How to perfect the game of influence

Summary

This post is my notes on the bestseller what got you here won’t get you there.

This is a great book for people who already understood the central role of human skill and has mastered the basics. It serves as a great checklist of potential flaws that prevent us from perfecting our game to the next level. It first listed 21 common poor habits. Then it recommended practical tactics to improve. Here is a wonderful summary.

This book is abundant with case studies from the author’s experience on helping executives to improve their behaviors. It inspired me to think about what’s the nature of influence and what truly separates the masters from the meditore players. Those thoughts lead me to eventually discover that ego is the driving power of all human interactions. If you were to read the book or the following details, I encourage you to explain the phenomenons by thinking how ego(self-esteem, public recognition, avoiding humiliation) drove our behaviors.

Key learnings restructured

To summarize of key insights, I categorized them into four sections:

• personal development
• motivation
• common human interaction techniques
• general problem solving strategies

In each section, the quotes are listed, some of them are complemented by my interpretation and extension of the idea.

Personal Development

“I am successful. I behave this way. Therefore, I must be successful because I behave this way!” The challenge is to make them see that sometimes they are successful in spite of this behavior.

Positive feedback(such as success) is a test on one’s self-awareness. Too sudden too strong positive feedback will almost certainly overwhelm conscience. That’s why many people who made tremendous achievements in their early lives end up being over confident and eventually lead to their later mediocrity or downfall.

Stop trying to change people who don’t think they have a problem. It’s hard to help people who don’t think they have a problem. It’s impossible to fix people who think someone else is the problem. People like this will never give up on their near-religious belief that any failure is someone else’s fault.

The desire to change has to come from deep frustration. Even under big setbacks, many people choose to deny anything wrong with themselves. The underlying psychology is a mix of the need for consistency and information reduction. The fact is clear though, one facing no big frustration can never improve. And they probably shouldn’t.

The higher you go, the more your problems are behavioral. At the higher levels of organizational life, all the leading players are technically skilled. They’re all smart. As we advance in our careers, behavioral changes are often the only significant changes we can make.

The higher up you go in the organization, the more you need to make other people winners and not make it about winning yourself… But there’s a difference between being an achiever and a leader. Successful people become great leaders when they learn to shift the focus from themselves to others. It’s an interesting equation: Less me. More them. Equals success.

The main job of leadership is to make achievers win, make the best idea prevail. Today’s enterprise doesn’t lack high achievers, but suffers from scarcity of leadership. See another post about this topic.

“It’s a lot harder to change people’s perception of your behavior than it is to change your behavior. In fact, I calculate that you have to get 100% better in order to get 10% credit for it from your coworkers.”

Self advertising should be a first class project by itself rather than some supportive task when necessary.

“The leader of the future will be a person who knows how to ask.”

Knowing how to ask is such a high impact and underdeveloped skill for most of us. Not only for leaders, but for any human being. We trained hard for how to do, how to tell, how to impress, but rarely how to ask. We need to ask for input, for feedback.

How to motivate

When we do what we choose to do, we are committed. When we do what we have to do, we are compliant.

As a general rule, people in their 20s want to learn on the job. In their 30s they want to advance. And in their 40s they want to rule. No matter what their age, though, understanding their desires is like trying to pin down mercury. You have to find out what they want at every step — by literally asking them — and you can’t assume that one size fits all. The person who sees the noble goal of “work-life balance” as irrelevant at age 24 may find it critical at 34.

If you press people to identify the motives behind their self-interest it usually boils down to four items: money, power, status, and popularity.

Very few people in tech are motivated by money, though far more think they are. Because if you gave them any amount of cash, they will immediately invest it rather than using them to buy anything. Subconsciously, they use money as an indicator of their success. The same is true about power, status and popularity. Few people really need them.

Remember this the next time you find yourself trapped by a needy, demanding staff. If they need too much of your time, you can’t just tell them to stop bothering you. You have to wean them away and make it seem like it’s their idea. Let them figure out what they should be doing on their own. Let them tell you where you’re not needed.

Anything that is hard to accept must eventually be accepted as if it’s one’s own idea. Forcing the hard decision down the throat will backfire one way of another. A common result is the person being regret and decided to overturn the decision.

Stop trying to change people who should not be in their job. You can’t change the behavior of unhappy people so that they become happy. You can only fix the behavior that’s making the people around them unhappy.

Key human interactions: appreciation, apology, feedback, listening

If you step back and look at most of these interpersonal flaws, they revolve around two familiar factors: information and emotion. The journalist/novelist Tom Wolfe has a theory he calls information compulsion. He says that people have an overwhelming need to tell you something that you don’t know, even when it’s not in their best interest.

1. He first made a list of all of the important groups of people in his life (friends, family, direct reports, customers, etc.). 2. He then wrote down the names of every important person in each group. 3. Twice a week, on Wednesday morning and Friday afternoon, he would review the list of names and ask himself, “Did someone on this page do something that I should recognize?”4. If the answer was “yes” he gave them some very quick recognition, either by phone, e-mail, voice mail, or a note. If the answer was “no” he did nothing. He didn’t want to be a phony.

I think this is a must-have habit for everyone. We don’t have to appreciate our connections, but we should have periodical check-in with them. This should be managed planning.

In depriving people of recognition, you are depriving them of closure. And we all need closure in any interpersonal transaction.Recognition is all about closure. It’s the beautiful ribbon wrapped around the jewel box that contains the precious gift of success you and your team have created.

Closure could be a recognition or an apology.

I have never seen feedback that said, “I think you are a great leader because I love the quality of your excuses.”

We tend to add context facing negative feedback. While this is honest communication, it’s very hard for the counterparty not to misunderstand the context as an excuse. The most safe answer for any feedback is ‘Thank you. I will do better.’ That’s it. The extra information can be provided in other channels. If it’s provided on the spot, it’s value will be dwarfed by risk of being recognized as disrespecting the feedback.

The dominant fact is that the person is giving you feedback, not collecting information. Contesting the feedback will make they feel disrespected. They will be discouraged to provide feedback in the future.

It works because helping people be “right” is more productive than proving them “wrong.”

Instead of saying you should have done xxx, say in the future, how about xxx?

“To gain a friend, let him do you a favor.”

Apologizing is one of the most powerful and resonant gestures in the human arsenal — almost as powerful as a declaration of love. It’s “I love you” flipped on its head. If love means, “I care about you and I’m happy about it,” then an apology means, “I hurt you and I’m sorry about it.” Either way, it’s seductive and irresistible; it irrevocably changes the relationship between two people. It compels them to move forward into something new and, perhaps, wonderful together.

The ways to build or strengthen trust:

• Do him a favor(reciprocity)
• Let him do you a favor(consistency)
• Appreciate his work(make him feel important)
• Apologize for your wrong doings(make him feel important)

Almost any response to a suggestion other than “thank you” has the potential to stir up trouble. It’s almost irrelevant whether the boss gives the idea any further thought. The critical issue is that saying “thank you” keeps people talking to you. Failing to say “thank you” shuts them down.

We should all use more ‘thank you’ and ‘sorry’, less ‘no’, ‘but’ and ‘however’.

No one expects us to be right all the time. But when we’re wrong, they certainly expect us to own up to it. In that sense, being wrong is an opportunity — an opportunity to show what kind of person and leader we are. Consumers judge a service business not so much when it does things right (consumers expect that) but rather by how the business behaves in correcting a foul-up.

This harks back to my big issue with negative feedback: We don’t want to hear it and people don’t want to give it. In soliciting feedback for yourself, the only question that works — the only one! — must be phrased like this: “How can I do better?”

“How can I do better (in the future)?”. The author later mentioned the importance of in the future part himself(coined feedforward). It will loosen up others because they will be building a better future that yet happened rather than criticizing your past, which can’t be changed anymore.

I regard apologizing as the most magical, healing, restorative gesture human beings can make.

Once you’re prepared to apologize, here’s the instruction manual: You say, “I’m sorry.” You add, “I’ll try to do better in the future.” Not absolutely necessary, but prudent in my view because when you let go of the past, it’s nice to hint at a brighter future. And then . . . you say nothing. Don’t explain it. Don’t complicate it. Don’t qualify it. You only risk saying something that will dilute it.

A great recipe of apology!

Speaking establishes how we are perceived as a listener. What we say is proof of how well we listen. They are two sides of the same coin.

Asking “Is it worth it?” forces you to consider what the other person will feel after hearing your response.

The ability to make a person feel that, when you’re with that person, he or she is the most important (and the only) person in the room is the skill that separates the great from the near-great.

Yet, we can’t do it because: we know it’s true and important, but we don’t realize it’s the only and most important thing for influencing people.

The more you subsume your desire to shine, the more you will shine in the other person’s eyes.

Gratitude is a complex emotion — and therefore can be complicated to express. It is frequently interpreted as submissive behavior, slightly humiliating.Eventually, you’ll come to see that expressing gratitude is a talent — a talent that goes hand in hand with wisdom and self-knowledge and maturity.

I never realized gratitude implies some amount of humiliating. Maybe that’s why it’s harder than what most of us thought.

By asking people, “How’m I doing?” he was advertising the fact that he was trying; that he cared. Follow-up is the most protracted part of the process of changing for the better. It goes on for 12 to 18 months. Follow-up is how we erase our coworkers’ skepticism that we can change. Leaders who don’t follow up are not necessarily bad leaders. They are just not perceived as getting better.

Asking, of course, gives the other person a license to answer. I cannot overestimate how valuable this license can be.

Problem solving

If You Can Measure It, You Can Achieve It. Part of being an effective manager and leader is setting up systems to measure everything.

Many times avoiding a bad deal can affect the bottom line more significantly than scoring a big sale.

In its broadest form, goal obsession is the force at play when we get so wrapped up in achieving our goal that we do it at the expense of a larger mission… Candace was climbing to the top, but stomping on her supporters to get there. Colonel Nicholson was building a bridge, but not winning a war. Mike was making money, but losing a wife. The seminary students were on time for a sermon, but not practicing what they preached.

The best way to balance persistence and flexibility is to have a clear stated long term priority(the goals in this quote are usually implementation or means). Then constantly review the daily routine to trim activities that can’t justify its cost given the single priority.

You failed to appreciate that every successful project goes through seven phases: The first is assessing the situation; the second is isolating the problem; the third is formulating. But there are three more phases before you get to the seventh, implementation. In phase 4, you woo up — to get your superiors to approve. In phase 5, you woo laterally — to get your peers to agree. In phase 6, you woo down — to get your direct reports to accept. 7. Implement.

In smaller companies, 7) is more often to be the bottleneck. In more mature business, 7) is usually the easiest part due to the abundance of technical competency.

1) is usually patience plus basic human skill. If one can do 1) well, 2) and 3) should naturally follow through.

The efforts spent on 4), 5) and 6) vary case by case with huge differences.

“I’ve learned that the key to your job, Marshall, is client selection. You ‘qualify’ your clients to the point where you almost can’t fail. The deck is totally stacked in your favor.” It surprised me because he wasn’t talking about himself. He was turning the tables on me. Then he said something more profound. “I admire that kind of selectivity because that’s what I do here. If I have the right people around me, I’m fine. But if I have the wrong people, not even God can win with that hand.” This is one of the defining traits of habitual winners: They stack the deck in their favor. And they’re unabashed about it. If you study successful people, you’ll discover that their stories are not so much about overcoming enormous obstacles and handicaps but rather about avoiding high-risk, low-reward situations and doing everything in their power to increase the odds in their favor.

The best way to be successful is making it hard to fail. It’s a far stronger strategy to make difficult problems disappear by disassembling them or converting them, than to solve hard problems out right.