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The Gentle Power of Mobilising Others

Watch the Intro Animation Video on You Tube:

Inspire & Influence; Online MasterClass

Whatever your position in work and life, you always need to mobilise and influence people around you: colleagues, friends, relatives, your boss or your subordinates. Trying to “convince” can be a frustrating experience; “convincing” actually rarely works. Instead, when you are able to influence with confidence, flare and no stress, when you manage to engage, inspire and mobilise others, your efforts are more productive and you can feel happy, satisfied, fulfilled and proud.  How can you get there?

First of all, you need a clear understanding of what is Personal Power (different from Positional or Relational Power); we can say that Personal Power is the application of your energy (mental, physical, emotional and spiritual) to mobilise others.

Then you need to know how to use this energy, how to apply it in order to be truly effective, inspire, have an impact, mobilise and influence. Not unlike when we try to move an object, we may mobilise people in various ways, using different “muscles” in one or several steps, by pushing or pulling, by using different instruments and techniques.

The Inspire & Influence Master Class will guide you through the 9 most important strategies that can help you mobilise others with flair and no stress. Some of these strategies will surprise you, some others might appear more intuitively obvious yet their conscious and intentional application might help you make them work better for you.

With this Master Class, my intention is to guide you through a thought-provoking journey, by inviting you to peek outside your comfort zone and explore new ways to become fully and confidently “the most accomplished, fulfilled and influential version of yourself”.

This Master Class will not give the Magical Recipe for success, but I guarantee that it will shake some of your beliefs and that you will never look at a an opportunity to mobilize others in the same way ever again! Of course you will get some practical tips and examples to reapply, but the main benefit will be deeper; you will acquire a new level of awareness and you will guided to look differently into your intuitive reactions, accept and channel your emotions and choose how to respond instead of reacting “as usual”.

CASE STUDY: Read the Case Study at the bottom of this article to get an initial “taste” of what you can learn and how you can more effectively mobilise people based on the Inspire & Influence training.

Online Training Logistics: 

Tuition Fee:   

Program Details: The program is articulated around the 9 “inspire and Influence” skills with an introductory session

Case Study

(Real case, with details altered to protect confidentiality)

Agatha is a senior Digital Marketing expert, recently hired by the European headquarters of a global Food & Beverage company.  She quickly notices that their website looks very old fashioned and she wonders about its effectiveness in attracting clients and business opportunities.  She starts her own investigation with an exploratory small-scale audit, both internal and external, and her concerns are confirmed. Although the website appears to attracts a lot of traffic, virtually nothing turns into a concrete sales opportunity; she would have guessed that much.

Thus Agatha decides to add a “Website Upgrade Project” to her list of initiatives. She knows that, in order to make it truly effective, she will need the inputs of the main internal users, the Sales people. She assumes that it would be a great advantage for them to have a website able to generate concrete prospects; based on her past experience she has a good idea of how to go about it, but she is unfamiliar with the F&B sector.

Agatha calls a meeting with the Director of Sales, Marco.

Initial Approach:

Agatha

Agatha sits in the meeting room and waits for Marco. While waiting, she remembers how the few initial encounters with Marco had not been especially pleasant. Many colleagues have also told her how Marco can often be “difficult”.  She feels a bit nervous, sitting on the edge of the chair, slightly hunched, with tense muscles.

Marco is a few minutes late. When he arrives, she welcomes him and gets right into the subject: she has noticed that the website is old fashioned and ineffective, she wants to improve it, but she needs his help in the form of inputs, to make sure that the new version fully responds to their requirements. She starts to get into some details, but Marco interrupts repeatedly, with questions and rebuttals without actually waiting to get answers. Agatha begins to feel overwhelmed and her usual confidence starts to fade. She recedes on her chair while Marco advances. The words are not especially harsh, but their non-verbal gives them away; he appears to be confrontational, using a defensive-aggressive demeanor; she resists the temptation to justify every point and plows ahead with her proposal, while her demeanor communicates that she finds Marco’s approach unnecessarily provocative, her resentment is contained yet apparent (after all, she thinks, she is actually offering to do something for him).

Marco

Marco is initially annoyed for being called into a meeting that distracts him away from other priorities and urgencies. He eventually decides to hear her out, after all she is a new colleague, let’s give her a chance. When he arrives, he notices her nervousness and attributes it to lack of clarity; he sets himself to be a bit patient, but cannot stop thinking about what is waiting for his attention back in the office, he is really hoping the meeting to be quickly done and over with.

As soon as Agatha presents her desire to upgrade the website, immediately sharing what she needs, he loses his good intentions.  They have had this website for years and it has never done anything fir the business, why bother? Right now it is the last of his preoccupations. He has extensive experience and has a senior team of sales executives, they all know very well how to go about getting their prospects, no need for a zealous technologist to distract them away from what they know best. Who gave this girl the idea that he needs her to help him with a silly and useless website?

Outcome:

Not surprisingly the meeting goes south.

Some decoding cues: 

No effort was initially made to align on intention, both Agatha and Marco come to the meetings with assumptions and biases, no questions are asked with genuine curiosity to understand the other side; none of them is actually listening.

Alternative Approach

Agatha sits in the meeting room and waits for Marco. While waiting, she remembers how the few initial encounters with him had not been especially pleasant. Many colleagues have also told her how Marco can often be “difficult”.  She feels a bit nervous, but is able to set aside her anxiety and decides to give Marco the benefit of the doubt. After all, she is genuinely interested in offering some help; hopefully he finds it interesting, he is a professional and she trusts he will make his decisions in the best interest of the business.

Marco is a few minutes late. When he arrives, she gets up, shakes his hand, thanks him for giving her some of his precious time, she knows how hectic things are. Then she sits down and gets right into the subject: she had noticed that the website attracted a lot of traffic, but somehow she had doubted its effectiveness and had decided to do some initial investigations – not wanting to unnecessarily waste his time. She had found out that very little had ever come out of it, so she now wonders what his thoughts are, is he concerned?

Marco’s rebuttal is prompt and short: the website traffic is useless. He and his people know very well how to get prospects by themselves. Agatha listens and agrees, yes, she can see how the most important work is done directly in the field; she knows that he has a senior team, although she never sees anyone around; they must be super busy in the field, she adds, things are quite hectic, I gather?

Marco suddenly volunteers that he wished his people could be a bit more often around in the office, to share best practices and plan together, but they are so busy building the pipeline and then following up an all the leads, yes, things are too hectic! And the website has never done a thing to help!

Agatha briefly shares a previous experience and mentions a couple of ideas on how a proper website could more effectively increase the pipeline with concrete and workable initial leads so that Sales people could rather focus on developing the key leads. Would that be interesting?

Marco admits that in principle it could be useful, but challenges the real possibility to select truly meaningful leads. Agatha listens and tells him “I am glad you raise this key point; there is no one-size fits all in this; you guys are the only ones, with your experience, who can set the best criteria. It seems like the current website has no such customized criteria; no wonder it does not work.”  “True, thinks Marco, the current website was built without my input, Agatha seems to know what she is talking about. Maybe this could be useful.”

Marco is surprised, but interested. He wants to hear more.

Outcome

Productive Meeting. Agatha has managed to mobilize Marco. They start to plan.

Some decoding cues: 

In this alternative approach, Agatha has been more influential and more inspiring thanks to alternative behaviors, e.g. Connecting, Inquiring, Uncovering, Engaging, narrating and Energizing. Can you identify the specific instances where these skills were employed?

Laura Lozza

Managing Partner, Grooa

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