How to PERSUADE your Boss

November 1, 2013 27 Comments

Hes smart, quick on his feet, and hes got power. All attempts to
persuade him have failed. You could just give in after all youve tried.and hes the boss. If he
wants it that way, fine.

But, deep in your heart you know youre right. You care. It matters. Others are counting on you. Try
again and PERSUADE him to your point of view.

How to PERSUADE Your Boss

Of course, every boss is different. Understand and play to their style. Ive had lots of bosses over the
years, and am constantly being persuaded by those I lead. Heres 8 time-tested approaches to
consider.

P- Private

Whatever you do dont confront him in front of your peers, his peers, your team you get the picture.
Take it offline.

E- Emotion

Let your passion inspire your argument, but dont emote. Stay calm. Appeal to his heart and mind,
but dont wear your heart on your sleeve. It might help to tell a story, but think it through first. Overly
emotional appeals will weaken your argument.

R- Research

Do your homework. Prepare for questions. Do the math. Do more math. Do the math his way.
Poke holes. If he doesnt like math, collect stories. Do more math, just in case.

S- Share
 Share your concern frankly. Speak your truth. Share why you are concerned for the business. Have
several supporting points.

U- Understand

Listen CAREFULLY. Hes got broader perspective and more context. Learn as much as you can.
Hear him out completely and suspend judgement. Listen some more.

A- Acknowledge

Appreciate his point of view. Hes likely not a jerk. Hes got pressures too. Understand them. Learn
all you can. Consider deeply.

D- Data

If youre still convinced, bring on the data. Build graphs. Show correlations. Draw pictures. Find
stories. Benchmark with the best.

E- Engage

Engage your supporting team. For me, this usually means the finance gal shes fantastic yours
can be too. In my last gig it was the finance guy. These folks are more reasonable than you think.
Convince others to care about your point of view. Get a light murmur of whispers headed to support
your cause in their own words.

Change the Way You Persuade

by Gary A. Williams and Robert B. Miller
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Its happened to you before. You call a meeting to try to convince your boss and peers that your
company needs to make an important movefor instance, funding a risky but promising venture.
Your argument is impassioned, your logic unassailable, your data bulletproof. Two weeks later,
though, you learn that your brilliant proposal has been tabled. What went wrong?

All too often, people make the mistake of focusing too much on the content of their argument and not
enough on how they deliver that message. Indeed, far too many decisions go the wrong way because
information is presented ineffectively. In our experience, people can vastly improve their chances of
having their proposals succeed by determining who the chief decision maker is among the executives
they are trying to persuade and then tailoring their arguments to that business leaders decision-
making style.
Specifically, we have found that executives typically fall into one of five decision-making
categories:Charismatics can be initially exuberant about a new idea or proposal but will yield a final
decision based on a balanced set of information. Thinkers can exhibit contradictory points of view
within a single meeting and need to cautiously work through all the options before coming to a
decision.Skeptics remain highly suspicious of data that dont fit with their worldview and make
decisions based on their gut feelings. Followers make decisions based on how other trusted
executives, or they themselves, have made similar decisions in the past. And controllers focus on the
pure facts and analytics of a decision because of their own fears and uncertainties.

The five styles span a wide range of behaviors and characteristics. Controllers, for instance, have a
strong aversion to risk; charismatics tend to seek it out. Despite such differences, people frequently
use a one-size-fits-all approach when trying to convince their bosses, peers, and staff. They argue
their case to a thinker the same way they would to a skeptic. Instead, managers should tailor their
presentations to the executives they are trying to persuade, using the right buzzwords to deliver the
appropriate information in the most effective sequence and format. After all, Bill Gates does not make
decisions in the same way that Larry Ellison does. And knowing that can make a huge difference.

Five Approaches
Executives make it to the senior level largely because they are effective decision makers. Learning
mostly from experience, they build a set of criteria that guides them. Each decision is influenced by
both reason and emotion, but the weight given to each of these elements during the decision-making
process can vary widely depending on the person.

In a two-year project, we studied the decision-making styles of more than 1,600 executives across a
wide range of industries. Our work focused on how those people made purchasing decisions, but we
contend that the results have broader applicability to decision making in general. We interviewed
participants about various facets of their decision-making processes. For instance, how strong was
their desire to have others educate them about the issues involved in a particular decision? How
willing were they to move beyond the status quo? How much risk were they comfortable with in
making the decision? These characteristics and preferences are often set early in a businesspersons
career and evolve based on experience. In other words, people have a natural tendency toward a
certain style of decision making that gets reinforced through successesor that changes after
repeated failures.

Our research should not be confused with standard personality tests and indicators like Myers-Briggs.
Our framework is simply a categorization of how people tend to make decisions. Of course, people do
not always make decisions in the same way; much depends on the situation theyre in. But our
research has shown that when it comes to making tough, high-stakes choices that involve many
complex considerations and serious consequences, people tend to resort to a single, dominant style.
Call it a default mode of decision making.

In this article, we describe each of the five decision-making styles in detail. This information is
intended to be neither exhaustive nor definitive, and most executives will exhibit only some of the
 traits we list. Nevertheless, knowing the general characteristics of the different styles can help you
better tailor your presentations and arguments to your audience. Unfortunately, many people fail in
this regard. In our experience, more than half of all sales presentations are mismatched to the
decision makers style. Specifically, close to 80% of all sales presentations focus on skeptics and
controllers, but those two groups accounted for just 28% of the executives we surveyed.

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How to present to your boss

Published 08 October 2012 05:45, Updated 09 October 2012 06:02
Nancy Duarte
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Nailing presentations to senior executives can open tremendous doors.

Senior executives are one of the toughest crowds youll face as a presenter.
Theyre incredibly impatient because their schedules are jam-packed and they
have to make lots of high-stakes decisions, often with little time to weigh options.
So they wont sit still for a long presentation with a big reveal at the end. Theyll
just interrupt you before you finish your shtick.

It can be frustrating. You probably have a lot to say to them, and this might be your
only shot to say it. But if you want them to hear you at all, get to what they care
about right away so they can make their decisions more efficiently. Having
presented to top executives in many fields from jet engines to search engines
Ive learned the hard way that if you ramble in front of them, youll get a look that
says, Are you kidding me? You really think I have the time to care about that?
So quickly and clearly present information thats important to them, ask for
questions, and then be done. If your spiel is short and insightful, youll get their ear
again.

Heres how you can earn their attention and support:

Summarise up front Say youre given 30 minutes to present. When creating

your intro, pretend your whole slot got cut to 5 minutes. This will force you to
lead with all the information your audience really cares about high-level
findings, conclusions, recommendations, a call to action. State those points
clearly and succinctly right at the start, and then move on to supporting data,
subtleties, and material thats peripherally relevant.
Set expectations Let the audience know youll spend the first few minutes
presenting your summary and the rest of the time on discussion. Even the most
impatient executives will be more likely to let you get through your main
points uninterrupted if they know theyll soon get to ask questions.
Create summary slides When making your slide deck, place a short
overview of key points at the front; the rest of your slides should serve as an
appendix. Follow the 10 per cent rule: If your appendix is 50 slides, create 5
summary slides, and so on. After you present the summary, let the group drive
the conversation, and refer to appendix slides as relevant questions and
comments come up. Often, executives will want to go deeper into certain
points that will aid in their decision making. If they do, quickly pull up the
slides that speak to those points.
Give them what they asked for If you were invited to give an update about
the flooding of your companys manufacturing plant in Indonesia, do so before
covering anything else. This time-pressed group of senior managers invited
 you to speak because they felt you could supply a missing piece of
information. So answer that specific request directly and quickly.
Rehearse Before presenting, run your talk and your slides by a colleague
who will serve as an honest coach. Try to find someone whos had success
getting ideas adopted at the executive level. Ask for pointed feedback: Is your
message coming through clearly and quickly? Do your summary slides boil
everything down into skimmable key insights? Are you missing anything your
audience is likely to expect?
Sounds like a lot of work? It is, but presenting to an executive team is a great
honour and can open tremendous doors. If you nail this, people with a lot of
influence will become strong advocates for your ideas.

Five Ways to Sell an Idea to Your Boss

October 10, 2013
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You're a genius! You have SO many great ideas... if only you could get your boss to agree with
you, but that isn't going well. By my estimation, roughly one billion people have this problem.

Here are five strategies that might help. Since every boss and situation is different, not all will
work for you. But I hope a few might...
Communicate the way your boss likes to communicate. By far the most common mistake
people make is to assume their boss thinks like they do, which is often untrue. This does not
mean your boss is wrong; it means that you and your boss are different.

I know an executive, let's call him Frank, who is conservative and logical; he relies on facts and
figures, and - for the life of him - can't figure out why his boss ignores most of his
recommendations. Here's the reason: the boss and most of the executive team live in an ego-
centric world. They make decisions based on social interactions and what makes them feel good.
But Frank keeps sending them well-reasoned memos that no one actually reads, and he almost
never socializes with his superiors.

Until Frank recognizes this and starts pitching more ideas over a drink or two, he is unlikely to
get any traction. I'm not saying this is right, just that it sometimes is reality.

(By the way, the opposite can also be true: you might be trying to be the life of the party, when all
your boss wants are facts and figures.)

Embrace your boss's agenda instead of your own. You may have lots of great ideas, but how
many of them support your boss's conception of how things should work, instead of your own?
Trying getting 100% behind your boss, and investing 100% of your energy in coming up with
tactics and strategies to support his or her vision of your business.

This is easy to say, but can be hard to do. That's one reason why actually doing it works so well.

Only pitch ideas your boss can approve. Many employees make a serious miscalculation,
which is to drown their boss with proposals that he or she does not have the authority to approve.
Your boss may not tell you this, because doing so would lessen their standing in your eyes. But
every time you pitch such an idea, you are reminding them of their lack of standing.

Also, don't complain to your boss about things neither of you can change; sorry, but often it just
sounds like whining. You boss is not your friend. Your boss controls - at least partially - your
compensation and your future; it is in your interest to impress, not annoy, your boss.

Lower the risk to your boss of doing what you want. One of the best strategies I know for
lowering risk is based around the idea of keeping your options open. Structure your proposals in
stages, so that subsequent stages can be changed or cancelled if your first stages doesn't perform
as expected.

For example, instead of pitching that your business commits $1 million (now) to building a new
warehouse, pitch that it risk $50,000 to draw up plans for a new warehouse, which can then be
approved if everyone likes the plans, and demand for a new warehouse remains high. Doing this
moves the project ahead - for now - but with less risk.

Earn trust. When you pitch an idea, your boss not only has to wrestle with whether of not your
idea makes sense, he or she also needs to make a judgment about the odds that you will actually
do what you say you are going to do. So trust is often a bigger factor than your claimed benefits.
If you don't already have the trust of your boss, start with small projects and focus on execution.
Tell your boss what you're going to do, do it, then share your success. Establish a pattern of
standing behind your words.

BONUS TACTIC: give away the credit. Here's your secret weapon, but I'd only use it if you
believe your boss to be a decent human being (more on that below.) You can accomplish much,
much more if you don't need to get credit for the outcomes you wish to see come true.

Once you give up the need to get credit, there are countless ways to influence an outcome. You
can give superiors more room to form their own ideas. You can offer informal suggestions
instead of formal proposals. You can "pre-sell" ideas to colleagues and other senior managers,
and you can even present your ideas as those of the people around you.

It's important that your boss be a decent human being, because he or she needs to recognize that
everything runs better when you are around, even if you don't get credit for each of your
individual victories.

This tactic works especially well when you care more about the outcome - preserving jobs, for
example, or taking care of loyal customers - than you do about another pat on the back.