Hierarchy of Influence: Matching Your Actions to Expected Reactions
Filed Under Community, Marketing, Successful Blog | 2 Comments
Redux: I wrote this post in Feb. 2011. Based on recent conversation, it seems even more relevant now and so I choose to pick it up, add some clarity and publish a newer version this week.
Not Every Attempt Gets the Expected Outcome
When our son was barely five years old, he was a shy child who lived by his own timetable. He had his own ways of doing things. If you wanted his attention, your best bet was to make eye contact and simply explain what you what you had to say.
It was during that year, that his grandparents came to visit us in Austin. Together as a family, we planned several outings to enjoy the city and our favorite restaurants. One evening, the whole group was getting ready to go dinner and our son was still playing — not getting ready. This circumstance stressed out three of four adults in his company. Suddenly one, then two, then all three of them were using loud firm voices to tell a child, half their size, to “Get upstairs to change in to clean clothes, immediately!!”
The child froze like a deer in the headlights.
The mom in me responded with like to like. In firm and loud voice, I said, “Who are you to gang up on a little kid like that? Get away from here!”
The three adults moved into the kitchen and spoke quietly to each other.
I took the little boy by the hand. “I said let’s go upstairs and find what you’ll wear to dinner.”
When we came downstairs ready to go to dinner, I walked into the kitchen and apologized for my outburst. In return I got three calm apologies that also said I was right to intervene on the child’s behalf.
Not every attempt at influence gets the outcome we’re going for.
Which Actions Achieve the Outcomes You Seek?
If we can agree that influence is some word or deed that changes behavior. Then plenty of influence occurred in the story I just related. I suspect that had I been privy to the whole scene in the kitchen I would have found that that single story included examples of confrontation, persuasion, conversion, participation, and collaboration. The only thing missing in this family scene would be true antagonism. Six different approaches to influence which lead to entirely different outcomes.
I’ve been reading about, thinking about, and talking to people about influence for months, because influence and trust are integral understanding to loyalty relationships. Let’s take a look at six of the usual forms of influence and the outcomes that result from them.
- Antagonism – provokes thought Your values are everything I believe is wrong with the world. You can’t stomach anything that I stand for. We are not competitors. We are enemies at war. Your words and actions might provoke thoughts and deeds, but what I’m thinking is how wrong you are, how to thwart you, or if I have no power, how to hide my true thoughts and feelings. An order from an enemy can influence a behavior but won’t change my thinking.
- Confrontation – causes a reaction You say it’s black. I know it’s white. I respond in some way — I fight back. I run away. I consciously ignore you. My response will probably change based who is more powerful. You might overpower me. I might stop responding, but it’s unlikely that you will actually change my thinking. Confrontation leads people to build a defense, to strengthen their own arguments.
- Persuasion – changes thinking You look at me and think about how what you want might benefit me. Rather than telling me, you show me how easy, fast, or meaningful it is go along with you. You’ve changed my about what you’re doing. I now see your actions from a new point of view.
- Conversion – moves to an action Your invitation to action is so convincing and beneficial to my own goals that I do what you ask. You’ve influenced my behavior to meet your goal. You have won my trust and commitment to an action. It’s not certain I’ll stay converted.
- Participation – attracts heroes, ideas, and sharing You reach out with conversation. We find that we are intrigued by the same ideas, believe in the same values, and share the same goals. Your investment in the relationship builds my trust and return investment. You invite me to join you in something you’re building. My limited participation raises my investment, gives me a feeling of partial ownership, and moves me to talk about you, your goals, and what we’re doing together.
- Collaboration – builds loyalty relationships We develop a working relationship in which you rely on my viewpoint. We share ideas and align our goals to build something together that we can’t build alone. You believe in my value to your project. I believe in the value of what you’re building. You have gained my loyalty and commitment. I feel a partnership that leads me to protect and evangelize the joint venture. I bring my friends to help.
Strauss Hierarchy of Influence
Not every campaign or customer situation will need to move to collaboration. But understanding each level will help us manage expectations allowing us to move naturally and predictably from confrontation to persuasion, so that we don’t expect the loyalty of collaboration from a momentary conversion.
Could be useful when looking to connect with that special valentine too.
How might you use the hierarchy to change the way you manage your business, your event, your community, and your new business initiatives?
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!
Be Still
Filed Under Motivation/Inspiration, Productivity, Successful Blog | 2 Comments
A Guest Post by
Rosemary O’Neill
“Still, still, still…one can hear the falling snow…” That’s the opening of my favorite Christmas carol.
It speaks to something buried deep inside us that craves absolute quiet and solitude. Picture a midnight snowfall, before the footprints. Picture being alone on the beach in the early morning. It doesn’t matter what your spiritual beliefs are, or your religious tradition, we all need to withdraw occasionally from the heat of battle and restore ourselves.
How does this relate to our online selves?
Here are some ideas:
- White space on the website
- Pause between questions in the conversation
- Room to breathe
- Remove one popup window
- Say no to animated gifs
- Clear every single thing off your desk
- Offer a single button
- Don’t pitch in every communication
- Stop keyword stuffing
- Think for a moment before typing a response
- Don’t hold yourself to a 5 minute turnaround on all emails
- Turn off the social alerts for part of the day
- Cut back on the multitasking
And now that you’ve read this, sit up straight in your chair, close your eyes, and breathe in and out slowly five times. Be still for a moment.
_____
Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out their blog. You can find her on Twitter as @rhogroupee
Has a CFD Experience Cost You Business?
Filed Under Successful Blog | 1 Comment
In 2007, I proposed an adventure on my blog. I invited bloggers to submit five bits of information that would promote their blogs:
- the name of the blog
- the blog url
- the tagline
- what makes the blog worth visiting
- one bit of advice for new bloggers
and I gave them 2 days to submit the information, clearly stating that the deadline was Friday noon Central and pointing out the clock in the sidebar of my blog.
How hard could it be to gather and email me those five bits of information?
Yet …
82% of the entries came in with information missing.
Which led Small Biz Survival Owner, Becky McCray, and I to describe a new syndrome — CFD: Can’t Follow Directions.
Is CFD Hurting Your Business?
In the case of that blog promotion, perhaps no one was hurt by the fact that if enough information was missing, I didn’t bother to hunt down the sender. That the entry wasn’t included might not have made a difference to their potential blog traffic. We’ll never know.
But I can tell you that it happens regularly that when I’m looking for help on a paying project, the presence of CFD makes a huge difference. Let me explain why …
- CFD means that I can’t trust the work. I’m telling you what I need and how I need it delivered, if the business can’t follow directions, then I’m going to get back something other than I requested.
- CFD means that things will take more time. When I have to repeat what I need, that second iteration means it takes twice as long to get the work done.
- CFD means more cost. Guidelines and directions are meant to make the work easier, faster, and less costly. Whether something was missed because it wasn’t read or because it wasn’t understood, it adds up to corrections or adjustments. Corrections and adjustments cost time and money.
- CFD means missed opportunities. What I might have been doing with the time it took to do things over is a huge hidden impact of CFD.
So I’m hugely biased toward people who listen, read directions, and ask questions if they don’t understand for certain what we’re trying to do together. They get my loyalty and my repeat business.
I run from people who show signs of CFD.
CFD not only hurts your business, but it hurts mine too.
Has a CFD experience cost you business?
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!
How to Recognize and Recover When You’ve Started Believing Your Own PR
Filed Under Branding, Successful Blog | 5 Comments
The Universe Falls Out of Balance …
Communities grow and change. We do too. It would be unrealistic to expect that a community of people would stay static. Would we really want it to? It would be hard for us to grow, innovate, and build new things without the dynamic change of a community’s ebb and flow.
But it’s a sad and serious thing when a community starts to lose the energy and interest that made it a community. It’s even sadder when that happens just as things start going good.
It can happen to anyone — you, me, our best friends. We’re on a team and a great thing happens! We get some applause and attention! New “friends and followers” start showing up and new opportunities start appearing. Strangers start joining in the fun. Then, our favorite people quit showing up.
What? Right when things start going good, the good ones start going?
Really … well, sometimes yes.
But you can bet it’s not them, its us.
When that happens more often than not, we’ve quit thinking about the community and they’ve noticed.
When the world starts to revolve around us, people move away and the universe flies out of balance.
How to Recognize and Recover When You’ve Started Believing Your Own PR
In the fray and frolic of good things happening, we can grow faster than fast. Networks explode and bandwidth becomes slim. All at once, a mother lode of new expectations and rewards are sitting within reach. Possibilities and potential are right there, but … they require new discipline and focus.
People don’t decide to make the world revolve around them. People decide to take the new work, the new calling seriously. We forget that if we focus too hard on the work, we can make it more important than the people the work is meant to serve. Most of us would be embarrassed to think we ever did. Most of the people we know won’t tell us if that’s the road we’ve landed on.
So, how do you recognize and recover when you’ve made yourself the center of the universe? How do you win back the folks who’ve decided that you’ve gone to the dark side of believing your own PR?
- When you ask people about their business, their life, their goals, does everything they say come back to a story about you? People who live in the center of the universe are self-focused. Name an event from the Big Bang to a cat that had kittens. People in the center can easily tell you how it proves or illustrates something about them. To recover: Care more about why someone is telling you a story than what you might have to say in response.
- Do you have the same conversation with everyone? If you’re bringing the same story to every conversation, you’re not considering the person who is listening. Folks like to talk about beautiful ideas and compelling stories — things worth sharing. Conversations are meant to be an exchange. To recover: Listen more than you talk. Give people a chance to ask how you are and they’ll be more inclined to care.
- Have people stopped listening when you talk? It’s the Boy Who Cried Wolf. Folks figure out that people in center of the universe are stuck inside the stories they tell. They don’t bother, because they know a person has to want to leave the center of the universe. To recover: Find the rewards for being part of the world where everyone interacts and come back.
- Does it seem like people only want, want, want? Do you feel surrounded by people who take and people who feel sorry for themselves? Misery loves company. Winners form a circle. To recover:Wire your head back to your heart. Be the kind of person you admire and want as a friend and supporter.
We don’t need to “believe our own PR,” when we really know who we are.
Success is about helping other folks reach their goals.
The universe does fine without us — the people we serve are the reason to be us.
Be irresistible.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!
__________
Top 10 Social Media Fears that Go Bump in the Night and How to Make Them Worse!
Filed Under Marketing, Motivation/Inspiration, Successful Blog | 3 Comments
Nightmare
In honor of Halloween, I’ve updated this advice, I first wrote in 2007. Read it now and be wise. heh heh.
It’s the middle of the night. The wind is blowing. The moon is high. Creaking noises are sounding. Memories of comments are running through your head, and you’re thinking of emails you sent that went unanswered.
You had such hope when you started in social media. It was daytime. You were always laughing then. Now you’re just shell of yourself in despair, dejected, and broken. Your socmed fears have taken over with the things that go bump in the night.
Not to worry.
Wait, sorry.
Indeed with just a little more worry, you have the power to take those concerns beyond the social business world!!
Go for it. . . . give in to it … become a mess on the floor.
The Top 10 Social Media Fears and How to Make Them Worse
As you read, remember, the more you buy into these, the better you’ll be at crippling yourself. Here’s your chance to prove you’re good at something besides misspelling words online and making social goofs.
If you’re faint of heart, read no further. Jumping without a parachute and shooting yourself in the foot require a certain dedication to being . . . hopeless.
10. Fear of Looking Like a Fool Don’t go near the comment box on any blog. Stay away from posting on Facebook. If you make a remark on Twitter or ask question on LikedIn, folks might find out about you. If you find you’re having trouble keep silent, translate your thoughts into a language you don’t understand. You need this fear in your repertoire — Fear the clueless, pest that everyone knows you are.
9. Fear of Content See how much better every other person’s content is. Count the ways that you’ll never be half that good. Write the reasons. Frame them. Put them on a wall in your line of vision. Feel the fear of an undisciplined wimp who is inept when you do your best work.
8. Fear of To-Do Lists Think up at least 5.000 urgent things you MUST do — blog tweaks, promotion spots, Twitter updates, Facebook posts, shares to buy and sell on Empire Avenue, LinkedIn status updates, blogs to read and not comment on. Don’t stop until the list could only be done by 83.479 people. (Get the math right, not 84,000 or 83,479. Be precise.) You’ve moved up a level on the fear chart. Fear how lazy and shiftless you are. [What does shiftless mean?]
7. Fear of Code Tweak your website template for hours to fix minute details. Then copy and paste the original stylesheet back onto the site, throwing your own work away. Changing the code should fill you with fear that you are an egotistical and anal-retentive rat.
6. Fear of the Numbers Check your stats. Hit refresh every 30 seconds for an hour. If your page views don’t rise by 100,000 or more between clicks, start reading every blog post you can about how to improve your social media ROI. Write three blog posts. Publish them. Spam all of your social networks with their links as soon as you might. Then do the whole thing again. Fear being exposed as a woeful underachiever.
5. Fear of Ideas Hunt down the perfect idea — the one that will get you tetweeted all day and on the front page of every social sharing site. (Great ideas have nothing to do with readers.) If you don’t find that perfect idea, you are ridiculously dimwitted and slow. Fear that everyone knows what an idealess idiot you are.
4. Fear of Relationships Link out in every sentence of every post you write. Link to anyone who has ever said “hello.” Link to rocks, trees, and statues, if you can. DM your links to everyone you’ve connected to on all your social sites, whether you’ve said hello to them or not. It will take forever, but people will notice how desperate you are. Link promiscuously, while you fear people see you as an anti-social hermit and a prude.
3. Fear of Saying “No” Answer all email, including spam. Always do what folks ask — buy, do, sign up, attend, subscribe. You’ll prove you’re needed. Fear that those you gently refuse will call you jerk or go higher and fear that no one would know who you are or care.
2. Fear of the Written Word Get out your dictionary and Thesaurus. Be sure you have two grammar books near. Use words so large that you can’t say or spell them. Be sure that you write unintelligible mush. See every teacher you ever had finding out how much you forgot. Fear that you’re not only a slacker, but also a bottom-of-the-barrel communicator.
1. Fear of Your Personal Worth All of your fears come together here. If you can’t get those first 9 right, then what could you possibly be good for? This the crown jewel. You have made it to the consummate fear of all . . . fear you are a worm.
On this deep, dark, dastardly night, you no longer have to be a shell of yourself in despair, dejected, and broken. You can be crippled and hopeless too — melted down into unrecoverable mess. Follow this Top Ten List, and you’ll show the world what fear is really for.
On the other hand, if you would rather get out of your funk, give up those fears, and come back to us. . . .
Definitely, positively, and for sure, surround yourself with positive people, because positive people make positive things happen. Wouldn’t you rather …
Build Opportunity into Your Life Right Now!
Find the Irresistible Rock Start in You.
Choose and Tell Your Best True Story
Happy Halloween!
Be Irresistible!
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!
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