Last week I attended a talk by an accomplished business woman who is the personal coach and a consultant to the leaders of both the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. As a Western female trail blazing a unique path in Muslim countries, she has had to overcome some challenges. There was one line she said during her talk which particularly captured my attention, and which I would like to discuss today. That line was “Sometimes you need to go through their door to bring them out yours”
People often try to influence others based on what influences them. We think that our societal rules are “right” and should be followed by others. For example, early during the Russia-Ukraine conflict there was much written about how sanctions would cause the Russian population to rise against Putin and overthrow him. This was a sensible assumption under the template of Western democracy, just witness how Boris Johnson has been ousted before his term completed. However, dictatorships don’t follow the rules of Western democracy and using such a template does not teach us how to engage with dictatorial states such as Russia.
In a business context, most of us try to convince others based on what would convince us. For example, if price is the most important factor in deciding whether to buy a product or service, we focus on price when we try to convince others. However, this approach will be ineffective if the other side cares about other variables more than price. For some clients/consumers, variables such as quality, delivery schedule, reliability or exclusiveness may carry far more weight than price. Such consumers will not make a decision based on price and offering discounts may actually work against you since it could be seen as devaluing the product or service. The extreme example of such a situation would be Veblen goods where demand for a product actually increases as the price increases.
Back to our quote “Sometimes you need to go through their door to bring them out yours”. Whether in politics, business or our personal life, we are well counselled to consider this approach when looking to increase our influence over others.
A more common way of saying ‘going through their door’, is ‘putting yourself in their shoes’. By doing this, we open our minds to learning about the other sides perspective; their beliefs, their culture, their values. This helps us appear aligned with the other sides perspective even if we are not. In turn this will increase the chance that they will hear us out which gives us a chance that they will follow our requests. This is because when others see that you have made an effort to understand them, their perception of you becomes more favourable, the seed of trust is planted and they are more likely to take the time to understand your perspective.
This is especially important when the other sides position is far from yours and when finding common ground is important to you. When there is a large gap in opinions or positions to bridge, take a starting position based around listening and understanding and search for common ground and mutually beneficial trade-offs. Research shows that the most successful negotiators spend 400% more time in pre-negotiation preparation looking for opportunities to collaborate rather than less successful negotiators who spend that time developing counter arguments.
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