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How To Gain Support Beyond Logic

How To Gain Support Beyond Logic

How To Gain Support Beyond Logic

This week’s video series works with the frustration experienced when you’re trying to make a big shift with others and they do not follow. And more than that, you’ve tried walking through the shift in a logical way with everyone. Even if you’ve helped them work through general change anxiety or fear, your frustration has increased while their desire to follow drops even more.

If this sounds familiar to you, then this series was designed to assist you in this all too familiar leadership space.

How To Squash Frustration

Click Here To Get Your FREE Practice

Experiencing frustration or other strong emotions is normal. Things can get pretty intense when you clearly see a better way, you’ve communicated the “why” pretty clearly and then people dig in to the opposite direction with even more energy.

In support of the FREE practice, there are 3 ideas to consider as you lay a foundation for this week’s work:

  1. Intense emotions need intense focus
  2. Emotions need to be expressed
  3. Redirect the energy

Gaining some understanding about how you can better handle the situation certainly helps. Going a step further to actually redirecting the release of intense energy into something more useful should help you significantly.

Download your FREE practice here. Start working with the practice a few times a week and see how it supports you so your focus can shift out of frustration and into more productive activities.

How To Gain Support Without Logic

You’ve had an epiphany in some regard to your leadership. Great! Now as you try and lead people to your new way, things are stalling and may even be pushing people away. Stepping away from a strictly logical approach could really help.

I’m not saying go crazy and be wildly spontaneous. I’m encouraging a step back from the logical, case-building approach, to behold a wider phenomenon going on. When we encounter something new that captivates us, our focus tends to narrow and we get absorbed into “the new”.

In general, watch out that you aren’t “selling” but rather “translating” in leading people toward this new concept or view you have. In the video I cover 3 ideas that might ring true for you:

  1. YOU shifted the context
  2. Others likely have NOT or will NOT shift
  3. Translate to make it “safe” for others

Most leaders understand that pushing change only works for short bursts. And although a pull model is desired and intellectually understood, the “how” varies dramatically. These ideas are not a fix in all situations but I and my clients have encountered it often. Hopefully it can get you and your new vision moving again.

Deep Dive: How To Get Your Team To Think “Big Picture”

Your particular divide with your team may not be exactly around them thinking “big picture”, however, it is a useful illustration and does come up often as a gap in teams. There are many resources about how to work through conflict with others. There are also many techniques to get groups to align in their thinking. However, in this deep dive video we focus on you, the leader, as a the place to work because at the heart of many disconnects it starts with a shift in the leader that is difficult to follow.

Leading In A Relative World

A relative worldview, as a leader, has you balancing outcomes while weighing options. Decisions and actions are far from clear. Soliciting many perspectives in order to shape the best direction forward works well when the leader can hold all of this input in a relative sense based on the source of the input and how that source view the world to arrive at that input. Complicated? Yes. Sophisticated? Yes. Common? No!

Leading in this way is becoming more common as complexity, speed and significance of impact from leadership decisions builds in ever bigger scales in the world. Leading in this way frequently conflicts with the simpler, more entrepreneurial view to focus down on a goal while relying on personal horsepower, tenacity, energy and drive. The two frequently have conflict around focus and balance.

Relativity At Odds With Command And Control

From another point of view, this type of leadership also struggles to work within established rules, norms and operate with a high degree of certainty. In fact, these types of disagreements center around nearly antithetical concepts about how to get things done and the assumption that lead to the desired outcomes.

Leaders working within complex environments do their very best to make the complex simple, to make the unreliable as predictable as possible. However, more and more leaders and organizations are not able to function while strongly holding onto concepts of stability, predictability and control. Leading a group having strong membership in these two camps certainly can escalate frustration and to open conflict quickly.

The “Medium” Interfering With The “Message”

Here is where “logic” departs completely as it is usually viewed. At the core in these types of leadership challenges is the problem of translation into terms others can understand from their point of view. This is way beyond WIIFM (What’s In It For Me?) ideas because that is centered around compromise. These scenarios rarely work under compromising solutions. So as a leader, your time, talent and energy is more urgently needed in the space of co-creating a new future, a new type of outcome.

If you’re frustration or fascination with “the new” occupies a lot of your time and thoughts, perhaps you are getting in the way of your own message. Now observing yourself and creating awareness about your ability to translate becomes central. Realizing that this is likely an internal challenge and growth opportunity for you, the leader, than a challenge and growth opportunity for your organization is step #1.

Does This Seem “Fluffy” or “Murky” To You?

If all of this seems vague or too unworkable, I strongly encourage you download both free practices and give them a serious try on your own. See what happens for yourself. This may be a blindspot for you and therefore difficult to work with on your own. Try a coaching conversation as a way to breakthrough in a couple of hours. Click here to get started on the fast track!

How To Defuse Conflict With A Leader

It is not only up to the leader to work through changes and conflict. Frequently we hold the mindset that the leader’s job is to get us there or to make things possible for us to do what they want. When conflict with a leader arises it seems we often demand more from the leader and are quick to find fault or reasons not to follow any longer.

So, before we jump in on tearing down a leader or their position as reasons for us not to follow, there are a few things we can try to help us all get back to functioning as a team again. There are 3 approaches that you can try with your leader during a conflict around change or direction:

  1. Are they demanding now? So, what is it that they need but you aren’t hearing?
  2. Do they thrive on intensity?
  3. Ask, “What’s possible?” as a way to get dialog going

These are ways to get distracting emotions out of a conversation. They also relax positions that people can invest in more as conflict escalates. By going half way, you can meet the leader there when they’re able to, without being manipulated or giving up your position.

Practice To Help Others Work With Opportunity

Click Here To Get Your FREE Practice

These are a lot of deeper ideas and concepts. Here is a practice to begin working on new capabilities within yourself as a leader.

At the core of this practice is working in small steps away from the current leadership conflict so you can be very clear and present when building your worldview translation skills. Although a simple practice, if taken seriously, honestly and openly with yourself, should open up a lot for you to work with. It also provides you with a practical scaffold, of sorts, to take back to your leadership challenge so you can start making progress quickly.

Grab your FREE copy of the practice and get to work! The world needs stronger leadership into the complex, relative and co-created future!

All my best,

Russell Lindquist, Founder & Principal

Russell is a Certified Integral Professional Coach™. I help leaders and entrepreneurs break through plateaus, earn more respect and move on to their next level of success.  80% of my clients take on more responsibility with less stress, more success, and half of them get a promotion or earn more money within 6 months of completing their program.  www.tessagen.com

Russell Lindquist

Author Russell Lindquist

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