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Impact and Influence in Action – Prepare With The End in Mind

Guest post by: Clive Hook

Article Overview: Setting positive foundations for effective influence and creating the right impact helps the conversation, interaction or negotiation by building rapport and establishing a working relationship. Preparation means thinking through your own and their point of view, assembling what you know about them as well as recognising your tendencies that act for and against your negotiating skills. Those wizards you see who seem to think on their feet have often spent time practising – I call it “rehearsed spontaneity” when I’m coaching senior managers and leaders.

Impact and Influence in Action – Prepare With The End in Mind

Setting positive foundations for effective influence and creating the right impact helps the conversation, interaction or negotiation by building rapport and establishing a working relationship. This is more than “Hello – let’s get going” and it’s less than “Let me tell you about my life, loves and the universe”. This is a business conversation so there’s a purpose – and the first few minutes could help you achieve your objectives and get more of what you want by engaging in the right way and making the right first impressions.

The Hale Circle of Influence is a map I use to structure my conversations and negotiations. It helps me make sure I’ve covered the bases before I meet and it reminds me where I am in the process during the meeting or conversation. The first of the eight elements or areas of the map is Preparation.

Preparation– I’m astounded by how many senior managers, leaders and executives I meet and work with that “fly by the seat of their pants” when going into important discussions or negotiations. If it’s that important you can not leave it to chance, luck or instinct. At the same time, of course, over-preparing and going in with a completely fixed idea of what you will say, how they will then respond and how you will then deliver your killer blow is doomed to failure. You say “A” and expect them to say “B” but they say “K” and it all fall apart.

Preparation means thinking through your own and their point of view, assembling what you know about them as well as recognising your tendencies that act for and against your negotiating skills. Those wizards you see who seem to think on their feet have often spent time practising – I call it “rehearsed spontaneity” when I’m coaching senior managers and leaders.

Vitally important – but strangely absent from many managers’ planning – is a clear statement or picture of what you want to achieve from the meeting – your desired end result. Investing a few minutes in mental rehearsal of how you are going to open the discussions, set the agenda and share your desired end result pays huge dividends. Write it down but make sure it’s an end result not how you are going to get there. Remember – an objective is a destination, a place you’re heading for not the journey itself. Imagine what you want to be on the table that isn’t there at the moment. What will actually exist that doesn’t yet? How do you want them to think and feel? What do you want them to do at the end of the meeting?

It’s not by accident that “Vision” is so often cited as a requirement of leader capability – vision is having a picture of something in the future so that you know what you need to focus on as you decide what to do. Vision in negotiating is being really clear about what you want in place and what you can realistically expect as an outcome.

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Article Tags: influencing skills, influencing skills training, negotiation skills, negotiation skills training



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