How to Influence People (Whether Or Not You Win Friends)

How to Influence People (Whether Or Not You Win Friends)

We all are confronted with tough prospect and client questions, and even challenges socially and professionally from colleagues, regularly. (Forget about the social media platforms, where anyone with zero experience and less intellect feels comfortable informing you about their view of the world. A phys ed teacher on Twitter is trying to tell me that buyers need approval from others, and you shouldn’t seek the actual people who can approve investments!)

You can fret and stew about this stuff, and generally become immobilized and increasingly stressed. Or you can learn some simple steps to effectively resolve it. (There are only two outlets for stress: internal, making yourself ill; or external, making someone else ill. I’m just kidding. I think.)

1. Treat objections, questions, and rebuttals as a sign of interest. These are opportunities, not threats. What you should really fear is silence and apathy, meaning you haven’t pushed anyone’s buttons. So regard even a confrontational reaction as a positive.

2. Focus on principles, not taste. When someone wants to pay people for loyalty and not merit, or forge signatures, or evade taxes, pull out your weapons. But if it’s about the choice of the hotel for a retreat or a dress code, swim with the tide (to quote Jefferson).

3. Remember that your entire being does not depend on the outcome, and that little you or I ever do will change the course of civilization. The Greeks believed there was nothing more glorious than to die in battle. The Romans believed that if things weren’t going all that well you retreated to fight another day. Be Roman, not Greek.

4. Use language better than the other person, which isn’t difficult at all. Responding with “Oh, yeah?” or “So’s your old man!” or “Says who?” is not going to impress anyone with more than a third grade education. But responding with, “You’re logic is self-contradictory. You’re arguing that customers won’t realize that we’re not treating them equally, when those same customers are in discussions with each other daily on our own website. They’ll find out in the first fifteen minutes.”

5. Understand that most conflict is NOT personality based, but is over one of two things: disagreements over objectives (end results, destinations) or alternatives (options to reach the destination and result). Sort that out first. If it’s about objectives, find out who really “owns” the decision. If it’s about options, the agree on the destination and compromise on or combine the options.

6. Identify your “musts” which are inviolable and which you cannot live without, and your “wants” which are desires and not as critical. When you negotiate and compromise, use your wants as the bargaining chips but store your musts in the vault and never put them on the table.

7. Never hold a grudge or seek retribution. An old bromide goes, “You win some, you lose some, and some get rained out, but you have to suit up for them all.” Win more than you lose, but don’t expect to win them all, and never take a loss personally and grow to detest the other party. That merely diminishes you. When you hate someone else, they forever have you enslaved, which is far worse than merely losing an argument.

© Alan Weiss 2011. All rights reserved.