Realistic Influencing (part two)
Some time ago I blogged about a course I followed: Realistic Influencing. I promised I would write about day three as well. Here's my list of learning points:
- When in a discussion you have opposite conclusions look for facts and criteria (refer to previous post) you agree upon and/or have in common and starting talking from there.
- Remember to summarize someone's criteria when you think you see one and ask for feedback to see if you're correct.
- We all have several different voices in our head. You can give them names. Like my Einstein voice telling me to be creative, think out-of-the-box, etc. But this voice can have contradictory voice telling me to be pragmatic for instance. Talk about these voices out loud in a conversation, it helps people understand what going on in your head. It also buys you time.
During the course we also looked at Hersey & Blanchard's situational leadership matrix. I really like that model. It's a great model to use to talk with your manager about how you want to be managed or how you experience his/her management. Striking is the fact that if you e.g. think you are delegated a task but your manager coaches you, you fall back one or two development levels. I've had the experience several times in my career.
Finally we went through the 'point of view flow'. This gives some context and flow to the influencing model I wrote about in the previous blogpost. I found the two different phases, pacing and leading, interesting. Because usually people are good one or the other: pacing is easier for softer people, leading for macho's. This flow says, you have to try to do both. And during the whole process 'rapport' is important: being in sync with the other (watching his body language, truly listening, etc.)
I really enjoyed this course, not just because of the interesting theory, models and flows. But also because of all the assignments we had to do to translate theory into practice and learn!
