something that has only one benefit, and that is for you, and it doesn’t benefit them in some way.
1:00:55
That would seem to be more manipulation or using a technique to get them to do something in a hidden way.
1:01:05
Uh!
1:01:06
That, that is, again, in, in your favor that, that you’re doing in such a clandestine way.
1:01:15
That, it’s like, that is, you know, that. Where it is manipulation, practically, right?
1:01:21
So I think that when you’re wanting said, When a change needs to be made, an action needs to be taking your enlisting somebody else.
1:01:28
You’re using techniques that increase the probability of it happen and it has mutual benefit and that is somehow good for them, too.
1:01:38
That that’s the best use of influence and not manipulation.
1:01:42
So, yeah, the word because might get you to get something that you otherwise wouldn’t have gotten, but it comes down to you to use it with good motive and a motive that benefits them and benefits you versus being a magician, who’s trying to hypnotically, get people to do things that only benefit you. But it’s a very good question.
1:02:04
Great. Well, today’s webinar was sponsored by Giant leap Consulting at Giant leap Consulting Partners with valued clients to set of strategies, build strong teams, and develop courageous leaders. Again, you can learn more at www.giantleapconsulting.com. That will bring us to the end of today’s presentation. Thank you so much for your time today, Bill.
1:02:29
You got it, and thank you once again to HRDQ. You catch up for your next webinar, Just go over to them, as you often do. Folks.
1:02:36
Thanks so much, Sarah, and all of the folks with passion today.
1:02:40
Yes, thank you all for participating in today’s webinar, happy training.