Influence: The million dollar question

There's a million dollar question in the field of influence and persuasion which is designed to enable the buyer to be and feel like the best/ most confident version of themselves. In this post, I'll provide you with the million dollar question, an actual example in action, plus the foundational rules and principles which will allow you to immediately utilise what has taken me a thousand plus hours to develop. We'll begin with a principle:

Human being beats human doing:

It’s the connection you have with yourself during moments of mastery or peace which takes you from a human doing to a human being. Call it being in the moment or what you like, we’re talking about a human-being-enough - nothing to add or take away, nothing to do, just being-human, you being you. 

About you/ your customer:

You recognize this desire to be the ideal version of yourself, you love connecting with people who love connecting with you, you love visiting places and acquiring things which encourage you to let go, relax and experience yourself “being rather than doing”. Ideally you would like to be and experience the ideal version of you all the time, and so would your prospect/ customer. 

In the Boardroom:

It requires no leap of the imagination to understand that from the perspective of persuasion and influence, enabling a person to be their ideal self at the start of the meeting is a recipe for success. There's a model/ question for achieving this...

Before reviewing the model: 

Let’s get you prepared by reviewing the following five points from Carl Rogers, understand these and you’ll understand what’s present when you experience your ideal self. We’ll then apply what you recognise within yourself to the person you wish to persuade.

1. Openness to experience: There’s no need for defense, rather there’s an investigation of the mutual truth/ values which exists between you both.
2. Existential experience: In touch with what’s happening in the moment, there’s no need to preemptively judge, neither of you has the need to be right. The present is all you want and need - you’re both in the moment.
3. Trusted feelings: The combination of openness and mutual connection with the moment enables you both to put thoughts to one side and work from within. You both know and trust your gut instinct in these circumstances, in fact it’s a relief to work positively with your feelings. 
4. Creativity: There’s no need to play it safe, you’re having an open discussion, the process of mutually exploring, adjusting to and adopting new ideas, or conversely having your counterpart do the same is liberating. You trust people you can be open with. 
5. Fulfillment: When a person achieves fulfillment and gets to share moments of fulfillment, they’re truly happy. Challenges they once cursed but overcome, or challenges they created for themselves and overcome form part of who they’ve become.

Bringing these factors to the table, enables your counterpart to be the fully functioning and the best/ ideal version of themselves. Given the question, they’ll feel like the most interesting person in the room… becoming genuinely interested in you as a result. According to Rogers, people with these five qualities, (above) are high achievers, the funny thing is, we can all be this person given the right set of circumstances. And that’s what I’m suggesting you set out to provide first with the people you meet, “their ideal self”. 

Nearly there: Rogers notes that there are two factors that influence self conception: 

1. Childhood experience
2. Evaluation of others.

“According to Rogers (1959), we want to feel, experience and behave in ways which are consistent with our self-image and which reflect what we would like to be like, our ideal-self. The closer our self-image and ideal-self are to each other, the more consistent or congruent we are and the higher our sense of self-worth.”

In the following Influence/ Persuasion Model: you’re going to see how I utilise childhood experience and positive evaluation to enable a person to be the ideal version of themselves. 

Here’s the question which sets up a person to access their ideal self:

"I have a question for you if that's okay? "Yes, of course". Thanks, whenever I meet with successful people like yourself, I'm always fascinated to understand, what's the passion or the inspiration which took you from where you started to where you are today? 

Technical Note

This is the setup for what I call an, "ideal identity frame" - I'm stating that I see the person as successful. I'm asking the person to direct their mind back to where they started out in business/ life and contrast that with where they are today... At this point, my aim is to enable the person I'm speaking with to experience a renewed awareness of how far they've come and how much they've achieved.

Let's take a quick look at the process... 

The person travels back in their mind to recollect the first time they experienced the essence of themselves - "where it all started, the foundational moment of their life... the time they connected with their passion or drive”.

Here's an actual example… What was the passion or inspiration which drove you from where you started to where you are today?

The person says, "my first passion was mountain climbing". Then I say, Mountain climbing, when did that begin - tell me more about that... "At the age of 14, the first mountain I ever climbed seemed impossible when we set out. I remember getting half way up and realising, if I can climb half the mountain I can climb this entire mountain"... "I got to the top and I'll never forget the words of my Grandfather... "I hope you realise how mentally tough you are son, don't forget it, just develop it" - so I did…

Then I say...

So as you heard your grandfather's words and you recognised them to be true, there was a feeling and awareness of how mentally tough you must be, you understood this to be true so you've developed this aspect of your character and it's this that led you to define who you've become today - a mentally tough person? "Yes", Wow, and as you consider this now, how is your mental toughness and your approach to personal development helping you in your role today... 

Mechanics... 

I'm utilising the terms which have the highest emotional resonance and personal importance at that moment, "mental toughness” and I’m using the stage which they’ve set, “the mountain” as a way of enabling the person I'm speaking with to comfortably show me their core whilst highlighting how they represent their ideal inner world... 

On a deeper level… 

I'm quite literally enabling the person to share and experience the self respect and recognition that I've developed for them whilst listening - at this point in time, they see I've stepped into their world... my ability to do this enables them to see their ideal self through my eyes - this is a moment of magic…

We share a genuine moment of mutual appreciation... It's at this exact point that a mutual level of trust, respect and liking begins to emerge and is naturally experienced as mutually authentic - the person feels that the truth of the matter is, I have their best intentions at heart and my intention is to empower them... Additionally, it’s important to note that through opening myself up at the level where they experience me stepping into their world, they reinforce the experience we shared - increasing the likelihood of future moments.

The Principle:

If the purpose of communication is to be understood, my job is to unify how we mutually represent our world and each other... As such, I'll utilise the abstract model of the world used by the person I'm speaking with to present myself... 

Here we go… 

You know, it's interesting that you speak about mountain climbing... as the early years my life can only be described as an uphill struggle, where I come from in Liverpool there wasn't much money growing up, so at the age of 12, I got my first job as a flower seller... 

As I was selling flowers a question arose which I'm still working on and much closer to answering thirty plus years later... "What makes some people say yes, and others say no"? 

Quite literally, answering this question has provided me with the basis for an incredible adventure into the minds and worlds of some of the world's best thinkers, especially on the subject of buyer profiling... 

To relate this back to yourself - I can hear that reaching the pinnacle of human excellence relies on finding a purpose which transcends the necessary pain of the climb... and it's the times we revisit where we've been, your purpose and who you've become which really allows you to quite literally scale every mountain you decide to climb, plant your flag and say with self appreciation - that was you, you did that!

Mechanics... 

I get to relate with the person, and having given the person the opportunity to present "the ideal self", I've gained implicit permission to do the same... Notice how I switch from the use of generalised commentary to a personalised commentary at the end - quite literally, I'm reconfirming the truth of what I see and what I've experienced in the person I'm with…

What's the result? In the course of three to five minutes…

We've developed a common set of values and themes to work from during our present and future discussions, we've got a mutually positive frame of reference which we can both use to discuss our alignment and interests, we've got the bedrock required to develop a standard dialogue which we can both use to make our points and sell our respective ideas to each other... and most importantly, we've got an authentically shared experience which proves to be the foundation for affinity - a combination of trust and liking which is strong enough to lead to a shared sense of mutual values, unity and appreciation.

Reinforcing core rules & principles/ enabling you to utilise what you've learnt now:

Self worth: 

Based on what you think about and say to yourself will influence the level of equity you prescribe to your time and engagement. The further you get the less you’re willing to buy and the higher the price you’ll require to sell. If you want to increase your equity, build the self worth of the person you’re meeting. 

Self image: 

How you see yourself on the outside and the inside will affect the people you’re drawn to - “birds of a feather flock together.” If you see yourself as a confident achiever, you’ll be drawn to others who share your image and the worth you associate with yourself. You face and overcome challenges, you accept losses as parr for the course - success is found in the process and obviated by the outcome. Boost how the person sees you by boosting how they see themselves. 

Unconditional positive regard: 

People value and respect you, you’re loved by the people around you, positively appraised by others in social interactions and are able to let go of shortcomings because openness and honesty has proven to be the foundation for reward from the people who value themselves and you. In other words, if you do fall short, your positive regard won’t be withdrawn. Give the person what they can’t give themselves and they’ll learn to associate being at their peak state with you - a recipe for ongoing success. 

Conditional positive regard: 

Respect, recognition, love and care are dependent upon doing things according to the whims or wishes of others. The underlying message, I’ll love you, but only if you comply. As you can see, this condition is antithetical to being able to be open, creative and exploratory. All of the things we want from an engagement require mutual positive regard. If the positivity you share is driven by the need for compliance rather than the genuine desire for mutual engagement, don’t be surprised when you don’t hear back from the person. 

Congruence: 

Your ideal self is consistent with your behaviour and your consequent presentation and experience of life. From a business perspective, your aim is to enable the person you’re meeting to feel and be their ideal/ most congruent version of themselves. Enabling the person you’re meeting to behave in accordance with their preferred self image - achieve this and they’ll see and communicate with you in the same light. 

If you like this article, your friends, colleagues and network will likely like, comment and share it too, that’s good for them, me and you. 

Warm regards,  

Robert. 

Credit to Carl Rogers and S.A McLeod for inspiring this article:

McLeod, S. A. (2014, Febuary 05). Carl Rogers. Simply Psychology. https://www.simplypsychology.org/carl-rogers.html