The People Behind Technique and Strategy

by Kevin Hogan

You can know all the techniques, strategies and mental linguistics on
the planet...but...if you aren't a person of influence you haven't
got a chance.
Similarly you can be a person of influence but your client quite
simply might not be motivated to change. (at least not yet!)

Let's look at both of the people in the process and find out what
kind of a person a person of influence is...then find out what your
client must feel about you to best be motivated by you....

First: What is influence? It's a process where one person motivates
another person to change something.

Let's look at just what it takes to motivate that person and who the
person of influence needs to be to accomplish persuasion.

Just who is the person of influence?

Who is the great salesman, the great therapist, the great lover, the
great President, the great you get the idea....

There are a number of qualities and characteristics that are crucial
to success in persuasion and influence...in every usage from therapy
to selling. Above all else is one characteristic that dwarfs all of the rest...

Empathy.

*Nothing* is more important than empathy for someone who wants to
motivate others to change. What is empathy? It's the ability to
feel...to understand...to walk a mile in their shoes...Empathy means
that you can *feel* and see life from the perspective of the other
person. If and when you can do that...you can be influential. If you
can't you will only be able to "close a percentage" or get lucky now
and then. You can know all the techniques on the planet but if you
can't feel their pain you will never truly be a great salesman, a
great communicator, a powerful person of influence.

***You walk into the hospital, see your loved one with the I V in
their arm. You paste a smile on your face but they know it hurts you
as much as it does them. That's empathy.

***Your child is home sick from school. You feel as bad for them as they feel.

***You see the result of their bad decisions and the pain of the
future they now face. You feel it too.

When I think of empathy I think of people like former President
Clinton. (gasp!) He has far more empathy than most people in the
public eye. Politics aside, when you watched Clinton with people, you
sensed he could really be in that person's shoes...and he was.

That means he has the capacity to identify and feel what others are
feeling at this moment. People of great empathy have three common traits.

* They have experienced pain first hand.
* They have a wide range of experiences with all kinds of other people.
* They are validated and feel good based upon the approval of others.

I saw a book on the shelf today at B & N. It was called "Disease to
Please." I didn't pick it up. Why? The person doesn't get it. (Just
like the guy who wrote "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff. It's All Small
Stuff.") The book might be helpful but the *title* spreads a very bad
ideavirus.

In a broad sense, the ideal life is about two things. Giving and
receiving pleasure. (Pleasure broadly means anything that is good.)
Take away one of the two (giving or receiving) from the person and
you have a half of a person...

Take away the giving part, and in the vernacular, you have a jerk....

I'll bet a nickel the author of "Disease to Please" will tell the
reader that the reason people are unhappy and unsatisfied is that
they are trying to please other people at their own expense. (And
that might be a fact.) The possible solution might be proposed to
*stop* trying to please others and start doing what the reader has
never done perhaps...please themselves.

Problem.

As soon as the person stops being helpful, kind, loving, supportive,
nurturing to others they lose the other half of who they were. The
half of them that IS powerful and useful.

The real solution obviously is to always be supportive, kind and
helpful. And then to be supportive, kind and helpful to yourself as
well. (It requires no more time or effort. A simple set of choices.)
Then instead of becoming a jerk they becomes a complete
person...and...a person capable of powerful influence...which means
they are only one step away from success at any level they choose.

The influential person has a strong desire to please... and if they
are going to be influential that extends to the desire to help (for
both altruistic and selfish purposes) others be happy, feel better,
and be useful as a human. This desire to help, to create value, to
love will often be paired with some kind of pain and no one should
tell this person to try and squelch the feelings of being rebuffed,
rejected or hurt. That IS the healthy and normal response. These are
the feelings that generate the empathic response.