From resistance to buy-in: Influencing the toughest leaders

Speaker A: Welcome to HR Disrupted with me, Lucy Adams. Each episode will explore innovative approaches for leaders and HR professionals and challenge the status quo with inspiring but practical people strategies. So if you're looking for fresh ideas, tips, and our take on the latest HR trends, subscribe wherever you can get your podcasts. So today we're getting practical about a problem that every HR team knows too well, which is that if we're going to do HR differently, our leaders and managers have to do things differently, too. And that's the really hard bit. You know, almost every HR person that I speak to tells me that they worry that they struggle to influence leaders effectively. And so this episode, we're going to look at how to get better at it. We're going to look at why leaders resist, how to win attention without a 50 slide deck, and the simple moves that can shift behavior. And today I'm joined by my co founder at Disruptive hr, Karen Moran.

Speaker B: Hi, Karen. I'm excited about this one.

Speaker A: Yeah. So did you feel that you really struggled to influence leaders when you were an HR director?

Speaker B: Yes, uh, of course I did. I think, um, I think about it now, look, in hindsight, and a lot of it is to do with personality, isn't it? Because the leaders that I didn't struggle with were the leaders that kind of, that I got, they got me. You know, it was very easy. Um, but when I look back, I think the leaders that I struggled with the most were where I. I didn't kind of, I wasn't really understanding their personality, their drivers, their motivation, where they were, what was going on for them. Um, so I think, yeah, I think that was my biggest issue. Yeah.

Speaker A: And, yeah, and I definitely struggled as well. And I think a bit like you, there were those that it was just easy. You connected, you got each other, you shared the same language. But there were also large numbers of leaders that I really found it difficult and I would worry that I wasn't having the impact with them, that they perhaps didn't view me as being credible. And, And I think I made a lot of mistakes when look back. And so that's what we're really going to talk about today is, you know, we're going to have. Yeah, we love sharing our humiliations, don't we? Um, but it's going to be all about what can we do differently, techniques that we know work. Um, but let's first of all just kick off by just looking at the reality of it. You know, we know that influencing leaders can be really hard work, and it's not because they're bad people. It's not because they're villains. It's because they're human. You know, when we ask them do things differently, we're asking them to take a risk, you know, that they might get it wrong. Or we're asking them to deploy, use new skills, but they might not have these skills and they're worried about it. Or perhaps they haven't even got the motivation to try. And let's face it, they're really busy people, aren't they? And so we're asking them to do something new. And that means usually that they have to take their focus away from the day job. And they're not usually very happy with that. Um, you know, when you and I talk to HR people, we kind of ask them what's the resistance that they usually face from leaders. And these four types come up, don't they? The first one is what we call the Defiant. And that's the type that says, you know, we tried this in 1984 and it didn't work then and it's not going to work now. Or it might have worked in another type of organization, but it just doesn't work here. You know, they're completely shut down to any idea of change. The second type we call the intellectual. And this is those people. My finance director was like this. Oh, God, he was forever asking me for more data. Uh, prove to me, yeah, give me the evidence. Prove that it will work. Um, and I think that those type, the intellectual resisters, they're having the same emotional response as everybody else, but they're just cleverer at hiding it and camouflaging it with I, you know, I would change. I just need more and more data. M. Then we've got the third type, which is the busy operator. And that's very common. We hear this a lot, don't we? It's just I haven't got time. You know, I'd love to, but I haven't got time. And then the final type is what we call the reluctant, which is where they kind of think, well, what you're suggesting, isn't that your job, hr? Um, and, you know, it's kind of got nothing to do with me. So, you know, each of these types kind of makes sense when you kind of dig a bit deeper. You know, we know that, uh, logic rarely changes behavior. If something feels like it's being done to them, they'll dig in. If it looks like it's taken to take a lot of effort, they'll avoid it. And any change is even if you don't like the status quo. But any change always means some kind of loss. It could be loss of certainty, loss of status, that feeling of being the expert. So when we look at those types of resistance, how do you see them

Speaker B: playing out, just building on what you've said? I think the defiant, they're often very sort of those proud experts. You know, they've kind of, they've built their whole careers on knowing how it works around here. And so, you know, someone new and shiny comes in and maybe that feels quite threatening to them or maybe they've seen the failures in the past. So they're kind of going, we m. Know it's not going to work here because we've seen it fail so many times. I think the, the intellectuals, they just probably hide behind the data. Huh. So when they're saying, show me the research, it's actually what they really meaning is, um, I'm too scared or I don't want to risk trying this. And it's interesting the, the we as you know, when we, when we do sessions on the, on our club with our, with our members, uh, and they talk about this, a big one comes up as they're just too busy. And sometimes I want to push back on that in the sense that I would have had that same response. And when I think about what I was asking them to do, it felt like, um, you know, do this process, fill in this nine box grid, do this probation review. You know, all the things I was asked them to do were all very much, this is a new process for you to do manager. And so no wonder they're going, I'm busy. And I think, you know, we know that if it, if it was useful, they wouldn't, they wouldn't be too busy for it, would they? Um, and then I think the reluctant ones, I think that's again, uh, we have to take some blame because we've been doing it for them, fixing their messes, making it easy for them to opt out. Um, so no wonder they kind of started to see, and you still see it now, don't they, where they say, you know, go to HR if you've got a problem. It's like they, they're not really understanding the role that they play in terms of leadership versus what we should be doing as a function.

Speaker A: I think what we're saying is that the resistance that we're facing is largely just normal human reaction, isn't it? It's not that it's hostile. And so I think it changes our response from how Do I make them do this to how do I make this feel safe, simple, and worth their time? And I think if we can kind of change that as our stance and our starting point, then I think we can approach it differently. So let's look at how we can approach it differently. And we're going to kind of COVID 10 tips, aren't we? Which sounds a lot, but, um, hopefully we can rattle through some of this. And I think the first one that we start with is the kind of start with questions rather than programs or processes. You know, I think too often we turn up with a shiny new initiative and a slide deck and all leaders here is more work. And instead, I think a better way is if we start with great questions, ones that l link directly to their world.

Speaker B: Just really regret that I didn't do more of this because on a common sense perspective, I knew why we were asking to do the things they were doing, but I wasn't linking it to their challenges. So for me, those sorts of questions, uh, sounds very simple, but it would be with a manager saying, what happens if we don't tackle underperformance in your team? You know, getting them to really think about that, or if we don't build these new AI skills this year, where is it going to hit us? Know those things that make them sit up and think, oh, actually that's a good question. And I haven't really thought that through. Or let's stop tweaking around the edges. If you could redesign your team from scratch, what would you do differently? So I think those questions put us in a much better place to get our, um, leaders to really think about things differently.

Speaker A: Yeah. And I think when they've sort of said the problem out loud, they're a bit more open to a solution, you know, And I think when we skip the questions.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: What do we see happen?

Speaker B: My managers, they were sort of all got nods, you know. Yes, yes. Okay. And then do nothing. Uh, so I think, yeah, you're right.

Speaker A: Yeah. They're the worst ones, actually, aren't they? The ones who at least resisting gives you something to engage with, but the ones that just nod politely and do nothing, you think that they bought into it and yet nothing really changes. So first one is let's start with better questions. And, you know, that kind of ability to really tap into something that might be worrying them or at least getting them to reflect, I think is definitely a good place to start. But of course, once we've got the conversation going, we still need to get their attention. We need to cut through all of the noise and the, you know, the other things that are demanding their time. And so I think our, uh, second tip would be using commercial data to get their attention. And I know this isn't always easy, but it does tend to work best.

Speaker B: And I think again, you know, it's obvious, isn't it, that we need to make sure that there is some commercial value in the, the options, the challenges, the offers that we're giving our leaders. So, uh, just an example, two examples actually. So Credit Suisse, they did some work analyzing in the background and were worked out that losing their top talent was costing them $70 million a year. Um, so just even saying that figure, you know, they start to think, well, actually, we can't afford not to do anything about this. At, uh, Best Buy, they showed that a 0.1% bump in engagement bought in $100,000 extra profit per store. You know, when you start making it about the numbers they can see, stores that had higher engagement were bringing in more money. So that's where we start to really link what we do with kind of commercial value.

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. It's about talking in their language. Money, customers, performance. And we know that data on its own won't change behavior, but at least it opens the door. And that's what we're trying to do at this stage, isn't it? You know, we've kind of started with great questions. We've used some commercial data to at least get them to sit up and take notice. Um, and now let's go on to some of the other tips that we found have worked really well in terms of influencing. And you talked earlier about rocking up and training managers in process. We've spent hours doing this, haven't we? Here's the new process that we're going to give you for talent or performance or engagement. Um, but instead if we focus on the outcomes that we want from them, it can build a different type of reaction. Instead of it being another process from, ah, hr, uh, if we focus on what these are the outcomes that we are expecting from you as a people leader, it can be very powerful. And a great example of this is at SAP or SAP. I never know how to say it. They had three clear expectations or outcomes for leaders. They said, we want you to lead with trust, show appreciation and coach your team. So they didn't go into kind of huge amounts of detail about how they had to do that. They didn't dictate how they had to do that. They didn't have tons of process for that but they were just very clear on these are the expectations. Lead with trust, show appreciation, coach your team. And then they measured it through regular pulses and they held people accountable. You know um, and salesforce leaders with poor people scores just don't get bigger teams to manage. You know it's as simple as that.

Speaker B: I just love that approach because I think it, it just respects that we're every leader is different and will do it in their own unique way but it still makes it people leadership matter. Um, and I think it just shows that difference between follow this process that we're telling you about or achieve this result.

Speaker A: Yeah. And uh, you know leaders are used to being held publicly accountable for all sorts of other things aren't they? Financial results, operational results. But rarely do we hold leaders account when it comes to their people. And I think if we're going to be influential there has to be some consequences, doesn't uh, there. Okay, fourth one fourth tip is about giving leaders choices. You know we often do mass rollouts and implementations with our one size fits all processes. Uh but we know that when people feel that change is being done to them they're more likely to resist that resistance does start to drop when they feel that they have a say.

Speaker B: And um, I think there's Adobe that are really good at this. So they do this with performance management where the manager and the employee agreement between themselves what it's going to look like for them. You know, how often are we going to have check ins? Um, do we want to keep notes? Uh, do you want to drive it? You know, how do you like your feedback? So they're kind of really personalizing it down to that level. Um, in terms of this kind of managers feeling that they've got some choice not being pushed to this is how often you need to do it. And Akiva took the same idea with hybrid working. So instead of sort of doing the return to the office mandate you must

Speaker A: come in for three days or three days in.

Speaker B: Imagine how you'd feel if you were given that instruction. Can't you, you know, um, and instead they said no, we're not going to do that. We're going to let you decide as teams what works best for you. Because we're all different. Some will have much more flexibility than other areas but you decide what works for you, for your customers. Other um, and have your own kind of little team charter which I just think again as you say it just means they're much more open to it because they feel they've got some control over it. Themselves. Yeah.

Speaker A: I think if you, if you feel like you've helped design it, you're more likely to own it.

Speaker B: So, yeah, I mean, small choices, big commitment.

Speaker A: Yeah. And even limited amount of choice, even if it's, would you like A or B? We know that can have a big impact on getting buy in. Um, so fifth tip is about making the change feel much smaller. So back to that resistor type that we talked about, the time poor manager, the leader that just, you know, just is like, yeah, I'd be interested, but I just have no time available. And we know that when we're asked to do something that feels like it's going to take a lot of effort and time, we're going to be more resistant to it. You know, big change feels really heavy, whereas small change, something that's maybe going to take me five minutes or so, feels possible. Um, and I think that's definitely something that you and I probably regret. Our change tends to be a bit big.

Speaker B: I think again, it's because you feel that as a HR person it's got to feel really, I don't know, special and deep and commercial and actually, yeah, and actually it's the small things that make the difference. And that's why we, we're you And I love the kind of nudge effect. Um, and Google, uh, with their famous whis, um, which are nudges. So they did, obviously did the research that showed them how much poor managers were costing them in terms of turnover. But rather than kind of going, you must all now go through a mandatory training program, they just started with these kind of simple nudges. So they looked the feedback of what employees were saying they wanted more from their manager and then they would send them a little email or WhatsApp or whatever it was saying, try asking one, one extra question in your one to ones. Try showing appreciat to someone in your team M this week. You know, just small little reminders that we all kind of need, don't we? Um, and I think what I loved about this as well as they said, and let's share what works. So peers were able to share what was working for them and obviously scores, engagement scores in terms of how they felt about managers went up, turnover went down. Um, it's just much more manageable.

Speaker A: So if you were going to give one nudge, one of these small little changes to a really stretched manager, what would it be?

Speaker B: Uh, what's one process or stupid rule we could drop this week with zero impact? You know, do we say that enough?

Speaker A: Yeah, I Think. Yeah, and we don't know. I think mine would be asking. Get, uh, just say to leaders and managers, ask your individual team members what helps you do your best work and what gets in the way. Because again, I don't think we don't focus on that enough, do we? This idea that actually a leader's role is to kind of help their team do their best work. Um, okay, so we've looked at five tips. I'm just going to have a little pause here to talk about the Disruptive HR Club. You know, if you want to get more tools like this that we've been talking about, templates, questions, nudges, case studies, all about how you can do hr, uh, differently, including how you can influence leaders. Then you can find them in the Disruptive HR Club, where we've got thousands of HR professionals who are learning how to do things differently. And we'll put a link to the club in the show notes. Okay, let's move on to number six. Um, which we're calling use peers, not PowerPoint. You know, another technique that we can use is to tap into the research that we trust people like us more than we do experts. So it's the same research behind the fact that I'll trust a TripAdvisor review from somebody I've never met and their review of a restaurant more than I would the restaurant website. Um, we know that leaders will listen to other leaders more than they will to hr. And we can use this and adopt that kind of peer to peer learning and communication as a way of helping leaders to change their behavior. Uh, so this is where you bring a group of managers or leaders together, but instead of training them in a traditional way, you pose scenarios and you get them to share how they have or how they would handle it. And it's just such a great way of using that kind of peer pressure and peer advocacy to help them learn these skills.

Speaker B: Um, uh, Patreon, they do this sort of internal manager community. So it's just on their slack space. And leaders talk to each other about what they're doing, what's working, what's not working, asking for advice. It's just so simple and Novo Nordisk, they have what they call manager clubs. So again, as you say, no process.

Speaker A: I love that.

Speaker B: Uh, uh, not what I would do, which would be turn up with a 2020 slide deck to take them through how to follow a process. Just informal sessions, my man, where they're talking about it might be let's talk about hybrid working, or let's talk about Having difficult conversations, whatever the topic is, and managers just share and swap experiences. And, um, that can be. I mean, at Novo Nordisk, that's facilitated by HR business partners, but it can also be facilitated by leaders themselves. So. Completely up to you. So I just think, you know, it means we're not chasing. They're just. And, and we're, We're. They're kind of starting to lean on each other rather than coming to us all the time.

Speaker A: Yeah. And they're hearing what's working, and no one wants to be the person who's not trying something that's clearly working elsewhere, you know, So I think it's that kind of peer pressure, using a bit of fomo, uh, peer advocacy, and, uh, just hearing from each other rather than being trained by an external provider or hr. So we're up to the seventh tip, which is all about Speak human rather than hr. You know, language is just so important, and it can absolutely make or break what we do. You know, the minute we call something the Global Performance Enablement Framework or something, you know, we've just lost them, haven't we? So, uh, just kind of using this.

Speaker B: I think about that with our. Some of our job titles in hr, and you just think, oh, I don't even know what it means, never mind an employee. So, yeah, I mean, there's just. We could just make things sound much better. So we take a few examples for you. Uh, Telefonica. Instead of calling it a, uh, learning. Learning sessions or training course, they've called it learning shots. Idea being showing that it was just a tiny amount of development, tiny amount of training that you can do in a couple of minutes. So instead of a tequila shot, you get a learning shot. Abercrombie. Um, instead of calling it, uh, their, their informal mentoring program, they just called it Touch Base. And Virgin Trains called its benefits package. You're amazing. Which, you know, obviously fits really well. Simple, warm, fits with their culture and doesn't sound like the Virgin Trains reward and benefits program.

Speaker A: Yeah. And. And sometimes it's not our core strength. Is it in HR using kind of perhaps more human marketing speak? Or, um. And if it isn't your strength, thank goodness we now have AI to help us. So you can just put in what you were planning to call it and just say, give me 20 different options that make it sound clearer, more human. Uh, and this is all about avoiding those long papers and about finding messages that just land quickly and make sense. So it's about making sure that we're speaking human, um, not hr. And as talking about language. I think that brings us to our eighth tip, which is about speaking their language. Um, and you know, different leaders hear things differently, don't they? Um, and we need to really make sure we're tailoring our message because it can make a huge difference. I was talking to a client this morning and um, about a new strategy that they're working on and um, just, you've got those people that just want the facts, that just want the data. There's others that need a story and a sense of the why. And um, so I think you know, we, we need to get perhaps a little bit smarter at thinking about how we tailor our leaders.

Speaker B: You're so right. And I think we started with this at the beginning in terms of um, influencing leaders. And one of my regrets was not understanding that. So I think there are broadly four types of kind of leaders that we're dealing with. We have the kind of what we might call the driver. So they're the person that wants you get to the point fast, show speed and impact. Probably a bit of you Lucy there, I think, think. Um, and then we have the uh, the um, the connector. And you can call them whatever you like when they're more perhaps motivated by emotion, by team, by caring about their team. So you want to show them how their team will shine. The analyst will be the person that needs that logic, the evidence. So you'll need to be sharing insights, not jargon. Um, and then you have the kind of what you might call the steady hand. So they're those risk aware leaders who are just not up for it. So you might be thinking about, you know, small pilot, um, should we prove this in one other area before we kind of scale it so, you know, thinking about how you might position your language to get them to agree to you.

Speaker A: So if you were talking to a driver and trying to influence them.

Speaker B: Well, I do what you do all the time, Lucy. I'd give you three bullet points. I'd show you the outcome, the metric trick, the next step, and then I'd shut up.

Speaker A: And I didn't know I was being manipulated. And what about the steady hand, the one that you described at the end? You know, the risk averse?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think I'd probably be saying, should we try this in one team just for three weeks and see how it goes. And um, you will see them kind of relax instantly. Um, when I think about, there was a guy that I worked with when we worked at our law firm. His name was John. He was such a lovely, lovely man. And he was someone that needed a lot of evidence, very cautious, very risk. And I'd turn up to him with meetings going, I've had this great idea. I think we should do this. Why don't we do this? And it's, let's go for it. What's the worst thing that could happen? Let's wing it. And he'd be like, karen, please stop. And he'd sort of send me away to go and kind of think about it more deeply before I came back to him again. So if I'd have known what I know now, I would have handled it very differently.

Speaker A: Yeah, I worked in the rail industry for a while and, um, I remember standing up in front of them. I was, you know, in my defense, I was a young manager, but I stood up. We were kind of inheriting this group of railway, uh, workers and leaders. And I'm standing up, talking to them and I'm saying, oh, it's all going to be amazing. There's going to be all this change. And. And I suddenly realized that they were looking at me like I was insane. And with. On reflection, what I should have been doing was saying, these things aren't going to change. These are the things that are going to stay the same. Because that's what they needed to hear. That's what was. Would work for them. We're up to our ninth tip, and, um, I think that this is possibly the biggie, which is asking ourselves, why would they want to change? You know, not why we want them to or why we think they ought to, but why would they want to change? And we often use the Persona technique, don't we, when we're helping hr, huh? People work through this with their leaders. Because typically you're going to have, again, three types of leaders in terms of, of, uh, resistance to change. You're going to have your biggest, uh, resisters, the ones that are always going to create a lot of noise and are really problematic and are not interested in doing anything differently. You've got those individuals and individual leaders, uh, that they're kind of. They would be open to it, but as long as it just helps them deliver results, right? They're very, very focused on the business outcomes, results oriented. And then you've perhaps got your, you know, the ones that are intellectually a bit more hungry, a bit more curious. And I think perhaps what we've been trying to do in the past, and I know I've been guilty of this, has always been to focus on getting the biggest resistors on board first. So we give Them names, don't we? We call the biggest resistor. We've just called them Microsoft. Michael. Sorry. To any Michaels who are listening, we've called the results oriented leader, the Jessica, to kind of make sure you give them a human name and a human face. And then the, um, early adopters, we've called Olivia's. And of course what we would do is focus on the Michaels. We would compromise, delay, dilute what we were going to do, anything to get them on board, have them on every consultation, stakeholder group, group, and it never made any difference. Meanwhile, the early adopters, the Olivia's, are, um, getting frustrated because they want to do things differently. And we're saying, yeah, we'll get to you in a minute. And they end up going rogue or getting frustrated. And whereas we need to flip that on its head, you know, we can kind of say to the Michaels, you don't need to worry about this yet. Um, we're going to be focusing our attention over here. We start with the Olivia's, the early adopters, and then once it's working, we use them to win over the results focused, pragmatic leader who will follow what works. The Jessicas. Um, you know, I think when I think back to my time, uh, at the BBC, you know, I had one leader who was absolutely in the Michael category and I spent so much time with her and there I was avoiding the person, the Olivia, who was trying to get things going and do things differently. So I just think there's, you know, we've got to focus our energies, focus our efforts rather on where the energy is going with the energy, rather than wasting all of our team's talents and energies and efforts on people who are perhaps never going to change. So let's focus and go with the energy and work with the early adopters. So, final tip, which we're calling package it. Well, you know, even brilliant ideas will die if they look like hard work. So we've got to keep it simple. You know, one clear title, one slide on why it matters, one next step, uh, and telling them what's not changing. Back to, uh, my example about the, uh, the railway workers. You know, it's basically, we've got to be really kind of clear on our sales, messaging and the kind of market.

Speaker B: Yeah, I was just. When you were talking about that rail industry, I was thinking about an example when we moved to where we were working, we moved kind of flexible desks, which was actually quite a big deal at the time. Um, and, you know, someone like me. Yeah, hot desking, that Was it? And then someone like me who loves change, loves something new. I was like, this is great. I was so excited. And I remember with my team kind of going, going, right guys, so from Monday, no fixed desks. We're just going to move around and I don't want to see you all at the same desk every day because we want to kind of have better conversations. Be sitting next to someone you haven't sat next to before and the kind of horror on their face. You know, these people have been coming into the same desk for the last sort of, you know, 15 years or something. They've got all of their, you know, their uh, pictures and they're Robbie Williams Williams posters. And I'm saying from, from Monday, you know, it's fine. Um, it's all gonna be great.

Speaker A: It's all gonna be great. It's gonna be exciting. And we've got to kind of reduce the threat, haven't we? And just package it in a way that, that works for them, that brings together all of the tips that we've talked about that kind of avoids the buttons that we need to avoid for them, but hits the ones that are gonna work for them. So we're kind of creating it least perhaps less threat and a little bit more curiosity. So let's just kind of make this practical. Right, so let's say you're an HR business partner, you're meeting a skeptical operations leader next week. How are you going to handle it?

Speaker B: Okay, so I would say, um, use one commercial number that they care about. Could be cost turnover, customer impact, agree one outcome. Um, so let's lift coaching your team by two points on the Pulse survey this, this month, um, offer two options going back to that idea of at least giving them two choices. Sometimes that's enough. So 10 minute one to ones weekly or 20 minute huddles fortnightly, you know, whatever that might look like. Add a small nudge. So one little question that they could ask in their next check in. Um, share peer wins. So that team over there has seen this results in the last month and then measure it. So we'll look at the mini pulse in two weeks. So you've kind of got your one to six there in terms of how you would do it.

Speaker A: Lovely. So simple, fast, but ultimately still quite human. And let's finish with three things that people who are listening, uh, if they're still listening by now, that they can try this week. Um, so maybe number one, pick one leader and have a short chat. You know, no slides, just questions. End with a clear outcome rather than a process. Number two, think about creating two tiny nudges linked to that outcome and test them for a week. And maybe number three, rename one HR thing in plain language. You know, if a busy manager wouldn't instantly get it, rewrite it and use AI to help.

Speaker B: If you love that. I always do the, um. If I was explaining it to my mum, would she understand it? Um, yeah. And I think influence isn't about us pushing harder, it's about making it feel easy and worthwhile.

Speaker A: Yeah. So. So start with questions, use the numbers that matter. Uh, focus on outcomes rather than process. Make sure you're offering choice. Keep it tiny, keep it small, let peers spread it rather than, um, us being the expert. And hopefully these will help you be much more influential in your role. So thank you so much for listening to today's episode. If you enjoyed it, please do like and subscribe and we will see you next time.