Читать книгу Tap Into Greatness - Sarah Singer-Nourie - Страница 10
ОглавлениеThe Ever-present Guide
What if you could actually get people hooked and psyched with your idea, your request, your viewpoint every time? Even that skeptic?
Completely possible.
We’ve already established that everyone’s got that little voice in our heads. So let’s get a handle on how to get those voices on your side, and keep them engaged. For the folks you’d like to influence, their internal voices could be speaking much louder inside their heads than you are on the outside. Sorry, it’s not personal. That voice has the advantage of residency in there a lot longer than you have. Fortunately, there’s a shortcut to get the little voice/s all in, ready to go with you.
Influence
That voice questions authority, and cautions us before we do something. It’s also the determining voice that tells us to make the next move, or don’t. Thousands of times every day, we’re making decisions forward from one thing to the next, one step at a time, so quickly that we don’t even notice all of them. Most of the time that voice is quietly piloting us in our seamless movement throughout the day, but sometimes it gets challenged, and pauses us. It pipes up in our head and asks the question: “Why should I do this?”
Put another way, it considers a next move or a request/directive from outside (i.e., another person) and goes right to the heart of it: “What’s In It For Me?”
Bingo. WIIFM. That’s the big question, and hugely important before your next interaction with someone. Why?
Because…
WIIFM is the question in everyone’s head, all the time.
It’s not always in an entitled you-need-to-give-me-something voice (but sometimes it is). More often it’s in an I-need-a-compelling-reason voice. Reason to change position, to do something different from what I already planned, to listen to what you have to say. Those thousands of micro-decisions we make all day come from this question too—there’s something in it for us to make the next move, so we make it. Not everyone’s WIIFM question is as brash or loud as mine was/is, but make no mistake—it’s always there behind that squint in their eye.
In fact, it was likely there for you as you started this book…“Okay, what am I going to get out of this? What’s in it for me to go through this whole book and do the things that Sarah challenges me to do?” If you don’t have those answers yet, you probably skipped the Intro chapter, so just pop back to page 1. If that doesn’t do it, email or call me. Yes, I’m serious.
Going forward, the bigger question is: How are you utilizing the little voice or answering the WIIFM in other people’s heads as you approach and lead them?
Because we know from our own experience that the voice in their heads has more leverage than you do on the outside, WIIFM has to get answered or you’re wasting your breath. You can use it to your advantage to make communication smoother, points stickier (as in sticks in their heads longer), agreement happen faster, and learning more engaging (like they get it the first time, so no need for several more asks).
Answer the WIIFM, and you’re in.
For many leaders, this is one of the hardest concepts to get their heads around, but ultimately one of the biggest game-changers. Often at this point I hear the following: “What’s in it for them is to get to keep doing their job.” or “But I don’t really care what’s in it for them—that’s their issue. It’s their job to do what I said, and I shouldn’t have to sell them on it.”
Yes, if they work for you, it is their job to technically do what you say. And yet, human motivation is a lot more complex than that. If you don’t give them a WIIFM, it doesn’t mean they won’t do what you say. It just might take a lot longer to get done, the quality of what they produce won’t be as great, you might need to re-explain it before they start it, and their buy-in to everything else might drop (which is contagious- reference Chapter #9: State).
Think about your own results as the best example. Recall a time when you produced something you were personally fired up about or invested in. Now recall a time when you produced or completed something simply because you had to, were supposed to, or were told to. Pretty different results in quality or time/process it took, and your personal experience to get there, right?
In Daniel Pink’s awesome book Drive1, he reminds us of the three biggest elements of human motivation:
1. Autonomy: it’s MY choice, not someone else’s
2. Mastery: I get to see my own progress, and it’s achievable
3. Purpose: I get to be part of something bigger than myself
If you hit one of these, you’ve tapped WIIFM.
The other fair reason to address WIIFM at the onset is that even if they are invested in what you’re about to ask/present, their thinking might be somewhere else at the time, such as the last meeting they came from, the last thing they were just working on before you approached, the last tweet they just posted, a particularly significant moment from some other part of their world that’s working itself out in their head. How many times have you found yourself thirty seconds into a conversation before realizing that you haven’t engaged yet or didn’t really hear anything that person said because you haven’t transitioned yet and the other person didn’t really engage you effectively yet? There you go. Giving them a WIIFM gets them focused and present and engaged with you in the conversation.
Either way, just know that without the WIIFM you’re assuming a whole lot about whether or not they’re really with you for the rest of the conversation. And honestly, your time and energy is too valuable to waste repeating yourself unnecessarily because they didn’t get it or weren’t with you the first time.
So, address the persistent question of WIIFM first and get them hooked into the conversation. Then you are golden.
Here’s how…
1. Get out of your own head for a minute.
Reflect and put yourself in their shoes.
Some key questions can help you get there…
What do they care about?
Some good guesses you can try out:
• Being the expert
• Being part of something significant
• Being part of a team
• Being the one who solved it or made it happen
What do they really want out of what they do?
Usually, it’s as simple as:
• The opportunity to create or contribute something
• Acknowledgment
• Accomplishment
Why do they ultimately do what they do?
This is a deeper level, which we’ll explore later in Chapter #13: Pyramid Of Perspective, but if you already know this answer for someone, here’s where you employ it practically, tapping their Big Why with what you’re presenting/asking.
Calling out what’s been silently working against you de-powers it, like turning on bright lights in a dark, creepy room. It’s still there, but now you can see what you’re dealing with clearly. In a group, calling out voices like this is liberating for everyone involved—often you can hear an audible sigh of relief as everyone relaxes a little.
2. Make your ask/case/request from their perspective, answering one of the questions from #1 in it.
Seriously, in that request or directive that you just gave them, what was in it for them? What’s really juicy for them in the agenda you’re about to present? What opportunity is really there for them in the new project that you’re considering? Compelling people open with your WIIFM, and have you hooked from the beginning. They speak to your needs first.
Some tools to open with their WIIFM:
• Think about what you know bugs them the most and make this the solution to it.
• Consider what their role or contribution in it can really cause, make easier, or solve.
• Open with the part they care about most.
• Start with them and their important part in the whole, not the whole first with them as a detail in it or a “therefore you need to…” at the end.
3. Start with a question you know will get a “Yes” or an “I’m in.”
I did it with you at the beginning of this chapter, and you chose to read on. Decent online writers do it in the first line of a post so you click further. I teach teachers to do it at the beginning of everything they teach, and their students engage in learning immediately.
Try:
• What if you could…
Fill in with something from the list above—what they care about, what they might want: “What if you could be the one who brought sense and structure to this whole thing that the team’s been challenged with?”
• Would you be interested in…
Fill in with something you know they’d like to be a part of: “Would you be interested in being a part of something that will make all the difference in the way this project goes?” or “Would you be interested in some feedback that could take your presentation to a whole other level of awesome?”
• Have you ever…
(The plural form=How many of you…) “Have you ever wished we had a way to approach these projects that could save us time, hassle and redundant meetings?”
Tip: I always have a series of three HMOY (how many of you) questions ready, so I’m ensured of a “Yes” or some kind of engagement from everyone in the room.
The first is serious: “HMOY would like to conquer the little voice?”
The second is funny, loosening up those who didn’t raise their hands the first time: “HMOY would like to conquer someone else’s little voice?” The third is absurd, delivered with a chuckle, and the group holdouts finally engage because they get that I’m not going away: “HMOY can hear my voice right now?”
As you mess with this approach, remember that everyone’s WIIFM is there all the time, most people are easier than you think to engage most of the time, and very few people’s WIIFM get direct answers very often. It’s a distinction that separates truly great leaders we want to follow from managers who leave us uninspired. The truly great leaders help us understand what’s in it for us to follow them. They recognize the value of our work, our efforts, our time and our attention, and give us a reason to jump in from the beginning. They help us understand the outcomes and how those are connected to our own greatness. So now, that leader will be you.
Go try it!
Notes:
“…it changes the game completely for them, and feels like slamming on the brakes when they were in cruise mode.”
