If you aspire to be a role model and work on your personal development to become aligned in what you say, think, do and write, you will be able influence 360 degrees around you, says Birgitta Sjöstrand
As with all influencing, we have to start by looking at the target group. Who do I want to persuade?
The people working on the C-level in organisations have to zoom out and take a helicopter view of the company and the world in which they operate. There is a fair amount of external monitoring, for example having to have their ear tuned into the stock market, how interest rates and currencies fluctuate and what the competition is doing. Seeing connections and transcribing what it means to their organisation and taking action is their job. Making money for the shareholders and being on the right page with the stakeholders is essential.
With this is mind, part of your job as a middle manager, is to make your boss’s life easier. For example, when the executive management team invites you to tell them how your project is coming along, be clear, concise and knowledgeable. Have all the details at your fingertips, so you can call on them if they ask for them. A quote to bear in mind is:
Give people what they want and need. ‘I love strawberries, but whenever I go fishing, I bait my hook with worms. It is because of fish like worms, not strawberries.’
Dale Carnegie
The ancient Greeks taught us ethos, logos and pathos, and it is useful even today. Showing the executives your ethos means you are trustworthy and have both warmth and strength. Warmth to be likeable and human, strength to show courage and dependability. Your ethos can also be shown in your body language; you stand straight but yet relaxed and your hands use gestures deliberately. Logos means you have the facts, figures, statistics and how the facts connect to other points. Pathos means your driving force and energy. The way you put your soul in your job and this shows mainly in your face, in your eyes and your voice.
Pushing the right buttons
When you want to influence somebody, think about what is essential for them. Their own values or criterion are very personal labels. The words a person uses incite a physical and
emotional reaction, almost like pressing a button, and if you use the right ones, the person will feel motivated to follow you.
For example C-level managers might have buttons labelled profit, low-cost, buy-ins, outcomes, bottom line; their focus could be within spreadsheets, processes and efficiency. It’s not that they’re not interested in the people behind the numbers; they are just sometimes detached. When you present to this group of people you need to use their criterion words, but you can do so much more if you want to.
Managing change
My take on the middle manager’s job is that it’s a person who can make a massive difference in everyone’s lives in the organisation. If you aspire to be a role model and work on your personal development to become aligned in what you say, think, do and write, you will be able influence 360 degrees around you.
Quite often, a middle manager will be in charge of implementing change in the organisation. Some managers may think change is as easy as installing new software into the computer, but it takes a lot longer and is a lot more complicated.
Lots of changes fail, especially if they come from the top and go down into the organisation. There are significant steps to take and it is important you take them all to mitigate risks. Be patient; it takes a lot longer than you think. Suppose you start to think about a change in December. You write down the pros and cons and work the idea until it looks great to you. You present it to your team or the c-level in April and this is the first they hear about it. Don’t expect them to buy into it right away; if it’s taken you 3-4 months to plan it will take them at least as long to get onboard. As a middle manager, your team is a team of managers who have to sell the change onwards to the employees. So, not only have you got to make your reporting managers buy into the change 100% you probably have to help them sell it onwards.
There are a few things I suggest you keep in mind when managing change among all parties:
The context
Involve everybody to avoid ‘them and us’ thoughts. Go through ideas and beliefs and what they mean before selling the change. Work with realistic ambitions—smaller chunks and involving the people doing the actual work. Keep a long-term perspective.
People driving the change
Integrate planning, implementation and follow up, all concerned must take part in the entire
project. When different teams are doing different things, it always leads to unforeseen problems. Clarify the different roles, identify how people perceive themselves and how others perceive them, so the two’s discrepancies are evident.
The content
Focus on meaning instead of values. Values are often just words to people. Find out what the meaning behind the words means to the employees. Avoid clichés like quality, customer orientation and growth.
The tactic
Use sentences explaining both the benefits and what problems are solved when selling the idea. Having a smaller tight group with influential people inspiring larger groups works well. Ask them to interpret and report the view of the larger group. Formulate messages that not only appeal to reason and intellect, but also excitement and imagination.
The process
Embed ideas and ideals in the local organisational context and try to avoid repeating standard formulas. Consistently go through learning, adaptations, review plans and procedures, and
revisiting ideas and roles. Change is an ongoing process; you can’t tick it off after a conference or meeting with the staff. The project is completed when everyone says: ‘This is how we do it here.’
Helping the c-level understand this process is vital when you are selling in a change. When reporting about the change be clear about the why, what and how. Why the change is needed, why it takes time, benefits of doing the change and what problems are solved. What you and your team are doing, give an overview and a timeframe. Show them a simple timeline of how and when things are going to be implemented, including costs of training, new software or machines. Perhaps you could include alternative costs if you don’t do the training. Tell them how you are ironing out the glitches and what they can expect when. Demonstrate to the executives you are capable, skilled, on top of everything and answer their questions, rather than flooding them with too many details they might not have asked for right now.
Save the details to the workforce; they will want to know everything. When implementing changes, communication is critical. Choose a specific channel. It could be on an intranet, podcast or by mail for example where you on every Thursdays at 2 pm, give information about what is going on. Even if nothing new happens, tell the employees the next steps or what is in the pipeline. They are much more likely to buy into the change when given lots of information.
Birgitta Sjöstrand is a professional public speaker, leadership trainer, facilitator and coach. She works internationally with both large and small organisations. Her area of expertise is leadership, communication, motivation and neuro-linguistic programming (NLP). Birgitta is the founder and chief executive of Inre styrka, Sverige AB, formed in 2003. (Inre styrka means PowerWithin).
Birgitta was working in the financial market in Stockholm and London for ten years. After having three children, she studied again – leadership, behaviour psychology, communication – and has a number of different certifications. Birgitta is the author of Outstanding in the Middle, a practical and accessible guide to excelling in all aspects of middle management.
