Want to influence yet feel out of your depth?

Clear on what you want a “yes” to?

Can you say it in just one sentence?

Here, red10 ‘s Gavin Simpson talks about one aspect of pre-suasion that we in red10 call Outcome.

Outcome – Can you say it in one short sentence?

Outcome thinking is a relatively simple idea yet in our experience it’s often not done well or at all in people’s planning.

People can be very abstract and vague about what it is they want people to say yes to. If this isn’t clear, it’s hard to engage the other aspects of pre-suasion and per-suasion e.g. what do you want to draw people’s attention to?

In red10 ‘s Influencing Masterclass we ask participants to describe their influencing situation and then – once they’ve heard their own thinking on the situation – we ask them “What is the outcome you are trying to influence?”

9 times out 10 we hear a long-drawn out description of their outcome…and then a reflection and a there is a realisation, that they aren’t clear on what they want to influence.

We then ask participants to put it in a sentence. This is a great test; can you say it in one sentence? After 2 or 3 goes it becomes clearer.

Recognise the central element of the message that would make it most wise for someone to accept – Cialdini

Outcome – Do you need an influencing plan?

Interestingly, when we:

  1. Ask the whole class to ask questions of clarification of the “influencer”
  2. Then go back to them and ask,
    “Hearing all the questions of clarification, please can you restate your outcome in one sentence?”

Then I’d say about a third of the time people change their outcome again.

Often, the “influencers” realizations include:

  • They need to start their influencing with a different person or group
  • It’s not feasible to go for the whole outcome all at once and they need to break it down to steps with sub-outcomes that lead to the final outcome i.e. creating an influencing plan.
  • For example; the first step could be “I want them to see this as important issue to engage with”, this points towards Priming…and then what next?
  • They realise that they need to create a frame that makes this compelling to the person they want to influence, and they need to restructure their proposal e.g. magnetizer

What’s your influence outcome and plan?