Fill in the blanks
Move the person to “willing to do” by making the person feel Felt and understood
People may not be ready to bare their flaw to a stranger. Invite people to a conversation rather than putting the person to defensive. Don’t come across as defensive teacher. Ask people to fill in the blanks.
Direct question make people feel you are talking at them, not talking to them
Example: “you are thinking to buy our software because”
“Trying understand, wholesale is impacted similar to retail because”
“I want people to work for me because they want to, not because they have to”
Take it all away
Benefit: move s person in the persuasion cycle from resistance to doing by creating an agreement when none exist.
Biggest mistake we make is not asking too much, but asking too little. Keep pushing for what you want until you receive a “NO”
Most people are scared of this approach. It’s a bit risky but if you ready to move outside your comfort zone, try this.
When the person says NO, they expect you to be upset or frustrated or angry.
Do none of these and say “I am grateful for your time, can I ask a question”. Ask “I failed to address something important, isn’t I”. This way you get a “Yes” from the person. Once you get yes, use fill in the blank approach to know.
The power Thank you or power apology
Benefit: Move a person from “doing” to “glad they did” and continuing to do with power thank you; or resistance to listening with power apology
When you are deeply grateful to someone, you need to express beyond plain “thank you”. Power thank you, offer it in a group setting if you can
- Thank the person for something specific he did or didn’t
- Acknowledge the effort
- Tell the difference that his action made to you
Power Apology: 4 R’s
- Remorse: Demonstrate to the other person that you know you caused harm and you are truly sorry. When you’re doing this, allow the other person to vent and don’t become defensive even if the person is over the top. When you encourage people who are furious to get their anger off their chests, it speeds the healing process.
- Restitution: Find some way to make amends, at least partially.
- Rehabilitation: Demonstrate through your actions that you’ve learned your lesson. If a mistake occurred because you didn’t do your job right or you shot off your mouth without thinking, do whatever it takes to avoid making the same mistake in the future.
- Requesting forgiveness: Don’t do this immediately, because actions speak louder than words. To truly earn forgiveness, you need to sustain your corrective actions until they become part of who you are. At this point—and not before—go back to the person you’ve hurt and say, “Are you able to forgive me for hurting you?”
If someone doesn’t forgive you even after you’ve done all you can to make amends, don’t assume that you’re unforgiveable; instead, realize that you may be dealing with someone who’s unforgiving. If that’s the case, don’t drive yourself nuts over it. Just let it go, and don’t work up a grudge that’ll add to your emotional baggage.
Fast fixes to 7 challenging situations:
1. The team from hell: As long as your team members stay in their silos, your job will be next to impossible. That’s because these people will fail to share information, resulting in major mistakes and wasted effort. They’ll refuse to share their expertise, making everyone’s job harder. And when things get tough, they may even fall into a pattern of sniping or outright sabotage.
So the first thing you need to do is to break down the thick walls between these silos. To do that, build on the things all silos have in common: the sky above (a shared vision) and the ground below (shared values).
Step 1 in this process is to hold a meeting with your team. Your goal at this meeting is to increase your team members’ sense of pas- sion, enthusiasm, and pride in your project,
Let people talk about what vision they’re passionate about and how this project is part of achieving it. Let them talk about what they’re enthusiastic about when their team is buzzing and productive, and what they’re proud of (or not proud of) about the company. Draw out comments about the changes they want to see to feel more passionate, enthusiastic, and proud about what they’re doing. As you do this, you’ll feel your team’s initial apathy or hostility gradually morph into excitement and energy.
- Keep self motivated person happy, use power thank you at strategic time. Remove obstacles from their path
- Make experienced but low motivated person to feel needed. If continue to be low achiever, take him to lunch and ask “I’m guessing that you sometimes find your work frustrating because …..”
- Make complainer feel important by allocating task that will benefit the whole team, like checking with all of they need equipment or support. If continue to complain, try “do you really believe that” or empathy jolt “how do you think Dirk feel when you criticize him of being slow”.
- Envious member: defuse it with your graciousness (power thank you) and humility (stipulation). Eg. “I’m especially grateful to you for the hard work you’re putting in on this project. I know I’m newer and less experienced than you, and some people in that position would resent having me as their manager, but you’ve been really support- ive. I’ve learned a lot from watching you, and I think it’ll make me a better manager.”
Stop fretting over being new and inexperienced and recognize that you got this job because you’re good. Project confidence, and you’ll inspire confidence. Project insecurity, and everyone will sense it.
So assume that you’re the best manager your company has ever had—and then go out and prove it.
Climbing the ladder
Middle level manager in MNC, how to climb up the corporate ladder
Ask your manager what are 3 things you must always do and 3 things you should never do
Your success lie in getting people under our to perform. Use side by side technique to figure out what & how they are doing and potential problems.
One thing your boss will want to know is: “Can this person handle the pressure of a management position?” You’ll look like a leader if you deal with crises without falling apart, so practice the “Oh F#@& to OK” drill in Chapter 3 religiously.
Look for occasions to make your boss “feel felt.” The higher up managers are, the more stressed and less “felt” they feel.
Look beyond your immediate boss. Are there other people, either inside or outside the company, who could help you climb the cor- porate ladder? If so, take my advice: kiss up to them. I don’t mean that in a bad way, but in a good way. These people are intelligent and can offer guidance and open doors for you, and many of them enjoy serving as mentors.
The Narcissists at the table
Good clients and customers raise the bar. Bad ones just keep hitting you over the head with it.
Quietly allow him to lay his new demand on the table. At that point, say very calmly and in a positive way, “Excuse me, but before we continue, you do know that if we listen to you and drop whatever we’re doing now, we won’t be able to finish that task—which was critically important to you last week. So I need to clarify which task you’d like us to do now: the task you thought was top priority last week, or the task you think is top priority this week.”
This approach will bring your narcissist to a halt, because it’s no longer you versus. him. Instead, it’s his former self versus. his cur- rent self.
Be careful, however, to use this approach only with difficult, demanding, narcissistic clients. In most cases when problems arise, they occur not because anyone’s being unreasonable or narcissistic but because there’s a misunderstanding between you and the client. When that happens, the best approach is to go deep using the “Hmmm” technique. For example, if a client looks at your brilliant design and says, “We hate it—it’s terrible!” don’t overreact. Instead, say “Hmmm . . .” or “Tell me more.” This will quickly calm your client, allowing you to get past “It’s terrible!” and identify the specific problems that usually are far short of catastrophic. You can also use the Fill-in-the-Blanks technique by saying, “You’re unhappy with this design because you imagined it being more .” By making your client feel felt and understood, these approaches can lead to a quick resolution.
Stipulation gambit: I do want you to realize that we work best if you give us specific ideas and allow us time to develop them fully.
Stranger in town
Dr Ivan Misner suggest VCP process for networking:
Visibility: know little about each other;
- be interested rather than interesting.
- Talk about other people business more than yours.
- Never ever cut short anyone talking, instead ask question to motivate them to say more.
- Make the person feel Felt
- Use transformation question and power thank you
Credibility: begin to form expectations of each other, and the expectations are fulfilled,
- Crucial stage, don’t create dissonance
- Present yourself honestly and accurately
- Don’t make assumptions about their needs, don’t make false promises
- Go out of the way to perform act which other person value
- Don’t focus on “what’s in it for you”
- Use power apologies to make amend for your mistake
Profitablity: Mutually rewarding
Typically, your new contacts will fall into three categories
—givers, takers, and reciprocators—and you want to weed out the takers early on. So review your list of new contacts and focus your efforts on the givers or reciprocators while easing the takers out of the picture. Be generous with your new contacts and don’t keep score, but give priority to relationships with people who are willing to give back.
Above all, relax and let your network grow over months or years. Relationships, especially ones that lead to mutual profitability, take time, so try not to be impatient. Sometimes you have to kiss a lot of toads before you find a prince—or a whole net- work of them.
The human explosion
Handle an angry person
Step:1: move the person from primitive reptile brain to emotional mammal brain
- Tell me what happened: venting allow the person to move from blindly striking out to emotional. Sceaming or yelling may upset you, but let it happen
- Paraphrase: If I heard you right,….. Calmly with no anger
- Wait until the person says yes. If the person correct you, repeat the information which you are given
- Now say “and that makes you feel angry/frustrated”. Attach a word to his feeling, it lowers agitation. If the person correct you, ask him his feeling and repeat
Stage:2 move the person from middle (mammal) brain to upper brain
- Say that “the reason it is important to fix this now is…….” Ask the person to fill in blanks. Emphasize now. Fill in the blank makes the person think which open the door for reasoning part of the brain
- If the person say “Because if things don’t change, I’m going to explode”. Reply saying “let’s figure out how to get through this”
Don’t appear to compassion of enraged person, appeal to his self-interest
If someone would not listen to you, get him to listen to himself
Getting through to yourself
Henry Ford- “Don’t find fault, find a remedy”
Give yourself credit of things done right and use empathy jolt for yourself. Steps to ensure that you succeed
- Set specific target with step by step plan
- Put your goal in writing
- Tell someone about your goal & share your progress
- Keep toxic people from stoping your progress, avoid them
- Give it time and be patient
Six degree of separation
Reach VIPs
- Create one to one situation: common meeting ask question which people want to answer and make people look good, this creating mirror neuron empathy.
- Make virtual allies: use internet
- Reach the gatekeepers: if you are cold calling, you won’t reach VIP easily. You’ll be blocked by gatekeepers. Make the person your ally rather than enemy. They probably suffer from mirror neuron deficit
Inspired Journey towards greater heights 