Squiggly sprint 24: Day 5 - Influencing

It’s day 5 of the SquigglySpring with AmazingIf, and today’s article is on Influencing. 

For today, I’ll share a story that was an important lesson for me.

I was going to present something to senior management some years ago, including the CEO and the head of product. I was given some advice before going into that meeting. I was told not to spell things out to them. They were clever, they had been here for ages, they would get it.

So I gave my presentation, and the whole thing was pretty flat. What I was talking about was quite serious, but they didn’t seem to think it was as serious. I couldn’t understand why. 

It was only months later that some of the things that I spoke about came to pass that someone said a throwaway comment of “Oh, I see what the problem was now.”

Since then, I have seen many models around communication that give a platform to explain things. The starting stages are often the same, two being “Situation Behavior Impact” and “Situation Complication Implication”.

I strongly believe, and have coached on this topic multiple times, that people stop their explanations before they get to the Impact or Implication. Often this is because they don’t realize that the people opposite them don’t see the full picture, or they are afraid that if they spell things out to someone, they will come across as talking down to them. I actually remember explaining something to a boss once only to have a peer blurt out “Do you not think he understands that?”

Especially with senior people in a company, or people that have been there a long time, there is an assumption that they know everything, and are connecting all the dots. “Oh, Anne is the founder, she knows everything. Don’t try to explain details to her, she’ll get annoyed.” The problem is, as companies grow, people get spread thinner and thinner, and don’t have time to stay on top of everything.

There are two things I’ve practiced with this.

Firstly, telling my team to treat me like an idiot, and spell out the problem for me. If they don’t, I have a dozen other things on my mind. I can let people speak for a while and then offer the quick feedback of “That’s all great, but I don’t know why that is important.”.

The second is to tell people that I will be explaining things to them in detail, and apologies if I over-explain. However, I’m quite certain that someone that takes this approach will one day be greeted by the CEO saying “Oh. I hadn’t thought of that.”  

https://youtu.be/xfI33aHB5x0