People with a modicum of social adjustment don’t start conversations by describing what they want from others. However many times in influence conversations (like marketing, sales, leadership or collaboration) we do exactly that. Make sure your marketing, leadership and collaboration conversations consider others as humans.
Today I received an email from a connection that was a poor attempt to hide an email marketing piece. I replied pointing out it had no relevance to me, wasn’t interested in my issues and asked to be removed from the list. The opportunity for further influence has been damaged.
Everyday we ask others to listen to us as people seeking to influence our networks. In verbal conversation, we recognise the need to build rapport, to explain context and to understand the other’s situation first. We know influence comes from a relationship.
However put us in a stage or in some form of digital communication and we often forget these critical niceties. We see influence as a transaction. I ask. You do ( even if the response rate is only 1%). We excuse our approach to ourselves on the grounds of urgency, efficiency, need or authority. None of these matter much to the other person dealing with our insistent demands.
More human conversations build relationships in all channels. Understanding and relevance are foundations for influence. There’s no excuse for shouting about your needs if you want influence.
Shouting your needs simply doesn’t work. Have a human conversation instead.
