Squiggly Shortcut: How to Influence People Who Disagree With You

0:00Sarah:Hi, this is Sarah from the Squiggly Careers podcast. And in this shortcut, I'm going to talk about how to influence people who disagree with you. And I was thinking about the best way to bring this to life, and I thought it was probably through an example. So I want you to imagine I'm in a conversation with somebody who disagrees with the idea of squiggly careers. Can you imagine? But it does happen. Not that often anymore, but it used to happen a lot more. And I think the start of that conversation, so when you get a sense, perhaps you're surprised by it or perhaps you knew that it might be coming, somebody disagrees with you.

0:32Often our inclination might be to keep on talking, keep on persuading. You're trying to win someone over to your way of thinking. I don't think that works that well. I think you are much better off being open to listening because through that listening that is how you then learn more about what's getting in the way why somebody actually really disagrees so if someone didn't like the idea of squiggly careers let's imagine they said I just don't think it'll work in our company or in our culture rather than then trying to give them lots of reasons why it will work I would now say oh that's really interesting like what do you think would get in the way what has worked really well so just listen and learn and if in that first conversation

1:17Sarah:that's all you've done that's okay I think sometimes you know really kind of big influencing takes a while you don't achieve it all in one conversation secondly I want to involve that person in challenge and building so what I might say to them is let's say we were talking about careers in their company what has really worked well for careers in your organization so far what have people responded really well to or I might get them talking about the problems so what do you think is stopping people from you know developing and growing in your company at the moment get them talking about kind of ideas and problems so again you're having a conversation it's not sort of one way versus another way it's actually you're just being really kind of curious about about the challenges they've got and you might be making some suggestions at this point and saying oh well typically we've seen this work really well but appreciate that might be different in your organization like is there anything there that you think would be interesting or what definitely wouldn't work from what I've just described and so it shows that you are sort of holding your ideas or exactly how something might work quite lightly and again as well as being open to listening and learning you're also open to adapting you're being you've got good sort of agility in that moment you're not really fixed on like how something might work and then I think that helps people to relax um they don't feel like oh I I must do on squiggly careers I must do exactly what Sarah's done elsewhere it could look and feel different here and you know almost you want them to be saying things like oh well if I was going to do this this is perhaps what I would be thinking about oh this is what I would do um because again that will give you more insights and then the third thing is just to make sure that there is a clear payoff that somebody cares about for whatever you're trying to influence on and I don't think as we said it's probably not where you start but it is a good place to finish now it can't necessarily just be the payoff that you think is the right payoff it it has got to be a payoff that they care about and if you've not done the first bit if you've not been really open to listening and then you've not sort of done that challenge and build and involved them in that it's very hard for you to do that last bit whereas actually if you've done a really good job there you can think about well for squiggly careers what do I know is better because of squiggly careers people take ownership for their careers it feels much more personal it feels more relevant people can develop in different directions they can transfer their talents which of the different things that I know squiggly careers are good for is going to matter most to this person and so again you're being sort of smart and reflecting their situation back to them and saying well if actually your challenge is ownership like one of the things that we know is that squiggly careers will will really help with that um and so i hope that feels useful i often feel like influence is one of those words that can feel a bit manipulative so we might feel awkward about getting better at influence um but it does really matter because we we all need to influence each other to kind of get work done and to have an impact because you can so rarely deliver big bits of work by yourself so you have got to go and influence lots of other people but it's sort of the how you do that and the kind of the approach you take I think can make a really big difference so I hope that felt helpful if you want to listen to another episode of the squiggly careers podcast with and ask the expert with Conson Locke she's a brilliant expert on influence it is episode 239 that's definitely worth diving into if you've got an extra 20 minutes or so thank you so much for listening or for watching i hope you're finding these shortcuts useful please give us any fast feedback on them it's helen and sarah at squigglycareers.com bye for now