What if you knew yourself as someone who could inspire others to take action?
Not just any action but one that can forward your business. Someone to invest in your facility. Someone to work for you. A prospect to rent from you.
In this series of mind set principles I feel are necessary for any entrepreneur to succeed, this skill is one of the most important. No-one can achieve large goals and dreams alone. If your dream is large enough to inspire you to take action, it will most likely require many others to organize around it.
To require others help to achieve your goals, you must not only develop a skill of motivating others to take specific action, you must know yourself as someone who can. That knowing gives you the ability allows to set up that critical meeting, to ask for the business, to ask for money or a loan, or ask someone to take massive action.
Over the years I have learned a way to do just that with this two-step approach. I do not want to call it a technique, because it is so intimate. To employ this strategy you must be someone who genuinely likes and cares about people. People from all walks of life. If you are someone who believes all people have something to add to life and forwarding the human experience, this way of inspiring others to take action is right up your alley.
I want to acknowledge Landmark Education’s training is the place I learned most of this. Frankly, I can’t remember exactly what I got from them and what I developed from using it, but Landmark is where I learned these distinctions.
Step One:
{Background}
Behind everything a person says or does is a “concern”. Not like a concern that something is wrong, but what a person has their attention on. For example, when my wife complains (sorry Rebecca but thanks for letting me use you as an example) about my working late and not being home with her when she has a long weekend, I can address what she is saying or I can address her concern. She is talking about me not being home as much as I said I would be or as much as she wants me to be; or I can address the “concern” or what is driving her speaking. What is driving her speaking is her love for me and the fact my absence is hard on her because she loves me so much.
{Action}:
When talking with someone, always get their concern, or what is driving what they are saying. That requires true listening. Listening without talking going on in your head. Hear what is the real issue behind whatever someone is saying. It is never the content of what they are saying, it is the concern behind it.
This is a real skill, but soon you will know what their true motivation is better than they do. In my last interview for an employee, I could hear that this lady was truly devoted to her children and her life was about having them be in a better position than she is at this point in time. Or with one potential investor, I could hear he did not want to be the one to lose the wealth his Father made. That was more important than the actual “return” he was talking about needing. Again, the “concern” driving the speaking is never the content of what someone is saying.
Step Two:
{Action}: Always speak to the concern, not the content. If you have to, let them know you heard what they said, but speak into the concern.
For the investor mention above, I spoke briefly about the returns, but spent most of the time talking about self-storage as a safe investment and why it was. I created a space where he could see himself increasing the wealth his Father created, and how proud he would be with his siblings ad children. When he got I had my eye on what his motivating concern was, he had no problem investing in our project.
When you do this, people feel heard in a way few others ever grant them, and believe me, when someone feels really heard and understood, then they will support what you are up to. People are inspired when they are heard in this way. When people are inspired, taking action is a natural by- product of inspiration.
So practice listing for what is the concern driving the speaking. Practice speaking into concerns rather than content. You will be amazed at the world of possibility that opens up from this.
