StandOut (13 page)

How to Make an Immediate Impact

• You are instinctively impatient. To ensure this doesn’t rub your new colleagues the wrong way,
pick a roadblock that everyone agrees on and volunteer to be the one to tackle it
. For example, if there is something your team wants, but someone—a manager, a client, a colleague— has always stood in the way of getting it, then volunteer to make the call and make the ‘ask.’ Who knows, perhaps you’ll prove persuasive. Perhaps you won’t. Either way you’ll have shown your nerve.

• Initially, because you are so action focused, people will wonder what your agenda is. So, to stop their wondering, be explicit with your teammates about it.
Tell them your agenda
. It doesn’t really matter what your agenda is—it could be making the sale, stirring things up, or getting your way. What matters is that you are transparent about it. People don’t mind persuasiveness. What they don’t like is uncertainty. And without a clear agenda, sometimes your persuasive push can feel like manipulation.

• Look for ways to measure your results
. You will be energized by the “proof” of whether you’re ahead or behind. You are always at your best when you know exactly where you stand.

• Whenever you succeed in making something happen,
be deliberate in thanking people for their help
. If you don’t do this, they may come to feel as though they are merely instruments in your plan of action. So tell them how much you valued their contribution. Spread this goodwill. Sometime soon it will come back to you and with their cooperation smoothing the way, you will be able to make more decisions.

• Listen. Look engaged. Ask short, open-ended questions and then keep quiet. Show interest in what the other person is saying. Be seen to be taking notes. All of this will let the other person feel heard and allow you to establish some kind of relationship before you dive into your agenda. This relationship will then speed your agenda. In fact,
you will be most effective at advancing your agenda if you let your agenda slide into the background of a genuine relationship
.

How to Take Your Performance to the Next Level

• You have an agenda. Okay. We know that about you. We get it. And we certainly value your transparency about it. But if you want us to rally around your agenda,
tie your agenda to a mission
—a purpose, a set of values, a better future, something that is bigger than you, something that can include all of us. Paint this picture for us, make it genuine, and we will make so much more happen for you.

• Yes, you can be competitive. And no, you’re not a good loser—why would you ever want to become good at that? Can you now take this competitive spirit beyond a mere win-lose framework and into an outcome where both parties feel that they’ve won? If you put your mind to it,
you can be the architect of these win-win outcomes
. All it will take from you is the discipline of stopping for a long moment to consider the world through the eyes of the other person or team. Take the time to do this.

• Learn to separate the small things you do to spread goodwill—the gifts, the remembered birthdays, the special favors—from the actual “ask
.
”
People want to like you and because you are excited and exciting they want to do as you ask. But they don’t want to be manipulated. To do a person a favor and then immediately make the ask: this is manipulation. To show others that you are thinking about them all the time—a note here, an interesting paper there—and then, later, a compelling challenge to act: this is true influence.

• You are an impatient person who thrills to a fast-paced, action-oriented situation. Alright. Fine. Good. We don’t want to slow you down. But we do need you not to leave us behind.
So take the time to invest in a relationship with us
. Invest time in understanding our perspective, our world. You can do this as quickly and intensely as you want. But do invest this time. Otherwise we will feel as though you’ve fitted us into your life, when what we really want is to feel a part of your life.

• One of your most powerful qualities may well be your sense of humor. You delight in fun and irreverence. It’s one of the ways you win people over.
So practice your stories, in particular the stories where you make fun of yourself
. You’ll be good at it, you’ll make yourself more appealing, and, of course, as a result people will be more inclined to help you get things done.

What to Watch Out For

• When you make a mistake or hurt someone’s feelings (and you will; with your need to move people to act, it is inevitable),
learn to apologize
. What’s wonderful about you is that mistakes and hurt feelings rarely derail you— you chalk it up to experience and then move on. What’s not so great is that you’ve moved on so quickly that you’ve forgotten to be contrite. What feels like momentum to you, feels like disrespect to others. You may never do this naturally—stopping to apologize feels like stalling—so learn a couple of phrases you can say when it’s clear you’ve pushed too hard or too fast. “How can I make this right for you?” is a good one, as is the classic, “I’m sorry.”

• We live in a digital, data-based world where virtually every action and consequence can be measured. Many of the people you seek to persuade are comforted by data and are prepared to make a decision only when supplied with the data that “prove” a particular action will lead to a particular consequence.
Learn to become proficient in the language of data
. Learn how to marshal the facts so that others with a lower tolerance for ambiguity can lean on these facts and find the certainty they need.

• Your persuasive instinct needs to be focused on the decision maker
. There’s nothing worse than going all out to win someone over and persuade him to act, only to discover that he has neither the authority nor the budget to make the decision. So before you flex your influencing muscles, take the time to identify the “decider.”

• Because you are energized by resistance you may sometimes, albeit unconsciously, seek out resistance simply because it is more fun to turn around a no than to get a yes right away. While it may indeed be more fun it will, of course, slow down momentum. Whenever you feel yourself being lured by the thrill of the push-back,
yank your attention back to the bigger prize of decision, action, movement, and, ultimately, impact
.

How to Win As a Leader

Influencer
: Your strength is your momentum. You see, you decide, you act, you move. Us. Forward. You’re on a ride, and we take the ride with you.

• You are a charismatic leader. We love to listen to you, be charmed by you, be pulled into a better future with you. We know you have an agenda. Be clear with us what it is and we’ll keep letting you woo us.

• Keep your scorecards up-to-date and share them often and openly. Letting the numbers speak for themselves, simply put it out there: “We can do better than this.” We will believe you.

• You are a competitor. Set up friendly but meaningful intracompany competitions to push us to give our very best. Keep the field of competition small and local. We will not only improve our performance, we will learn from our counterparts’ successes too.

• You are extremely effective in getting us to commit. Just make sure we understand
why
we are committing. Take the time to explain benefits, outcomes, and the difference the change will make. Then we’ll get on board.

• Your desire to “get it done now” can create errors, cause intimidation, and ultimately demotivate your most ardent followers. We don’t mind being pushed, but show us you understand that there are, in fact, real time constraints.

• Learn our names. It sounds small perhaps, but you can’t imagine what a difference this will make. We’ll feel less like an instrument in your make-it-happen machine and more like valued contributors.

How to Win As a Manager

Influencer
: Your strength is your ability to persuade me to decide, to overcome an obstacle, to act out the courage of my convictions.

• You make things happen. I love to work with someone who never loses sight of the end result. Keep reminding me of why you care so much about achieving it and how it will make a difference. Make it meaningful for me.

• You set high expectations. You push me to achieve more than I thought I could. I like to reach high, it makes the accomplishment that much more gratifying. Just please, once you’ve set the bar, keep it stable. A finish line that keeps moving is exhausting and demoralizing.

• Acknowledge my contributions. In a timely fashion, tell me specifically what I did that made a difference. This assures me that you’re focused not only on winning but on celebrating your winners too.

• You can influence in any direction but I love to witness you managing up. You are able to clear roadblocks, get approvals, and capture the attention of the key decision makers. I know you put your neck out for us, and this motivates me to deliver.

• Set the expectations and then step out of the way. You may feel that you know the best way to do things, but let yourself be surprised by the creativity and commitment you get from your team when you let them use their own methods to achieve results.

• Trust that you made solid recruitment decisions. If someone has fallen off their game, take ownership of getting them back on track. You rarely give up on someone and they know it. Once you identify a performance issue with a team member and commit to working through it with them, they’ll fight hard to get back into your good graces.

How to Win in Sales

Influencer
: Your strength is your conviction. Your beliefs inspire passive clients to make a decision, to take a step, to make something happen.

• You are an activator who can’t stand being idle. Your proactive drive offers incredible potential value to an entrepreneurial, start-up, or fast-growing business.

• Because you are not afraid to challenge, you can serve as a scapegoat to help me if I am the kind of client who tends to avoid conflict or ignore a problem. In taking the heat, you can call out an obvious issue, while enabling me to take action and reach a diplomatic resolution.

• To succeed in influencing me to act, help me understand the pure motives driving you. Share the source of your energy. Communicating your mission will humanize you and deepen my relationship with you.

• You will naturally set high standards for yourself and others. Define for me, your client, what excellence actually looks like—what standards are you going to meet, by when? Your specificity will spur me to act.

• Keep your message consistent. Because you’ve got a lot of energy and ideas, you may try different tactics to woo me, but be warned that this can confuse me (or annoy me). Your unswerving commitment to your strongest message will convince me.

• If I don’t buy what you’re selling at first, maintain the relationship. You worked hard to build a relationship with me; show me that our relationship is genuinely valuable to you, and next time there’s an opportunity, I’ll pull your card first.

How to Win in Client Service

Influencer
: Your strength is that you make things happen, even if it means confronting a difficult obstacle.

• You move into action right away. Tell me what you’re going to do and why you’re going to do it. Your initiative immediately reassures me that my problem is not going to sit on the corner of someone’s desk for two weeks.