From the course: Influencing Others

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Choose the right "who" to influence

Choose the right "who" to influence

From the course: Influencing Others

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Choose the right "who" to influence

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- To achieve an objective, sometimes it's clear who to influence, but often in the complex web of people at work with various interests and agendas, the obvious person is the wrong person or there are others as important. When you get the who question wrong, you waste time and energy or worse. Let me show you how easily it happens. I coached a high performer, let's call him Rick, and he was angry about his stalled promotion and he blamed his boss for not doing enough. His boss wasn't perfect, who is? But here's what he didn't realize, she wasn't the problem. She couldn't promote him. Promotions at his level were determined by a committee and they needed to hear and see more from him. I spoke with her and each of the committee members, and she was actually his strongest supporter. She consistently championed him. Rick didn't see it, but by directing his irritation toward her, he was systematically eroding his relationship with the person fighting hardest for his success. In other…

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