Convincing vs. Influencing

Renee ran operations for a US-based medical device company. She was good at her job because she was good at analyzing a problem and building a case. Give her a problem and she would return with a brief on the situation, an analysis, and a strong recommendation.

Her current "problem" was a person. The executive vice president of sales and Renee had been circling each other for months, colliding over forecasts, inventory, and whose numbers counted. Renee viewed the interpersonal friction with the EVP as a problem to be solved with the right analysis and argument.

So Renee did what she knew how to do. She wrote a two-page brief for the EVP laying out her argument and revised it after every failed planning meeting. The meetings were polite enough, but ended without timely or meaningful resolution. When she sent me an example of her brief before our session, the file name was version 11. It was version 12 when we met.

We looked at the facts. The brief kept getting better, and the meetings kept getting worse. If a stronger argument were the answer, version 4 would have worked.

Renee said, “I’m tired of it. Not the work itself, but not making progress on winning her over. It’s been six months..”

I repeated Renee’s words: “Winning her over.” Then I asked, "What if you set out to understand her and where she wants to go, rather than you being understood? What questions might you ask? No new version of the document, just a new version of the conversation."

Renee looked at the document on the screen. She noticed there wasn't a single question in the current version, nor could she recall any in previous drafts.

At the next planning meeting, she didn’t bring the brief. She opened by asking her counterpart what a good year in sales would actually look like, and what kept getting in the way of it. Then she listened and took notes. The meeting didn’t end in agreement, but it did end with the EVP requesting a second meeting at the end of the week.

Over the following quarter the two of them built something that arguments never produce: a working relationship. When asked what changed, Renee told me that she had stopped trying to be convincing and started being curious.

Convincing is fast and satisfying and almost never durable. Influencing is slower. It requires genuine curiosity, patience, and the willingness to let the other person arrive at the conclusion in their own time, on their own terms. Leaders who convince win meetings. Leaders who influence win relationships, and relationships compound.

Convincing asks another person to surrender their position. Influencing offers them somewhere better to stand.

The Question

Where in your life are you building a better argument when the relationship is asking for a better question?

"People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come into the minds of others." — Blaise Pascal