Читать книгу Work with Me - Dowling Simon - Страница 7

Go to the people. Live with them. Learn from them. Love them. Start with what they know. Build with what they have. But with the best leaders, when the work is done, the task accomplished, the people will say ‘We have done this ourselves.’

Lao Tzu, the founder of Taoism

Imagine if each of your ideas, initiatives or projects was a book on a shelf in a bookstore. Would anyone pick it up? Would they fork out the cash to purchase a copy? Would they even read it? More importantly would they act on the things they'd learned there? Would they take it back to their teams, colleagues and friends, and start a conversation about it? Would they put it on their own bookshelf or post selfies on Instagram of them reading it? Would they buy extra copies to give to their friends? Would people bang on your door, asking to work with you on writing the sequel?

We've all got ideas we want others to buy into.

Whether it's a new initiative, a project or even a way of life, we want people to jump on board and support us wholeheartedly and see our idea through to fruition. We need other people's cooperation, their commitment and their energy. We need them to smile, jump in and ask, ‘Where do I sign up?’ This infectious enthusiasm and dedication to see the job through to the end is exactly what it means to build buy-in.

Buy-in matters. Buy-in is the thing that makes and drives highly engaged, creative and motivated teams. As you've no doubt experienced before, without buy-in, projects and ideas falter or fail to even get off the ground. Without buy-in, managers are forced to crack whips or find ever juicier carrots to dangle in front of their team to get them to take action. Without buy-in, your ideas will come crashing down around you. Exorbitant costs, wasted money, squandered time and resources are all dangerous consequences of the inability to build buy-in effectively.

So how do you get others to buy into your ideas – to work with you?

Over the past couple of decades, I've had the good fortune to work with people from a wide variety of backgrounds – senior executives, tech geeks, elite sporting teams, government officials, lawyers, health professionals and salespeople. One thing that's clear to me is that although everyone's situation, ideas and context will differ, the challenge of building buy-in is not a technical one; it's a human one. How do I connect with this person? How do I help them to see things differently? How can I make sense of their concerns? How do I foster a sense of trust? What can I do to convince them to take action?

Answering these kinds of questions comes more naturally to some people than to others. After all, each of us has been forging our own approach since we first tried to convince the other kids in the schoolyard to trade football cards with us.

What many of us don't get is an opportunity to formally learn the skills required to build buy-in. Skills such as influencing, negotiating, persuading, collaborating and problem solving. As we build up our pool of technical knowledge – in whatever domain that may be – there is a presumption that we've got the rest covered. But that ain't necessarily so. These are skills that need to be learned.

This book will show you how to master the gentle art of buy-in. It will equip you with the skills to:

• become a true catalyst of change

• foster the mindset of a champion of buy-in

• design an approach that accounts for the complexity of the modern organisation

• build relationships of trust that will underpin your quest for buy-in

• set the mood and create an emotional bias to yes in your target audience

• overcome objections and resistance

• build genuine agreement and commitment

• convert buy-in into meaningful long-term change.

I'm a practical guy, so this book has lots of practical ideas and exercises at the end of each chapter so you can stop and apply what you're learning in the real world.

Each chapter builds on the ones before it, so I recommend you work your way through them in sequence. My hope is that you return to chapters that interest you or, when you're stuck, for inspiration and help at any point on the buy-in journey.

I wrote Work with Me because I'm a big believer in what can be achieved when you spark the energy of others. It's in this way that I hope to spark yours. By the time you reach the end of the book, you should feel a renewed sense of confidence and the courage to be a true champion of buy-in. To be someone who takes their power not from their position or authority, but from their ability to engage others and generate true, authentic buy-in. If you ask me, we need more people like that in the world.

So what do you say – are you in?