359 1 Overlooked Communication Skill to Unlock Your Influence, Build Your Career, and Be a Leader People Love to Work With

Speaker A: In this episode, you'll learn one question to ask that will transform your leadership influence, build your career, reduce conflict, and help you be a leader people love to work with. Welcome to Leadership without losing your Soul, a podcast helping human centered leaders master communication to accelerate your team's performance, reduce stress, and build a career with the respect and influence you deserve. I'm your host, David Dye, president of let's Grow Leaders. Uh, hey, welcome to the show. Today you're going to get an overlooked communication skill that's going to unlock the secret to build better relationships at work, have more influence across your organization. You'll build your career because you'll deliver better results and people will want to work with you because when they do, there's less conflict, more collaboration, and you help them solve their problems, all while you avoid unnecessary work or wasted effort. So what is this overlooked communication skill? Well, to introduce it, uh, let me start with a painful example. And this is, I was working with a CEO, and we were doing some strategic planning, and she says, hey, I, uh, want to have this conversation about this particular topic. I said, great. And so dive into the conversation. I launch in immediately, sharing my thoughts, getting her thoughts, and. And we get to the end of the conversation, I think we are done. I think we've had a great conversation. I think we've had, uh, some significant progress on the strategic objectives that she was trying to achieve and so on. And at the end of the conversation that day, she says, you know, this is really not what I wanted to achieve, and I don't feel like we've, um, satisfied the goal here. I'm very disappointed with my work and effort and the conversation and the time invested, which is the last thing you want in a conversation like that. Right? Well, what was happening? What was the mistake I'd made? I had made a fundamental mistake. I had overlooked the specific skill that I'm about to share with you. And that is, I had not actually clarified her interest. What do I mean by that? The mistake you might be making that many, many people make is when they're working with someone and collaborating on anything, they take what that person says and they understand it in a particular way, and they never go any farther. They never push for any other understanding of it, and they take the words they heard, assume they've got what they think that other person meant, and they run with it. And that's exactly what I did. So that's the mistake is taking people's words at face value. Words don't always mean. In fact, they rarely mean what we actually think they mean we're just not good communicators as human beings. Back to George Bernard Shaw paraphrasing that the greatest problem with human communication is the illusion that it has taken place. And so this tool that I'm about to share with you, so many applications, someone asks you to collaborate on a project, you can use it there. Someone asks you to participate in a conversation, be a part of problem solving, they really need you to attend a meeting. I, uh, mean it's limitless in terms of anytime anybody's asking for just about anything. This is an opportunity for you to use this tool and become far more influential. So what you're going to do is clarify others interests. That's the habit here. How do you do that? You're going to ask one question. And the reason you're going to ask this question is because when most people tell you what they want, they often struggle to articulate why they want it. So you want to uncover what truly matters, clarify their interests. What's that? Smarter outcome in every conversation. And if you can help achieve that, you're going to be way farther along. When someone makes a request or they take a stance or they dig in on an issue, it can be tempting to respond immediately to what they say. But behind every I need this feature or I can't miss this deadline or this has to happen, there's something else, something that they haven't said yet. And that's your opportunity. That's why you're going to ask this question. If you only respond to what's said out loud, the person can walk away feeling like you didn't hear them. But when you uncover what's driving what they said, that's when you get all the benefits. We talked about. More influence, better collaboration, less conflict, less work for you often, okay, so here is your tool that you're going to use. The question is simply this. What would a successful outcome do for you? This isn't just about asking follow up questions. It is about shifting your mindset from reacting to requests to understanding the underlying reasons why the person is asking or has said the thing that they've said. So when you ask this question, you're staying curious longer, you're pausing before you jump into problem solving. You're figuring out what's underneath the urgency or the actual request, looking past whatever position they take to see the needs behind it surfacing the why, not just the what. So when you ask what would a successful outcome do for you, it's going to do all of those things. So Just a quick example. So let's say that you and I are getting ready to work on a project together. And maybe we've both been assigned this, or maybe one of us asked the other. Doesn't matter how we got there. Before we dive in and do any planning, we say, okay, listen, on this project, what would a successful outcome do for you here? And maybe I've been working a ton and I just want some margin, and I'm like, I'm overextended, and I really want to do this project. But what successful outcome would do for me is that, you know what, we're going to be wrapped up and ready for our executive presentation on Monday. By 5pm Friday, we're done. I don't have to worry about it over the weekend. I don't have to work all weekend on it. And so when we get to 5pm Friday, we're good to go. We're buttoned up, I'm ready. That's what a successful outcome would do for me. Obviously, good presentation, we want to have all that ready to go. But that's what I'm needing is some time with my family, some downtime so I can come to the presentation fresh. And then I find out, what would a successful outcome do for you? And you say, you know what? I don't know that my boss really sees, uh, my expertise, my genius on this particular topic. And so what would be great, what a successful outcome would do for me is that when they throw the tough questions at us, if I could be the one to answer those, or at least some of them, that would give me an opportunity to express my knowledge, you know, demonstrate my depth of understanding and so on. That would be super helpful. Okay, well, now that we know what a successful outcome would do for each of us, we. We can do some real shared problem solving that we would have no way to do before having that conversation before we ask that question. So if I never asked that question, you might be thinking, all right, we can work through the weekend. We're going to knock this thing out of the park. I really want to put on a good, um, display here and really show them my value. And I might at the same time then be resentful of working over the weekend, but also feel like, well, you know, I'm skilled at this. I can handle the tough questions no problem. Not knowing that you really wanted those, and we could actually really step on one another's toes, feel unheard, end up being resentful or at least stressed and frustrated because we never had this conversation. So asking this question, clarifying others interest by asking what would a successful outcome do for you? When you understand what someone really values, you can solve the actual problem, not just the visible one or the thing that they've asked for. You can de escalate tension before it turns into resistance. You can design solutions that people feel really good about because you're solving their problem. That'll strengthen collaboration across competing agendas, even when the agendas may not match up. Exactly. If we can find some solutions that can start to get us towards mutual solutions, that's gonna help. You can make decisions that stick because they're people have ownership, everyone's got something that they really care about. People aren't as attached to what they're asking for as they are to uh, why they're asking. If we can surface that. So when you get to the heart of it, people can be a lot more flexible than you think. You know, just another example on this, let's say that somebody is asking you to attend a meeting and you look at your calendar and it's 90 minutes that you just don't have. You say, listen, appreciate you inviting me to the meeting. Can you tell me what a successful outcome of my attendance at that meeting would do for you? And they say, oh, well, we've got this one agenda item. I really need your expertise on this. Uh, your team does a great job with this, uh, and we need your input. Okay, great. So now I know what a successful outcome would do. I can start to solve that in some other ways that maybe continue to maximize influence, solve their problem. But also I don't have to work as hard or be in a double conflict, a uh, double bind situation where I'm over scheduled. Maybe I can send another team member who has that expertise. Maybe I can show up for just the 10 minutes they need on that agenda item. Maybe I can find out the topic and just send them the right resources ahead of time so they have the information they need. Lots of different approaches I might take once I know why they're asking. So get to the heart of it and solve for that. Okay, let's get practical on how to use this. So you start with your go to phrase here. What would a successful outcome do for you that's going to shift the conversation from demands or positions to shared understanding. Then you're going to listen for the values, the principles, the actual thing that's trying to be solved for, not just the words someone says, okay, I need this by Friday. Ask yourself as you hear what they're saying is this about control? Is it visibility? Is it risk? Is it anxiety? What's causing the need to have this by Friday? Is there a way to solve for that? So then you can reflect what you hear. Doing a, uh, reflect for connect type of check for understanding here. Hey, ah, it sounds like what matters most here is not being caught off guard. Do I have that right? And again, you're trying to clarify what the real interest is so that you can solve for that in the most efficient, effective way. Resist the rush to jump in and solve right away. And I can do this. I am as guilty of this as any human being is. I want to solve things, move things along quickly, especially when I'm feeling stressed and overwhelmed. And so sometimes it's just so easy to reactively answer the request we hear without taking that beat to find out what's underneath where people are going to be more flexible when they've been heard and we're actually solving the real issue. So don't skip the listening. And you might even use some soft openers to explore motivation. Things like, you know, oh, well, why tell me more about that? Why is this or why now? Or how would that. And even more powerful than why questions sometimes. Oh, help me understand what that would do for you. Okay, how is that going to great. And those can open the door without creating the defensiveness that a why question will. Um, sometimes when you need to go a little further. Okay, so here are just a few more phrases you can use to help you clarify interest. So we started with that powerful one. If I could only do one, that would be the one. Hey, what's a successful outcome do for you? Um, some others you might use. You know, what's most important to you about this? Help me understand what's underneath the urgency here. If we couldn't do exactly that, what would still make this feel like a win? What's at stake for you and how this turns out? Is there a specific outcome you want to make sure we avoid? Any of those questions are going to help you to clarify interest. So my invitation here, if you want to apply this, if you're like, yes, this is going to. It is going to make a difference. I promise you it will. Here's your practical path forward for 10 days. Create a little mini personal experiment and use the phrase at least once a day, you're going to be in a conversation where somebody asks for something and just show up with some curiosity. Hey, what would a successful outcome do for you here? Or maybe one of those other phrases that I just shared. Write down what you learn, journal it, track it, see what some of the insights you're getting. If you really want to go advanced, use it twice a day in 10 days. That's going to give you 10 to 20 data points of what you're learning and clarifying about others interests so that you can stop reacting to noise and start responding to what actually matters. That's going to build trust, it's going to build your influence collaboration, it's going to reduce conflict, especially the unneeded conflict of competing priorities that we didn't know were actually priorities. And you will be a leader that people want to work with because you're helping them solve their problems in a really collaborative, productive way. And if you want to equip the leaders in your organization with the tools like this one to help reduce conflict, build influence, become more productive, more collaborative, collaborate better together, get more done and enjoy your work. I would love to partner with you. Give me a shout at David dye d y etsgrowleaders uh.com and have a conversation about how we can support you and your organization. And if you enjoyed this episode, make sure you subscribe so you don't miss any of these practical communication skills to help you accelerate your team's performance, reduce stress, and build a career with the respect and influence you deserve. Until next time, I'm your host, David Dye, reminding you clarify others interests, ask what would a successful outcome do for you? And be the leader you'd want your boss to be.