In Real Influence: Persuade Without Pushing and Gain Without Giving In, Mark Goulston and John Ullmen explain why some of the old techniques that you have been using to influence project stakeholders on your projects may no longer work. In short, people have become immune to hard sell-type negotiation tactics. They don’t like being influenced. They are savvy, and they know how the media and other outlets influence them into making certain decisions. And they’ll no longer put up with that kind of behaviour.
It translates well to a project environment as one of the big things that a project manager spends his or her time doing is influencing people. We need people to do things for us, generally because we don’t have line management responsibility for them and have to get them to complete their project activities through other means.
The main concept in Goulston and Ullmen’s book is that we should approach negotiating situations from the point of view of the other person. They call this ‘their there’. Too often we start communications from what they call ‘your here’. They say that this means we start off discussions communicating from our blind spot. It’s basically an approach that says that we have a different take on the situation to the other people involved, and the more we know about what they want, the easier it is to get a solution for everyone.
Stop focusing on what you want them to do
One approach they advocate is to stop focusing on what you want the individual to do. This can be pretty hard for project managers who spend a lot of time focusing on what we want other people to do! We have lists where we tick off activities that other people have done. We ask them for status updates about what they’ve done. Even if your project team resources don’t report to you, chances are you spend a lot of time giving them work, delegating project tasks, tracking task status and using software like Seavus ProjectViewer to ensure that they are doing what you have asked them to do.
This, according to Goulston and Ullmen, is completely wrong. "It means going beyond 'What works for me?' and thinking, "What works for everyone?" And it means focusing on long term benefits rather than quick victories,’ they say.
Traditional influencing techniques fail because…
Here are 4 reasons, according to Goulston and Ullmen, why traditional influencing techniques don't work.
Fight or flight
You are programmed to get what's best for you. Your fight or flight instinct kicks in when you are negotiating on project objectives, progress, dates, or budget. Think about it. If you want resources to get a task done, you’ll fight hard to get them because that is what is best for your project and you have the project’s interests at heart. Unfortunately, fighting (or backing off completely – the flight option) are not great ways to win people over to your way of thinking.
Habit
It is easy to fall into the habit of saying, “You just don't understand,” or giving in completely. Whatever your normal position when it comes to negotiating and influencing others, this is the fall back position that you default to. Unfortunately, your fall back position is rarely the best one for every situation. You need to adapt your style to suit the situation, not rely on something that has worked in the past or that feels comfortable.
Being wrong feels right
You don't know that you are wrong until you realise it! Goulston and Ullmen make the very valid point that while you are being wrong it feels normal. It feels as if everyone else is wrong and that you are right. Consider a time where you have held a position and then found out additional information that meant you changed your mind. Up until that point you felt that your position was valid and accurate, didn’t you? It is hard to know that you are acting in a ‘wrong’ way until you realise that there are other ways to behave that could get you a different outcome.
Knowledge trap
Don’t assume that everyone knows what you know, or agrees with you. When you are deep in your project, you know everything about it. You know the ins and outs, the details, the problems, the resources, the challenges of working with stakeholders, budgets and this particular set of requirements. But the people you are negotiating with – say, for example, the line manager of a particular individual – knows nothing of all this. For them, it is a very clear request about whether you can use a resource for an additional week or not. Without all the background they are not making their decision from the same position of knowledge as you are. And consider that they have a lot of knowledge about other tasks that their team and that resource are involved with – information that you don’t have (because you haven’t yet asked).