Climbing the ladder is overrated. It’s lonely, and the closer you get to the top, it becomes perilous.
Shaping perception isn’t about your rise. It’s about your truth. You don’t need more preparation or perfection. It’s not about your potential. “Potential” easily becomes someone else’s agenda for you.
Perception is about your person, who you are as you are and the value you bring.
You can spend a lifetime trying to get things right. And the whole time, people miss the real you. Somewhere in there, you realize you miss the real you too.
The following answers one question: How do you shape perception of who you are so as to own the positive promotion you and your team deserve while exhibiting the true you?
Some Background
Earlier this week, I asked you the best way to shape how you are perceived. Three strong answers emerged: communicating business value, building executive relationships, and delivering visible wins.
Yes. Bravo.
And there is a starting point that gives you a strong beginning for each. I have coached numerous leaders in this one strategy to help open up the openness of others.
Four Words
I need your help.
These are genuine words. Now, the help you seek is aimed at the help you want to provide - connecting IT to business value, building better relationships, and delivering meaningful wins.
Some more background:
- Every person you work with has a desire. It’s a preferred state.
- Desire creates space that needs to be filled. If I desire lunch, the hunger becomes prevalent and persistent.
- Space is a place of discontent. I’m hungry, and all else is losing focus.
- Space is also the place of friction. If I have a preferred state I want to be in, it means I live in a current state I want to be out of. But I can’t always get there on my own. (I didn’t bring a lunch and someone borrowed my car and it’s too far to walk)
- Space can be a place of fulfillment. (Door Dash has been waiting for you).
- Essentially: A person has a desire. They also have a constraint. This is where you and IT come in. You have the ability to overcome the restraint and get them from where they are to where they want to be.
The problem: Prophets get run out of town. When we come in uninvited with solutions to people’s problems, we haven’t necessarily created a desire. Usually we create defensiveness. We are met with stonewalling because we threw bricks.
Why climb a ladder when I can hike with others? Why be in exile when an expedition awaits?
How do you answer someone who says, “I need your help”? Typically, you ask, “What can I help with?” (Or some variation, such as, “I will if I can”).
Now You Are In
When someone offers to help, the conversation begins.
Name a problem: Example, “I’m concerned that IT isn’t as aligned as I thought we were with what the business needs.”
Tell your solution: Example, “So I’m meeting with other leaders to get their insights so that I can make productive changes”
Be clear on the agenda: Example, “If I could have X minutes with you (or coffee, or lunch, or ride with you to a jobsite, etc), you would help me clarify our real needs and opportunities.”
Lead with the engaging question: “What is something in your business where the right technology would make a difference but you just aren’t there yet?”
The conversation continues but that’s a whole other article or five.
Here is what happened though:
- Most conversations start with two people on either side of a table (real or imagined).
- Asking for help is an invitation to bridge the divide.
- Turning the focus on their needs places you alongside them.
- Telling them how they helped you (because you are evaluating how you can improve based on what they say) affirms their input.
- Finding ways to help them as a result of the conversation cements their perception of you as a credible (and incredible) team player.
One of my favorite things I say to people, “You know I can help with that.”
In our scenario, that sounds like “I learned from you. By the way, we can help with what you brought up. When may I follow up with you?”
What you have done; Established business value while building executive relationship so that you can deliver a meaningful win.
I frame all this as championing. If you champion another then they will champion you.
Or as a friend once said to me, “Love my kids and I will love you.”
You are loving their business. Build up their business, and they will build up you. It’s not manipulation, it’s motivation.
You serve. It’s why you got into leadership and technology - to solve problems, to answer challenges. Who you are is what people need.
Frustrated leaders are failed servers.
To better another is your truth. The doorway in is for another to help you out.