Pillars of High Performance: Influence

Foreign. Everyone, this is Sean Butner with start your day with a high performance coach where we try to engage you in your performance as you start your day during the week. So if you're new here, say hi below this video. And as always, you can always ask questions, hit subscribe, or follow wherever you're watching this video on YouTube, Instagram or Facebook. So with that out of the way, this last series of videos have been talking about the five pillars of high performance and how they can help you achieve even more success and getting after whatever you're going after in your life, whether that's deeper relationships, advancement in your career, better personal health and wellness. These principles are able to help you kind of diagnose and get some momentum towards whatever those goals are. So with that said, today we're talking about influence, and it's one of my favorite topics in high performance. And someone who had studied influence in school and college, growing up, reading all these books and, you know, being in business and business functions, at least in some manner in technology. But, you know, how do you lead teams? How do you, you know, when you don't have the authority, right? This is directly from my experience in tech, where, you know, you're not the manager, you're not the project manager, you're not someone of formal authority in an organization. How do you get people rallied around ideas? How do you get people thinking about the right things so that there's a discussion? You know, a lot of times influence is just facilitating a discussion about the best way to go forward. So I've used this. These techniques that I'll share with you. First off, you know, I know I'll just address that. I know a lot of folks, you know, kind of feel weird about influence. Like, you can be like slimy salesperson that's like portrayed in the movies, and this is not it. Like, you can never get anyone to do something that they absolutely think is a terrible idea or, or that they don't think is right, in my opinion. So how do you reveal that and how do you stand out amongst all the noise? You know, I think a lot of times influence nowadays is taking a look at all the information coming in from the Internet, from, you know, all the media that we are bombarded with and really taking a pause and thinking, like, what's useful here, what is accurate, what's not accurate, and, and kind of being that curator of, hey, like, this doesn't make sense to me that, you know, let's figure out why. And that's a very costly thing to do too so, you know, nobody wants to go over every single fact that's ever posted on the interrupt, prove somebody's point, right? It's really exhausting. You could just spend your whole time doing that and figuring out like, oh, you're presenting this data in the wrong way. Hey, you're making this base assumption and then carrying the argument through which it seems logical, but, you know, you got the beginning wrong and you get lost in the actual journey there. So how do you stand out amongst all that? How do you engage people? How do you lead people at a greater manner? Because the opportunity here is with stuff like this, wherever you're watching this video or tools that we have to communicate and work from home or anywhere, you know, the reach of your voice is so much larger than in any other time in history. So I could literally, you know, there could be people around the world watching this video. And I know from the analytics that that's not true, but it's possible, you know, so the scale of what we communicate, the scale of the information we present is great. So with that said, now, you know, on projects, you know, a lot of times what makes up or breaks a good project is the personal relationships on a team. So if you have someone that's overbearing and someone that's shy, you know, you need to kind of like, identify, like, use some of your social intelligence and be like, that guy probably needs to talk more. That guy. How can we, you know, get him a little bit more under control just to allow some space for other ideas and for other people to think? And I think as a great meeting facilitator or a great leader on a team that, you know, you're able to pick that stuff up, pick up those subtle body language clues, tone and all that stuff and say, okay, you know what, what do you think about this project? Because I remember working on a project when I worked at Walmart in the logistics division. So I remember, you know, a big meeting. They're going over how they're going to update this one system. And so they have folks that actually use the system in warehouses, they have consultants, we have the business folks at the home office. And we're all like, talking about this problem. And the one guy that's like the manager that's going to be using it is just like turning red, like sitting like this and like boiling. Like, you could feel the heat coming off of this guy's body, you know, because you could tell he's really, really upset. And so people talk for like 45 minutes without ever, like, Saying anything. And then at the end of the, that 45 minutes, okay, are we ready to move on? And noticing that this gentleman was furious about what we were talking about. I'm like, hey, but what does he think? Hey, you know, his name was also Sean. Like, hey, Sean, what do you think? And he goes, this will never work. And he goes, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And then the 45 minutes of talking around for folks just, you know, not super productive. You know, we could have caught that a little bit earlier, but we prevented going down a road that was just going to make people's lives terrible using the system, you know, months when we had it implemented. So that's the power of picking up on social cues, but also like being courageous enough sometimes to talk, to notice something and to say something because, you know, sometimes people are so caught up in their ideas that they feel threatened and they'll try to shut you down and all that kind of stuff. So how do you build influence? Well, the first thing is, you know, common mistake in times when you need to persuade or influence someone is you think it's just a one shot deal. Like, hey, I need to convince the investors at this meeting to invest in the company. So you get ready for the presentation and you have all the cool slides and you're like ready to go and you pitch and it fails. And you know, why? Why did that happen? Well, there's a lot of legwork that goes into, you know, really thinking through how you can help people, really thinking through how, you know, everyone's different angle, how you can present it, you know, knowing your audience. So you know, really like what should have happened is like you need to know all the stakeholders that are going to be at the meeting kind of, you know, what are their interests? Like investors, it's probably return on investment. They want to see X, Y and Z. If it's you're pitching a meeting at work, you know, that, you know, Cheryl really, really loves like working on, you know, keeping the maintenance low on a system. You know that Jack is really just all about user interface and Mo over there is really into just making it function. So how do you present the idea of aligning all those interests, you know, and I think like that's where so many people fail that I've seen out in industry. You just don't consider everyone's point of views and they're too caught up in being right or getting the win than they are about doing the right thing. And so I've had that experience in, in technology tons and tons and Tons of times. So three ideas to really help you build influence and think about it is like, number one, build relationships. So it's much easier to convince people or at least get people to listen to you if they like you. And how do you get people to like you? You just take a active interest in what they're into, you know, so talk about, you know, people's kids when you see him talking, talk about what's going on in their lives, you know, and like especially at work, it's so many times I've been, it's like, okay, we need to talk about, you know, these work items. And it's like, okay, like we can talk about the stuff, but you know, the real kind of connection that happens at work is all the personal stuff. So to talk about relationships and do that often and not only when you need something, right? Second thing is to know your audience. This is basic speech, public speaking stuff, but really what are their interests and how can you align them to your idea? Third thing is, this is probably the super magic secret. Third thing is, you know, how do you get people to engage, right? So not having the way that it's going to go, but inviting people into a conversation to kind of co create. So it's like, hey, I had this idea for a project, this is how I'm thinking about it. How would you do that? You know, because people will support what they create. So if you get people engaged in building something and you know, convinced that it's a good idea, that they're contributing to it, they have some skin in the game, you know, those are just some three really basic ideas that you can use in your life to help lead better. Build more influence. Build more influence. Just be a good person, right? Just be cool, take an interest in other people and go from there. So. All right guys, with that said, I'm going to sign off for today. I hope you enjoy these videos. So go forth, find more joy, growth and have more impact in your communities. Guys, talk to you later.