Evan LaPointe: belief

Transcript context

…We'll probably unpack a second topic and open up an off ramp here right at the beginning, but there's two things, there's influence itself and then there's relationships, and we should probably talk a little bit about relationships. Trying to exert influence through a dysfunctional relationship is not going to go great. And most human beings, especially when they go to work, are pretty out of sorts when it comes to relationships. And you even hear crazy mantra like we have to each other to work together, which are like, good luck with that. I mean, just watch a text message pop up on a phone of a person who doesn't like you and watch their response time to the text message, or their Slack message, or whatever. I mean, you're talking about you've built in a multi-day, at least multi-hour delay into responsiveness purely because the relationship isn't good, and then you compound that effect over whatever size your company is. That's massive operational inefficiency just because I don't want to respond to Evan right now. So that's the one piece. Now assuming the relationship is in place, and we'll come back to that and talk about that because a whole very actionable framework to unpack, assuming the relationship is good, I think the starting point for influence is to choose your character and choose your mode. It's almost like you're playing Elden Ring or some video game, and you're going to be like, am I going to influence him this way as the hero or the exemplar of these things, or am I going to influence through back channels, what is my character? And everybody for your personality has a natural fit for the character you're going to select as this mode of influence, and then you're going to pick a speed of influence, which is slow, moderate, or fast. Then you're going to pick a speed of influence, which is slow, moderate, or fast. The habitat can help a lot with this. If a founder is listening to this and you haven't created a habitat where fast influence is easy and the permission isn't there, then you're slowing the company down inadvertently by just not clarifying this with the team. So slow influence is the we'll let them find out the hard way influence. They're going off a cliff, we know they're going off a cliff. And a lot of times we find ourselves in what's called the Abilene paradox. The Abilene paradox is where everybody in the room knows it's a bad idea, but we're all like "We're in." And the classic Abilene paradox kind of if you look up memes on Google, it'll be like the dad thinks that the kids might want to go camping. Mom doesn't want to go camping, the kids don't want to go camping. Dad also doesn't really want to go camping, but everybody's like, "Dad probably wants us to go camping, so let's give it a go." And they all go and don't enjoy it. And we see that play out all the time. And a lot of people will just say, "I can't do anything. I don't have any influence in this case. ng, so let's give it a go." And they all go and don't enjoy it. And we see that play out all the time. And a lot of people will just say, "I can't do anything. I don't have any influence in this case. We're just going to let him fail and they'll learn." Or this impolite person like me giving feedback the wrong way years in the past, I'm not going to sit Evan down and talk to him about this. He'll figure out on his own through failure that this doesn't work. And that can take months, that can take years, that can take a lifetime for people to learn the slow way. And it is a form of influence. You are being intentional to say, I think the world will create enough failure that adaptation will occur. That is a form of influence, just the slowest one. And a lot of people listening probably realize, "Oh, that's what I'm doing. How can I go way faster than just letting things fail?" So that's where moderate influence comes in. And a great book to read for a moderate influence is the Challenger Sale. And in the Challenger Sale, what we're looking at is the concept of teaching people something. And then when they live with this new knowledge, they'll see things that they weren't seeing before. So for example, in the feedback example that we can keep using over and over again through this is, "Hey Evan, you might want to notice people's body language while you're saying these things and here's some signs to look out for that when you've done this and you get this, that's probably a sign that people are bought in and still with you. And when you see this, that's probably a sign that people are pushing back." And you can ask this question in that moment and you'll probably hear answers like this. So you're like giving somebody a tool that their future is going to unpack. And the Challenger Sale kind of assumes a long enough sales cycle where you're not going to land the sale in the meeting, you're not trying to close them right there. You'll teach them some stuff and you'll, "Hey, if you see this stuff, that's a pretty clear sign that you need to take action. So why don't we call you in 30 days, and 30 days later we get on phone, "Hey, have you been seeing this?" And they'll go, "Everywhere I look, I can't not see it now." And that's how you influence a person in a few days, a few weeks, maybe a few months at worst, way faster than letting them fail. We actually had, I don't know if you know this, we had the author of that book on the podcast, Matt Dixon, I think his name. And the Challenger Sale, the idea there is challenge their perspective and view on what is actually real about the market and what they need.…

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