Tag Archives: Influence

Mastering the Power Sandwich with Skillful Upward Influence

Extract More Value from Meetings with Effective Questions

Shane Snow

Shane Snow, co-founder of Contently.com advocates asking incisive questions to extract more value from meetings, mentors’ guidance, and chance encounters with thought leaders and influencers.

He notes that expert journalists, researchers, innovators, and therapists are trained to ask effective questions, and their common “best practices” include:

Listening more than talking
Asking open-ended questions to avoid suggesting responses: “Who?”, “What?”, “When?”, “Where?”, “How?”, “Why?”
They use closed-ended questions sparingly: “Is?”, “Would?” and “Do?”
Posing one concise question at a time.
They avoid multiple choice questions
Waiting for an answer without interjecting more questions or comments.
They rarely interrupt themselves or others
Tolerating the other person’s silence for several seconds before talking
Directly, repeatedly probing for insightful, revealing replies
Nodding only when the response is intelligible, logical, and understandable
Interjecting questions or rephrasing the original question to redirect tangential responses
Cross-checking information and following up possible inconsistencies with more probing questions

Sakichi Toyoda

Nearly a century earlier, Sakichi Toyoda, founder of Toyota Industries introduced an iterative problem-solving approach based on posing “Five Whys” to uncover the root cause of an issue.

This technique is now-widely applied in Lean Manufacturing, and is advocated by Eric Reis in The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses .

‘”Five Whys” were reduced to “Three Whys” to uncover customer objections in sales situations, and was modified Judith Beck in cognitive therapy to identify underlying Core Beliefs that lead to negative automatic thoughts.

Judith Beck

Beck softens the “Five Whys” by repeatedly asking “If that were true, what would it mean?”
Her model that suggest connections among:

Early experience->Core beliefs (schemas) ->Underlying assumptions (if/then – conditional) ->Automatic thoughts-> Physical Experiences->Self-Limiting Behaviors

Lois Frankel

Therapist and writer Lois Frankel illustrated the similarity of effective questions in psychotherapy sessions with those used to spur inquiry and innovative breakthroughs.
She advises interviewers and consultants to:

Use questions to define your purpose:
What do you want to gain from this conversation?
- Help
- Advice
- Information
- Commitment
- New ideas
- Clarification of opinions or attitudes
- Decision
- What is the “real” problem? Engineers and business people answer this question using a “Root Cause Analysis”
  - What are the options?
  - What are the likely consequences?
  - What results will justify the invested time, effort or money?
  - Ask specific questions:
    - What could we do differently?
    - Why is this important?
    - How can we best meet our objective?
    - What do you want to happen?
      - What don’t you want to happen?
      - What is the best thing that could happen?
      - What is the worst thing that could happen?
      - How will you react if you don’t follow this course of action?

Frankel advises to

Maintain eye contact:
Focus full attention on the interviewee
Repeat and summarize important points to verify accurate understanding

Listen for:
Content (facts)
Intent (feelings)
The way these are expressed (process).
Warren Berger

Journalist Warren Berger applied refined questioning in Design Thinking processes to produce innovative solutions in Glimmer: How Design Can Transform Your World .

He advocates continued exploration of meaningful “big” questions in his blog, A More Beautiful Question.

-*What effective questioning practices have you found most helpful in achieving business results?

Related Posts:

Tim Hurson recommends New Questions, “Senses” for Innovative Thinking and Problem-Solving
John Miller, Dennis Matthies, David Cooperrider suggest Effective Questions as Change and Innovation Catalyst

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Memorable Business Stories: Ideas and Numbers

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Chip Heath-Dan Heath

Chip Heath of Stanford and Dan Heath, Senior Fellow at Duke University’s CASE center, distill principles that make messages memorable in Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

Citing urban legends and advertisements as examples of tenaciously “sticky” messages, they argue that unforgettable ideas can be recalled with an acronym that means “success” in French:

Simplicity
Unexpectedness
Concreteness, with many details to act as “hooks” to “stick” to memory’s many “loops” (Velcro theory of memory)
Credibility
Emotion-laden stories.

Robert Cialdini

The Heaths’ principle of credibility draws on the three elements of persuasive messages outlined by Robert Cialdini in his best-selling Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.

Credibility is enhanced by liking, authority, and social proof in Cialdini’s model:

Liking – Appealing public figures or personal friends endorses
Authority – Well-respected role model or respected authority provides testimonial
Social proof – Others like me endorse it, and others provide justification: “because…”, though the actual reason is immaterial
Reciprocity – “I know you’d do the same for me,” recommended by Guy Kawasaki to convey that “You owe me…”
Scarcity – “While supplies last…”, “Limited time offer!”, “Act now, don’t wait!”
Commitment, consistency – Draws on people’s desire to appear consistent, and even trustworthy by following through on commitments: “I do what I say I will do…”
Contrast principle – Sales people sell the most expensive item first so related items seem inexpensive by comparison: Real estate transaction fees may appear minimal in contrast to a large investment in a house.

Both memorable messages and persuasive messages take advantage of habitual reactions to typical situations.

These automated and sometimes unconscious processes are a heuristic to help people to deal rapidly and efficiently with routine activities and tasks.
However, “auto-pilot” reactions may lead to being persuaded to act in ways that might not be helpful, such as excessive eating, drinking, spending, or engaging in risky activities.

Jonah Berger

Wharton’s Jonah Berger formulated an acronyn, STEPPS, to describe narrative elements that increase the likelihood that a story, idea, or product will spread like a contagious virus:

Social Currency – Passing along the information makes the sender appear “good” – knowledgeable, helpful or other
Triggers – The message evokes a familiar, frequent situation
Emotion – The story evokes emotion, so will strengthen the emotional between the sender and receiver
Public – Similar to Social Currency, passing the message reflects favorably on the sender
Practical Value – The sender provides actionable value in sharing the message
Stories - Memorable, surprising elements increase the likelihood that others will convey the message

Randall Bolten

Finance executive Randall Bolten draws on similar observations about human cognitive and perceptual processing to recommend ways to tell a memorable and motivating quantitative story.

His Painting with Numbers: Presenting Financials and Other Numbers So People Will Understand You, discusses “quantation” as another type of business storytelling that affects ”personal brand image.”

Edward Tufte

Even more practical than Edward Tufte’s breathtaking examples of effective “information architecture” in The Visual Display of Quantitative Information and Envisioning Information, Bolten provides coaching on designing memorable, persuasive presentations and “pitches” featuring quantitative information as “proof points.”

His book demonstrates the Heaths’ principles of simplicity, concreteness, and credibility while drawing on Cialdini’s proven approaches of authority, commitment, consistency, and contrast.

-*What principles do you use to tell stories that motivate others to act as you hope?

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Business Influence as “Enchantment”

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Guy Kawasaki

Guy Kawasaki, former Chief Evangelist at Apple, co-founder of Alltop.com, and author of Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions, shared with Stanford University entrepreneurship students his conviction that business influence or “enchantment” is the foundation of successful entrepreneurship.

He maintains that business influence, or “charisma”, or persuasiveness, is based on the following characteristics and behaviors.

Likeability
• Smile, engaging the corner of eyes (“crow’s feet”!) of Duchene smile
• Handshake, drawing on University of Manchester research, for the optimal handshake to engage social connection
• Dress equal to audience, not more formally or more casually

Trustworthiness
• Must trust others in order to have others trust you
• “Believe that the world is a non-zero sum game”
• “Default to Yes: How can I help this person?”
• Create something (product, services) DICEE for the listener
o D-eep
o I-ntelligent
o C-ompleteness
o E-mpowering
o E-legant

In promoting products and services, he advises:

• Branding must be “short, sweet, swallowable”: “Mantra, not Mission Statement.”
[Kawasaki’s mantra is “Empower People”]

• Conduct pre-mortem to course-correct: Pretend that the company failed; use diagnosis to course-correct

• Launch product or service by telling a compelling story

• “Plant many seeds: The world has been inverted: LonelyBoy15 needs to embrace your product and he encourages his contacts to embrace your product.”

• “Put your prototype out there because you never know who your LonelyBoy15 will be.”

• Make salient points, things that matter to listeners

• Overcome resistance via:
o Social proof (“others are doing it, so it must be ok”)
o “Find a bright spot – don’t fix something for the nay-sayers; use what is working”
o Enchant all the influencers. “The higher you go, the thinner the air, and the more difficult to support intelligent life. If you deal with CXOs, you will deal with the dumbest people. Look for the influencer, in the middle or bottom.”

• Make something endure
o Don’t default to using money; cultivate genuine “belief” and “commitment”
o Invoke reciprocity –“pay it forward”.
When the person expresses gratitude, say, “I know you would do the same for me.”
Enable the reciprocity to “alleviate the guilt” the other person experiences
o Build an ecosystem beyond your product including all interested stakeholders, users

• Learn to speak
o Customize the introduction: verbally, photos
o Sell your idea
o 10-20-30 rule: 10 slides, 20 minutes, 30 point font

• Provide value via social media
o Information
o Insight, meaning

o Assistance
o Remove the speed bumps, and obstacles to adoption
o Engage within 24 hours – “fast, many, often: it is core to your existence”

• Enchant up
o “Drop everything and whatever the boss asks: Just do it”
o Prototype fast – exceed expectations, deliver early
o Deliver bad news early, with ways to correct

• Enchant down
o Master
o Autonomy: Empower action, convey trust of others’ judgment
o Purpose
o Never ask others to do what you wouldn’t: “Suck it up”

-*How do you use “enchantment” to influence others?

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Making Magic Meaningful as a Life Metaphor

Kathryn Welds | Curated Research and Commentary

Creating value by connecting people, information, ideas, to deliver strategic results