The Mindset You Need for Influence

0:00 [Music] if I'm literally presenting myself as a truth Seeker whether I use those words or not with another team or another individual on my team who I'm not very aligned with like wait wait wait I'm trying to seek truth here and they don't seem interested well no surprise because what is likely happening is simply that they think you're full of [ __ ] which is

0:30 you're trying to play the moral superiority game like well I am truth seeking and you are just like following these incentives the core thing to understand is that never works or rather that will only work if you have a position higher in the hierarchy then sure you can use this as a tool but then if you have that then there are many other tools at your disposal as well but if you don't have that hierarchical superiority over the

0:58 individual then doesn't work the challenge of these situations is one of influence the point is that you see a certain path a certain solution a certain approach and others see a different solution a different path a different approach it's a challenge of influence so I would rather approach from the perspective of influence rather than using any kind of Truth seeking terms in the vocabulary because when I start thinking about myself as a truth

1:29 Seeker seeking person I'm basically assuming kind of moral superiority and then that is going to actually make my task difficult of actually being able to influence them because no wonder then that I'll look at them with immense frustration and disdain so instead I treat it as a curious influence problem I just reframed this basically and that reframing is very important now there is the valid question is it even worth my time and my energy and my political

1:59 Capital to need to influence here there is a certain personality that loves problem solving and that Prides itself in both the moral superiority and the intellectual superiority that just looks at the world out there with the eye of like gosh can you believe how [ __ ] up this place is oh everything is messed up these people are following the wrong process they have the wrong goals executives are giving us the wrong strategy they don't even have a strategy somebody said

2:26 vision is very important on Twitter and we don't have a company vision I asked the company Vision question at all hands and the CEO just hemmed and Hau and didn't really give us any Vision this is the in inside world of many smart product managers this is all the stuff that is going on inside their head and then they come into a one-on-one with me oh sh all these problems and blah blah blah and I can't do this I talk to this

2:48 person and they can't give us resources until 3 months from now so how are we going to launch this it's just complete and utter chaos over here that's why I bring up this point if we're talking about well we're trying to seek truth is this important enough is it worth even trying to influence these people use LNO framework what are the highest leverage things that you should exert your influence on and be okay with certain things where yeah it could be better but

3:14 be okay with certain things working the way they are otherwise you'll drive yourself not by society's definition insane but you're kind of insane you're driving yourself completely insane and then burnout happens and then you are ineffective and various other things it is very important before we get into well how do we solve this specific problem we have with this team just understanding these things do you really need to solve this whatsoever hopefully by this time you've eliminated a lot of

3:40 things because remember the role of ego remember what I said about understanding yourself you have to ask yourself when you are feeling like telling this team member that oh you're not thinking through this properly you're not truth seeking why are you doing it and in most cases it's not because you care about the project it's because you want the dopamine hit of being right of being smarter of outwitting the other person now until you recognize that in yourself

4:06 you are not going to be able to fix it you're going to keep doing it and most people will deny this no no no sh you have it all wrong I'm a very humble person blah blah blah no this is all driven by your ego trying to tell somebody that oh this is the right way the point is that yes sometimes you should tell people that this is the wrong way or you're doing it the wrong

4:27 way and this is the right way whatever but I want you to be very very selective about when you do it and I want you to devote most of your energy towards those few selective things where you should even try to influence so by this time if we go through this tree of logic you have all but eliminated most conflict and most issues that are garbage in the mind of PMs and other leaders constant like oh this needs to be fixed oh this

4:53 also needs to be fixed oh let's fix that let's fix that oh my gosh our Sprint process is not right oh my gosh Tech lead is not sending notes and the tech lead is supposed to send notes from the meeting that is not going to determine the success of your project right okay once you're done eliminating most of these things now we can start talking about the few things where you should actually apply your truth seeking

5:16 desires and again reframe it to your desire to influence people and in those cases again what can you control is very important you cannot control the processing that is happening in somebody else's head you cannot control it all you can control is the inputs you provide for that processing therefore what is this problem of influence what is it it is a problem of your skill it is not a problem of the other person's incompetence because if you think about

5:47 it in that way you will not try to amplify your influence ability and sure again if you have a power relationship where you can fire this supposed incompetent person by all means fire them but we are already presupposed opposing that that's not the case you cannot fire this person you have to work with this person and the only thing you can control is your ability to give them the certain inputs that hopefully will lead them to a similar conclusion as

6:13 yours not necessarily the same but similar therefore this is a problem of your skill when you are not able to do this and there are many PMS who cannot do it in most situations the skill is essentially two different things how well can you escalate and that's the default path that most people use and I'm not saying it's the wrong path but escalation also requires energy you can't do escalations for everything so yes build the skill for doing

6:37 escalations well and that's one way of exercising influence which is hierarchy by proxy essentially but the other way is you develop your own ability to influence that is what I want you to focus on instead of all this garbage like how everybody is [ __ ] up and everybody's messed up and every team is doing the wrong thing and nobody gets it the CEO doesn't get it and we don't have the right resources and we don't have

7:02 the right funding and the this QA team is not doing the right process and the engineering team is fighting everybody has these issues your issues are not unique you also have to remember this is why you are getting paid the big bucks so build that influence skill that is your only sustainable solution besides focusing on what truly matters letting many many problems be learning how to escalate and escalating well where warranted and and then exercising your

7:31 influence a prerequisite to which is building the set of skills required for influence most people have a very long journey towards building and mastering this the art of influence but don't want to admit that to themselves they think just because they read chalini that they understand how to influence on this last point I'll also give you some unpopular news chalini is a useful resource It Is by no means means the best resource for

8:02 influence so everybody cites Chini and all the principles and all of that it's complete intellectual masturbation anybody who cites chalini as a source of influencing teams and influencing other people I know that they don't actually understand influence the reason I keep emphasizing influence is because at higher levels that's what's essentially going to determine your failure or success your ability to communicate in an influential manner is basically going to be the core job at higher levels so

8:30 you better take it seriously and really absorb this thing which is like yes the onus is on me to be able to better influence people and there are ways to do it and I'm going to keep leveling up on that skill [Music]