Good morning everyone,
How many times have you just believed that the people around us should follow us because we have a title that they report to? If we are trying to gain influence with direct reports based off organizational title to keep the team following our lead we will fail.
We all want to have influence over those we connect with whether it is family, work associates, a ministry, etc. If you’ve been reading the past two blog posts, you’ll be following a core to building influence. It’s a process to get the focus off of ourselves and on to those we are needing buy-in from.
Let’s review the crucial steps to accomplish influence:
Week 1 C.I.A – stands for being curious, intentional, and asking questions.
Week 2 Developing questions to pull out the needs from those we are building influence with
Week 3 Figure out if we are on the right track.
We want to make sure that what we believe the needs to be are in fact resonating with those around us. It’s time to step out and test our thought process and start getting into activity to find out. So how to we figure this out?
Today we are going to SEE if we are on the right track to building influence.
The first step is to Set up a meeting or a time to review with those that we are working on influence with. Don’t do a drive buy ambush to validate we understand their needs. Let them know that we value their time and respect. Look at their calendars and set up a meeting with the purpose in the title or go one step further and walk up to them asking for a good time to meet. I know some introverts will say, but I don’t like engaging people. Maybe that is a growth step for them. I am an introvert by nature, and I speak to groups of people because I took small steps each day to grow.
Show them respect by being prepared for the meeting. We can also give them a few details we would like to review so they have time to prepare for the discussion.
Be Engaged. Turn off emails, close doors, and pay attention. Be engaging with this meeting as best you can. Ask them questions to pull out their needs as you have drafted from last week’s blog. Let them do most of the talking like a 70/30 ratio with you mainly asking questions and them answering. Find out deeper needs than just a paycheck and insurance benefits. Find their WHY they are continuously showing up.
Encourage them to come to us with questions, help, ideas for their growth, and to keep an open dialogue. Let them know we truly care by encouraging them. We don’t need to have parties for them but showing them that we care and encouraging them to take steps for growth and reaching out will help us gain influence.
Now if they have needs that we have not already identified from our prep work, then this is our homework to review and make sure that we can answer those needs. It is better to know that we are not meeting their needs now so that we can either work on being able to meet those needs, or help those that report to us find somewhere in our organization, or another organization that will allow them to find their place best suited for them. Keeping someone that limits them is not a long-term play and will slow down progress. Yes, sometimes we may need to help the reports find a better suit for them and look for someone else.
People are not cogs in a machine, but individuals helping to support a vision we have. This is a concept that far too many organizations fall into because they are just trying to keep moving and not focusing on their individuals and how to help those individuals.
Helping those that we are influencing know that we truly care will build a great foundation to help us in the future to move further faster together.
Kevin Sidebottom
“Businesses wonder why the majority of their sales teams struggle at winning profitable business. I teach your sales team to walk with the customer through the five buying decisions, and in the correct order to generate more sales with high margins!”