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 and mobilise others, you feel happy, satisfied, fulfilled and proud.
How can you get there?
Let me first offer a metaphor. Imagine that you wish to move a large object: in simple terms, you can push it or you can pull it. You need different muscles and different movements to push than you need to pull. Using the wrong approach might lead to failing or hurting yourself. In order to be effective, we need strong muscles and the right movement. Training, practice and learning by testing different approaches gradually help make the task easier.
Now imagine to translate this into conversations.
Sometimes we have a rational solution to a simple problem that is mainly in our own area of responsibility and we intuitively “push the explanation” onto others; we might succeed; unless of course we have insufficient or excessive rationale.
Other times we only have an opinion; it feels right and logical, we have thought about it long and we certainly have loads of evidence, so it starts to feel like “the truth”; so we “push” our own truth onto others trying to “prove it” ; others are likely to have a different opinion and push back. Not much progress. Frustration. Sounds familiar?
Sometimes “pulling” can be more effective; asking, enquiring, even (constructively) challenging other people’s ideas can open a dialogue; since people are more articulated than objects, we can actually learn from different perspectives; then we can integrate them into our initial approximate opinion; the other person can do the same. Suddenly there is understanding, engagement and movement.
Sounds easy enough, yet we know it is not.
Not unlike learning to apply the right energy to an object in the right way, also learning to mobilise people requires training, practice and testing different approaches.
And not unlike when you train at the gym, influence training requires to workout the different “muscles” (e.g. asking, listening, asserting, connecting the dots, etc.) and to practice frequently.
But how to find the time?
Here are some easy option:
- THE SYTE PROGRAM: At the Grooa Inspiria Learning Center (Netherlands, Eindhoven region) we offer “Interactive Learning Bites” in convenient moments: Weekdays, 16:00 to 18:00 – Saturdays, 9:00 to 11:00. The first series will start in mid August 2018; see program below.
- THE MINI-SYTE ONLINE PROGRAM: the key elements of each Interactive Learning Bite and some simple exercises that you can do on your own are distilled into 5-minute Online Learning Drops that are made available online at a few days intervals.
SYTE is a Grooa Inspiria initiative, aimed at getting you started and keeping you trained in the Transformational Journey of Personal Influence.
Syte is a set of effective ”learning bites” that are designed to be experienced in convenient moments, e.g. towards the end of a working day or on a Saturday morning, in the quiet of the Grooa Inspiria Learning Center; smoothies and rolls are available during the sessions, also as metaphors for the concentrated “learning vitamins” and “fun” of the “Leading with a Smile” Grooa approach. You will get concentrated bites of wisdom and the opportunity to immediately practice in order to experience the transformational effect, with simple exercises to take home, so you can continue to practice on your own.
Note that we wish to keep the Interactive Groups small, so please book your seat in advance: info@grooa.dev-projects.tech