Persuasion Preparation - Video Transcript
Hi, I'm Ed Musio, author of Make Work Great, and I'm going to tell you how to interact strategically. In other words, don't shoot from the hip when you need information.
Here's a common situation.
A new project lands on your desk and you're not sure what to do. So you go talk to one of your colleagues about it. Maybe you talk to a second coworker about it.
Maybe they talk to each other about it. Maybe one of them mentions it to another coworker. One of them mentions it to your boss.
Your boss comes back and asks you about it. Ask his boss about it. Maybe your boss takes the project and runs with it as his own.
Whatever happens here, this is chaotic and it makes a lot of work for everyone.
It's easy to blame these people, but in reality, this may be your fault.
There are three definitions you need to make. One, two, three, before you go off looking for information. The first definition is the definition of the question. Now let's take an example here.
Let's say you manage a group of salespeople, but your divisional vice president has asked you to put together some information that will be used to evaluate a potential new product for the company. Now your first question might be, how in the world am I supposed to do that? That's a valid question, but it's not exactly well-defined. What you want to do is narrow down to a more specific question that you can get an answer to.
So let's say you think about this for a while and realize, you know, my staff can do some of this, but I'm going to need at least three marketing people for about 10 hours to help me pull this together. Where am I going to get them? That is a well-defined question. You may have others too, like what's the scope, when is it due, et cetera.
Once you have your well-defined question, it's not time to go start asking yet. The second definition you need is the definition of your approach. Now there are three parts to your approach.
The first is who. That is, who are you going to ask? Now that you have your defined question, I need marketing people, who is probably the marketing manager, not your boss, not your peers. The second part of your approach is what. And that is, what are you going to say? If you walk up to the marketing manager and say, I need three of your people, he's probably going to say no. You need to figure out a way to introduce what you're doing so that you'll get some support.
The third part of the approach is related to how. And that is, how are you going to approach this person? Will you catch him first thing in the morning or at the end of the day? Will you catch him when he's with people or by himself? Will you bring a lot of data or will it be a quick 'in the hall' conversation? There's no right answer to these questions, but the better you know this person, the better you can make choices here that will help you get some interest.
Now it's still not time to go off and get your question answered. There's one more definition you need and that is a definition of the need for agreement. This one is often overlooked. Again, we're talking here about narrowing down. Let's say, for example, you're talking to this manager and he says to you, you know what? I don't agree with the philosophy of what you're doing here. I think you're wasting company resources. Now you may be inclined to argue this point, but really what you need to do with this is something very powerful. You need to agree to disagree about that point.
You need to say, sir, I respect your opinion. I don't necessarily share it, but that's not what's at issue here. What we need to come to agreement on is whether or not I can have those 10 hours, those three marketing people or not. This is a narrowly defined need for agreement.
So the next time you need information before you do anything, before you start asking questions, take time to make your three definitions.
First, come up with your well-defined question.
Second, define your approach clearly in terms of who, what, and how.
And finally, define as narrow as possible a need for agreement so that you can agree to disagree about everything else.
If you do those three things, you'll be a lot less likely to inspire this kind of chaos and a lot more likely to get the answers you need.
End of Transcript
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