Influence

Who is the idiot?

/ svik88 / Leave a comment

You are trying to enter a building. You have an important meeting and have been invited over. You’ve even been sent emails telling you about the security clearance. You have all the paperwork to take you in. However, for some reason the security team is not letting you in. You are stuck outside, the guard is being an idiot and you can’t enter the building. You reason with him at first,you plead and you may even argue – yet no access!

How many such encounters do you have?  Encounters where you are trying to tell people to do the right thing, yet people remain stubborn. Encounters where people are being downright Idiots and getting in your way.

But hold on.. Who is the idiot here? At the end of the encounter – you lost your right to enter the building, you lost your cool and perhaps lost a lot of energy. He is having his way. So he maybe an idiot, but you are the bigger idiot aren’t you?

We communicate to get an idea across. We interact to influence the other person. If we can’t, we are perhaps the idiot.

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Fighting to end fighting?

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We fight, we all do. Countries call them war, you may call it a passion for change or a quarrel with your neighbour. It’s important to avoid them , but sometimes we have to fight.

It’s important though to remember why we fight. We need to fight to end fighting – in which case small punches don’t help. In fact they may even cause more harm.

So if you are annoyed by your friend/partner’s habit of pointing out when you leave the dishes out, it doesn’t end the fight when you start pointing out he/she does it too. While we think this is a dose of their medicine, it usually adds more fuel to the fire. So the fight doesn’t end. To end the fight, you may need to change the paradigm of argument or find another way to demonstrate the frustration.

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My super-public habit tracker 

May: Exercise 1 Blogging 7 Meditation 3

Nudge Nudge Nudge – to the finish

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In an ideal world, if we need to go from A to B – I would make a grand plan, execute it to perfection and we’ll go to the party.

In our world though, a lot of execution depends on people. People have different agendas, people have different emotions. Nudging i’ve found is very useful. I now plan to go from A to “somewhere close to B” – and each step of the way nudging people towards B. There are 2 outcomes:

1) If time is not urgent, this allows the other passengers to enjoy the journey to B. Better still, they start finding better ways to get there.

2) When people are initially hesitant to come with you on your journey – It helps keep the relationships while yet nudging them to the finish line.

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My super-public habit tracker – (looked through my archives  & the no-snooze shall be successfully retired) 

May: Exercise 0 Blogging 3

Delegation & Micromanagement

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Micromanagers can be painful. Previously I had only thought about micromanagement as a disease and suggested ways to get around it. I thought of autonomy was the way to go – empower people to do their work.

This matrix puts things in a slightly different light. Autonomy happens when you are working with a High Skill + High Will person. In other case you need to manage differently. My big mistake was to expect and to provide autonomy on Day 1. I’d provide some support wheels but it definitely centred around autonomy. Often though, this autonomy gave the person some high initial motivation & when things went sour they move into a very low will quadrant(“I cant do anything right”). This meant that micromanagement would start & we’ll have to build upwards from there.

Useful to realize that micromanagement has its place – perhaps on route to autonomy.

Preventing micro management 

/ svik88 / 1 Comment

Easiest way I think is to just so much to do that micro management is impossible.

If you are the micro manager- give yourself more work when you find yourself intruding too much. Or go to the gym!

If you are the managed- ask your questions or point out other things that you were not able to do 🙂