Productivity Tips Newsletter
For Better Results, Goals & Success

This issue deals with overcoming resistance and mastering conflicts with positive influencing skills.

Issue:
Jim is the manager of a large team of professional knowledge workers. He was always puzzled by the following observation. Any time he introduced a new or different initiative, his team would become resistant. Try as he would to win them over with sound arguments, the more resistant they became.

Problem:
Jim has not mastered and consistently deployed the five main influencing skills:

• wavelength - recognize the signals people give to ensure full cooperation.
• questioning - gain a clear path to your goals by questioning more effectively.
• understanding - listening is key in to what's actually being said, rather than what you want to hear.
• conflict handling - understand the reasons and feelings beneath the surface of conflict.
• agreement - make cooperation a mutually rewarding experience worth repeating.

In this case, it is apparent his ability to handle conflict and come to agreement needs some help. Jim is used to the command and control model of management. The characteristic of this model is to persuade or push people toward your objective.

Solution:
When people dig in their heels and become resistant, they always have their reasons for doing so, even though they are not immediately apparent. When the other person resists, the temptation is to try harder and this usually means increasing our attempts to persuade them. We step up our arguments by making increasingly exaggerated claims and/or applying more pressure. Unfortunately, this usually converts a resistant person into an uncompromising person and nothing will budge them from the position they have taken up.

Whenever you encounter resistance, the best approach is not to try harder, but to find out the reasons why. If you think of resistance as an indication that the person has reached a decision (hopefully, a temporary decision), it makes it easier for you to ask questions to understand the rationale behind their decision. The essence of influencing is to get the other person to do what you want them to do. This can only be achieved if you help them to see how their reasons for saying no are really reasons for saying yes.

Always treat resistance as an unwelcome, but temporary, decision that has been reached for a host of different reasons. Ask questions to discover the reasons behind the decision.

Learn how you can Master Your Influencing Skills at the upcoming skills workshop hosted by: