Introduction to Podcast and Theme
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The Voice of Growth, Mastering the Mind and Market.
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Welcome back to the Voice of Growth podcast, Mastering the Mind and Market. My name is Manny Turan, and I'm your host.
Understanding Powerful Leaders for Career Advancement
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On today's podcast, we're talking about working for, working alongside, or working in the same sphere as powerful people.
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these type A, C-level, hard-driving entrepreneurs and business leaders will be in your path if you want to take your career forward, if you want to close that deal, if you want to move your initiative to the next level.
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The more you understand about how they see the world, the better prepared you'll be in order to meet them there and get your point across.
Personal Experiences with Business Leaders
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Now, I say they, but I also mean me. You watching might be a powerful person, but recognize that you're not always going to be the most powerful person in the room.
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There's occasions when I'm working with people that are much more powerful than i There are occasions where... I'm the smallest ant in the room.
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And for instance, ah um'm part of this breakfast club full of business leaders, folks that manage and are the leaders of billion-dollar companies with tens of thousands of employees.
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And so certainly in those situations, I need to have my wits about me. And the things we'll talk about today in this podcast helped me out. and will certainly help you out as well. and recognize that i from time to time during this podcast, I might say third party or third person, sometimes it'll be first person.
Impact of Power on Leadership - Insights from T.D. Jakes
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And so we'll start off with a quote that I really like by Bishop T.D. Jakes. And that quote is something that is interesting. So if power makes you smaller, you're not ready for it.
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If power makes you steadier, you're already leading. So the idea here is that power corrupts. So if power leads a person to be controlling or put others down, they are too immature to handle it.
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But instead, if power strengthens a person's resolve and allows them to be calm and grounded, then they're already leading others. And this is something that is aspirational, of course, but something to keep in mind.
Stoicism and Negotiation Techniques
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So today we'll be talking about um these hard driving, powerful people, and we'll be looking at stoic principles to better understand how you can control what your mindset is and what you say.
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And we'll also be looking at some techniques by Chris Voss, who is an FBI negotiator, has amazing content about how to um get your point across. He wrote a book called Never Split the Difference.
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And we'll also be looking at Robert Cialdini, who is a researcher and author on influence. He's got a lot of great things on the idea of, of he calls it ethical influence.
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This is not the Machiavellian type of influence. So when you're looking at um how to work with people at this high level, um many times we operate
Strategies for Quick Decision-Making
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very quickly. We make decisions fast.
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We do not tolerate wasting time, but we do tolerate a high level of ambiguity, especially when making decisions. we don't make We don't need to have every piece of the puzzle in order to make the decision.
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We just need to have enough of the pieces and be confident in our ability to set a direction, go out there, deploy, and assess.
Leaders' Responsibilities and Organizational Impact
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If it falls on our face, then we reassess read and redeploy. And so ah we also carry asymmetric accountability. The idea of asymmetric accountability is that you as the leader of your organization, of your business unit, of your whatever you're doing, you need to carry the entire responsibility for the result of that company.
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A good example, if you are a product if you're launching a product and your product manager makes a mistake and that product launch is a flop, The market should rightly blame the CEO for that failed attempt.
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They're not going to search out that individual, and and nor should they. You need to carry that weight. And if you're not ready for it as a CEO, then you're not going to be a good CEO.
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and And something really that has, we're not going to talk too much about leadership today, but recognize that that person, that powerful person across the table carries that load.
Time Management and Status Instinct in Leadership
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And with that, there's a tremendous amount of responsibility. So those traits produce three kinds of behaviors. The first of which is, i mentioned before, is compression.
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We compress time and we compress decisions. We need to operate quickly, so we need to make decisions based on the information we have on hand and move forward.
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Go out there, deploy, and assess. If it doesn't work out, if there's a mistake or something flops, you reassess and you redeploy. You go out there and you do it again. We also want to compress time.
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We're going to ask the person on the other side of the table All right, why how long is this going to take? Well, it'll take 12 weeks. Why? Well, because this, because that. So the idea here is that we want to look at every nook and cranny and squeeze out all the time that we possibly can from that situation.
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And if you're on the other side of the table and you're giving these broad brushstroke answers, you're not going to go very far. You've got to have a very tight response of why it really will take 12 weeks because the hard drivers were going to want it in six weeks.
Confidence, Communication, and Assessing Ability
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The second of these behaviors is signal seeking. What does that mean? We're going to scan the room for confidence, clarity, and ultimately consequence.
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Is that person across the table able to clearly articulate what they want from me or what they want from the project or what they want for themselves?
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Is that person across the table going to be able to be confident in presenting that clear signal to me or to our vendor or to the customer or to whomever. We're looking for confidence.
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We're also looking for consequence. Will that person take the heat? Will that person Be responsible and and show accountability. All those things are very important.
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So if you're sitting on the other side of the table from somebody who's confident and or somebody who's powerful, recognize and show confidence. Be clear with your message.
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And that will go very far with operating with these powerful people. The third thing is status instinct. Status instinct has less to do with pecking order and more to do with ability and confidence.
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This is where confidence comes in again. we're set We're scanning the room for for status because we want to understand who can carry the load, who is able to do what they say they do.
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And when I look for weakness, and I do, I'm not doing it as a judgment call of character. I'm doing it in as a judgment call of ability.
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Can this person do what they say they they they can do? Are they going to be able to take that initiative across the finish line? Whether or not they can is is something that can be the difference between success and failure.
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If I am being asked by somebody or if we're working together and I scan the room and I find the person that I believe is the weakest link I may not give them the ball because I don't think they can get it done.
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And I've got this organization, goes back to the asymmetric accountability. I've got this organization that's looking to me to make the right decision. So I'm not going to give that weak person the ball.
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Sounds really... Surface, maybe. It sounds like it could be a judgment call on a person's character. It's not.
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It's all about business. And the the more quickly you can get past that, um the the better.
Managing Ego and Tolerance with Powerful Individuals
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Which brings us to another topic. Ego.
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Ego is something we all carry around.
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Powerful people usually have an abundance of ego. I myself need to, I check myself often. Am I being too ego driven?
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um Is this decision based on my ego? Am I trying to assert myself because of my ego? These are things that I ask myself on a regular basis.
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And a lot of the times the answer is yes. recognize if you're working alongside or for or with a powerful person that you'll have to deal with them and their ego both.
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And sometimes their ego is way bigger than than they themselves are. But with that perception comes your ability to judge and to tolerate.
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So, you know, of course, one of the stoic principles has to do with tolerance, and this is no different. If you recognize that that person is being driven by their ego and they say things off the cuff they that sound rude, that sound like they're putting people down or whatever, be tolerant in the sense of ah the words that they're saying, but don't lose your values.
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And if they're if there're being if you're saying things um out of disrespect or they're truly putting people down, and this is not part of your value system, then you have to make the decision whether or not you walk you the other direction.
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But the tolerance is something that that you'll have to go up and down on based on the situation. I've been in the room with very powerful people. um There was one occasion with um somebody who, we'll say they were at the highest level of of a city's government.
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And they said things in closed doors that I did not ascribe to. After that meeting, I began to remove myself from that person's circle.
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Even though though they were a very powerful person, there what they were saying behind closed doors did not meet with my value system. I walked away.
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There was other occasions where other powerful people, not in and in a city government, but you know in a business, said things that were unbecoming of who they were, and bumped up against my value system, and I recognized it was ego talking, I let that one go.
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So you have to be tolerant and move that tolerance up and down based on on the situation.
Stoic Responses and 'Amor Fati' in Leadership
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A couple things more to discuss about the Stoic side of things.
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Choose your response and how you respond. Calm. Remaining calm is so big and so powerful in situations where when you're dealing with a powerful person.
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If there is a frenzy to the situation, if there's a frenzy to the conversation and you remain calm, there is so much benefit to that. Also recognize that Amor fati, we've talked about that principle before, which is to love your fate.
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If you enter into a conversation with a powerful person and you have the amor fati mindset, you're going to take everything at face value and you're going to recognize that no matter what, you're going to learn from the situation.
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Amor fati and the love of one's fate has much more to do with learning and with being happy about it than anything else.
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I have been in negotiations and maybe this is why i I really align with stoic principles so much. And I'm being barked at on on a phone call by somebody else on the other line. And we're in a conference room situation, there's three or four of us and I'm just getting just grilled.
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and i i initially And initially feel bad, but then the more I think about it, I'm like, oh my word, I get to be in this situation.
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It is such a rare privilege to be in a situation where I'm being barked at by this amazingly powerful person on the other line. And the worst thing that's gonna happen is that my ego will be bruised slightly.
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No one's going to die. No one's going to lose their job. The company will still be here tomorrow. I'm just getting basically grilled and punished, but I love my fate.
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I'm a CEO. i I rose to this position. i wanted this. And here I am. I'm going to take my fate. And that mindset, man, there's so much powerful. There's so much power there.
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That mindset just holds so much power.
Advanced Negotiation Tactics
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I'm gonna now talk a little bit about some things that Chris Voss, the FBI negotiator, talks about. The first of which is the late night FM DJ voice.
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What he's saying in this is in a situation when you're dealing with somebody who's very powerful, if you're able to keep your voice calm, this goes back to the calm I mentioned before,
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If you keep your voice calm, like a late night FM DJ voice, slow, you're going to be methodical. and you're going to go at a downward angle, down.
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That calms the room. That sets the stage for confidence because people that are frenzy, you know, we have this weird perception, unfounded by the way, that confidence is volume.
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Confidence is not volume. Some of the most confident people I know speak at a level that is barely above audible.
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but because I know the the power that's held behind that voice, and I know that their actions speak much louder than their words and their volume, and I see their success, man, there's a lot of power to that.
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So lower your voice, slow down your voice, and there's power to that. The second thing that Chris says is mirroring. Mirroring is repeating the last couple of words or phrase that somebody says.
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And when you're doing in what you're doing in mirroring somebody's words is you're giving them a green light in their ability to share more.
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And you're giving that trust, you're building trust. When they say, need this by Friday, and you say, by Friday? and you say by friday Yeah, because of this, because that. So you're giving them the green light. They're gonna tell more, they're gonna go deeper, and it's gonna build trust. It's gonna tell them that you're listening, and it's gonna get you in that and that flow.
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Third thing, which is kind of related to the mirroring, is labeling. The idea of labeling or naming their emotion or their concern.
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Seems like you're upset about what Bobby said. um It sounds like the real risk is the supplier dropping the ball. What you're doing by labeling is, again, you're giving that that green light, that trust.
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So they'll likely either agree with you or they'll disagree with you. But either way, you're going to get the information that you want. So if you say, yeah, it's it sounds like the the supplier is a real risk here.
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No, no, no, it's not the supplier. It's finance. and dadadada And so they're going to think you're, they're going to know that you're listening. And it's also going to give them the green light to give you more information, more information.
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and Fourth thing, calibrated questions. This is the, the how, what? So the idea is you might say, well, what's the biggest risk if we proceed as is, or how can we hit Friday without quality slipping?
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What you're doing is you're co-authoring a path. you're You're giving the idea um of your question a direction.
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Another thing that is very powerful, number five here by Chris Voss, is the know-oriented question. If you structure your question so that know is the response that you really want, you'll get further faster.
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We are programmed in our brains so that when we say yes, there's this underlying sense of commitment. And so we're fearful of that.
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But instead, if you flip the narrative and you ask the question in a way that knows the answer that you want, you'll get further faster.
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Let me give you an example. Rather than say, um Hey, Bob, can I talk to you now? You might. And the idea is if he says yes, he's going to be um doesn't really want to say yes.
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But if you say instead is now a bad time.
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ah Either he'll either say yes, it is, in which case it's fine. Or he'll say no, most likely. No, no, it's not. now Now it's fine. Come on in. Or, um you know, the idea is that no feels more safe.
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You can actually Google Chris Voss and no questions. And he gives a very in-depth framework of how this works. And the last thing I'll say with Chris Voss is the accusation audit.
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In this form format, you kind of lead with their fears. And by doing so, Again, in this whole stack of information, it's all about building trust and trust breeds um more trust and it breeds more conversation and brings closer community.
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So in the accusation audit, you're leading with your fears. You're saying, well, Brett, you're going to think that I'm sandbagging you, but here's the math on the product launch, whatever.
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And so you kind of declaw the accusation before it bites. um I've used this quite a bit and in every instance, it it just opens up that conversation and it you know the proverbial elephant in the room, you talk about it first, you get it out of the way, then they know that you have a ah higher level of confidence, builds trust, and that begets more trust.
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Believe me, it's a very powerful tool.
Cialdini's Principles of Influence
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I'll now talk about ah Robert Cialdini. Cialdini is the author of a book called Influence. He is an ASU professor and a researcher on influence, ethical influence.
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And so he claims and purports that people don't purely decide on data. They use other levers of influence. So um I won't go through these all necessarily, but a couple of them are very powerful.
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So authority. So signal competence quietly. So numbers, precedents, snapshots. If you are seen as an authority in the conversation you're having with this powerful person,
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then they will more likely listen to you and want to know information. So authority is extremely powerful. Authority comes from not only confidence, clarity, and calm, but also from reputation and with um other people vouching for you.
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The other thing is reciprocity. So if you give value first, if you, either it's a physical token or something you bring to the table and you give them, hey, I spent the the last X amount of time doing this white paper report for you because I thought it would be useful, drop it on their table.
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You can give it to your COO, you can give it to your admin. This is gonna be very useful for you. That reciprocity builds trust. they're going to want, um there's this deep sense of they owe you something.
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And that owe you something, quote unquote, could be just time, could be attention. But whatever the case, if you come to the table with something, they're going to have this subliminal um tipping point where going to want to give back.
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And that's going to be to your advantage. The other thing you wanna consider under the Cialdini influence stack is scarcity. So if you come to the table with that powerful person with the, hey, this is ah scarce resource, whether it's time or an actual resource, we're running out of time, dah, dah, or we're running out of resources, it's gonna put that leader, that powerful person in the perception of problem solving
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under constraints. They're going to want to help you and help themselves if they realize that there is scarcity in whatever resource you're dealing with.
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Very powerful. Another one is liking or unity. This one goes kind of without saying, but it's worth saying. If that powerful person across the table likes you, or if you have something in common It's going to open the door and build trust.
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If I am sitting across the table from a powerful person and we both have a, we both like motorcycles and I had a BMW and they have BMWs or whatever, then it gives a little bit of commonality and they're gonna want to ah work with me or open up to me because we have something in common.
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This goes a lot for if you're from the home same hometown, the same country, or if you like the same kind of music, you'll be surprised on how these very weak, seemingly weak connections can build very strong connections when you open the path and they they look across the table and they see another human being that's in some ways just like they are.
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And the other thing I'll say to actually, there'll be two more things I'll say. The first which of which is consistency. And you want to build consistency in what you say.
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You want to build consistency in your results, in what you're able to show publicly and privately. The more consistency you can show to that powerful person, the more that they're going to be wanting to work with you.
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The last thing I'll say about the Robert Cialdini influence stack is the idea of social proof. Social proof is when there is wisdom in the masses.
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You've heard things like seven out of eight dentists say this, or millions of customers can't be wrong, so forth and so on. So if you can parlay and position yourself um on the side of the social proof,
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on the the good side, then you'll be able to get your point across with that particular powerful person. There'll be a few other things to consider with Robert Cialdini's influence.
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And there's lots of resources out there. He's got a couple of books. There's also a certified training program and there's so many resources. um There's there is a guardrail here is Never inflate your credentials or fake scarcity.
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What you're doing here is you're building credibility, equity for the next five or 10 meetings. You're basically setting the stage and the thing with working with powerful people, even though there is a sense of of scarcity and time you they want to compress, you also have to build things slowly.
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Reputation is one of these things that is built slowly, but can be dismantled quickly. So take your time in building your reputation, in building social proof, um and it'll pay many dividends going forward.
Pitfalls to Avoid in Leadership
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I will now mention some common landmines to avoid when working with a powerful person. The first of which is talking too much. We have a tendency that if we get nervous, we talk, we talk, we go here, we go there.
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What that does is that shows that you are not confident, that shows that you are not clear, and that also sets a level of disrespect that you don't respect that person's time.
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All those three things can get you kicked off the island, as it were. And if you are out of the graces of the good graces of a powerful person, it's a monumental feat to get back into the good graces, especially they have lots of people around them trying to get into the the cool kids club with that powerful person.
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The second thing I'll say is the idea of being right versus being useful. If you're constantly trying to one-up in the room or you're trying to be right all the time, rather than show your youthfulness, all you're doing is you're going to make a mockery of yourself.
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You're going to be seen as somebody who's petty and ego-driven. Not to say that that person, that powerful person isn't ego driven.
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We all have our egos. But if you're trying to be right, if you're trying to one up that person, they're going to very quickly dismiss you and you'll be definitely kicked off the island. The next thing is over promising.
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The idea that if you over promise and under deliver even one time, that may be enough to be kicked off the island. What want to do instead is you either want to do the Scotty Principle, of course from Star Trek, where he would essentially um under-promise, over-deliver, and you're the hero.
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Or what I prefer better is to do your best to be right on the mark. If you instead of over-promising or under-promising, if you you do your best and your best intent to hit the mark, then you're going to be seen as consistent.
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And also, if you don't hit the mark, either you are late or early, then you can say why. And and that clarity also speaks volumes.
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But you definitely don't want to over-promise and under-deliver. The next thing I'll say is taking the bait. In a room when you're working with a powerful person, there will will be other people in that room that will throw bait out in the table and want you to take it.
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That bait can come in the form of getting you to commit to things you're not willing to. That bait could be some level of of getting you to over speak.
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That could be a way that will accuse you of certain things. And just like we've talked about in previous podcasts, if you get accused of something by this bait person,
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Very simply agree that you've heard them. Don't necessarily agree to what they're saying. You agree that you heard them. All right, Michael, I hear what you're saying. And then very calmly address the issue in a manner that is not defensive, which is hard to do, but it is easy when you realize that all you gotta do is show your value.
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If somebody accuses you of something and you say, okay, Michael, I i hear you. And this is really what happened. you're not being defensive you're not going head to head with what you're saying no i didn't do that i didn't say that you can just say and did the this the facts speak louder than words if you just say this is what happened you can see from this report you can see from this response from the customer xyz calmly and you don't take the bait and ultimately they're the ones that are seen as the fool
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And other things that I'll mention here as we wrap up, power isn't necessarily the volume of your voice.
Human Side of Powerful Figures
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It's the clarity of your vision.
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It's the clarity and the confidence of your next step. If you lead with stoic spine, if you lead with the stoic principles, the virtues, then you will not only be seen as somebody who is trustworthy in that domain, and especially if you create a level of consistency with what you produce, that powerful person will bring you more and more to conversations, to these rooms where you're being presented with opportunities that many others would be dying to have.
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You also want to remember the tactics that Chris Voss and Robert Cialdini talk about and practice them and practice with people that you work with.
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The crazy thing about powerful people is they're just people. They are people that have risen the ranks through their own hard work, through their position in a family structure, or through inheriting business or whatever it is.
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But at the end of the day, they're still people. They are still ruled by psychology. They are still ruled by the principles of virtues and and the way we live this world.
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um Society still has a lot of pressure on these people. And if you recognize that before you enter a room with them, then things will be taken down a level.
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I remember the first time that I met with the president of the University of Arizona. And um this guy you know runs a billion dollar enterprise.
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And this is a long time ago, so I was i was a little nervous. But I recognized as I was sitting there in the waiting room looking at his office, which was beautiful, that there was a piece of paper that was outside the trash can.
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And I could see him sort of working in the corner there. and And there was that piece of paper. And I thought to myself, all right, this guy is running, you know, he's got 30,000 employees. He's running a multi-billion dollar enterprise.
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And I'm here to to speak with him. And that person in that room took a piece of paper, crushed it up, threw it, missed it, and left it there.
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For whatever reason, that, was so humble. I don't know. I just, that to me was so such a ah ah moment when I recognize this is just the guy.
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This is just the guy that made shot and missed and he's just sitting there working. So I walked in, picked up that piece of paper, threw it in the waste basket, sat down like nothing and presented my my case.
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And we actually became friends. Um, And so i just I remember that and I keep take that with me.
Lessons in Humility and Service from the Powerful
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One other story I'll talk about power before you wrap up.
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I was in a fraternity in college and we went to a an event in Austin. We drove there from Arizona. It was like a 13 hour drive, it was crazy. We drove my mom's ah giant um Buick Roadmaster, six of us in the car.
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We get there and we are there for a conference. They're doing this Hall of Fame. They're initiating a person into the Fraternity Hall of Fame. We get there at two o'clock.
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The event started at 1.30. So we're already late. We get to our, our ah we're sitting way in the back, kind of to the right of the stage, and we're all thirsty.
00:35:57
Speaker
We're sitting in there, we're waiting for, you know we're calling the waiters and and they're not seeing us, they're not hearing us, and we're all getting frustrated, we're all you know tired and thirsty. And these tables have, I think, eight or 10 people in them, and there's six of us.
00:36:12
Speaker
So there's two other folks on the table. One of the guys there, you know we're all like 20, 22. One of the guys there is an older guy, stands up, goes to the back, you can see him coming back with four pitchers of water.
00:36:27
Speaker
sits down he he fills up our pitchers of water and we are just like so thankful we're drinking our water and it's like feels it's just so good and uh we're very thankful and appreciative and just at that moment they announce the honoree of the hall of fame and it is joe angle the one of the pilots of the initial space shuttles he is the honoree of the hall of fame they called his name and all at the table our jaws dropped we couldn't believe that we got served water by the honoree of this national fraternities conference
00:37:22
Speaker
And that to me showed such humility. This man of power, this man of influence, this man that was being recognized at the highest level, was humble enough to serve water to a bunch of kids because it needed to be done. That that moment for me was also monumental.
00:37:46
Speaker
Anytime I ever feel as though whether or not I should do something or not, I just do it because it needs to be done. A conversation with a powerful person, recognizing that they're just a person and whatever I'm bringing to the table needs to be done, I'll say it, I'll lean in.
00:38:08
Speaker
And I'll lean on all these things I mentioned to you regarding how to work with these people. But in the end, it's all about getting your influence to the table, building trust and being happy that you're at the table with these powerful people and able to take a shot, sometimes hit, sometimes miss, but you're at the table and be in love with your faith and whatever it brings.
00:38:47
Speaker
Thanks for your time. Cheers.