Doing Your Homework

That's it, basically. If you have something important to influence about, learn everything you can about it. Read everything you can find, talk to everyone who knows more about it than you do. Don't limit yourself by looking only for support or justification of your point of view. Get familiar with all the counterarguments and all the potential threats that are related to your idea—all the needs and fears that might arise for someone who actually had to agree to take action on it. Put yourself in the place of the person you wish to influence and make an educated guess about the specific issues that your request or offer will raise for her or him. Think yourself into the mind of someone who would be unalterably opposed to doing what you want done and then see what it would take to change your mind, even to warm up to the idea just a little.

Develop a list of benefits and costs for taking action—not just for you (although that will be useful), but for the person or group you hope to influence. Do a risk analysis. Identify what could go wrong and how such problems could be prevented or mitigated. Be sure to do this from your target person's point of view. Think about the risks of not taking action at all.

Anything you can do to stimulate dissatisfaction with the status quo may help move your idea forward. Some ways to do that include

• Showing objective data that indicates problems with the current approach (decreasing sales figures, plunging grades, etc.)
• Providing information from third parties about needs or problems with the current situation (letters from neighbors, customer complaints, etc.)
• Finding benchmark examples of successful implementation of an idea or approach similar to the one you support
• Planning an evaluation with the group, team, or family to test what is and is not working about the present situation

Influencing people generally means getting them to change or modify the way they think, feel, or act. Behavioral scientists, such as the late Richard Beckhard of the Sloan School of Management at MIT, have suggested that change occurs under the following conditions. There is

• sufficient dissatisfaction with the present state, and
• a positive vision of a future possibility, and
• support for getting from the present to the ideal future state.

Each of these must exist in sufficient strength to balance the perceived risks of change. The information you gather about the issue can serve to strengthen the other person's understanding in any of these areas.

When you have gathered the information, consider how best to present it to the person you want to influence. This kind of information is often most effective when the other person has a chance to absorb it on his or her own before you discuss it. You'll also want to think about choosing information that focuses on the merits of your idea, rather than criticizing the status quo or viewpoint of the person you want to influence. It's best if you let the other person do that. It is easier to get someone to think about your idea as another, more useful alternative than to escape unscathed from someone who is fiercely defending his or her previous choices and decisions.

Even with all the homework you are doing, it's possible that you'll persuade someone to agree that the situation needs to change, without deciding that your preferred solution or idea is the way to go. Consider possible alternatives and how close they would come to meeting your need or achieving your goal. You may even have to shift to a slightly different “ideal result” if it looks as if you won't achieve your original goal. Having already considered alternatives gives you some useful flexibility.

Framing the Issue

The way an issue or suggestion is framed can make all the difference in how another person receives it. Framing is the process of presenting an issue or idea so that the listener interprets it in a particular manner. Jim Kuypers, an academic specializing in communication, suggests that frames operate in four ways: defining problems, diagnosing causes, making moral judgments, and suggesting remedies.^* With influence, we're especially interested in the latter function—framing ideas or solutions to problems by increasing the urgency, importance, or priority for specific issues or concerns, and getting others to agree to a particular plan of action or to take a certain role or responsibility.

There are usually many possible ways to frame an issue. You may have selected one frame that is meaningful to you, but other ways of looking at it may be equally legitimate. As discussed in Chapter 10, understanding the other person's values, goals, and vested interests or the organization's strategic priorities can help you frame the issue you're influencing about in a way that appeals to that person or organization. Connecting a new idea to one that's accepted as received wisdom can be useful.