Influence in Action

by Craig Weber

  • Is there a gap between our strategy and organizational capabilities required to make the strategy work?

  • Are there places where critical factors such as engagement, trust, or alignment are lacking?

  • Are there cultural, functional, or other boundaries across which people need to work more effectively?

  • Where do teamwork, essential work relationships, or organizational performance need improving?

  • Are there critical processes, important meetings, pivotal decisions, strategic changes, or other important activities that aren’t functioning as well as they should?

  Use this list of questions to prime the pump, and consider what opportunities you see in your team, organization, or community.

  Your Personal Plan

  The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.

  —ALBERT EINSTEIN

  You’ve been thinking about your current state, your goals, and places for practice. Before moving on, take a few minutes and answer the following questions:

  What are your personal conversational capacity development goals in these three areas?

  Awareness: ________________________________________

  Mindset: ________________________________________

  Skills: ________________________________________

  What are one or two significant issues in your LLZ that you plan to address?

  Okay. You’re now ready to pick the practices you’ll use to close the gap between where you are and where you want to be. I encourage you to revisit Chapters 5, 9, and 14 to review your options. Your choices should include the following practices:

  One practice to start strengthening your awareness: ________________________________________

  One practice to adopt and strengthen the conversational capacity mindset:________________________________________

  One practice to build a skill that will bring more balance to your behavior:________________________________________

  Don’t Overdo It

  You might be tempted to do more than just one practice in each area, but I strongly suggest you balance patience with persistence and stick with just one. This is going to be harder than it seems, so don’t overdo it. And remember, you’re going to be revisiting this process periodically to assess your progress and begin new practices, so you’ll have plenty of time to do all the work you’d like.

  Progress and Accountability

  Don’t view this as a simple four-step process: (1) Assess (2) Plan (3) Practice (4) Re-assess. Done. View it instead as an ongoing process of learning. It’s an iterative, adaptive development process, not a routine, one-time, check-the-box activity. You don’t go through the process once and receive a diploma. You don’t ever really graduate. If you’re serious about building your conversational capacity, you’ll repeat the process over and over.

  Take time every three to four weeks to get off the dance floor of your busy office and practice to climb back up to the balcony and ask yourself reflective questions: How am I doing? Do I need more time on these practices, or is it time to expand my practice and try something new? Revisit your goals after you’ve made progress and continue to set higher goals and adopt new practices.

  Again, it’s like a jazz performance. Rather than having every note in your personal learning plan all scripted out in advance, begin with a set of ideas, start practicing, and then improvise and learn as you go along. Improvisational learning, as Frank Barrett puts it, is “the art of adjusting, flexibly adapting, learning through trial-and-error initiatives, inventing ad hoc responses, and discovering as you go.”3

  Yes, let’s see where this leads.

  —FRANK BARRETT

  The idea is to create a feedback loop of learning in which your practice sparks more growth and competence, which in turn leads you to adjust your plan in order to push yourself to even higher levels of performance. The basic process looks like this:

  • Plan. Identify a practice in each domain to help you move toward your goals.

  • Practice. Conduct that practice for a specific amount of time as you address an issue in your leadership and learning zone.

  • Assess your progress. From time to time reflect on these questions:

  • Where am I now?

  • What have I learned?

  • How far have I progressed?

  • Adjust your plan.

  • Given my progress, do I need to adjust my goals?

  • What practices do I now need to adopt to further close the gap between my current state and future vision on the awareness, mindset, and skill set fronts?

  • Continue to practice. Onward and upward you go.

  Think of your personal plan as you would an exercise plan. Consider distance running. You don’t just get up one day and run a marathon. You start with shorter runs and slowly build up your fitness. In the same way, you don’t just read my books, complete my eCourse, or attend a workshop, and immediately master your ability to stay in the sweet spot under pressure. You slowly build up your capacity with regular practice. If you want to join the ranks of elite runners or people with high conversational capacity, you must put in the miles.

  The trick is to create a plan and then follow it through. Here are three things that will help you get traction and build momentum:

  • Create a “Daily Question List.”

  • Work with learning partners.

  • Schedule your review.

  Create a “Daily Question List”

  In his book Triggers, Marshall Goldsmith outlines a strategy for establishing a new habit called a “Daily Question List” (DQL).4 A DQL is a list of questions you ask yourself each day to check in about your goals and the work you’re doing to meet them. Because you track your answers, a DQL is a great way to hold yourself accountable for your effort and progress. The trick is to ask the right kind of questions. Goldsmith explains that you should avoid passive questions:

  When people are asked passive questions they almost invariably provide “environmental” answers. Thus, if an employee answers “no” when asked, “Do you have clear goals?” the reasons are attributed to external factors such as, “My manager can’t make up his mind” or “The company changes strategy every month.” The employee seldom looks to take responsibility and say, “It’s my fault.” Blame is assigned elsewhere. The passive construction of “Do you have clear goals” begets a passive explanation.

  Goldsmith then nails the point, “. . . passive questions can be the natural enemy of taking personal responsibility and demonstrating accountability. They can give people the unearned permission to pass the buck to anyone and anything but themselves.” Put differently, passive questions produce victim-oriented responses.

  He then explains the power of using active questions in your DQL: “There’s a difference between ‘Do you have clear goals’ and ‘Did you do your best to set clear goals for yourself?’” he says. Active questions, in other words, encourage us to take responsibility, to hold ourselves accountable, to take stock of our actions relative to our goals, and train our beam of focus on the fit between our goals and our efforts. “Adding the words ‘did I do my best?’” Goldsmith explains, injects “an element of trying into the equation.” Active questions produce responsibility-oriented answers.

  Here is a list of questions you might consider for your DQL. I’ve also included a question that focuses on upcoming learning opportunities:

  • Did I do my best to notice and journal situations in which I was triggered today?

  • Did I do my best to remain focused in situations where focus was key to my effectiveness today?

  • Did I do my best to notice a situation in which patterns of behavior, mine or others, and the purpose of the conversation, were out of sync today?

  • What opportunities for practice will I experience tomorrow, or in the next few days, and how can I take the greatest advantage of those situations?

  Work with Learning Partners

  Another practice
that Marshall Goldsmith and I both advocate is to select and work with a learning partner. (Goldsmith uses the term coach.) A learning partner can be a colleague, friend, professional coach, or even a boss. Your partner can play a variety of roles to help you build your skills and stick with your plan, from more casual conversations about your progress, to daily check-ins and regular feedback. The point is to share with your learning partner all your goals and DQLs, and to invite them to provide as much support as needed to help you along your learning path.

  Schedule Your Review

  Schedule a regular time on your calendar (every few weeks, perhaps) to review your progress and adjust your plan. If you don’t schedule it, you’ll likely forget to do it and your progress will grind to a halt. It doesn’t matter if you have a membership if you never visit the gym, and it doesn’t matter if you have a personal plan if you don’t continually use it and revise it.

  Example: The Flamethrower’s Personal Plan

  Imagine that the Flamethrower, the colorful character you met in my first book, created his own personal plan. It might look something like this:

  • Goal and description. “I want to be more genuinely curious, less stuck in my own views and more open to seeing things through the eyes of others. I’m not doing this to agree with everyone but to learn, and to earn a reputation as someone genuinely collaborative and trustworthy.”

  • Awareness practice. “I need to get better at catching, naming, and taming my reactions, so I’m going to keep a trigger journal.”

  • Mindset practice. “I’ll start an ‘Indianapolis Journal,’ which will have the added benefit of increasing my awareness, and I’ll keep the three questions in front of me on a small laminated card.”

  • Skill practice. “Testing my views will make the biggest difference in how I come across to my team, so it’s the logical place to start. To get better at doing this, I’m going to create a master list of tests, starting with those Craig has provided, and then add to the list by coming up with new tests of my own. I’ll then use these tests every time I put forward a view.”

  • My DQL:

  • “Did I do my best to monitor and document my triggers today?”

  • “Did I do my best to notice and document any ‘Indianapolis moments’” ?

  • “Did I do my best to test my views today?”

  • “What opportunities for practice and learning will I have tomorrow?”

  • Learning partners. “I’ll share my plan with my entire team and ask them for patience and help. I’ll also ask one colleague, Camila, to check in with me every other day, watch me in meetings, and provide feedback on how well or how poorly I’m doing with my goals.”

  • Scheduled check-in. “I’ve scheduled a review every third Friday of the month for the next six months. This will give me a chance to assess my progress and adjust my practices accordingly.”

  Short Wrap

  “Ambition is the path to success,” said Bill Bradley. “Persistence is the vehicle you arrive in.”5 As you practice be persistent and serious-minded, but also remember to be patient and lighthearted, especially when you stumble. Your quest is for ongoing learning and expanded competence, not comfort-seeking or ego-strokes. View the inevitable surprises, frustrations, and slipups as a valuable part of the learning process—as encouraging signs that you’re making progress.

  If you can muster the discipline to stick with this process, you’ll see remarkable growth in your conversational capacity. You’ll be better next week than you are this week, better next month than the month before, and better next year than you are this year.

  THE ILLUSION OF CONCLUSION

  Why Your Leadership Journey Never Really Ends

  The purpose of life is to contribute in some way to making things better.

  —ROBERT F. KENNEDY

  When faced with messy problems in their teams, organizations, and communities, people respond in a variety of ways. At one end of the spectrum sit those, who, when they see a problem, shrink back and say, in essence: “Yes, it’s a big problem, but there’s nothing I can do. It’s not my job. I’m not responsible. I’m not in charge. I’m no expert. I can’t make a difference.” People in this group often complain about problems, pontificating ad nauseam about what ought to be done, but they rarely stand up, get involved, or do something constructive to address them.

  At the other end of the spectrum, there is a smaller but far more influential group of people. When people in this group see a problem, they take responsibility for addressing the issue. They say to themselves: “This won’t do. I may not be perfect for the role, and it may not be in my job description, but I’m unwilling to just stand by and do nothing. So, I’m going to roll up my sleeves and engage this problem. Who’s with me?”

  Little progress comes from the first crowd. It’s the largest faction, but it’s the least influential. People in this group drift along with the status quo, feeling justified in their inaction because, in their view, nothing will change, improvement is unlikely, and the risks aren’t worth the potential for progress. This feeble response spurs no change or improvement because it fails to challenge the existing state of affairs.

  All intentional progress comes from the people in the second group. It’s a much smaller faction, but it’s the most powerful. Acting as agents of change, they choose to engage the status quo because the potential for progress justifies the risk of taking action. Motivated by this responsible and constructive orientation, they’re willing to put themselves on the line to make a difference.

  Take the Lead

  My mission in life is to convert people in the first group and to empower people in the second one. This is important because, as Peter Drucker observed, “the only things that evolve by themselves in an organization are disorder, friction, and malperformance.”1 Meaningful progress is only possible, in other words, when someone takes purposeful action and wields productive influence.

  We face a raging onslaught of tough, messy, adaptive challenges in our organizations and communities, and we desperately need more people willing to lead. But we don’t just need people willing to blunder into difficult situations, armed with little more than good intentions. We need individuals who can do so skillfully—people who can engage tough, adaptive issues in a way that provokes more discovery than defensiveness, more collaboration than conflict, and more progress than problems. We need people with the discipline to stay in the sweet spot, and to keep their intentions and their behavior aligned under pressure. We need people with an affirmative bias, who say “yes to the mess,” people willing to jump in and learn as they go, who lean into difference to spark more learning, and who refuse to shy away from tough issues because they choose progress over feeling comfortable or right.

  Imagine it. There’d be far less inhumanity, double-dealing, and underhanded nonsense if more people would speak up in its presence. People, organizations, and communities would be less likely to suffer from injustice, unfairness, incompetence, and malfeasance if there was a larger group of people willing to competently confront these problems.

  You Have More Power Than You Think

  An organization is a community of discourse. Leadership is about shaping the nature of the discourse. And someone exercising real leadership is shaping the discourse in the direction of openness, learning, and constructive progress. My hope is that you now have more power to do this.

  An organization is a community of discourse. Leadership is about shaping the nature of the discourse. And someone exercising real leadership is shaping the discourse in the direction of openness, learning, and constructive progress.

  “Our power is found in simple acts that bind people together and yield the greatest benefits for the group,” says Dacher Keltner. “The difference we make in the world depends on the quotidian: on raising the right question, offering encouragement, connecting people who don’t know one another, suggesting a new ideas.”2 No matter your status or station, you can play a leading role
in building healthier work relationships, teams, organizations, and communities. You can take action and have an impact. You can wield greater influence. You have more power than you think.

  Four Ways You Can Lead

  There are four ways you can do this:

  1. Leading UP. You can exercise leadership up the chain of command by candidly raising issues so that the people upstairs have a clearer view of what’s really going on and are in a better position to make wise decisions.

  2. Leading DOWN. If you’re in a position of authority, your challenge is to lead down by creating an environment in which people can speak up under pressure and put their best ideas to work.

  3. Leading ACROSS. You can assume responsibility for leading across by reaching out and building bridges to other people and groups.

  4. Leading OUT. You can lead out by working to improve relationships with partner organizations, customers, clients, suppliers, and other vital external entities.

  What we need now are heroes and heroines, about a million of them.

  —EDWARD ABBEY

  It Doesn’t End Here

  Before I wrap up, I want to highlight a couple of thoughts: First, this is the conclusion of the book, but you shouldn’t confuse that with the conclusion of your work and practice. If you’re serious about building your ability to work in the sweet spot under pressure, your practice never really ends.

  Second, you’re not alone. Even if you’re the only person in your organization working to build your skills, you don’t have to do it by yourself. You can connect with a growing community of people determined to build their conversational capacity by working to make their teams, workplaces, and communities a better place. Visit conversationalcapacity.com to engage with other smart and committed people from around the globe to ask questions, seek help, share best practices, introduce new ones, and provide counsel and encouragement to other like-minded souls.