Employing Differences, Episode 15: How do I get them to do what I want?

Paul: 0:10

Welcome to Employing Differences, a conversation about exploring the collaborative space between individuals.

Karen: 0:16

I'm Karen Gimnig,

: 0:17

and I'm Paul Tevis.

Karen: 0:20

Each episode, we start with a question and see where it takes us. This week's question is"How do I get them to do what I want?"

Paul: 0:29

You know, when you know the right answer, it can be really frustrating when people don't just do the thing that you know they should do.

Karen: 0:36

Yeah. I was thinking about how there are variations of this question."How do I get them to do what I want? How do I get them to do what I know is best for them? How do I get them to do what I know is going to work?" How do I get them to– because when we say"what I want" that sounds selfish, and I think often it isn't even from a selfish direction, it's just, I have this idea of what's going to be the best thing. How do I get them to do it?

Paul: 1:02

Yeah."How do I get them to buy into the solution?" In my coach training, one of the things that we talked about was working with groups, and the idea that the group is an 800 pound gorilla. Don't try to arm wrestle it because it will rip your arms off. I think that a lot of times when people come into a group– particularly someone who has some degree of structural authority or influence w ith a group and they regard their job as being convincing the group to do the thing that they think is best– they get really disappointed because it doesn't work. I think because of the way that they approach it– because they will often, for the best of reasons, the best of intentions, like as you point out, I think they often do have the best intentions of the group at heart– but the way they approach i t is they hold onto their idea and they hold o nto their belief i n the rightness of their idea in such a way that it damages their ability to actually really be with the other people. It gets in the way of creating a real sense of collaboration and influence and relationship.

Karen: 2:24

Yeah. And I think that's, that's true for so many people, and some of the folks most susceptible to this are the ones who genuinely do have a lot of really good ideas, who really have a lot of discernment about"this is going to be the best thing, this is where we're going to be best off if we end up." If only being right was the thing that made the group buy in. Paradoxically, I think what actually works is to really let go of your certainty that you're right, to be willing for that not to be the thing for the group to do.

Paul: 3:09

One of the things you and I have talked a bit about, and that I use a lot in my facilitation work, is the idea of inviting people to do things. When I give instructions in my workshops, I will say things like,"So I invite you to turn to the person next to you and have a conversation about this." It really emphasizes that they are at choice. I'm suggesting that they do this because I think it will be useful for them, but they get to decide, because they may know a very good reason why that's not going to work. Now I'm actually letting them decide whether or not they want to do it. I'm suggesting, and I'm inviting, but I'm not requiring. A lot of people don't necessarily pick that up in the workshops that I do unless I draw attention to it. But I also can feel the energy show up a little bit differently when I do that, because I'm also showing up differently.

Karen: 4:07

Yeah, and I think there's a lot of possible languages for that. I think each person finds theirs. I do think invitation is the concept, but it can be"If you are willing to" or"I have this idea." I think there's a lot of like dialing back. You know, most of us had a third grade teacher or thereabouts– it was my third grade teacher who, as I was being taught to write an essay and I would write,"I think that" and would they say,"No, don't say that you think, just say it's true." So now we do that,"So the thing we need to do is.." And everybody in the room goes"Ugh." They back way off of it. Retraining ourselves to own that our ideas are that: they're our ideas."I saw this thing that I thought might work for us. Would you be willing to try it out?" That kind of approach. Here's the big s ecret. We can give you all sorts of ways to word it. It doesn't work if you don't mean it. If what you mean is"This is the idea, and this is how we have to do it," and in your head you're in t he space of,"I'm trying to make the group do this thing," you can use all the i nvitation language you want, and it's not g oing t o be received as i nvitational. But if it's genuinely invitational, meaning you are prepared to really hear the group say,"Nope," or"I don't think so," or"Couldn't we do it this other way?" If you're really open to that, 90% of the time the g roup's g oing t o say,"Sure, we'll do it your way."

Paul: 5:45

Yeah, and when they aren't, they'll actually find a better way. They'll find what's actually useful. I had a wonderful experience– I was facilitating something for a group. There were three groups that were all doing some things. And I had invited them to participate in this particular structure, and it had a sequence of steps that they were going to go through around this particular topic. There were two of the groups they were following along. They were doing the thing. The third group was having none of it.. Every time I'd go by their table to try and get them–to invite them to move to the next question in the sequence, because they were up on the screen and they were in their workbooks, so I was just kind of saying,"Now would be a good time if you hadn't finished up with the second question to move on to the third," I would come by their table and they would be deep in conversation, not about the thing that I'd asked them to talk about, but the thing that they needed to be talking about. And they would shoo me away. I eventually stopped going over to the table because I would start to walk over there and then would go,"Agh!" It was a moment for me as a facilitator where I was able to step into that space of going"My job is not to control the room. My job is to catalyze useful conversations around particular topics. If what I have invited people to do is not the useful way for them to engage with it and they have found a way that they will engage with it, my job is to back off and let them have the conversation they need to have."

Karen: 7:17

I think what you're demonstrating there is what I think of as a really profound trust in the group. That's a vulnerable thing when you're a facilitator or a leader, to be able to say,"I might be wrong. I might not be the one who knows." To let go and to really believe that even if the group is wanting to do something that everything you ever have thought of says,"This isn't the right thing," to be willing to say,"If that's what the group knows that it needs to do, it is the right thing." It may not get the result that I would hope for. It may be that if the group was ready to do the thing, I wanted them to do, that they would get more of what they say they want, but if they're not ready to do it, then it's not the right thing like that, that just in a really basic foundational way, the fact, even that they aren't ready for, it means that's not the right thing for today.

Paul: 8:16

There's a strong degree to which we can have our, our perspectives and our experiences and our opinions and our best practices, and we have to have the humility to admit this context might not be the one where those apply. Those are still true. Those ideas that we have, those opinions we have, those are real. We have them and we can share them in this context because we believe that they might be useful and we get much better results when we are open to the notion that this might not be the right context for that idea, that structure, or that tool.

Karen: 8:59

I'll find that when I'm feeling that"They're saying they don't want to do this thing, but I still think it is that thing" what I try to do is let them know."What I think is likely to be different is if we do it the way you're suggesting, I think this will happen. I think if we do it this other way, we'd get this other benefit in this way." Sometimes that's compelling and sometimes it's not. If they don't hear it or if they really need to try it the way they want to try it, then that's what they do. There've been times that I was like,"Oh yeah, we are not any further at the end of this meeting than we were at the beginning." But in fact we are, because at the end of the meeting, they've caught up with where I already was. That's what they needed to do.

Paul: 9:54

Sometimes the thing that you think that they can accomplish in this space right now is not actually the thing they can, but now they may be ready to do that. There's a piece in there too that I think is important, which is about sort of staying in dialogue with the group around it. It's not just,"I'm going to invite you to do this thing, and if you don't do it, you're never going to hear from me again. I'm just going to shut up and let you go." It's like,"I'm going to invite you to do this." It's just kind of an offer. Then what the group chooses to do about it is going to inform what I do or I say next, but I'm going to stay engaged with it. In the example you were talking about where it's like,"No, we want to do this other thing," you're willing to stay in that place of"Well, So my experience has been that if you do that, I suspect that this kind of thing will happen." You're not telling them they can't do it. You're not telling them you're not going to support them in doing it, but you are sharing with them what your real experience is, what your real idea is. That's important. It's important not to fall into– you know, there's the two ends of the spectrum that's really easy to fall into. I'm just going to tell people what they have to do; I'm going to use the language of command, or I'm going to completely wimp. I'm just going to say,"You know, it would be really nice if you could do this thing, but if you don't want to, that's not a big deal." The useful space is between.

Karen: 11:30

Yes. Well, and then there's the third option, which you sort of alluded to in there of"And if you won't do it my way, I'm going to take my toys and go home."

Paul: 11:38

Yes.

Karen: 11:41

Which is that piece you were talking about, about staying engaged. I think one more piece of why this matters is that the invitational approach, what it does is it really protect their agency. Each member of the group has fully intact the agency to have their own opinions, to have their own thoughts, to make their own decisions. Each person gets to say,"This is what I'm going to do." It's amazing how– when I have my agency that I know I get to decide– I actually can decide to do the thing that's vulnerable or scary, or doesn't feel safe because I got to pick it.

Paul: 12:23

There's several different avenues of neuroscience research and models that talk about how preserving people's sense of autonomy allows them to go to that more difficult, more vulnerable space because their brains are less het up about it. They really are able to go,"Oh, okay. I'm choosing to do this. So, okay, yeah. I will go there. I am more willing, and I'm more able to go to that space than if I were told that I didn't have a choice."

Karen: 12:59

That brings us back, I think, to really where we started, which is that this invitational approach, although it will not always result in people doing what you want, it probably will. It either will, or it will reveal that the thing that you thought was the right thing for the group was not actually the right thing for the group. In my experience, nine times out of 10, if I'm willing to let it go however it needs to go, it will go very much the way I wanted it to, to begin with.

Paul: 13:29

It really reveals whether or not it was possible.

Karen: 13:36

So I think that's probably going to do it for us today until next time. I'm Karen Gimnig,

Paul: 13:41

and I'm Paul Tevis, and this has been Employing Differences.