Ch4 building relationships.docx

Chapter 4 – Building relationship 0-5842000Two Behavior styles – Push (your point of view onto others) and Pull (pull people to your point of view) Pull – Soft in tone and execution. Prominent in Early stages of relationship. Listening is much more difficult than speaking even though our listening instruments are more efficient than vocals. Influences listen more than they talk and listen effectively. Use smart summaries to clarify. Four Pull Behaviors: (FEWR) Fishing – Fishing for common ground. I.e. background, interests, job. Small Talk. If you stop fishing relationship aborts. It is easier to influence when you have things in common. Mediation can be described as sophisticated fishing. Influences take interest in people they meet and fish for opportunities to make connections. Beware of interrogating someone on the first meet. Enthusing – Next step – if a subject is identified in fishing – follow up further. (Do not be overly enthusiastic just in case it is something they are indifferent to). To succeed you need to convey a sense of excitement in your manners. Wallowing – engaging in empathetic probing of incidents, problems, moods and doubts. It is counterintuitive to influencing – many think it is gossip and a waste of time. Those who allow wallowing are better influences. Effective sellers do not jump in with instant answers to problems. Recounting memories induces powerful emotions from the last time person experienced it. Sharing the memories and feelings strengthen relationships in influencing. Revealing - Discreetly revealing “intimate” and confidential matters and personal feelings. Takes time and correct circumstances and is mutual, proportionate and balanced. It is not about confessions nor it need to include them. A main criterion is something that is revealed about you is not something that is revealed to others. Each person lets the other in their private territory. It is not gossip but what is intentionally revealed. PUSH BEHAVIORS – Unlikely to be successful where parties are strangers. Relationships can be weakened or totally destroyed by applying push behaviors in a fragile relationship. Using push behaviors without relationships you will come across as arrogant, presumptuous, threatening and unbalanced. Need to use pull behaviors is a precondition before using push behaviors. Pull influencers earn “right” to use push behaviors. Using these behaviors inappropriately leads to counter-productive and some people resent and react to careless use of these behaviors. Some (Usually females) manages do not feel comfortable when using these behaviors and feel self conscious. Four Pull Behaviors (RSAC) Reasoning – Using logic and rational argument s to point to the required decision. Suggesting – Making general recommendations. ‘Softest” of the push behaviors. It is different from advice as anyone can offer advise where as in influencing suggestion presumes a relationship. Suggestion is not an offer of impersonal and disinterested advice as influences we have direct interest in the outcome and our suggestion is usually geared to achieve the outcome we favor. It is a push behavior because it is a determination of what we think should be done by others and not what we jointly agree might be best. Asserting – using assertions to identify the “correct” decision. A complex relationship is implied by the fact that assertion is made. Assertive behavior is not meant to be ambiguous. As in tit-for-tat you know where you are with assertive people therefore the language they use is clear and to the point. In appraisal behavior it is necessary to be assertive otherwise there is a less chance of the behavior being corrected because people are not sure of what they have to do. Coercing – using pressure to compel someone to take a course of action. Influences put pressure on the target to act in a certain specific way or manner in pursuit of his or her goals. Difference between asserting and coercion is that asserting is direct advise (you must stand firm) and coercion is a direct command (you will stand firm or else) Use of coercion indicates some form of power over the target. It is a complex behavior similar to bullying and intimidations. EPILOGUE Linear presentation necessarily gives a misleading impression of the linkages between relationship behaviors. While it is true that we can speak of pull behaviors as being associated with the early, more tentative and fragile stages of a growing relationship and push behaviors as being associated with mature and more robust stages of a relationship, this is not to suggest that there is a strict linear one-way Progression from fishing to coercion. You will combine and sequence the behaviors throughout a relationship to suit circumstances – sometimes fishing, sometimes suggesting and sometimes coercing. You are unlikely to exhaust the incidence of the repetition and elaboration of mutual revelations. As for wallowing, variants of it will be exercised sometimes with enthusiasm and sometimes in sadness (at the content). Exhibit 4.4 shows the linkages between the behaviors as crisscrossing the linear layout, which corresponds more accurately to how they are related in practice. The eight behaviors discussed in this module are main headings with many subtle variations. They can be combined in many ways too. The key is to recognize how to behave to achieve the results you seek from the relationship. Concomitantly, it is necessary to know how not to behave when the circumstances dictate that certain behaviors are not appropriate. There is, for instance, nothing to be gained from push behavior when pull is called for, or from pull behavior when a more direct push behavior is required. Influence- Module 4 Building Relationships 4.2: Two Behavior Styles One useful simplification for influencers is to identify many complex behaviours by whether they can be said to ‘pull’ a person to your point of view or whether they can be said to ‘push’ your point of view onto the other person. Other people give different names for the behaviour sets: ‘authoritarian’ – ‘democratic’; ‘push’ – ‘build’; ‘hard’ – ‘soft’). Pull behaviours are soft in tone and execution. They are usually prominent in the early stages of a relationship when the individuals hardly know each other, though they are by no means confined to near strangers. Harsh exchanges are not so easily tolerated between strangers, whereas long-time partners appear to tolerate fairly outrageous behaviours. Hence, pull behaviours are more about ‘pulling’ someone towards you and your preferences rather than ‘pushing’ your preferences on them. The courtship analogy is apt: ‘you let the boy chase you until you catch him’, as is the saying ‘softly, softly, catchee monkey’. Behaviours can be more ‘pushy’ in execution. You ‘push’ your preferences onto people, not intending to destroy your relationships and hoping that their robustness will absorb the relative harshness of your behaviour. In the extreme, in a fragile relationship pushing may be entirely inappropriate. 4.3: Pull Behaviors The capacity to listen is a behaviour common to all effective influencers. People can listen faster than they talk, which leaves large gaps in a conversation with nothing for the listener to do. Boredom is inevitable. You are waiting at the end of a sentence before the speaker completes it. You jump over complex word patterns and interpolate what you ‘know’ he is about to say. You ‘switch off’ listening in the gaps and let your mind wander all over the place, with occasional ‘sound tests’ for key words you expect your speaker to say. You are present but not listening. When you mishear something that’s said and act accordingly, you expose your lapse by failing to heed what has been told to you. Hence, listening is much more difficult than speaking, even though (or because) your listening instruments (ears, etc.) are much more efficient than your vocal apparatus. Influencers listen more than they talk. And they listen effectively and not just as an affectation. Influencers use the simple technique of ‘smart summaries’ to clarify sympathetically what they are told and to signal to the speaker unambiguously that they are listening actively to what he or she says. Smart summaries are brief, timely and focused and they have a strong assurance effect on a speaker. They properly belong to the pull set of influencing behaviours – in fact it is difficult to conceive of listening being absent from any of the pull behaviours, or of any pull behaviours that could be improved without simultaneous improvement in your listening skills. Listening carefully takes effort, and there are distractions of all kinds. You may not be interested in what somebody says or you may disagree strongly with the content of the message. Disagreement induces the silent composition of a reply or a rehearsal of why you believe the person to be wrong and sometimes, though you are silent, you give your feelings away by your body language (head shaking, facial grimaces, narrowing of eyes). If it is boring, you glance around as if looking for something or someone else to relieve your misery, and you make token noises to hurry the speaker to a conclusion. Trying to influence others while failing to listen is an uphill struggle. The best way to react to views with which you disagree is to ask questions with the sole purpose of increasing your understanding of what other people are saying, what they believe and what they want. Disagreements are like obstacles on the terrain between you and the people you wish to influence. The disagreements may be profound or slight. Questioning reveals the depth of their convictions and how they feel on the subject of your apparent disagreement. Table 4.1 Pull relationship building behaviors Behavior Description 1- Fishing Fishing for “common ground”, such as in background, experiences, interests, and feelings and what can be agreed where there are disagreements 2- Enthusing Enthusing about personal predilections , goals, aspirations, hopes, concerns, beliefs and future prospects. 3- Wallowing Engaging in empathetic probing of incidents, problems, moods and doubts 4- Revealing Discreetly revealing “intimate” and confidential matters, and personal feelings Fishing Almost the first thing two people do when meeting for the first time is to establish who they are, what they do, where they come from and where they live. This is sometimes called ‘small talk’. Almost automatically each fishes for the other’s short ‘autobiography’. Mostly you use this rock bottom ‘c.v.’ to decide whether to get to know more about the person. If you decide that you want to know more, you fish for supplementary opportunities – if you can think of any. If you do not wish to know more, you change tack, make your excuses and break off the contact. Uncovering anything you have in common is an opportunity. Whether to pursue these opportunities at all is the first (and sometimes the last) decision in a relationship. From the influencing angle, it is more likely that you will have influence with someone with whom you have or can create something in common than if you have absolutely nothing in common at all. Those who deny they have ‘anything in common’ mostly cannot be bothered to fish because they see no benefit in making the effort. For influencers it is difficult to make progress if the party has made up its mind and resolutely resists revising its stance. Even a fish cannot be caught by rod and line unless it opens its mouth. Influencers take an interest in the people they meet. They fish for opportunities to make supplementary connections, either at a first or later meeting. Fishing for common ground is the first step in a relationship which, once found, is explored. People resent over familiarity on a first meeting and they are cautious about going into too much detail about their personal circumstances. It might also be an error to shout ‘Eureka’ on uncovering some trivial connection between you both, such that you are both of the same sex, you both breathe and you both bleed when cut. Enthusing The next step in a developing relationship is to encourage them to enthuse about a personal interest and to do likewise with them. To succeed in enthusing you had best convey a sense of your excitement in your manner. An emotionless tone does not energize those you wish to enthuse. People like to talk about their enthusiasms but are often discouraged from doing so, either from mocking reactions or from brutal cut-offs by insensitive people who are not interested in anybody but themselves. That you overtly encourage people to talk about their special interests – by fishing – contrasts with their normal experience. They will note the difference. This alone does not amount to a major breakthrough but it could lead to one. You grow your relationships with people precisely because they behave differently from those with whom you choose (and you do choose) not to grow a relationship. From the influencing angle, it is more likely that you will influence someone you encourage to relate enthusiastic accounts of their special interests, predilections or experiences. It is, as always, a question of striking the right balance. But the more relaxed they feel about your interest in their enthusiasms, the more likely they are to be receptive – in due course – to your influence about your enthusiasms. Their reaction to a perceived lack of interest or, worse, a mocking rejection of their enthusiasms, limits the extent to which you will be able to exert influence on them. Wallowing ‘Wallowing’ is engaging in empathetic probing of incidents, problems, moods and doubts. Wallowing is counterintuitive as an influencing behaviour. Many think wallowing is pointless and time-wasting gossip. Wallowing has many applications in influencing, persuading and the management of meetings. It is also widely used between friends, though few probably call it wallowing. For that reason, wallowing is barely mentioned in management literature. Wallowing is too easily dismissed as self-indulgence, and is easily – and frequently – discouraged. People in a hurry have no time to waste listening to someone ‘moaning’. In brutal fact, if you cut people off before they wallow, it may curtail the boredom of your listening but it also eliminates opportunities to consolidate your relationships. Wallowing is commonplace with people who do not intellectualize about what they do in their relationships. The problem for most of us is that we do not consider what we miss when we intentionally avoid letting others wallow. An absence of shared wallowing probably explains 90 per cent of the reasons why you do not develop relationships with others effortlessly and why those who do allow wallowing are better influencers than those who do not. Rackham’s research showed that effective sellers, in contrast, do not jump in with instant answers to problems. They note the opening they get from your having a problem, but they also encourage you to elaborate (i.e., wallow) on the wider consequences of your problem. This raises the current profile of your problem and brings it higher up your personal scale of priorities. They do not assume that having a problem automatically ensures an urgency to do something about it. In fact, postponement of a solution is the most common response to most problems. When you wallow you feel ‘psychic pain’ from having the problem. Problems mentioned en passant do not yet have a high enough priority urging you to do something about them. Few people buy to solve low-priority problems. Wallowing focuses attention on the scale and intensity of your problem, which you may recollect too dimly for it to require urgent action. Revealing Revealing takes time and the correct circumstances. Revealing behaviour is not about salacious confessions nor need it include them. The revelations can be purely trivial though they would be much more than your ‘name, rank and serial number’. The main criterion for the successful exchange of revelatory behaviour is that what is revealed to you is not something that is normally revealed to others. Those with whom you have no relationship – passing encounters – may not get beyond a morning greeting or similar courtesies, and perhaps not even those. People in a relationship mutually reveal details of their private lives, feelings and hopes and their revelations are mutually proportionate. Details of who they are, where they come from, how many children they have, how many marriages, their current domestic arrangements, current job circumstances, their sexual preferences and so on are exchanged, and each lets the other enter her private territory in reciprocation for being allowed into the other’s private territory. Giving your own detailed ‘biography’ without listening to details of theirs would be inappropriate, except in anticipation of them having a turn at revealing their own later. To give them no turn at all would cut you off from them no matter what you revealed to them. Revelation in influencing is mutual, proportionate and balanced. It also becomes increasingly intimate as it moves from the standard introductory revelations to the non-standard ‘confessional’ type of revelations that are shared only by close friends. People who have shared their ‘innermost secrets’ are more likely to influence each other than if they remain virtual strangers. 4.4: Behaviors for a Push Strategy Push behaviours tend to be viable only where there is a robust relationship between two parties. They are unlikely to be successful where the parties are virtual strangers or where there is an element of suspicion between them. Influence rests on relationships that are built over time and through various circumstances. Potential relationships can be severely weakened or totally destroyed through the attempted application of push behaviours to fragile relationships. Using push behaviours to influence people with whom you have no relationship is a forlorn quest. You will come across as arrogant, presumptuous, threatening and ‘unbalanced’. Hence, resorting to push behaviours presumes a previous investment in developing a relationship through combinations of pull behaviours. This leads to a singular conclusion: taking the necessary steps to improve – even establish – relationships through pull behaviours is a necessary precondition for using push behaviours to influence them. In short, pull influencers earn the ‘right’ to use push behaviours. Table 4.2 Push Behaviors Behavior Description 1- Reasoning Using logic and rational argument to point to the “required” decision 2- Suggesting Making general recommendations 3- Asserting Using assertions to identify the “correct” decision 4- Coercing Using pressure to compel someone to take a course of action Reasoning In argumentative discourse, logic is assumed to be superior to subjectivism. From given premise a logical conclusion follows. Any other conclusion is false and, by logical implication, should be rejected. Asserting that a decision is based on logical reasoning bestows authority or legitimacy on it. Dismissing a contribution as “emotional” or “illogical” is usually sufficient to discredit it. They become a mere cipher in an impersonal decision process. No discussion on the role of rationality can neglect how claims to rationality may be manipulated by those anxious to claim objective authority for the decision they prefer. In principle, a rational decision has a powerful claim to be meritorious in its own right; in practice, your claim to have chosen rationally may be spurious. Suggesting Suggestions are sometimes regarded as the ‘softest’ of the push behaviours. Because a suggestion, like advice, does not have much weight, some people make a case for reclassifying suggesting as a pull behaviour. It is, however, different from advice in that anybody can and does offer advice (which strangers mostly ignore), whereas in an influencing exchange a suggestion presumes a relationship (the suggestion is freely sought and legitimately offered) and, therefore, that there is some confidence that the suggestion will be seriously considered. The likelihood of the suggestion being implemented is directly related to the strength of the relationship. Suggesting behaviour is not an offer of impersonal and disinterested advice. As influencers we have a direct interest in the outcome and our suggestion is geared to achieve the outcome we favor. So when strangers ask for advice on the shortest route to a dockyard, we are indifferent whether they heed or ignore us. In suggesting to colleagues that they should support a scheme to build a new dockyard, we have a direct interest and would be anxious if they chose instead to check our suggestion with a third party (particularly one known to oppose our stance) before committing themselves. Our confidence in our relationship with those to whom we feel free to make suggestions is closely bound up with our confidence that they will heed what we suggest because we have influence over them. That is why suggesting is a push behaviour – it is a unilateral determination of what we think should be done by others and not what we jointly agree might be best. Asserting Asserting is a step up from the right to make general suggestions to someone (with an expectation that it will be acted upon). In asserting that this or that is the correct decision for someone to make, there is a much more complex relationship implied by the fact that the assertion was made. A stranger making such an assertion may be ignored; a close ally would not be ignored. Assertive behaviour is not meant to be ambiguous. As in Tit-for-Tat behaviour, you know where you are with assertive people. Therefore the language they use is clear and to the point. In appraisal interviews it is necessary to be assertive if those being appraised are to be absolutely clear what they must do to achieve a satisfactory rating. Praise for what they have achieved is matched by direct comment on where they have fallen below the organization’s standards and what they must do about it. If something less than assertive behaviour is used, the substandard behaviour has less chance of being corrected because the people are not sure what they have to do. Evasive decision-making styles that use language like ‘on the one hand … and on the other …’ and anything that invites uncertainty about what must be done are well short of assertiveness. Coercing Coercive behaviour can work in robust relationships. It is at the extreme of the influencing relationships. The influencer puts pressure on the target to act in a specific way or manner in pursuit of his or her goals. The form of the compulsion may vary from a direct instruction that is highly likely to be obeyed (‘vote for the rejection of the minutes of the Board meeting’) to an instruction combined with a threat The difference between asserting and coercing is that asserting is direct advice (‘you must stand firm’) and coercion is a direct command (‘you will stand firm, or else’). The use of coercion rather than the softer influence behaviours indicates some form of power over the target. Relationships give power to the influencer and, ironically, partners behave towards each other in ways that would not be tolerated if there were no relationship. Coercion is a complex relationship behaviour that is hardly different from bullying and intimidation. It may be willingly accepted by the parties and as vigorously resisted if an indeterminate line is crossed. Coercion is often accepted out of a sense of obligation or duty, but it is also fiercely resisted if the person feels humiliated or exploited. Epilogue While it is true that we can speak of pull behaviors as being associated with the early, more tentative and fragile stages of a growing relationship and bush behaviors as being associated with mature and more robust stages of a relationship, this is not to suggest that there is a strict linear one-way progression from fishing to coercion. The eight behaviors discussed in this module are main headings with many subtle variations. They can be combined in many ways too. The key is to recognize how to behave to achieve the results you seek from the relationship. There is nothing to be gained from push behavior when pull is called for, or from pull behaviors when a more direct push behavior is required.