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Transcript
Hellooo! Do you have a co-worker, or someone in your life, who does something that you don’t like? Something that maybe causes you extra work or just frustrates you. And then you have a choice, you can put up with the situation or you can do something about it.
The concept of “gaman” in Japan — putting up with the situation — is considered a virtue. And I think that it can be a virtue, for example, in a situation where you can’t do anything about the situation, like a natural disaster. There’s no point in complaining after that’s happened. You just have to put up with the situation and do the best that you can.
But in many cases, you can do something about the situation. You can get what you want.
And I don’t mean in an evil — a manipulative — way. I mean positive influencing to get what you want.
I’ve worked with a number of corporations on their in-house influencing skills programs over the years and I’ve read about and taught a number of approaches.
So they tend to breakdown the influencing styles or ways into between about six and I think the most I saw was fifteen, which was a bit much for me.
Common examples of these styles are, for example, using logical reasons to back up why it is that you want someone to do something.
Or it could be collaboration, in the sense that you have in your mind what you want the person to do and then you invite them to give suggestions for how to get to what it is that you want them to do.
And then there’s another approach that is often mentioned and that is simply stating or saying what you want the person to do.
And I dismissed this as maybe not so effective for quite some time.
But last week something happened that changed my mind.
I was having lunch with a good friend and a loyal reader of Sasuga! Tips For You. And he said that he’d noticed that I’d been changing the style of the newsletter quite a lot recently.
And that’s true because I keep looking for what’s the best way to convey what I want to convey — what are people going to find most useful.
So recently I’ve been making the text more concise and then including links to the blog post with the tips for communication skills.
But he said that he would prefer to simply have the text in the newsletter.
And that was great because it gave me a different perspective.
He had asked for what he wanted and he had influenced me.
So it is possible to ask for what you want to influence someone.
And of course, often we hesitate to ask for what we want because we think maybe we might upset the person — we might disturb the relationship. But provided we have a good relationship with that person and provided we ‘re not asking for something that’s too difficult, it’s okay to simply ask.
So if you want to get what you want, ask.