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Chapter 3 HOW DO I INVITE PEOPLE TO BECOME INVOLVED?

Julie once received an invitation to a garden party at Buckingham Palace hosted by the Queen of England. Yes, that Queen of England. Julie had to sign a receipt when the invitation was delivered. The envelope was stamped front and back with “Lord Chamberlain Buckingham Palace.” It was addressed in beautifully handwritten calligraphic script. The message on the card itself was embossed in gold. It began with the words “The Lord Chamberlain is commanded to invite . . . ”

Talk about a special invitation. Julie still has it. The Queen, and the Lord Chamberlain, could be sure she would be there.

If we are not going to do it alone then we have to do something to invite others to join us. We know the people we want. Getting them to come becomes our focus.

We may not be confident they will come. We might fear that they won’t find what we are inviting them to exciting or worthwhile. Then they might think less of us. We could worry that it will take a lot of work to persuade them. It’s the times when we are not sure how to invite people in, when we are not confident that they will come, that this step deals with.

In answering the question, “How do I invite people to become involved?” we focus on six things:

• The list of people we want to invite
• How to invite them
• Making it personal
• Asking them to do something
• Dealing with objections
• Following up

Now you may be thinking that inviting people just takes some common sense. We might find it very simple: Give them a call, or have a chat as we pass them on the street or in the corridor, and they readily join us. Why go through all this to invite someone to join us?

But our experience is that when the stakes are high, “common sense” goes out the window. When time is tight and we are under pressure, we use the methods that are easiest for us rather than the ones most likely to tempt people to join us. How often do you send a quick e-mail to twenty people announcing a meeting and then find that only three or four people took enough notice of it to show up?

We can easily make assumptions about what people need. This might mean that we give them too much information, which ends up being off-putting, and they turn us down because they think they will not be able to cope. On the other hand, we can send something out in a rush and give too little information. Then they don’t join us because they did not have enough information to know they would want to.

Our six focus areas can serve as gentle reminders to guide us in these situations.

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The List of People We Want to Invite

If your involvement work is on track, Chapter 2 will have challenged you to consider inviting extraordinary people into your work. You should now be looking at a list of names. The list will include people who care, people with authority and responsibility, people with information and expertise, people who will be personally affected, people with diverse points of view, and people who are considered troublemakers. You might not have lists of names for each of the categories of people, but you will have an idea about how you might reach them.

You should also have decided how many people you want to involve in the work. You should have gone through the ideas generated by the categories and considered who was essential and who was desirable. If your work is complex, you may even have completed separate lists of people for each phase of the work.

We deliberately take the question of whom to invite and separate it from the question of how to invite them. Then any nervousness about actually issuing an invitation won’t deter us from putting people on the list.

We have heard people use “They won’t come” as a reason to eliminate people from involvement. Guess what? If you don’t even ask them, they won’t.

In Julie’s house, they called this kind of speaking for other people “tractoring.” The word comes from a story Julie’s dad used to tell about a farmer whose tractor breaks down. He decides to ask a neighbor if he can borrow his tractor. On the way to the neighboring farm, the farmer thinks about the man he is going to see. He remembers stories he heard about other people being refused favors, and he remembers something he borrowed from this farmer a while ago and has not yet returned. He begins to wonder whether the farmer will lend him the tractor and becomes more and more anxious about asking. Finally, when he gets to the door and rings the bell, the neighbor cheerfully answers, and the farmer angrily says, “You can keep your bleeping tractor!”

Don’t tractor—don’t speak for other people.

How challenging is your list? Do you wonder if some of the people you’ve listed will come? Are you beginning to think about not even asking them? Does the thought of asking them make you nervous? Nervous is good. You can tap into your nervousness and use it to inspire you to invite with confidence and originality.

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How you invite people can be critical to your success in involving them and getting things done. It is worth being creative about finding ways to invite the people on your list to join you that are compelling and galvanizing. Here are a few ways to be compelling:

• Sometimes just telling people about the activity you want to involve them in is compelling. We barely need asking twice to a close friend’s birthday or wedding celebration.
• On the phone, in the corridors, and in presentations, talk about your project in a way that is galvanizing. When you speak with passion, people will want to join you.
• The form of the invitation can be unusual. We once saw people being invited to a farmer’s market with apple-shaped balloons.
• Sometimes the name or the title of the work can be intriguing. One pharmaceutical company who wanted to invite people to join them in developing a new identity for their website called it “The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party” and invited people to “come and lose their marbles” with an activity using marbles.

Or you can have another type of creative theme. We have seen many other themes with invitations to match, from “movie tickets” for a research project in Cannes during the Film Festival, to “travel passes” to invite people to join a Learning Journey project, to footballs to tempt people to join in work on values at a football field.

When you focus on the list of people you want to involve, use it to inspire and motivate you. You are not going to be doing this alone. All these people may join you. You are going to get great things done.

How to Invite Them

There are a lot of ways to invite people. Sit now and think of all the things you have been invited to join. You did not say yes to them all. Which stood out for you as ones you knew instantly you were attracted to? Was it just the appeal of the job? Was there something about the way you were asked that made it appealing? Or was it the person who asked?

Let’s consider many of the options. If time permits, we might put out feelers during a casual lunchtime conversation. If time is tight, we might send an e-mail. We could craft a letter, a card, a leaflet, or some other kind of written invitation. We can use a phone call or a personal visit. We can invite people during meetings and presentations. Each form of invitation has its strengths and weaknesses.

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Face-to-Face. This is the most powerful medium for persuasion. You are showing that you have clearly made an investment to spend time with the people you are inviting. You will be able to see how people are responding, which can help you tailor your message appropriately. You can deal with objections straight away.

We worked on a project in Liverpool where the planning team made the effort to go out personally to many community groups and invite them directly. Needless to say, going to see people face-to-face takes a lot of time. Even if you go around and see them in groups, it could take a while to get things moving.

Another version of face-to-face is the video conference call. This cuts out the travel of a personal meeting. It might not be ideal for a first invitation, but may be used to issue a broader invitation once a project has started.

Phone. The personal nature of a phone invitation can be persuasive. The phone allows for a conversation, which also gives us the opportunity to answer questions. We might think it more difficult to use the phone for large projects with a number of people making the calls. We have seen teams plan a phone message carefully so that they can all be as compelling. This was not in the form of a rigid script but simply a basic format of points to mention. In a business context, we’ve found it can be very powerful when a senior manager makes the call. If your company CEO phoned to invite you to join a project, wouldn’t you be eager to agree?

Of course, the biggest problem with the phone is calling the people you don’t know. Just the thought of it can make us go cold. The trick is to think of it like a meeting. In Chapter 6, we introduce a framework for meetings that you can use when making cold calls. Once you have introduced yourself, form some kind of connection. You could mention the person who suggested you call them. Talk with them about the issues in the work, listen, and note their ideas. Invite them to begin to share ideas about what is possible and plan with them some things that you could do. As you do this, you will draw them in and asking them will be easy.

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Letters, Cards, and Leaflets. Printed documents are a good choice when your invitation list includes a number of people you do not know. They offer a lot of scope for creativity. We’ve seen stunning leaflets that use unusual typestyles, shapes, colors, graphics, and paper choices to create a powerful impact. You can use themes and wacky titles. A well-crafted personal letter can also be extremely effective.

The trouble with these kinds of written invites is that they can seem very formal. They also have to compete with all the other things people get in the mail.

E-mail. This is an increasingly common method of issuing invitations, although it has serious drawbacks. Most people today have electronic in-boxes filled with messages, and separating the important messages from the spam is a time-consuming and annoying chore. Still, e-mail offers unsurpassed speed and efficiency.

When you know your audience well, and especially when they are expecting a message from you (and therefore are unlikely to overlook it), e-mail can be effective.

You might want to consider ways to make your e-mail work better as a way of inviting people. We like to see color and web links. We are drawn to simple short messages and the sense that people have taken the time to think about us in writing the e-mail (not just lumped us in with a general distribution). These days using jazzy titles for e-mail can be risky; we have deleted at least one invitation thinking it was spam.

Posters and Advertisements. When the list of people includes people you are not sure how to reach, consider using well-placed posters to catch people’s attention. If you can, tap the talents of an experienced artist or designer to create your posters; they need to be bright, easy to read, and eye-catching. You can also use the press as a conduit for your message; for example, we have been successful in recruiting people to public conferences using a combination of press releases and advertisements.

The serious downside of posters and ads is that some people (including the people you want to reach) may not see them. Worse still, the people you had rather not see them do! Posters and ads can be undiscriminating. You have to be sure you want all comers.

When you are focusing on using the right media, be prepared to consider all options. If necessary, use a combination of two or three media.

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Making It Personal

We may not be inviting people to Buckingham Palace, but we can still make people feel special when we invite them to join us. There are many ways to accomplish this. The key, for us, is speaking personally to the people you are inviting and conveying the message “Come in—this will be worth your time.”

This is as important in a corporate setting as it is anywhere else. It is easy for people to feel lost in the body corporate and to think that their voice does not matter. In a corporate setting, your request will be competing with many demands. It will sit alongside all the other meetings, e-mail, letters, notices, and phone calls. Making it personal can help it stand out.

Showing that you have thought about the person you are inviting and his or her particular talents, concerns, and aspirations can be powerful. When you help people see what they bring to the party and how their peculiar talents and backgrounds relate directly to your work, they are more likely to join in. Try this: Go through the list of people you created in Chapter 2. Take stock of what you know about them. How busy are they? Have they signed up for work with you in the past? Are they likely to volunteer easily, or will they need persuasion? What are they interested in? What might they be concerned about? What do they care a lot about?

If you know little or nothing about some of the people you are inviting, do a little background research. Talk to them directly, or talk with other people who know them and have involved them in projects in the past. Find out what might encourage them to volunteer. Work hard to build up a clear picture of what might appeal to them. Express your openness to having people offer gifts that are unexpected.

It can be helpful to think of inviting people to join you as a strategic activity. You may find you need different strategies for different people, such as:

• Different ways to make it personal—what will be a hook for one person might not work for another.
• Diverse descriptions of what the work is to match varied talents.
• A range of media—some will read and respond to e-mail, others will need that call.
• A set of tactics for following up.

You can use the Invitation Strategizing Tool (Figure 3.1) as a handy guide to the various tasks involved in answering the question, “How do I invite people to become involved?” Adapt the form in Figure 3.1, adding as many spaces as you need to cover all the people you will be inviting.

Another way we make it personal is by speaking from the heart. As you prepare to invite each person to join you, get in touch with your emotions. Share your deepest desires, dreams, and concerns. Tell people why this venture is important to you and about the important difference you hope to make in the life of your organization or community.

You also make it personal when you make people feel special. When we are inviting people to join us, we can do a lot to make people feel needed and important. Just the request can be enough. If the people you invite can see your passion and imagination, they will be more willing to offer theirs. Don’t be afraid to be vulnerable. Be ready to say, “We can’t do this without you.” The more energy you devote to the process of inviting people, the more likely you are to get an active response.

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FIGURE 3.1

THE INVITATION STRATEGIZING TOOL

People	Relevant Personal Information	Points to Make	Media	Responses and Follow-up

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FIGURE 3.2

AN IMAGINATIVE INVITATION

A man was walking on the beach and saw a small boy throwing starfish into the ocean. There were millions of them washed up on the shore. “What difference, young man,” he asked, “can that possibly make, throwing starfish one at a time?” The boy just picked up another starfish, tossed it into the sea and said: “It’ll make a big difference to this one.”

Dear

I am writing to you because I think you might be a starfish-thrower. I think you may be someone who, even when faced with a large, seemingly impossible task, will give your all to do whatever you can to make things better. I think you are probably the sort of person who feels that way about our town. If you are such a person I would like to draw on your enthusiasm, love of our town, commitment to make things better, as well as insights, and involve you in the planning of an event that I believe could benefit our town greatly. . . .

---

Figure 3.2 shows an example of a very distinctive invitation sent by the Reverend David Beedon to key people in the town of Wednesbury, UK.

Finally, including a surprise and making it distinctive will demonstrate that you care. When you do something unusual in your invitations, you lift people out of the everyday. People will be intrigued and wonder what it might be like to be involved in your project. The Body Shop International once sent out invitations to attend an International Franchise Meeting that included an audiotape featuring provocative interviews about change. This unusual step prepared people for a very different gathering.

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Asking Them to Do Something

When we invite people to help us get things done, we never intend to waste their time. But they may not believe that. Past experience in being asked to help and then being left on the sidelines, ignored, or other such horror stories of involvement may have colored their view. We can help overcome this by being clear in the invitation what we are asking people to do and why.

Let people know what your project will be like through your invitation. If the work will be creative, then show creativity in the way you invite them. If you will be asking a lot of questions, include several examples in your invitation so that people will start thinking about them and will want to be part of creating the answers.

Sometimes saying what the project will not be like is important. We have seen invitations that promise “No speeches, no hierarchy.” Those weary of bureaucratic committee meetings are likely to find such an invitation very appealing.

One restructuring project we worked on with a cosmetics company needed people to join at every stage of the design. They wanted everyone to be involved in some part of the job. They laid out what all the work was. They made it clear that each stage of the work required people to do something. They laid out what talents and aptitudes would suit which work. Then they invited people to choose. Everyone responded to this invitation; every stage had a great team of people who came with their sleeves rolled up.

Sometimes we are asking people for their ideas. We might issue a general invitation and get nothing. Ever opened a suggestion box to find that the only slips in the box are sarcastic comments? Perhaps we need to do more than ask them to do something. We might have to say what the impact of their action will be and how we will use it. The best suggestion schemes we have seen have made promises. There was a process that took every suggestion seriously and responded to each one.

Inviting people to meetings can be the hardest work of all. In Chapter 6, we will talk about how you can make meetings a powerhouse of involvement. But you have to get people to show up first. There have been too many meetings that were a waste of their time. If they are wary of meetings, you may need to tell them what work will be done at the meeting. In addition, asking them what they would like to discuss or what should be on the agenda is a powerful way to invite people to your meeting. In doing so, you convey the message “This is not just my meeting, it is our meeting.”

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We have seen a range of ways of inviting people to meetings and letting them know that something will be done. One we like is to include some form of interview or questionnaire. It says we are going to be listening to you; you are going to have a say in how this works. Another is to engage people emotionally by asking them to bring something with them—an object or newspaper article—that represents an important issue you are going to be working on in the meeting.

Sometimes you can invite people in by simply getting on with the work yourself. We think of this as “being the invitation.” It’s one thing to ask people to help you with a job. It’s quite another to roll up your sleeves and start doing it yourself. This can work wonders when you are confident that people will recognize that the job is too big for you to handle alone. Also, they can see exactly what you need help with. We have spouses who are masters of this—when they start a big project like redecorating the house or landscaping the garden, it’s almost impossible to resist getting involved.

Dealing with Objections

It is natural for people to raise objections. Some will readily join you. Others may have a range of reasons not to.

It can help to have in mind the types of objections people will raise when you invite them and how you are going to respond to them prior to inviting them. Our main thinking about how to deal with the objections is to put yourself in their shoes and think about why they might be raising those objections. Then respond in ways that deal with their objections as you continue to invite them in.

“I’m not sure I have the time to do this” or “What’s in it for me?”

Why people raise this: Most probably this will be because they’re very busy and they have not understood your purpose or the benefits of getting this job done.

How you can respond: You can try painting a clear picture of how much time it will take and what the personal benefits to them will be. You can talk about the purpose of the work. Then ask them what would make it worthwhile for them. Ask them how much time they could commit. Share your ideas about what they could contribute. Make them feel needed.

“Is it going to be the same old faces?” or “Who else have you asked?”

Why people raise this: They may well be sick of always being asked or of always seeing the same old tired faces producing the same ideas and getting the same results. They may also be worried that there will not be enough people and they will end up with a lot of extra work.

How you can respond: You could talk about whom you have invited and who has already agreed to come. You can share your ideas so far for the kinds of things people will do. They might be interested in what you are doing to invite different people to join you. You could ask for ideas as to who else to invite and what strategy to adopt with them.

“With that many people, why do you need me?” or “If everybody comes, won’t you have too many?”

Why people raise this: Some people fear large groups. They get anxious about not being heard or not being able to do anything useful. The concerns range from the fear of being manipulated to the fear of things getting out of control.

How you can respond: Reassurances can help here. You know what you are doing. You need all those people. There will be work for them all. You have planned it all out. Show them the plan. Explain the bits they are concerned about in more detail. Questions can also help. Get their ideas about useful things to do, how to group people, what will be important to make it work.

“I don’t know enough to help you” or “Why on earth would you want me?”

Why people raise this: They don’t think they have anything to offer, or they don’t see the relevance of what they know to what you are talking about.

How you can respond: The best thing here is to get them talking. Give your thoughts and ask questions. Show how much they have to offer by listening to their answers. By drawing them out, as part of the process of inviting them in, you will demonstrate clearly how valuable they can be. It will set the scene for their active involvement.

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Following Up

A lot of people will not let you know that they object. Some might not even respond. It’s valuable to track the responses. Sometimes the response will be instant and you can immediately proceed to the next step of working with people and planning their involvement in the project. If some people fail to respond, plan a secondary invitation, possibly using a different medium to contact the nonresponders. Otherwise you can begin work as soon as you reach critical mass—that is, as soon as you recruit enough people to get started. Then you might consider a second invitation after you have done some work with the initial group.

You can continue doing follow-up once the work has started. It can be particularly powerful to use your initial volunteers to recruit others. Ask the first few people who accept your invitation to talk to their contacts via phone, in other regular meetings, or by e-mail.

Follow-up needs a high degree of tenacity. When we don’t immediately accept an answer of “No”—when we press our case—we convince people we really mean it and we really need them. Sometimes sheer tenacity wins commitment.

Finally, say thank you—and this means to everyone, even those who did not accept your invitation. Who knows? You might be inviting them to join another project soon.

Chapter Checklist

To develop a really special invitation that will draw people into active involvement:

• Review the list of people you want to invite.
• Make notes of what you know or can find out about these people— their needs, interests, and concerns.
• Decide on the most appropriate media for your invitation.
• Prepare a distinctive message for each person you want to invite.
• Respond to objections, track the responses, and follow up as needed.
• Thank everyone involved, including those who turned down your request.