The focus of this chapter is on developing relationships both within and external to your team and then leveraging those relationships for the benefit of all.
WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?
People tend to do business with, and refer people to, people they know, like and trust. The more people there are who know and trust you, the more referrals you will get. This is obviously important if you are a small business owner or are in sales and marketing, but it is also equally important in every organisational setting. As an IT leader, you may wish to sell the benefits of a piece of new technology to a business partner; alternatively you may wish to give your board a wake-up call on the potential impact of digital disruption.
Cast your mind back to that excruciating experience at school when you all stood in a line while two sporting stars picked their teams. They did not necessarily pick the best players; they picked the people they knew, liked and trusted. If you were new and unknown, you were left until last and nobody wanted you.
It is just the same in organisations. The people who get the interdepartmental transfers, the special courses, the places on the cross-functional action teams, one of the very few places on the company awayday – these are the people who are known, trusted and respected far beyond their work team or department.
If you want to get on, you need to raise your visibility and start working on your sphere of influence.
Some would call this networking. Now, when we talk about networking, we are not talking about the use of social networking tools, such as Facebook or LinkedIn. While they are both fine tools and very useful, they lack the key element, the ‘ingredient X’ – a sense of how much you trust someone. You don’t come to trust somebody by clicking on a web page; you can become inquisitive about someone, you can even develop the beginnings of a sense of liking, but trust can only be built through face-to-face interaction over a significant period of time.
THE IMPACT OF THE ISSUE
In organisations, as in life, who you know, how they think about you and their willingness to put their reputation on the line to help you has a far bigger influence on what you can achieve than anything you can do on your own. Your circle of influence is key to your success – make it your business to build and expand it so that when you are faced with a daunting task, you look up for help and find that you are surrounded by willing hands who have your best interests at heart.
MAKING SENSE OF IT ALL
When some people talk of a circle of influence, they do so in an attempt to give you a focus for your attention. In his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen R. Covey distinguishes between:
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Our circle of concern – all the things that might interest us on which we can focus our energy. Our circle of concern may be made up of things like our family, our mortgage, our job, the economy, global warming, heart disease, educational inequality, the state of the health service and so on. Although these may all be noble causes, some clearly lie outside our ability to have a direct influence.
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Our inner circle of influence – this is a smaller subset of the circle of concern and is made up only of those things that you can actually do something about.
Covey argues that by learning to focus on those things that you can do something about, that you have some control over, you can become more proactive, productive and energised. Wasting your time and energy worrying about things over which you really have no control is counter-productive. He goes further in suggesting that if you focus too much on the wider circle of concern, the things that you have no control over, the effect can be to increase feelings of negativity, which, in turn, can have the effect of reducing your circle of influence.
There is no doubt that where you focus your attention and energy is important, and there is considerable merit in the idea that you should prioritise those areas where your skills, knowledge, experience, and mental and emotional connection allow you to make the biggest difference. However, when we talk about circle of influence, we are talking about building relationships with people: how you can build deeper, more trust-based relationships, and techniques that you can use to dramatically increase the number of people that you know and who trust you.
But trust is such an ephemeral quality – how often do you see someone briefly in a TV programme and think, ‘I wouldn’t trust them’? Perhaps you look at someone in the street, or in a shop, and think ‘I wouldn’t trust them’. It is human nature to make initial assessments of trust on pretty tenuous information. Maybe this is because learning to trust someone takes time and effort. You risk having your trust abused and, if this happens, you become even more reluctant to make the effort again.
So, one of the key factors in your willingness to make the effort to trust someone may be your assessment of how useful you feel that person may be to you in the future. If you feel that they may be helpful, you are more inclined to make an effort to get to know them.
Once you start to engage with someone, you may find that they can indeed be helpful to you, in which case you are likely to invest even more time and effort to maintain your acquaintance. If they then go on to be helpful, you invest your trust in them and you feel an obligation to be helpful in return.
If you make an effort to help someone get what they want, and you do it in an ethical and honest manner, you will increase their level of trust in you and, in return, you build a bond of obligation that you can call upon at a later date.
This leads us nicely to our central question, which is – How can I create opportunities to interact with more people in a way that encourages them to like me and trust me?
The obvious answer is that you need to network more. But before you rush off to meet more people, let’s take a moment to understand what networking is:
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Networking is a purposeful human interaction with the sole aim of building trust. You do this by focusing on the other person, their needs and what you can do to help them fulfil their needs.
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Networking is not selling, either yourself or your product; it is certainly not an opportunity to boast of your achievements or prowess. It is not small talk, because that has no purpose or useful outcome other than passing time; nor is it an opportunity to practise amateur psychoanalysis or run a self-help clinic.
Networking as a means of marketing yourself is a skill that needs to be understood and practised. It is much more than just meeting people and, despite the hype of technology-enabled professional networking tools, it is also much more than just getting connected online.
In his 1999 article, ‘The Human Moment at Work’, Edward M. Hallowed set out the two conditions that must be simultaneously present for a human moment to happen: physical presence, and emotional and intellectual engagement.
The same is true for your networking efforts because, when you network, you are creating a human moment. However, in today’s world, with remote working and virtual teams, physical presence is often a challenge. When physical presence is not an option there is no easy solution. Video-conferencing tools, such as Skype, are useful but not a substitute; the limits on sound frequency filter out tone and voice inflections. Body language is not the same; it is often contrived or static, there is a time lag and frequently quality issues, depending on your internet connection. Quite frequently these days, in business conversations, people choose to turn the video option off – they may be working from home and feel they are not dressed appropriately or want to be free to multi-task unseen. Our advice is:
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When you do have the chance to meet and talk to strangers face-to-face make the most of the opportunity; don’t waste those precious moments by spending your time on your email communicating back home.
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When you are communicating remotely be very thoughtful in your use of tone – consider how your message may come across to the receiver: is there any ambiguity, could your message be misconstrued, how may someone from a different culture or background perceive your message? Also, try to engage in a little small talk and find that personal connection to create a lasting bond.
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If at all possible, try to ensure that your first meeting is face-to-face – it will be so much easier to find that personal connection to create that lasting bond. Also you will significantly reduce the chance of things going wrong.
As your purpose is to build liking and trust, it also follows that your focus should be firmly on the person you are engaged with, their needs and how you may fit into fulfilling those needs. By doing so, you can demonstrate your value to them by helping them to achieve their goals.
We have seen that if you want to increase your circle of influence, you have to get out there and network; that means you build relationships with everybody and anybody you come into contact with who could be of value to you in the future.
You may feel a little daunted by this prospect because you cannot assess people’s potential value to you, unless you take the trouble to get to know them, and you don’t have the time to get to know everyone you bump into. As such, you need to establish a strategy on how to target and prioritise your networking efforts.
We suggest that you work on the following groups in this order:
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Inside your organisation: make it your business to find out who the key players are in each department, who is sponsoring each major project or programme, who is managing each project on behalf of the sponsor and who reports directly to board members. These are all people who should be in your circle of influence – you need to make opportunities to interact with these people and find out what you can do for them, even if it is something as simple as introducing them to someone else. Make it your business to do something for them and show them they can rely upon you.
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Outside your organisation, but inside your professional discipline: you already have something in common – your area of expertise. Now look for a way to leverage that – you may be able to help them solve a problem, access a resource that is unknown to them or introduce them to like-minded people. This may be a longer-term pay-off, but it is time well spent. Look for opportunities to engage with people in communities, such as:
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your customer community – the people who use and care about the goods and services that you provide;
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specialist groups under the banner of your professional body;
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journalists (both retained and freelance) who write on your subject;
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conference organisers and speakers.
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Outside your professional discipline, but working in the same sector as you: this is playing the long game, but it does have two big advantages:
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It helps you understand the needs and drivers of people who face different problems from you, and gives you valuable practice at building relationships where you don’t have a common bond of professional knowledge.
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It can give you new insights that you would never pick up by interacting with like-minded people – this sort of boundary spanning is a key skill and makes you a valued asset on cross-functional teams.
OK, so now you have narrowed down the universe to a manageable 15 to 25 people that you will target in order to expand your circle of influence.
In addition, make it your mission to give a little to the people you come across each day who are generally ignored by the masses, such as security guards, car-park attendants, cleaners, drivers, receptionists and so on. Acknowledge their existence, engage in a little small talk and look for an opportunity to compliment or thank them. People like to feel valued for who they are and what they do, and people in such professions are vital, but rarely noticed or acknowledged. They also have their own network and pretty soon word will get around – ‘that one is OK’, ‘he’s not stuck up like the rest’, ‘she made my day’. Remember that value can come out of the most unlikely acquaintanceships.
To do this you will have to be generous with yourself and your time because you never know what you might need from someone in the future. As they say, ‘be nice to people on your way up because you might meet them on your way down’.
Now for some general advice on sensible tactics to follow when engaging with someone you want to influence. This is a long list, and we suggest that you start by choosing one or two ideas and building them into the way you do things. Once these have become embedded as good habits, revisit the list and choose two more areas to work on:
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Always speak well of others; never slag anyone off behind their back. If you say something bad about someone to someone else, how does that someone else know that you are not doing the same to them behind their back?
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Take an interest in other people and their activities and interests. For most people, their favourite topic is either themselves or the achievements of members of their family. Listen carefully; this is how you get to know someone and find out about their values and what is important to them.
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Develop the ability to converse on a wide range of subjects – your aim is to show that you know just enough about what they are saying to recognise that they are making a really valuable contribution and to be able to ask meaningful questions that give them the opportunity to impress you some more. Resist the temptation to show them how much you know on the topic.
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Look for common interests – these will always provide an easy, non-threatening ice-breaker on any occasion.
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Actively listen to others and accept that they have a valid point of view, even if you don’t agree with it. If you can learn how they see the world and why they see it like they do, you will be better placed to assess how you can help each other.
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Praise, rather than criticise, and never, ever argue with someone. You cannot win an argument – if you lose, you have lost and if you win, you have lost because you have just created a grievance in the mind of the other person and potentially destroyed any chance of that person ever trusting you.
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Demonstrate empathy and sensitivity to the moods and feelings of others. You need to engage emotionally as well as intellectually.
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Respect and value people for who they are without trying to change them.
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Demonstrate modesty and humility and be prepared to admit your mistakes or that you are wrong. Develop your sense of humour and ability to laugh at yourself.
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Put yourself out to help others without expecting anything in return.
Finally, try to end every interaction with an enquiry that gets to the heart of how you can help them. This is your trump card because it demonstrates that you have been listening and that you care about them, and it gives you an opportunity to start another interaction with them at a later date. But you need to be a little subtle about how you do it.
Here are some ideas that you can adapt and adopt to your own situations:
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If you are building rapport with someone inside your business, but outside your discipline, try something like:
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’Wow, I had no idea what your programme was trying to achieve, it sounds ready exciting. But from what you’ve said, your biggest issue seems to be that you are tacking a skilled “x” – can you tell me more about what you need from this person, so that I can keep my eyes out for someone who might fit the bill?’
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If you are building your business and looking for prospects for yourself, don’t ask outright; use reverse psychology, show you want to help them find prospects and you can be sure that when you do, they will return the favour. Try something like:
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‘How would I recognise someone who would be a good prospect for you?’
Notice with both the examples above that you are feeding back to them that you have intellectually engaged with their issue and you are on their emotional wavelength with regard to their immediate needs. Also, by asking them for a pen picture of what they need to solve their issues, you have left them with a lasting impression that you are actively engaged with them to solve their problem. Even if you don’t actually help them this time, they will remember your interest and willingness to go out of your way for them. You have started to build trust and obligation.
THINGS FOR YOU TO WORK ON NOW
The focus of this chapter has been the importance of trust and building trust-based relationships. We have recommended a form of purposeful networking that requires you to first give generously of your time and resources; it involves listening attentively and giving openly.
Here are some questions to help you diagnose what you need to be working on.
Reflect on your answers and use the simple practical tools listed below to help you build a prioritised action plan.
Understand that although we advise you to do something now, building a relationship with people is not a ‘one shot’ activity. It takes time and multiple small but significant acts. Be yourself, don’t rush in and try to force an entry. Listen carefully and when the opportunity arises act with simple, open sincerity in a spirit of helpfulness.
FURTHER FOOD FOR THE CURIOUS
Covey S.R. (2004) The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People – Powerful lessons in personal change. London: Simon & Schuster:
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Lots of useful self-improvement guidance based on identified winning habits; needs deep study to get the best out of it.
Hallowell E.M. (1999) The Human Moment at Work. Harvard Business Review, January–February. Available from https://hbr.org/1999/01/the-human-moment-at-work [21 March 2017]:
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A classic Harvard Business Review article that makes the social and psychological case for ensuring that you create the time and space to have meaningful human interaction and points to the potentially dire consequences when you don’t make the effort.
Yemm G. (2008) Influencing Others – A key skill for all. Management Services, 52 (2). 21:
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A short, four-page article that introduces and expands on influencing strategies and tactics.